Rich countries - working through international institutions like the World Bank - rarely help poor countries modernize and strengthen public services. But they often push them to privatize and commercialize public services, a move that they themselves would never make. Leading the tide of globalization, international financial institutions are aggressively and undemocratically promoting an ideological agenda of privatization and commercialization. “The IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation care about dismantling the state,” says Nancy Alexander, director of the Citizens’ Network on Essential Services (CNES), a research and advocacy group. International financial institutions claim that such reforms help reduce poverty, but they often simply are promoting the interests of multinational corporations in water, energy, telecommunications and other industries, says this article in the publication In These Times.