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The main objective of the paper is to address and explore a much-debated issue within the evaluation community: the idea of "democratic evaluation". What exactly is meant by this term? When can an evaluation be said to be democratic? Through the adoption of what behaviours should this ideal translate into concrete working practice? The essay aims to contribute to broadening the community's debate on these questions, which are central at a historical-political moment such as the post-emergence from Covid-19 and in the midst of an international crisis, that between Russia and Ukraine, which calls democratic evaluation into question in our country. On a general level, in fact, the situation of uncertainty due to the unpredictable effects of the pandemic, the social and economic crisis in the country and the consequent growing distrust of the citizens towards the administration seem to have increased the demand for accountability, leading to talk, as in the rest of Europe as well, of a "democratic deficit". On the other hand, recent administrative re-centralization, even assisted by current evaluative practices, only aggravates the inefficiency of public administration. Accountability, freedom and democracy are never given, they need to be defended, always regained: evaluation assumes a strategic role to this end; it can help bring citizens closer to public administration. The crisis between Russia and Ukraine is changing geopolitical balances; the effects of the war economy, inflation, the energy crisis, and the possible escalation of the conflict add to the uncertain situation due to the pandemic. New inequalities and an increase in poverty threaten to generate deep rifts in the country's socioeconomic fabric. Systemic shocks add to chronic problems: a demographic collapse, stagnation, job insecurity, and a lag in digitization. At the same time, the political system fails to represent and stabilize consensus over time. Governments also suffer from this instability, with the inability to design and implement structural reforms for the country, including that of the bureaucracy. Social complexity, chronic problems and systemic shocks, require the ability to apply effective public policies. State intervention and the ability of the bureaucracy to be efficient and responsive to social change are central issues for the health of democracy. Public policies move within a framework of very high complexity, in which the role of evaluation emerges, which should tend to the development of democratic accountability, illuminating decision-making choices through its methodological rigor, analytical capacity and scientific knowledge. The essay thus aims to address the potential of a democratic evaluation that can broaden the number of stakeholders, the field of values that are taken into account, the repertoire of research methods, the field of interest of policies, and the very definition of the objects of evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the contradictory relationship between workers' experience of ecology and working-class environmentalism in the case study of Italsider/(ex)Ilva in Taranto (Apulia, Italy), on the methodological basis of social ethnography. The main thesis is that a new - qualitative and historically solid - analysis of such, complex relationship makes it possible on the one hand to deconstruct the seemingly natural opposition between employment and health, and on the other hand to open up unprecedented scenarios for the development of a different labor-based perspective on the ecological crisis. The structure of the article is as follows: the first paragraph situates the research from a theoretical point of view, against the background of an emerging field of investigation: environmental labor studies (§1). The second makes its methodology explicit (§2). The following ones examine two phases of Taranto's industrial, steelbased development - the public management (§3) and the private one, during which the eco-sanitary crisis deflagrates (§4) - in an attempt to articulate the elusive and non-linear relationship between workers' experience of ecology and working-class environmentalism - until the agreement with Arcelor Mittal in September 2018, starting from which a largely different story opens up. Such story is briefly referred to in the conclusions, recalling more recent events and sketching possible lines of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution, the Author intends to take stock of the situation regarding the main Italian public institutions which have assumed a leading role in the evaluation of public policies, with particular regard to the evaluation of the public administration, the evaluation of the education and training system, the evaluation of universities and research, the analysis and evaluation of labor policies and social policies, the evaluation of development cooperation initiatives, the evaluation of cohesion policies, the evaluation of agricultural policies. For each of these areas the public institutions of reference are identified, the role covered is outlined and the main activities carried out within the framework of the functions assigned to them are described. The purpose of the essay is to provide a general overview: the sources reported can be used for appropriate insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]