Evaluating Policies to Tackle Undeclared Work: The Role of Stakeholders in Trust Building

1. Evaluating policies to tackle undeclared work The role of stakeholders in improving policy making and building trust Anton Kojouharov, IAPP GREY Project “Out of the Shadows” – University of Sheffield Management School/Vitosha Research.

2. What is evaluation? • Constructivist- a structured process that creates and synthesizes information intended to reduce the level of uncertainty for decision makers and stakeholders about a given program or policy (McDavid and Hawthorn, 2013:3) • Positivist - “evaluation examines the actual implementation and impacts of a policy to assess whether the anticipated effects, costs and benefits were in fact realised, therefore also identifying what works in a program” (HM Treasury, 2011: 7). • Realist- what is it about a program that works for whom in what circumstances?

3. Why evaluate?

4. How are policies evaluated – the case of undeclared work

5. Policy-making and evaluation in context • Bulgaria, Croatia and FYROM have some of the largest informal economies in Europe, as % of their GDP • The dominant approaches in tackling undeclared work in all three states are direct measures focusing on control and deterring activities. • Tax morale, public trust in institutions and perceptions of administrative and judicial fairness are relatively low in the three states compared to other European states. • Institutional asymmetry (diverging formal and informal values) is persistent as both social context and driver of non-compliant activities. • Policies and their tools have the power to shape attitudes • Complex social problems (wicked problem) require collaborative strategies.

6. Challenges in evaluating policies – the case of undeclared work in Bulgaria, Croatia and FYROM • Lack of systematic evaluations and cost-benefit analysis of measures (Bulgaria) • Majority of interventions are conducted without pilot initiatives or public debates, and there is a general lack of studies evaluating the effectiveness of the introduced strategies (Croatia) • Many state agencies are still without a comprehensive approach to monitoring and evaluation (Macedonia) • No genuine stakeholder collaboration throughout the policy cycle • Where stakeholders are involved, it is often after a measure has already been designed. • For example a study on stakeholder collaboration in Bulgaria identifies the following deficiencies: • a lack of feedback from state institutions; exploiting the consultative bodies in order to legitimise an already designed measure; lack of clear rules, procedures and communication policies between state institutions and stakeholders. (Bulgarian School of Politics, 2014)

9. Why is early stakeholder collaboration essential –a win – win against institutional asymmetry.

11. The way forward • A stakeholder identification process must be completed. This should include intra-governmental actors, business, NGOs and academia. Policy-responsible officials may perform initial stakeholder scanning. A second round of consultative stakeholder scanning may be appropriate, among the initially selected ones, to ensure that all interested parties are invited in the policy discussions. • Stakeholder collaboration is only meaningful before the problem definition and policy design occur. Such collaboration must be inspired by engaged or pro-active public accountability, whereby participants may advise and revise policy proposals. • institutionalisedbelief in the attitude forming and trust-building powers of policy measures, tools and mechanisms

12. Thank you for your attention!