Abstract

In his book Un país al márgen de la ley, Carlos Nino offers an extremely critical reconstruction of Argentina’s institutional life and its juridical, constitutional and socioeconomic history. He describes a chaotic scenario where laws are distorted or ignored, rules are proclaimed but never followed, social duties, such as the duty to pay taxes, are dodged and transactions with the state are “sorted out” by the means of bribes. Nino refers to this state of affairs as stupid anomie because it creates a game where everyone wants to obtain benefits but ends-up in the worst imaginable situation. Taking this diagnosis as a starting point, this article aims to show that the average citizen of an anomic society depicted by Nino is the same as the individual living under an oligarchic political regime, understanding this as a regime where economic power is concentrated in a small group of people, or as a regime where political power is administered by a populistic leader an her close collaborators. In order to achieve this aim, I offer a quick analysis of global and domestic socioeconomic scenarios.