204 The Missing Link: Processing Variation in D ialogical Evaluation JURIAN EDELENBOS Erasmus University Rotterdam, H olland MICHEL VAN EETEN D elft U niversity of Technology, H olland This article is a comment on ‘D ialogue as a D emocratizing Evaluation Method’ by Katherine Ryan and Lizanne D eStefano. Their insightful paper prompted us to reflect on several difficult issues at the core of the ‘dialogical paradigm’ of evaluation. O ur reflections focus on four issues: (1) dialogue as a democratizing process, (2) representativeness and participation, (3) the missing link between variation and selection in dialogical evaluation, and (4) the role of the evaluator. O ur main argument is that dialogical democracy is excellent for raising awareness and a rich variation of views and ideas, but it does not help in retaining that variation for subsequent policy processes. Research into dialogical and par ticipator y democracy must pay more attention to this missing link. The paradox that needs to be addressed, we argue, is that variation can be retained only when dialogical evaluation also suppor ts selection and condensation processes. The ar ticle concludes with an outline of the evaluator’s role and tools in providing the missing link. K EY W O R D S: analysing methods; deliberative democracy; large infrastructural projects; par ticipative policy making; representation Dialogue as a Democratization Process The agenda of dialogical evaluation is clearly connected to that of participatory democracy. Indeed, Ryan and DeStefano (this issue) approvingly cite the notion that evaluators have a special covenant with participants and the public at large because evaluators are ‘constrained by the value of promoting democracy’. Unfortunately, democratically oriented evaluation remains undefined beyond ‘inclusion, dialogue, and deliberation’. The consequences of this omission extend far beyond definitional quarrels and, in fact, lead us to what we see as the Achilles’ heel of dialogical evaluation – and participatory democracy, for that matter. To better understand what it means to do democratically oriented evaluation, several aspects of democracy must be disentangled. First, we must distinguish Evaluation Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand O aks and N ew D elhi) [1356–3890 (200104)7:2; 204–210; 018660] Vol 7(2):204–210 at Institute of Soc Studies-Libr on August 19, 2015 evi.sagepub.com Downloaded from