ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters may have left the reader skeptical as to whether much of what is currently practiced in the name of poverty alleviation is effective, or simply aims to serve the national interests of donor governments and the self-interest of do-gooder philanthropists. For those who doubt the effectiveness of some foreign aid or believe it is paternalistic, global institutional reform offers a more promising normative perspective with a greater potential impact on poverty reduction. Rather than focusing on what can be done in poor countries to improve the lives of people living with deprivation, institutional reformers focus on the way in which legal, economic, and political arrangements currently impede poverty reduction. They argue that systemic reform in global institutions will do far more to reduce global poverty than will foreign aid. Furthermore, as a normative matter, they argue that individuals in high-income countries should focus to a much greater extent on the institutions that they uphold, and the ways in which these institutions produce suboptimal outcomes for people living in poverty, rather than attempting to interfere in communities that they little understand with programming that has at best a mixed record of improving outcomes.
