2001). Similarly an impact evaluation conducted in Zambia (Chase and Sherbume-Benz, 2001) found a positive impact on education and health. An extensive impact evaluation study conducted in Nicaragua also found a pro-poor bias with significant education and water-sanitation improvements (World Bank, 2000). Thus, the consensus view from Social Funds 2000 is that Social Funds are generally pro-poor both on the household level as well as geographically. Social Funds 2000 also reports that they are generally welfare improving. However, these quantitative studies do not have much to say on the impact of social funds on participation and collective action.

Evidence on these questions, to date, comes largely from Beneficiary Assessments, which are reports based usually upon Participatory Rural Appraisals (PRA) and Participatory Learning and Action tools (PLA) (Chambers, 1997), usually commissioned by the headquarters of a Social Fund, on targeted communities. They are not "impact evaluations" in the sense that they almost never include a control group or counter-factual to calculate the causal impact of the intervention. In a survey of Social Fund Beneficiary Assessments Owen and Von Domelen (1998) report that they were "uniform in their finding that beneficiaries consistently felt that social fund projects reflected priority needs of the community, confirming the essentially demand-driven nature of social funds." Owen and Von Domelen also report that the Beneficiary Assessments revealed a high degree of participation in the execution of projects. The Beneficiary Assessment for Jamaica provides a more complex picture of the relationship of the Jamaican Social Investment Fund (JSIF) to the communities it targets. Its overall findings, however, also are that JSIF has "succeeded to a large extent in its efforts to reduce poverty and increase social capital in targeted communities." Thus, the Bank's evaluations and assessments of Social Funds, on the whole, leave a favorable impression of an innovative process that not only is targeted to the poor, but is truly participatory with the capacity to build a community's capacity for collective action. This has led to sharp increases in lending to Social Fund and CDD projects, with a strong belief that CDD represents the future of development assistance.

Scholars outside the World Bank have tended to be more critical of SIFs and of the CDD process - usually at the level of theory or by analyzing secondary data sources rather than examining survey data on CDD projects. Cornia (2001), focussing on the role of Social Funds as mechanisms to offset the anti-poor effects of structural adjustment programs, argues that they play only a minor role in assisting the "adjustment poor" and the "chronic poor." Tendler (1999, 2000), reviewing evidence from beneficiary assessment and project reports also argues that Social Funds tend to work better for communities that are less poor, and that they are vulnerable to mismanagement and political manipulation. She points out that the SIF model functions under a set of assumptions that have not been empirical tested - viz. that they are more responsive to consumer needs and preferences, and better tailored to local conditions. Importantly, she claims that many SIFs are actually _supply_ driven rather than demand driven because choices of communities 5