End, New Beginning, or caesura of the “Chilean Miracle”?

• In Event: Making Democracy Work

Abstract

Once trumpeted as the Latin American Tiger for its economic and democratic success, Chile has been experiencing a great deal of political ambiguity and uncertainty since 2019. The electorate committed to adopting a new constitution in 2020, but then rejected two proposed constitutions in 2022 and 2023. The second rejection ended the constitutional revision process, but inaugurated a type of constitutional limbo. Chile had been the most politically and economically stable democracy in South America, but this episode indicates contradictory political pressures to reject neoliberalism while embracing it. This study relies on economic data, survey data, election results, policy positions and rhetoric from political campaigns on the constitutional referenda and recent national elections to explore how and why Chile has come to this caesura in its path to replace the Pinochet-era constitution. The essay applies a historical institutional analysis to explore how the concept of “weak institutions,” as developed by Levitsky, Murillo, and Brinks contributes to an effective explanatory framework to account for Chile’s current predicament. In this instance, the failure of the Pinochet-era neoliberal economic foundations to lead to an expanded middle class undermined the long-term development of the legitimacy of the constitutional order.

Author

• Kirk Buckman, Stonehill College