Available From UC Press

What leads to national progress? The growing consensus in the social sciences is that neither capital flows, nor the savings rate, nor diffuse values are the key, but that it lies in the quality of a nation’s institutions. This book is the first comparative study of how real institutions affect national development. It seeks to examine and deepen this insight through a systematic study of institutions in five Latin American countries and how they differ within and across nations. Postal systems, stock exchanges, public health services and others were included in the sample, all studied with the same methodology. The country chapters present detailed results of this empirical exercise for each individual country. The introductory chapters present the theoretical framework and research methodology for the full study. The summary results of this ambitious study presented in the concluding chapter draw comparisons across countries and discuss what these results mean for national development in Latin America.

Alejandro Portes is Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University. He is the author of several UC Press books, including Legacies, Ethnicities, Immigrant America and City on the Edge.

Lori D. Smith is completing her doctorate in Sociology at Princeton.

"Institutions Count is an impressively collaborative project and a valuable contribution, both for its lucid presentation of case study data across countries and cultures as well as its new insights to the roles institutions play in national development." —Bryan R. Roberts, Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, Austin

"Institutions Count by Portes and Smith is a significant addition to studies of institutions as well as studies of development. The main contributions include a clarification of the concept of institutions; an impeccable methodology for the empirical analysis of five institutions in five developing countries; and an innovative, comparative analysis of the outcomes of the individual studies. It is to be recommended to scholars across the social sciences who are frustrated by the lack of rigor in the existing literature on the increasingly popular topic of institutions."—Barbara Stallings, Wm. R. Rhodes Research Professor, Brown University