Contingency as the New Zeitgeist

To the extent that the project of mooring the rule of law in international regulations has failed or proved to be insufficient, Mexico’s institutional order is structurally unstable. State institutions appeal alternatively to the principles that are central to the operation of the informal economy—for instance trust/intimacy (confianza), loyalty, familism, etc.—or to rational-bureaucratic principles of rank, chains of command, discipline, equality before the law, etc. In this chapter, the focus is on the cultural and ideological implications of the constant oscillation between these two organizational models.