Introduction
Politics and the policies involved are crucial since they are responsible for distributing resources to the people. Therefore, developing policies and goals is significant since they help determine how people’s interest is considered during the distribution. With this comes the need to evaluate the programs mandated to oversee the distribution of these resources. Engaging the appropriate stakeholders is another strong aspect to be considered since the people are the backbone of the community through which politics is formed. The reaction essay summarizes four topics on politics and policy, planning and designing a useful evaluation, social goals and policy, and engaging stakeholders, reflecting their applicability among the people.
Politics and Policy
Policy and politics occur within the community and, therefore, form the initial starting point of the authors’ polis, which must assume collective effort and will. Unlike in a market, this is significant since an individual’s behavior contributes to the communal goal (Stone, 2012). Communal membership is essential since it helps define who members are and, through this, political membership. A polis framework must comprise partitions between social and partisan communities and consider cultural diversity since it forms the basis of political policy dilemmas. Through such considerations, it becomes possible to address issues such as bilingual education, criminal standards, and international and interracial adoption when defending communities against death by integration.
Communal membership is also responsible for economic, political, and social rights, which is necessary when mutual aid is legally defined among members. The definition is responsible for group members based on who is within or outside the community. Arguably, mutual aid is the strongest bond holding members of a community. It becomes the responsibility of modern politicians to develop policies that show care, maintain, and share relationships are important motivators of human behavior in terms of promotion, competition, and autonomy (Stone, 2012). Therefore, policy politics must factor in issues such as altruism, influence, cooperation, loyalty, groups, information, passion, and power relative to how they affect community members.
Planning and Designing Useful Evaluations
There is a systematic data demand for public and nonprofit programs throughout the world, and with that, the supplied data rarely matches the requestors’ demand level. With the increase in the demand for systematic data, nonprofit funders, foundations, citizens, oversight agencies, and elected officials question the value attached to the offered funded programs (Newcomer et al., 2015). Program evaluation, therefore, becomes a valuable learning strategy that facilitates knowledge enhancement about the fundamental program activities and logic. However, the evaluation programs must be cost-worthy and useful and should assess outcomes and implementation alongside ways to enhance the evaluated programs. Selecting programs to evaluate, evaluation type, and contextual elements impacting evaluation use and conduct identification. Further, producing essential methodological rigor to support credible findings, right measures selection, and selecting reliable ways to obtain the measures become essential.
For quantitative data, supporting causal inferences requires understanding internal validity, generalizability, validity in statistical conclusions, and reporting, which are essential when planning and designing useful evaluations. Therefore, planning a useful and responsive evaluation entails comprehending the planning evaluation process, data collection, and analysis. Using evaluation information comes through a clear presentation of feasible and finding recommendations. In practical situations, achieving effective use of evaluation information programs entails acknowledging and appreciating, addressing questions, envisioning the content of the final evaluation products, and carefully designing sampling processes (Newcomer et al., 2015). In actual circumstances, people must work to ensure authenticity and validity, address plausible alternative explanations, and communicate competence among evaluators. Further, they must clarify used techniques, tailor communication preferences for different audiences, and work consistently to provide a summary and written report.
Social Goals and Policy
Distribution forms the most familiar description of political science regarding who gets what and when and is also at the center of policy controversies. Equality becomes a critical issue in distributive conflicts since all involved parties aim to envision how best to distribute what is at stake. Therefore, the involved parties must consider the dimensions of equality, such as membership, merit, rank, group-based distribution, need, value, competition, lotteries, and elections, and how they influence the distribution of the available resources (Stone, 2012). Choosing a distributive method helps deal with the challenge of inequality from communal and democratic perspectives.
Efficiency is a reasonable idea, and in political science, it is a concern of how best to get to a place. Like equal slices, efficiency allows choosing between policy alternatives when solving the issue revolves around getting the most out of something intuitively appealing to the problem (Stone, 2012). When opposing political sides conflict over resource distribution, their offered assumptions, though they might appear different, only portray their preferred results as the most efficient. We must understand the exchanges involved in efficiency and market share allow for two significant characteristics; one, they are voluntary, and two, they enable people to make voluntary exchanges based on alternative provided information (Stone, 2012). Therefore, there is no firm ground when measuring efficiency relative to distribution. People must realize that full information, voluntarism, externalities, public goods, and competition are critical when determining where self-interest and jeopardy differ regarding efficiency.
Engaging Stakeholders
Understanding the value of partnering with stakeholders in evaluation is critical and focusing the evaluations based on their intended use is significant when utilizing focused evaluations. Therefore, program developers must acknowledge how analyzing and engaging the stakeholder process works to achieve an opportunity to address the key stakeholders, especially those intended to use the program. Further, the developers must clarify the evaluation’s goals and purposes and specify the right stakeholders to work with (Newcomer et al., 2015). To achieve this, Newcomer et al. (2015) define who a stakeholder is and argue that agreeing on an evaluator’s purpose is essential despite the disagreements in finding a considerable common ground. In line with the argument by the authors, people must identify and engage; they are the primary intended users, and they are critical since they help developers identify and analyze the appropriate analysis techniques. That is essential since it helps devise additional proposals that help to determine the evaluation’s goals and purpose when estimating the programs. However, when dealing with a rapidly changing evaluation situation, the stakeholders and the developers must adapt, be flexible, and respond based on situation. That is a necessity for continuous analysis and handling potentially evolving engagement tactics.
Conclusion
Frameworks through which policies are formed are critical since they help define how politicians should carry out politics. When distributing resources, equality and efficiency must be considered since they bring out which political affiliation receives which share of the available resources. However, even with the distribution being central in the sharing of resources, the community must understand the significance of planning and designing useful evaluations while acknowledging their role in distributing the resources.
References
Newcomer, K. E., Hatry, H. P., & Wholey, J. S. (2015). Handbook of practical program evaluation. 4th ed. John Wiley & Sons.
Stone. D. (2012). Policy paradox: The art of political decision-making. 3rd ed. W.W. Norton & Company.