Consider what we have discovered. Foreign aid does little to help poor people and may actually make them worse off. In addition, foreign aid makes threatened governments less likely to become more democratic and more likely to become more autocratic, leading either to a worse dictatorship or the instability brought on by a series of coups d’état. So when world leaders call on their brethren to engage in debt relief—a form of foreign aid—to offset the political instability brought on by a state’s debt burden, they are decreasing the odds that the beneficiaries (that is, the petty dictators) will use the aid to improve gover¬nance and freedom.

The impact of foreign aid is pernicious. It enriches petty dictators and secures them in office. It buys policy concessions that voters in donor countries value enough to pay for them, but it hurts those who are most in need—the very people that most of us presume are the reason foreign economic assistance is given in the first place. If we want to change this pattern of behavior, we will also have to change our own demands and the incentives of foreign leaders who receive aid. We will have to encourage our government to believe that there are more votes to be had by helping the world’s poor than by providing another small benefit at home, and we will need to convince aid recipients that their hold on power is better assured by expanding public-goods provision than by contracting it. That would be a noble outcome, but in a world where altruism seems infrequent, it may prove hard to come by.