This paper explores the institutional determinants of economic growth in Latin America by taking advantage of recent empirical research that employs subjective and objective measures to test for a possible "Northian" explanation that links institutional quality and economic growth. We explore a simple framework that may help better understand the policymakers' choices and persistence regarding inward-looking policies that were pursued between the 1930s and the 1980s by arguing that in the Latin American case Olson's (1982) idea of encompassing interest should be expanded to cover not only the economic stakes of power holders, but in particular, their psychic income which includes their political stakes, along the lines of recent work by Robinson (1997), Coyne (2002), and others. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.