It is with great joy that we announce and share the English translation of the book Evaluation, Democracy and Transformation: Experiences of Participatory Evaluation in Latin America, originally published in Spanish in early 2025. Following a rigorous period of translation and editorial work, today we make this collective product available to the international community.
This translation represents a fundamental step toward the internationalisation of the methodological and empirical knowledge generated by the EvalParticipativa initiative. Just as the manual Sowing and Harvesting achieved valuable integration into the English-speaking world, the English version of this new work responds to the growing global demand to know, in concrete terms, how evaluation processes with social participation are implemented in the Global South.
The content
Evaluation, Democracy and Transformation: Experiences of Participatory Evaluation in Latin America maintains the structure and richness of the original intact. The initial chapter provides the framework for understanding, highlighting the global relevance that evaluative approaches involving greater civil society prominence have acquired.
Based on the analysis of territorial experiences in Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador, the work presents (chapters 2 through 11) the lessons learned and suggestions capable of nurturing the international methodological debate on stakeholder inclusion. Likewise, the final chapters share the capacity-building strategy generated by EvalParticipativa (chapter 12) and the milestones of the ten years of regional cooperation between the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval) and the Ministry of Planning (Mideplan) in Costa Rica (chapter 13).
As with the Spanish version, this edition is supported by VIENTOSUR, the digital, indexed, peer-reviewed, and open-access publishing house of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Argentina. You can access the complete book in English from this link.
Global projection
The experience we have gained from EvalParticipativa over these years shows that participatory evaluation promotes collective learning and critical reflection on public policies. By overcoming the language barrier, we aim for the lessons forged in Latin America to contribute to global debates on how to democratise evaluative practice, give a voice to historically excluded groups, and contribute to social equity worldwide.
We hope that Evaluation, Democracy and Transformation becomes a reference, study, and discussion material in international academic and professional networks. We encourage you to share this publication with English-speaking colleagues, institutions, and communities of practice interested in this methodological perspective.
Pablo Rodríguez-Bilella and Esteban Tapella (coordinators).
