Jul 26, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

(Kaieteur News) – For years we have been told that institutions are the engines of prosperity. Build stronger courts, establish more transparent procurement systems, strengthen regulatory agencies, improve parliamentary oversight, and prosperity will follow as surely as dawn follows darkness. It is an attractive doctrine because it relieves us of the burden of asking a more uncomfortable question: who builds institutions, and in whose interest are they built?

One need not be a Marxist to appreciate that institutions do not descend from the heavens carrying tablets of administrative virtue. They emerge from societies already shaped by economic power. The architecture of politics is first sketched by the geometry of wealth.