Since the 1960s, institutions have been a central concern of political scientists and, since the 1980s, also a major research program for economists. Before that, social scientists used to adopt a structural or socioeconomic approach, in which institutions had a role but the economic structure conditioned them, whereas neoclassical economists simply ignored institutions. Thus, when mainstream economists focused on institutions, it was progress; it was a way of broadening the scope of economics, which had been narrowed by neoclassical economics. Yet the form that this inclusion of institutions in development economics took ended up being excessive and reductionist: excessive insofar as institutions suddenly gained autonomy from social structures and reductionist because the new institutionalist economists claimed that if the rules of law or property rights and contracts were assured, economic development would automatically ensue in the market. In this chapter, my central concern is not to criticize this claim, the weakness of which is self-evident; rather, I offer an alternative set of institutions that, on one hand, enjoy relative autonomy in relation to economic structures and, on the other, play a key role in promoting economic growth: a national development strategy.

The central weakness of the new institutionalist approach to economic development stems from the strong correlation between each society's levels of economic development of its institutions, or more generally, between the three social instances (the economic, the institutional, and the cultural) existing in all societies.