Economic institutionalism is a stream of thought that can be born towards the end of the nineteenth century, starting with the publication of the work The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen and A Sociological View of Sovereignty by John R. Commons, both of 1899. It is demonstrated that institutionalism was originally an essentially North American intellectual movement with considerable influence on academic and political spheres in the period between the end of the First World War and the crisis of the third decade of the 20th century. The aim is to remark the dissenting aspect of institutionalism against the dominance of the classic system. This work makes it possible to establish the origins and identity of an economic movement of importance to the present economic science, as an institutionalist renaissance has been experienced for a number of years.