Policy evaluation as a source of policy advice in Italy: a tale of two policy sectors

Abstract

Policy evaluation and policy advice overlap within the evidence-based policymaking paradigm but remain analytically distinct. This article examines their relationship and explores the conditions under which evaluation may contribute to advisory processes. The study combines a conceptual comparison of evaluation and policy advice with a qualitative documentary analysis of two Italian organisational evaluation systems: performance evaluation in public administration and quality assurance in universities. It examines their institutional design, the formal bases of evaluators’ legitimacy, and documentary traces indicating whether evaluators’ recommendations are taken into account in organisational planning and decision-making. The two systems display marked differences in the documented use of evaluation. In public administrations, evaluation bodies primarily perform methodological and oversight functions, with limited evidence linking specific recommendations to subsequent decisions. In universities, institutional arrangements connect evaluation more directly with planning, quality improvement, and monitoring, producing clearer documentary traces of uptake. The findings indicate that strong system-wide institutionalisation is neither necessary nor sufficient for evaluation to contribute to policy advice. Instead, two sets of conditions are crucial. At the organisational level, arrangements must connect evaluative knowledge with subsequent decision-making. At the professional level, evaluators need methodological expertise, recognised substantive knowledge, and relational competence to establish their legitimacy as contributors to policy advice. Exercising this role entails balancing engagement with independence, while safeguarding evaluative autonomy and rigour. Where these conditions converge, evaluators—a neglected category of policy advisory actor—can begin to perform a function that the policy advisory.