Institutional Stability Beyond Quality: Structural Coherence, Regime Persistence, and Developmental Trajectories in Latin America

Why do some developing countries sustain coherent institutional trajectories over long periods, while others cycle between reform, crisis, and incomplete recovery? Conventional measures of institutional quality emphasize levels of democracy, governance, or rule of law, yet they struggle to explain why countries with similar scores exhibit sharply different patterns of institutional persistence and rupture. This article advances a structural perspective on institutional stability, conceptualizing institutions as interdependent subsystems whose coherence, or misalignment, shapes long-run developmental trajectories.To operationalize this framework, the article introduces the Institutional Regime Stability Index (IRSI), a dynamic measure that captures the persistence of coherent institutional configurations rather than static institutional levels. Using comparative data for nine Latin American countries between 1900 and 2024, the analysis identifies three recurrent patterns of institutional development: resilient coherence, adaptive stability, and recurrent misalignment. Higher IRSI values are systematically associated with lower GDP growth volatility and greater capacity to attract foreign direct investment, linking institutional coherence to economic risk and policy credibility. By reframing institutional stability as a property of systemic coherence, the IRSI offers a new comparative lens for analysing development and institutional change.© The Author(s) 2026. Published by RITHA Publishing. This article is distributed under the terms of the license CC-BY 4.0., which permits any further distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited maintaining attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and URL DOI.Article’s history: Received 5th of January, 2026; Revised 10th of February, 2026; Accepted for publication 22nd of February, 2026; Available online: 6th of March, 2026; Published as research article in Volume II, Issue 1(3), 2026.