160who evaluate with research interests, to consulting firms, think tanks, agencies, ombudsmen, and specially appointed commissions or evaluation agencies; it is also common that executive agencies conduct self-evaluations. The same intervention or political effort can be evaluated multiple times by different actors. For example, the crash of a Dutch military cargo plane at Eindhoven Airport in 1996, and the subsequent crisis management, led to no less than 15 different evaluations from different actors (Goodin et al., 2008). While this event was extreme, it highlights the importance of evaluation in describing reality and providing recommendations for improvements of regulations, processes, and procedures, and also whether those regulations, processes, and procedures are effective in attaining the envisioned goals. The Eindhoven incident also highlights that different evaluators may reach different conclusions, a topic hitherto rarely attended to in the innovation literature. As our study will show, one of the aforementioned actors, the consultants, might be of special interest for those studying innovation policies.

During recent years, there has been a general trend in public administration toward an increased use of consultants. Although in many aspects it has been beneficial and efficient, the trend is also connected to several drawbacks. Scholars have pointed to reduced competence within public agencies, a confusion of responsibility between those contracted for a job and those ordering it, and a shift in values within the public sector: consultants bringing what can be referred to as instrumental rationality, a constant demand for efficiency, and evidence-based practices at the expense of normative judgments within the public sphere (van den Berg et al., 2019; Ylönen & Kuusela, 2019). The field of evaluation is no exception to this trend. Although developing at different speeds in different countries, large organizations such as the AEA (American Evaluation Association) and the EES (European Evaluation Society) signify almost industry-sized evaluation markets connected to American and E.U. political reforms.

3

Empirical Setting: Innovation Policy in Sweden

In Sweden as in many other Western countries, evaluations are conducted through-