29 broader political incentives; they also change politics by attempting to increase social cohesion for greater collective action.

Again, drawing upon the extensive review of such projects in Mansuri and Rao (Forthcoming), the broad conclusion is that while citizen participation in project design and implementation can have beneficial effects on project outcomes (better design, better quality, better targeting of benefits to the poorest), this varies across communities with variation in characteristics of initial inequality, social cohesion, and state-citizen relations (politics). Furthermore, in the available evidence, there has been little scope to test whether there is any impact on political inclusion of marginalized groups and social cohesion, leading to effects on the politics relationship that could extend beyond the project.

Two more recent pieces of work that have attempted to examine impact on political accountability, through broader political inclusion and social cohesion, reach different conclusions. Casey et al (2011) conclude from the detailed examination of a CDD program in Sierra Leone that although it improved local public goods provision and household welfare in the short-run (which could be because of the increased funds provided), there was no long-term or durable impact on local institutions of decision-making, inclusion, and collective action. In contrast, Fearon et al (2009) find in Liberia that a CDD project did not have significant impact on local household welfare measures, but that in project villages the results of behavioral games played with community members indicates greater social cohesion and willingness to contribute to public goods.

**_Community-driven reconstruction in post-conflict settings_** . The two studies just referenced are examples of particular types of CDD projects with the broader aim of providing benefits to the poor and building social cohesion in postconflict environments. Once again, a broader review of the evidence of such forms of engaging civil society, both to deliver project benefits and to address the root causes, perhaps, of conflict, concludes with strikingly mixed messages (Mansuri and Rao, Forthcoming). While there are some qualitative cases of success in both delivering benefits to the poor and to ex-combatants, and in engaging civil society to confront violent actors, others find that the poor and marginalized find it even harder to access project benefits in conflict areas, and that governments only selectively scale-up such projects in areas where they command political support. The authors of the positive outcomes measured in Liberia, Fearon et al (2011), point out that their results may not speak to addressing conflict _per se_ , because conflict usually occurs at higher levels than that of the local “community” targeted by CDD/CDR projects. It is even possible that strengthening cohesion _within_ communities may worsen conflict _across_ communities.

**_In sum._** Interventions that organize civil society to improve the compact and client-power can be effective; however, much depends on project design and initial conditions of inequality and social cohesion that vary across communities.  This does not imply that community participation in projects involving public goods will always fail in communities with high levels of inequality or weak social cohesion (low “social capital).  Khwaja (Forthcoming) finds that modifying project design can