International Conference Stream
during the 28th DeGEval Annual Conference from 17 to 19 September 2025 at Saarland University
For the first time, the DeGEval Annual Conference features an international stream. This stream presents findings from the CEval Evaluation GLOBE Project, which comprises 50 country case studies and 11 reports from transnational organizations, offering a global overview of developments in the institutionalization and professionalization of evaluation, as well as of enabling and hindering factors.
The international conference stream comprises the following events:
12:00 - 13:00 | Keynote: The Institutionalization of Evaluation in a Global Perspective Keynote by Reinhard Stockmann The use of evaluation is increasing in a global scale. More and more countries are using evaluation as a tool for producing reliable and trustworthy data to inform evidence-based decisions for program management, impact assessment and policy making. To this end, the institutionalization and professionalization of evaluation has been pushed forward on a massive level in many countries. However, until now there has been a lack of a global overview of these developments as well as of the factors driving and hindering them. For this reason, the CEval Evaluation GLOBE Project was launched in 2016 to analyze as many countries as possible on all continents in order to close this research gap. To date, 50 country case studies and 11 reports from transnational organizations have been published in four volumes (Europe 2020; Americas 2022; Asia-Pacific 2023 and Africa 2025), in which 137 authors have contributed. This has resulted in a globally unique database that serves as the empirical basis for the international stream of this year's DeGEval annual conference. In the keynote speech, the complete results of the CEval Evaluation GLOBE Project will be presented for the first time. During the following sessions, the findings will be taken up, successively expanded and discussed under various aspects by the authors of the country case studies from a continental perspective. The keynote speech will begin with the research objectives and the theoretical and methodological approach underlying the project presented. This is followed by a presentation of the findings on the institutionalization and use of evaluation in the political and social system and the degree of professionalization of evaluation in the countries studied. A double comparative analysis perspective is applied for this purpose. Firstly, the results of these three different systems that are presented are compared by country, followed by an intercontinental comparison. Finally, the promoting and hindering factors for the institutionalization and use of evaluation as well as the challenges for the future of evaluation will be identified. |
14:30 - 16:00 | Supporting and Hindering Factors for the institutionalization and use of evaluation The results of the Globe project will be compared and discussed in the panel from a regional perspective. To this end, the panelists will take up the topic from the key note presentation and comment on the overall Globe results from the regional (not country) perspective and discuss the following questions: (1) How can the considerable differences between the individual countries and continents be explained? (2) What are the driving and hindering forces of the institutionalization of evaluation within the political, social and professional system? (3) How are these three social subsystems interrelated and how do they interact with each other? (4) What can be done to foster the institutionalization of evaluation in individual countries to strengthen the use of evaluation? The panelists are all authors from the Evaluation Globe series. They each contribute the perspective of their respective region. |
16:30 - 18:00 | The Role of Parliaments, Governments and Administration in Institutionalizing Evaluation The Panel takes up the positions expressed in the keynote and keynote panel. It begins with a short input from each of the selected book authors about the role of the parliamentarians, the ministries and governmental institutions in regard to their function in the development of institutional evaluation structures and their use. It will be discussed what parliaments and governments can do, to push ahead with the institutionalization and use of evaluation. |
9:00 - 10:30 | Contributions of Academia, Civil Society, and VOPEs to Evaluation Institutionalization The Panel takes up the positions expressed in the keynote and keynote panel. The session begins with a short input from each of the selected book authors about the role of the academia, VOPES and civil society in regard to their function in the development of institutional evaluation structures and their use. In the Panels it is discussed what Academia, Civil Society and VOPEs can do, to push ahead with the institutionalization and use of evaluation. |
12:30 - 14:00 | Closing Panel: Stakeholder Strategies for Strengthening the Institutionalisation of Evaluation The panel marks the conclusion of the international section of the conference. The objective of this session is to discuss the future of evaluation, building on the outcomes of previous sessions. After the keynote provided an overview of the institutionalization and use of evaluation in 50 countries across all continents and identified the driving and hindering forces for the development of evaluation, the keynote panel expanded on these findings. From a regional perspective, the global results were discussed along a series of questions and then concretized during the two panel sessions, focusing on different stakeholder groups. In this closing panel, representatives from politics and administration, academia, international evaluation associations and multilateral organizations that analyze and/or support evaluation capacity development will discuss the future of evaluation on the basis of these results. The guiding questions are as follows: • How can the institutionalization and use of evaluation for evidence-based policy be progressed? • What can parliaments, governments and their administrations, civil society, academia and evaluation associations contribute to this? • Does evaluation even have a future under the given political and social conditions (e.g., populism, authoritarianism, fake news, AI, etc.)? And if so, what will this future look like? |
