The State And Capital In Chile - Business Elites, Technocrats, And Market Economics

Originally published in 1996. Chile emerged from military rule in the 1990s as a leader of free market economic reform and democratic stability, and other countries now look to it for lessons in policy design, sequencing, and timing. Explanations for economic change in Chile generally focus on strong authoritarianism under General Augusto Pinochet and the insulation of policymakers from the influence of social groups, especially business and landowners. In this book Eduardo Silva argues that such a view underplays the role of entrepreneurs and landowners in Chile''s neoliberal transformation and, hence, their potential effect on economic reform elsewhere. He shows how shifting coalitions of businesspeople and landowners with varying power resources influenced policy formulation and affected policy outcomes. He then examines the consequences of coalitional shifts for Chile''s transition to democracy, arguing that the absence of a multiclass opposition that included captialists facili