Evaluation and Learning for Social and Behavioral Science-Based Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Programs: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract Information: Democracy International (DI) and other practitioner and donor organizations in the international democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) development field are increasingly integrating social and behavioral science (SBS) in their work to generate more predictable and sustainable program outcomes. This trend raises important questions about evaluation and learning in the DRG field, including: How well are SBS-based approaches working in the contexts where many international DRG programs operate? What new insights can we generate by integrating SBS analytical frameworks into evaluation and learning activities? How can we reconcile differences between methodologies and epistemologies central to the behavioral sciences and local ways of understanding societal dynamics, evaluating program approaches, and building evidence in different global contexts? This roundtable will provide an opportunity for evaluators to grapple with these questions drawing on SBS-informed evaluation and learning insights from three of DI’s programs. In Bangladesh, the socio-ecological model helped facilitate programmatic learning following a randomized controlled trial which found that, counter to expectations, a planning prompts intervention did not increase women’s participation in advocacy behaviors and self-efficacy did not explain women’s participation in advocacy. In a Kosovo-based learning activity focused on building citizen-government trust, behaviorally-focused language carried a punitive rather than a technical connotation in Albanian, posing implementation and skill-building challenges with local officials. Additionally, the SBS focus on analyzing behavioral influences, particularly at the individual level, proved counterintuitive to local implementers and officials, presenting implementation and evaluation challenges. Third, SBS helped explain contradictory qualitative and quantitative data collected to evaluate DI’s work to support women's participation in the 2023 legislative elections in Liberia. Specifically, evidence regarding diverse behavioral drivers of women’s success during elections pointed to structural and social factors that helped explain why perceived improvements in women’s electoral participation among local partners and beneficiaries did not translate into an increase in the number of women elected to the legislature. Presenters will draw on these and other DI program examples to inspire discussion among roundtable participants on opportunities and challenges for evaluating and learning from SBS-informed DRG programs.