In the Name of Reason: Technocrats and Politics in Chile

Introduction:Technocrats and Politics in Chile

Introduction: Technocrats and Politics in Chile Studies of the Chilean political system have historically been characterized by their strong emphasis on the role of political parties (Edwards and Frei 1949; Gil 1966; Garretón 1989; Scully 1992). This particular feature of Chile’s political system has brought Manuel Antonio Garretón to claim that the political parties have constituted the ‘‘backbone’’ of Chilean society (1989, xvi). From a similar perspective Liliana de Riz concludes that ‘‘Chilean political history, unlike any other in the neighboring countries, developed with, and through, the political parties’’ (1989, 57). And finally, Larissa A. Lomnitz and Ana Melnick (2000) have argued that the political parties’ influence on Chilean society has been such that they have permeated, and in a sense modeled, the country’s dominant political culture. There is no doubt that Chile has a solid system of political parties, a system that has, for many decades, made it possible for a relatively stable democracy to operate (see Valenzuela 1989). For this reason, it is not my intention to question the important presence and influence of political parties in the political and social dynamics of the country; nonetheless, I do not believe that they monopolized politics in twentieth-century Chile. As early as 1988, Alan Angell had expressed doubts about this reading of the political history of the country, rightly highlighting the strong antiparty feeling that has also been a constant in Chilean politics since the 1920s. The government of Arturo Alessandri (1924–25), the two administrations of Carlos Ibáñez (1927–31 and 1952–58), 2 in the name of reason and the government of Jorge Alessandri (1958–64) all ‘‘flew the banner’’ of antipartisanship. To this list we should add the considerable citizen support received by General Pinochet with his ‘‘politics of anti-politics’’ (Loveman and Davies 1997) and, more recently, the support obtained in the 1990s by conservative leader Joaquı́n Lavı́n, who has also resorted to a clearly apolitical discourse (see P. Silva 2001b). My analysis of the evolution of the political institutions of Chile has led me to conclude that, together with political parties, technocrats have also played a key role in the administration and ideological orientation of the different political projects that Chile has embarked on since the 1920s. A cursory overview of key historical milestones gives evidence of this. Thus, we can see how technocrats played a central role in the reforms launched in 1920 after Arturo Alessandri’s victory, which were further reinforced in 1927–31 by the government of Colonel Carlos Ibáñez. These reforms not only implied the end of the oligarchic state, but also brought along with them a strong modernization of the state apparatus (see Ibáñez Santa Marı́a 1984 and 2003). Technocrats also played a leading role in the industrialization process promoted by the state from 1939 on after the foundation of the Corporación de Fomento (corfo, the state development agency), which became the main tool to give shape and implement the industrialization-based developmental strategy (Pinto [1958] 1985; Muñoz 1986). In the 1960s and until the military takeover of 1973—the period that Mario Góngora ([1981] 1988) so aptly called ‘‘the era of global planning’’—the influence of technocrats increased together with the expansion of the state apparatus after the creation of new bodies such as the Land Reform Corporation (cora) and the National Planning Agency (odeplan) and the administrative structure that emerged as a result of the nationalization of copper in the late 1970s. During this period, technocrats also acted as the ideologists of developmental -style reforms through the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ecla) and the universities, advocating a purported structuralism that called for active action by the state (see Ahumada [1958] 1973, Pinto 1973a, C. Kay 1989, and Hira 1999). After the military coup of September 1973, the so-called Chicago Boys were to become the main engineers of the neoliberal economic and ideological policy. One of them, Sergio de Castro, Pinochet’s minister of finance, was to be for a long time their undisputed leader within the cabinet of the military government (C. Huneeus 2007; Arancibia and Balart, 2007). During the tran- introduction 3 sition to democracy, in 1985–90, private institutes (such as cieplan, flacso, and so on) and technical think tanks of the democratic opposition performed a crucial job of rapprochement...