The promise of the stakeholder approach to evaluation lies in its potential to counter criticism that evaluation is too narrow, unrealistic in its standards for success, unfair to program staff and participants, and irrelevant to decision makers. (Author)

Critiquing the stakeholder idea, the author states: if government chooses to take account of competing views in social program evaluation, it can get a better result if it encourages the competing views to find a voice of their own, not to speak through the government's chosen instrument. (Author/PN)