Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD)

The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), established in 1993 by Professor Rehman Sobhan with support from leading civil society institutions in Bangladesh, is mandated by its Deed of Trust to service the growing demand that originates from the emerging civil society of Bangladesh for a more participatory and accountable development process. CPD seeks to address this felt need by way of organising multistakeholder consultations, by conducting research on issues of critical national and regional interests, through dissemination of knowledge and information on key developmental issues, and by influencing the policy making process in the country.

In the process, CPD strives to bridge the gap between empirical research and policy advocacy through a sustained effort in public policy analysis. CPD endeavours to create a national environment conducive to open public discussion on important policy issues with a view to ensuring domestic ownership over the policy agenda and also building a broad-based support for such policies.

Over the past six years, CPD has emerged as Bangladesh's premier think-tank and has established its credibility as one of the very few places in Bangladesh where the government and opposition political parties agree to sit around the dialogue table and conduct an informed discussion with the civil society.

CPD's civil activitism in policy-related areas is operationalised through various means which are implemented through concrete initiatives. These include:

• ● Knowledge generation through research and analysis, creation and management of data and information base.
  ● Policy awareness raising through dialogues, networking, information dissemination and mobilising support of the civil society.
  ● Policy influencing, at both national, regional and international levels, by involving policymakers in the dialogue process and by contributing to preparation of global policy documents and national policy briefs.
• ● Capacity building, by way of organising policy appreciation workshops for policy-makers and other important stakeholder groups.

The revealed wisdom stemming from recent development experiences of many countries amply demonstrate that unless policy changes originate from domestic discourse and are designed with stakeholder participation, it is hardly possible to establish domestic ownership over the development agenda and ensure successful implementation of the developmental policies. Besides, the absence of informed policy discussion on important public issues severely jeopardize the credibility of public policies, limit their acceptability and undermine their efficacy. In order for policies to be democratically sustainable, it is important to recognise the need for making the process of policy formulation more inclusive. To ensure accountability and participation, it is essential to initiate a process of public consultation based on a more objective assessment of policy designs, their implementation and outcome, which is independent of the donors as well as the Government of Bangladesh (GOB). Such an exercise provides a basis for encouraging civil society as stakeholder to identify policy alternatives and to build up support for particular policy options. Such a process will serve to establish a degree of ownership over the policy agenda by involving representatives of the stakeholders along with policymakers in the design of public policy. Policies which originate from such a consultative process are likely to be more acceptable to the people of Bangladesh and are, thereby, likely to be more implementable. The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) holds that an agenda of focused policy dialogues, organised in a non-confrontational environment is likely to bring to the surface a more consensual perspective to policy-making and would contribute towards good governance in the country.