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Legal Empowerment of the Poor (LEP), which has recently been launched as a new conceptual and operational tool for poverty eradication, has attracted considerable attention in the face of claims that poverty persists partly because the poor do not enjoy legal rights or the power to exercise those rights. This essay provides a brief overview of the conceptual foundations of the LEP approach as reflected primarily in the main report of the Commission of Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP). It thereafter critically examines the LEP's potential of promoting pro-poor governance and strengthening the protection and promotion of basic socio-economic and political rights of the poor. It argues that it is not only crucial to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of the concept by recognizing the links between legal and political empowerment, but to also closely link the LEP with the general development experience so far.

In this article I will first present the main thrust of Hernando de Soto's design, and then summarize praise and criticisms of his work. Next, I will address the question of to what extent De Soto's design is innovative. To this end I present a brief overview of past experience. I will then introduce some preliminary results of an international Leiden-based research project that has addressed the general causal relations between legalization, tenure security and poverty alleviation which constitute the basis of De Soto's argument. Most case studies of this project found that for De Soto's plans to be effective, a range of conditions had to be fulfilled. As long as these conditions are not fulfilled – which happens to be the unfortunate reality throughout the developing world – his plans will not work. Unfortunately, his proposals then are based on a whole set of unrealistic assumptions. Finally, in order to place De Soto's work in the context of today's development policies, with their emphasis on good governance and rule of law promotion, I will present a conceptual scheme which unpacks the key concepts of development, governance and the rule of law. In the concluding part I speculate on what we can learn from the success of De Soto's compelling theories, and from various criticisms of and responses to them How can these lessons be beneficial for a realistic rule of law promotion?

With a constellation of high profile global thinkers and leaders, the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor promised to reposition law and justice concerns at the centre of thinking on poverty alleviation. The Commission has succeeded in generating greater interest in the nexus between poverty, injustice and legal exclusion and is a welcome addition to the battle of ideas and concomitant battle over resources over how to raise the living standards of the poor and disadvantaged. However, this article, which analyzes the Commission's final report from the perspective of a legal empowerment practitioner, concludes that the Commission is an opportunity missed. The Commission's failure to properly tackle the political economy of reform and to justify its policy agenda with empirical data limits its value to the practitioner and will curtail its impact with policymakers.

The papers in this volume discuss the strategies adopted by people to accumulate assets through migration, housing investments, natural resources management, and informal businesses and consider how an asset-based social policy could enable those strategies or help them overcome the constraints of an unfavorable institutional environment.

The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor has made a considerable contribution to the international development community by focusing attention on concrete legal needs of impoverished populations. As such, it constitutes a fine start for international, regional and domestic efforts to pull together a legal empowerment agenda that will directly benefit such groups. Nevertheless, the Commission's report falls short in key respects. It displays an inordinate faith in employing rational persuasion to grapple with a widespread problem it highlights – how to get self-interested politicians and other elites to forfeit their own advantage for the well-being of society. It is similarly stumbles in addressing how to best implement ambitious legal reforms, so that they have actual impact and do not simply exist on paper. And it does not reconcile the Commission's fundamentally top-down approach with an area of development that is bottom-up in nature. Going forward, it is important to build on the Commission's good start, but depart from its false and even counterproductive steps; the international community should instead draw on successful country-specific legal empowerment experience from diverse contexts. This features increased investment in civil society efforts to make the rule of law a reality, since such initiatives have a better track record than government-centered programs that mainly rely on elite good will. It more specifically involves enhanced long-term funding for domestic and international NGO efforts, both in the form of legal services for the disadvantaged and by integrating such services into broader socioeconomic development programs. The international community should also support impact-oriented applied research and move toward establishing a Millennium Development Goal for legal empowerment

The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) states that workers in the informal economy can be legally empowered by bringing them within the framework of effective legal regulation, in particular, international labour standards. This paper acknowledges the value of extending rights to workers in the informal economy, but argues that CLEP's recommendations are impractical and unrealistic. It shows that neither international standards nor recent national legislation designed to promote the legalization of informal enterprises offers unqualified positive answers to resolve the plight of workers in the informal economy. Given the poverty of prevailing regulatory structures and the pervasive impact of inadequate structures of governance, workers in the informal economy justifiably distrust legal institutions and, as a consequence, do not, in the first instance, resort to legal institutions in their quest for empowerment. This paper offers examples of strategies that have successfully enhanced the social, political and economic power of workers in the informal economy. It concludes, however, that although the legal system has a role to play in consolidating the gains achieved by these strategies, law and legal institutions do not necessarily offer the best point of departure towards effectively empowering workers in the informal economy.

In 2008, the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP), chaired by Madeleine K. Albright and Hernando de Soto, published its report Making the Law Work for Everyone. In this report, the CLEP argues ‘… that four billion people around the world are robbed of the chance to better their lives and climb out of poverty, because they are excluded from the rule of law’. The CLEP also develops ‘… a comprehensive agenda for legal empowerment encompassing four pillars that must be central in national and international efforts to give the poor protection and opportunities…: access to justice and the rule of law, property rights, labour rights and business rights’. In this special section, which is edited and introduced by Stephen Golub, the idea of legal empowerment of the poor in general, and the report in particular, is discussed by Dan Banik, Julio Faundez, Jan Michiel Otto and Matthew Stephens.

Youth’s participation in community service is a proposed but uncharted way to prevent their violent perpetration. To clarify the preventive function, this study analyzes two-wave panel survey data on 1,710 Chinese youths in Hong Kong according to empowerment theory. Specifically, the theory posits that empowerment functions when it targets youth plagued by powerlessness. Two hypothesized conditions of relative powerlessness are being female and living in poor housing. Results support the hypotheses when participation in community service appeared to prevent violent perpetration, and the prevention was greater under the two powerless conditions. These results importantly emerged with the control for prior violent perpetration and adjustment for selectivity into the participation. The results thus imply the value of inviting youth to participate in community service to prevent their violent perpetration. The invitation can target youth who are female or residing in poor housing.

The Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations related to reduced inequalities calls for greater economic inclusion of the poor. Yet, how business leaders grant economic opportunities and development to the poor is significantly under-researched. Extending burgeoning responsible leadership theory that promotes paradox-savvy leadership for building inclusive ventures through various actors, this study introduces new concepts of inclusive leadership that foster the economic inclusion of the poor from Amartya Sen’s capability approach perspective. By studying how leaders include the poor in social businesses, we provide a fresh perspective of inclusive leadership as a personalized empowering cycle of economic–social–economic inclusion to close the gaps between the rich and poor in business and society. This perspective provides new territories of diversity and inclusion research for reduced inequality.