that they will support the "human development" sectors within the State. Finally, in the competition between macroeconomic policies that keep the public debt under control and thus reassure the external creditors of the State, and meeting the needs of the population, strengthening participation improves the bargaining position of the government in its negotiation with its creditors and with international financial institutions in particular. While this make it more difficult for the government to find an agreement with creditors in situations where it needs financial support, the creditors may take solace in the fact that transparency and accountability may improve the efficiency of public policies, and maximize the effectiveness of public investment in reducing poverty and placing the country on the track of sustainable human development.73 In the fulfilment by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of its monitoring role under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the insistence on participation and accountability also presents a major advantage: it reduces the tension between supervision of compliance by and international body of independent experts and democratic self-determination. The Covenant, after all, relies on deliberately vague wording to evoke the duty to progressively realize the rights of the Covenant "to the maximum available resources", and any attempt to go beyond that wording to clarify the content of such duty shall be met with suspicion by the States parties. By emphasizing participation and accountability in the design and implementation of taxation policies, the Committee conveniently can retreat from substance to procedure -- or, to borrow from the phrase of John Hart Ely, from a "representation-restricting" theory of rights adjudication to a "representation-reinforcing" approach, in which judicial review concerns itself more with "questions of participation", than with "the substantive merits of the political choice under attack".74 This is not to say that the Committee abdicates its duty to assess taxation policies from the substantive point of view, asking in particular whether enough is done to widen the tax base, to ensure adequate redistribution from the riches to the poorest parts of the population, and to combat tax evasion. These substantive requirements, however, should be read in the light of the procedural requirements of participation and accountability: such procedural requirements are both an additional requirement imposed on States, and a means to ensure that the margin of discretion left to States in the design of their taxation policies is used in ways that truly benefit the poor. 6. Conclusion In theory, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has all the tools it requires to strengthen the role of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the design and implementation of taxation policies. A consensus is emerging on the need to strengthen domestic resource mobilization, in order to make development less dependent on foreign support and to increase accountability of governments towards populations. The fight against inequalities, and thus the need for robust redistributive taxation schemes, is broadly recognized as a priority. There is wide agreement too on the importance of reinforcing the ability of local tax administrations to combat tax evasion, and on the indispensable role both of international cooperation in this regard (by the clamping down on tax havens and the lifting of bank secrecy legislation that favor money laundering), and on the need to regulate the private financial sector. Finally, the role of participation and accountability in the design of taxation policies is increasingly acknowledged: reforming decision-making so that such choices are not the result of backdoor negotiations between politicians and technocrats, but rather the outcome of public deliberation involving large segments of society, is one key ingredient to ensure that they serve the needs of the poor. Enforcing these four key requirements remains a challenge, however. In many countries, the economic elites exercise a disproportionate influence on political decision-making, and they resist any significant 73 World Health Organization, World Health Report 2010: Health Systems Financing: the path to universal coverage, cited above note 72, at 25 ("Improving efficiency and accountability may also convince ministries of finance, and increasingly donors, that more funding will be well used"). 74 John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust. A Theory of Judicial Review (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1980), at 181. 20 CRIDHO Working Paper 2017/1