Monitoring Elite Capture in Community-Driven Development Jean-Philippe Platteau ABSTRACT Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to improving ways of assessing the effectiveness of development interventions. This is to be welcomed, especially with regard to community-based or participatory aid projects, since consider- able resources are currently being earmarked for these by almost all types of donor agencies, including large international organizations. Such projects are vulnerable to elite capture at local level, and this problem must be mitigated if most of the aid funds thus disbursed are to reach the intended beneficiaries. This article discusses several methods available to achieve that objective. In particular, it argues that the sequential and conditional release of aid funds may not be sufficient to keep elite capture well under control, making it necessary to resort to co-ordination mechanisms among aid agencies, such as multilateral reputation mechanisms. Even these are not going to be effective enough, however. In the end, an active role will have to be played by the ultimate purveyors of aid money, whether the taxpayers or the contributors in fund-raising campaigns. INTRODUCTION The recent focus on improving techniques and data to better assess the effectiveness of development interventions is a welcome move in so far as the impact of such interventions in the past has usually been poorly assessed. It is particularly welcome with regard to community-based or participatory aid projects, given that considerable resources are currently being earmarked for such projects by almost all types of donor agencies, including large international organizations. For example, the amount lent by the World Bank for community-driven development (CDD) projects has increased massively from US$ 325 million in 1996 to a conservatively estimated figure of US$ 2 billion in 2003 (Mansuri and Rao, 2003). Further- more, CDD has, for many decades, been the key approach advocated by many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in developing areas. Yet it is a sobering fact that, in spite of such extensive experience, scant material is available from NGOs which allows us to gain useful insights into the validity of the participatory approach, or the conditions which lead to its success. Development and Change 35(2): 223–246 (2004). # Institute of Social Studies 2004. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA