1. Ideas for donors’ coordination On CDD Need to understand that our approach is not meant to weaken the decentralization process On the contrary It is meant to correct a creeping naïve interpretation of the working of “representative” democracy Let us stop playing on the doctrinaire opposition of local government and community level governance Rather Let us cooperate to define respective roles

2. Suggestion: a domain for the community level does strengthen not weaken the district level of local government, if: the respective roles are properly defined regarding the five components of service provision (regulation, planning, producing, delivering, and financing), and The risk is recognized that: a simplistic interpretation of “representative” democracy tends to generate large tragedies of the commons multi-party elections are only one aspect of democracy effective democracy is rooted in a system of checks and balances in the civil society thriving community organizations are building blocks of such system

3. About the tragedy of the commons : “lobbies (national and local pressure groups, professional political intermediaries, powerful individuals, ….. and donors as well?) have power to get allocations of public funds to implement their preferred projects in excess of what is socially optimum”. Transparency in public finance is a necessary conditions to mitigate the risk, but only countervailing powers become sufficient conditions

4. Costs and benefits (analysis) has been mentioned Let us all honestly recognize the risk of manipulation: particularly with respect to measuring the value of benefits in the field of human, social, institutional, and political development and avoid some bizarre ideas (from the bank OAD review), such as that the time “beneficiaries” spend on participation is to be added to costs, when it is one of the major benefits we are interested to achieve, and hanging sophisticated statistical constructions on the rope of sand of unreliable data (to that the operationally not responsible statisticians get what they want) In short: let us get to grips with some of the real problems, design for and exercise rigor where it belongs

5. That is, let us join efforts instead for example: to address issues and share experiences on how to design rules and procedures that combine transparency, accounting, and accountability principles with simplicity and practices of controls that are enabling for the people that we claim are our ultimate clients And coordinate the policy dialogue with the client governments among ourselves on key thematic bases