Research partnerships and their evaluation

This chapter looks at the role played by partnerships in public policy research and at the difficulties in evaluating the work done by these partnerships. The discussion will focus on the Global Development Network (GDN) as an exemplar of a global policy research partnership. The GDN is one of the programs through which the World Bank has sought to become a "knowledge bank" and to legitimize its claims of building partnerships with civil society organizations. It is inevitable that the Bank should seek to develop partnerships with organizations that share its values and norms, and the seven regional networks that form the basis of the GDN are devoted mainly to analyzing economic questions. The GDN was launched by the World Bank in 1999 in cooperation with the United Nations; the governments of Japan, Germany, and Switzerland; and a group of regional research networks and some other private and public international development institutions. It is largely donor funded.