Politics In Chile: Socialism, Authoritarianism, and Market Democracy

The third edition of Politics in Chile provides significantly updated coverage of Chilean politics and economic development from the return to civilian rule in 1990 to the 2006 election and early administration of Socialist Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s first woman president. Lois Hecht Oppenheim focuses on recent efforts to reconstruct democratic practices and institutions, including resolving such sensitive and lingering issues as human-rights violations under Pinochet and civil-military relations. Chapters on the contemporary politics and economics under the civilian Concertacion governments are largely rewritten for this edition. Rather than focusing on the “search for development,” the third edition considers in greater depth the “exceptionalism” of the Chilean economic experiment through successive stages of stability, socialism, and neoliberalism.