Administrative project review is newly started assessment system by the former cabinet governed by the Democratic Party. This review focuses on the effectiveness of the individual projects and on the appropriateness of the budget expenditures of all ministries. In fact, they reviewed about 5000 project a year. After a changeover of the government from Democratic Party to Liberal Democratic Party in 2012, the Prime Minister Abe decided to carry out administrative project review for the purpose of administrative reform. Then Administrative Reform Promotion Council chaired by Prime Minister has started in February 2013. The Council deliberated the policy and procedure of this review system and also discussed division of roles between this review system and the policy assessment system that is operated by the different ministry. In this paper, I will overview the administrative project review system, and will explain what and how the Council revised this system under Prime Minister’s initiative.

  The purpose of this study is to theoretically review “probative logic” by focusing on its philosophical background and its implication for evaluation methodology. Probative logic is a theory to analyze and improve judgment aspects of evaluation. This logic is developed by Michael Scriven and is one of the keywords of his "logic of evaluation". Thus, understanding probative logic lead better comprehension of logic of evaluation and meteorological implication about “judgment driven evaluation” such as research evaluation.

  In this paper I will present three topics concerning this theme. First, I discuss the relationship between probative logic and “value free doctrine” to clarify its philosophical roots. Second, I illustrate some features of judgment from a perspective of probative logic. Third, I show some models of the probative logic as alternative to the value free doctrine. To conclude, I will discuss implication for evaluation methodology and limitation of this paper.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is one of the most internationally recognized development indices. Unlike the conventional economic indices, the HDI considers not only economic but also educational and health aspects. The HDI is often used as a ranking index to assess the level of development of a nation. However, the theoretical foundation of the HDI, human development theory, does not aim at proposing a ranking index; rather, it provides a perspective for comprehensive evaluation to clarify the problems that each nation needs to tackle for its national development.

  Therefore, reflecting the original idea of human development theory, this paper tries to develop a new method of development evaluation to assess the balance of development of each nation, rather than ranking them. 141 nations which have the necessary data for statistical analyses are sampled, and principal component analysis is used to decompose each of the 141 HDIs according to education, health and economic factors. The decomposed factors draw a chart of development balance and these 141 charts are categorized and utilized for a more comprehensive evaluation of development.