Evaluating Country Programmes - OECD Online Bookshop

OECD 1999
Chapter 7
Issues for Country Evaluation:
The Case of the EU Country Programme in Russia
by Dr. E. Caputo and Alexander Kotchegura
for the European Commission, Brussels
Introduction
The subject of this evaluation is the Tacis country programme in the Russian
Federation, which began in 1991. This chapter gives a very preliminary appraisal of
the CP evaluation, which is being carried out by a DRN (Development Researchers’
Network) team on behalf of the EC Evaluation Unit. Table 7.1 provides an overview
of Tacis allocations by sector.
This chapter intends to highlight some methodological issues using the
Russian CP evaluation as an example. The evaluation team did not have either the
data – since the study is still underway – or the time to prepare a paper on the
results and/or the methodology of the evaluation.
The workshop in Vienna, however, provided a particularly appropriate occasion
to share some important issues with participants, even though findings were at
a very preliminary stage.
Three specific issues are discussed here:
– That of the CP strategy, beyond the general policy/programming documents.
– That of the political framework in which a CP should fit.
– How to measure the impact of a CP with respect to its ex-post relevance and the
influence of the donor.
Identifying country programme strategy
The existence of a country programme implies the existence of a strategy linking
an aid agency and a recipient country. Such a strategy may be more or less
explicit. Often it is just mentioned in relatively general policy papers. In any case,
the evaluation should retrace ex-post the logic and the coherence of a country programme
on the basis of its priorities and implementation.
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