It becomes difficult, though, to know how to balance the competitive threat against the management agency to make them perform up to par, with the value one gets from continuity.

Finally, California mandates that all HOAs have a (different) accredited firm perform a “reserve study” every three years, showing that the HOA dues are covering all necessary ongoing maintenance, and that that maintenance is being performed. This additional regulatory step prevents the board from doing anything really wrong.

We’re only in a crisis because of the unforseen maintenance and resulting special assessment and million dollar construction project to fix it. I expect when we’re finished this summer that the board could almost go to meeting every other month, and my experience in world domination may be over.

Now, we’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to extrapolate my HOA experience to how international institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO can cause otherwise questionable “donor democracies” to avoid screwing up.

First piece of evidence is this article on Daniel Arap Moi stepping down in Kenya. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/international/africa/27CND-KENY.html

There should be a pattern language of keeping such “thin” organizations healthy, and/or some sort of outsourceable outside management service — perhaps billed as continuity insurance — to patch over ups and downs of transitory leadership as a predictable cost. That is, as long as the continuity premiums are paid, some outside pros can come in and run the elections/rectify the books/raise exceptions against major boo-boos, on an occasional basis.

I suppose the use of city managers to smooth out the effects of electoral turnover in many cities is one form of such an approach.