161Evaluations are also conducted by two independent agencies: Tillväxtanalys (The Swedish Agency for Growth Policy Analysis) and the previously mentioned Swedish NAO. Evaluation is also performed by researchers and by consultants, hired to evaluate specific tasks. The empirical approach of the study involved reading and coding a total of 110 policy interventions from 2005 to 2019 with regard to the judgment calls made in the evaluations, the evaluative actor, the evaluative methods, the type of data used in the evaluation, as well as a few control variables. The results are presented below. The study shows that evaluations of Swedish growth and innovation policies largely consist of positive reviews. Among the 110 evaluations examined, there are 67 positive, 37 neutral, and 6 negative evaluations. Figure 1 shows the frequencies of different results in the studied evaluations.

The low share of evaluations containing negative policy evaluations in Fig. 1 is noteworthy. One possible explanation based on these results is that Swedish growth and innovation policy overall shows quite remarkably effective and efficient results—rightfully resulting in positive evaluations. An alternative explanation would be that some actors embellish their evaluations and write evaluations that E. Collin et al.

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0 Positive Neutral Negative

Fig. 1 Reviews given by evaluations of Swedish growth and innovation policies

give the impression that the policy seems to function better than it does. In the next section, we intend to probe various reasons behind the positive evaluations by analyzing the different actors responsible for the evaluations, as well as methods