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so the Commission is advocating radical changesin the existing distribution of public (and private)power. As the poor gain income, assets and power,they will be in a stronger position to call for additionalinstitutional reform, and so on in a virtuouscycle of empowerment. Changing policies injust one or two legal domains represents a start toempowering the poor, but the possibilities of legalempowerment will eventually require establishingmore open, inclusive and accountable institutionssystem-wide.This is a bold vision. Making it a reality meansimplementing a host of specific publicpolicies around the world to tackle the everydayhumiliations of powerlessness and destitution.Many legal covenants have been proposed andratified by the world community that are reasonablestarting points for building inclusive domainsof power 1 — the challenge is to adapt the broadprinciples of institutional and legal reform to reallife circumstances so they mean something to themultitude living on the edges of society. Implementationseldom goes as planned, or as the Englishproverb has it: ‘There’s many a slip ‘twixt cup andlip.’ This report discusses why those slips systematicallyoccur and how development practitionerscan work with poor people to sustain momentumduring implementation despite the tendency forpro-poor policy to be diluted and delayed while beingcarried out.Reports from the working groups for Chapters 1through 4 have analysed the way rights-expandingpolicies in the four domains of empowerment canblunt impoverishing forces. Legal recognition is afundamental step so that even the poorest citizenscan invoke the law to assert their rights anddemand protections to which they are lawfully entitled.For that to occur, judicial institutions mustbe made responsive, transparent, and answerableto all, not just to the privileged few. Property rightsare central to the fight against poverty: they are ameans for poor people to transform limited assetsinto secure, productive resources, which theycan then use to enter the marketplace and claima fairer share of gains from exchange. Eventually,they could build their asset base to support a betterquality of life. Labour rights are another mechanismby which disadvantaged groups can obtaindecent and productive work. Such rights enablethe poor to claim their rightful share of the wealththey have helped to generate and to achieve theirhuman potential. Many poor people are caught inambiguous employment relationships where theirrights as workers are illdefined and their ability tomake occupations safe and non-abusive is limited.Business rights round out the anti-poverty approachtaken by the Commission, in view of thefact that a significant share of the poor are eitherself-employed or already in charge of micro-enterprises.These entrepreneurs are burdened byunnecessarily complicated procedures and regulations,and they lack legal instruments providingaccess to the credit markets that would allow themto expand their small business activities and totake more risks with new investments.It may be evident that the interdependent domainsof empowerment are vital to ending poverty, butwe must ask if, and to what extent, the underlyingrights are realisable. The question has promptedour working group to address ways of puttingrights-expanding policies in place so they actuallyreach the poor. In Section 2, we discuss the numerousobstacles that policymakers must face andovercome in efforts to implement rights-conferringprogrammemes. Understanding these obstacles isthe first step to overcoming them.284