The Participatory and Intersectional Monitoring and Evaluation Hub (PRIME Hub) launches the guide “Evaluation and Social Participation: a guide to strengthening democratic governance.” The guide emphasizes that social participation should be a principle of democratic public governance that permeates all stages of evaluation\u2014planning, doing, and using. Here, we present an overview of active participatory evaluation methodologies, a toolbox to make social participation the central axis of the evaluation process, strengthening the legitimacy of interventions and democratic governance, with special attention to methodologies sensitive to inequalities of gender, race, and social class. Social engagement contributes to broadening the legitimacy of policies, strengthens democracy, and promotes the inclusion of historically marginalized groups, giving voice to different perspectives.<\/p>\n
Our guide examines the centrality of social participation in the public policy cycle, differentiating the different levels of participatory evaluation, with emphasis on active participation, promoting empowerment. The study presents and details an overview of seven participatory approaches (such as Warm Calling, Participatory Rural Appraisal, and Empowerment Evaluation), explaining their methodologies and objectives. The publication emphasizes the need for ethical safeguards (such as transparency and inclusion) and robust governance of these evaluations to ensure legitimacy, co-responsibility, and transformative results in strengthening democracy.<\/p>\n