Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Assessing the implementationof cultural diversity policiesResearch position paper 2By Arnold J. Love, Ph.D.Independent Researcher, TorontoIntroduction, methodology and limitationsThe purpose of this paper is to examine various ways of assessing the effectivenessof the implementation of cultural diversity policies, especially the translationof general policy principles into policy instruments and their application in thecontext of specific relations of diversity.The primary methodology employed for this research was a computerised and handsearch of the relevant literature published during the last ten years. Literaturesearches were conducted both in North America and in Europe. The literaturesearches, however, revealed few published evaluation studies of the effectivenessof the implementation of cultural diversity policies or their translation into policyinstruments addressing specific relations of diversity. The likely reason is that followingthe rapid devolution of governments in western democracies during the lasttwenty years, central government ministries have moved away from rigorous evaluationsof policy implementation. They are relying more on provincial and localgovernment agencies and voluntary and non-governmental organisations to conducttheir own evaluations. If done at all, these evaluations are usually designed tomeet accountability requirements and guide internal resource allocation and programmingdecisions, rather than to be published or publicly disseminated.Undoubtedly some implementation evaluation reports exist, but obtaining themwould require directly contacting the relevant government ministries and agencies,and non-profit organisations. This type of research was beyond the timeframe and resources of the current project.Persistent challenges to the evaluation of cultural diversitypolicy instrumentsLack of agreement on the meanings of cultural diversityA central concern for evaluation is the lack of a clear and agreed-upon definitionof cultural diversity. In western democracies the concept initially appeared to beunderstood as affording all members of society respect, no matter what their cultureof origin. In time, others appeared to see cultural diversity as the basic93