Abstract:  This thematic issue on the politics of pro-poor policies in the Global South brings together 13 articles that centre on the importance of institutionalist analysis. We emphasise several institutional dimensions that are particularly important in relation to pro-poor policies: processes of social ordering and social reproduction, the exercise of power, mechanisms of rule, and notions and practices of citizenship and rights. Accordingly, in our call for papers, we identified four major sub-themes within this broader framing that hold particular importance for pro-poor policies and the outcomes of those policies: (a) different types of legal mechanisms, (b) the power, interests, and ideologies of rivalling political actors, (c) the constraints and potential solutions of institutional configurations, and (d) the evolution and diffusion of the pro-poor agenda. In working off these sub-themes, the collection of articles reveal several recurrent insights, such as the dysfunctionalities of targeting systems in most of the Global South; the fragmentation and incoherence that is typical of social protection and related policies and programmes; the tensions involved in donor promotion, oversight, and monitoring of social protection programmes; related to this, the contestations between popular universalistic aspirations versus the narrow residualism of programmes promoted by donors; and the fundamentally political ways that “pro-poor” policy is envisaged.

Keywords:  employment generation; Global South; poverty reduction; pro-poor policy; social protection

Published:   27 May 2026

Issue:   Vol 14 (2026): The Politics of Pro-Poor Policies in the Global South