Exactly. Whether you're in the kind-of or kind-of-not has everything to do with bribes and/or local connections. And how many other people are also breaking that particular law, like in Jamaica's case. Sometimes this is bad, sometimes this is paradoxically helpful. Technically homeless people in the third world can often build a permanent house anyway, for example.

It also varies significantly by level of urbanness, with cities being the most formally run. Even backwoods first world will have things going on that would never fly in the cities.