This book has grown out of an established tradition of evaluation research undertaken by the Health and Social Policy Research Centre at the University of Brighton. Central to this tradition has been the recognition of evaluation as an inherently political activity. As our experience grew, we decided to bring together a range of academics and researchers to consider the wider aspects of the ‘politics of evaluation’. As a result, a national conference on this theme was held at the University of Brighton in November 2002. All contributors to this collection presented papers at the conference and subsequently revised them for publication. Four themes consistently surfaced in discussions about the politics of evaluation: governance, participation, partnerships and learning from evaluation. The book is organised around these themes. This, we hope, has allowed us to present a structured analysis of the thinking that characterises theoretical approaches to evaluation and the methodologies employed.