This article puts institutional economics concepts to work to help identify the proper role of evaluation in organizations and circumvent key obstacles to evaluation use. Looking at the role of evaluation in bureaucracies through an economics lens has its limitations. But addressing ‘the rules of the evaluation game’ helps to complement currently dominant approaches that concentrate on evaluation quality and practices. In concert with systems thinking, the neo-institutional economics perspective provides useful pointers for the design of evaluation governance configurations geared to organizational learning and accountability.