August 1999 - Whatever their nature, interventions to reduce poverty should be designed not only to have an immediate impact on poverty, but also to foster a rich network of cross-cutting ties within society and between society's formal and informal institutions. Using the lens of social capital...

Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry - that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what policies or organizations look like rather than what they actually do. The...