Panel Paper:
Policy Learning in Chile: Lesson Drawing from Periods of Extreme Changes
Monday, July 29, 2019
40.012 - Level 0 (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Chile has gone through drastically contrasting political and socioeconomic changes during the last forty five years. The period preceding 1970s was an experience of relative democracy for Chilean people. Clashes of external and internal forces representing international domestic interests led to free democratic elections and growth of semi-socialist economic and political changes through nationalization policies of the early 1970s under Salvatore Allende that culminated with the September 11, 1973 bloody military coup d e tat and rise of fascism under General Pinochet for years. Rapid globalization, privatization, and global corporate integration were the key economic policies Chileans experienced then. That era was ended as a result of domestic and international pressures, and a new era of moderated economy and social institutions emerged in post-Pinochet periods with various ups and downs vacillating from Right to Left to Right all the way to the twenty-first century—time has passed but the young Chileans have only vague idea about the past. Today, Chile is still a Latin American country with some similarities, but also very different from the rest.
What lessons, if any, do we learn from these four-five decades of political, economic, and social changes that characterized Chilean society? Do drastic changes produce path-dependencies in policy making? If yes, why do changes occur and how do they affect policy dynamics in process and outcomes? What policy learning theories can be utilized to explain the Chilean case and offer new insights for future research? This paper aims to address these and similar questions.
