Institutional Entropy

Latin American and Caribbean countries’ per capita GDP increased 700% from 1900 to 2020. Yet, by this same year, nearly four out of ten people in the region went through moderate or severe food insecurity. If institutions are the fabric of society, molding the organization of social provisioning, some serious aggravation to Latin America’s already disharmonic institutions must be taking place. High levels of institutional discord is not news in the region, of course. But the coming to office of progressive governments, in a “Pink Tide,” raised hopes that functional adjustments were possible. Part of those hopes derived from the absorption of human-rights and environmental concerns from post-industrial societies. These additions to the development agenda, however, also inflamed a reaction that made the levels of institutional dissension skyrocket. Already fragile development conventions were hit hard. Two large institutional sets that shape underdevelopment—reminiscent colonial institutions and consumption propensities that emulate industrial societies—are now impinged by those new ongoing concerns from developed countries. What could possibly go wrong?