Una relectura de «Un país al margen de la ley» desde el aporte del institucionalismo

In 2022 was the 30th anniversary of the publication of Carlos Nino’s «Un país al margen de la ley», this article reviews the Argentine author’s work in the light of the institutionalist approaches to development that have become the main current of thought since the 1990s and continue to have a strong influence. The review shares some of the starting points of «Un país al margen de la ley», but also offers a critical view of the work and of some institutionalist ideas. The central idea of the paper is that Nino’s description of anomie in Argentina (which in most cases can be extended to the rest of Latin America) is not so much a sociological or historically rooted product as a problem «of the law». Therefore, to overcome anomie, the focus should be on models of discussion and legislative production. Finally, the article gives a brief overview of the situation in Argentina today, assessing what has changed since Nino wrote the book that is the subject of this paper.