The Political Value of Land: Political Reform and Land Prices in Chile

In this article, we argue that when patron‐client relations are grounded in economic relationships, such as between landlord and worker, we should expect clientelism to influence not just how public policy, the state, and the political system work, but also how the economy works. We develop a simple model of the economic consequences of electoral clientelism when voting behavior can be observed. Landlords/patrons provide economic rents to workers, and in exchange workers vote for parties favored by landlords. As votes are used by the landlords to accumulate political rents, vote control increases the demand for labor and for land. The model implies that the introduction of the Australian ballot, which destroys this form of clientelism, should lead to a fall in the price of land in those areas where patron‐client relationships are strongest. We test the predictions of the model by examining in detail the evolution of land prices in Chile around May 31, 1958, for which we collected original data. A characteristic of rural Chile at this time were patron‐client relations based on the inquilinaje system, by which a worker, the inquilino, entered into a long‐term, often hereditary, employment relationship with a landlord and lived on his landlord’s estate. We show that the introduction of the Australian ballot in 1958 led to a fall of about 26% in land prices in the areas where these patron‐client relationships were predominant.     

Gauging the potential for social unrest

It stands to reason that social unrest does not erupt out of the blue. Although there are a great many reasons why social dismay might descend into social disorder, only few yardsticks or indices can plausibly be used to gauge the potential for social unrest (PSU). If policy makers want to undertake public action to prevent social dismay escalating into social disruption, they obviously need to draw on practical sensors. This paper assesses critically the adequacy of two such measures, the polarization (P) index, and the total relative deprivation (TRD) index. The paper proposes a tentative guide to selecting between these two measures. A review of three stylized scenarios suggests that, where income redistributions reduce the number of distinct income groups, and when each group is characterized by a strong sense of within-group identity, the P index surpasses the TRD index as a basis for predicting PSU. When the within-group identification is weak, however, it is better to use the TRD index to predict PSU.     

Agrarian change and regional settling in Chile

"This study analyzes the effect of agrarian change on regional settling dynamics in Chile during the last 35 years. The transformations of agrarian structure have produced important changes in the spatial configuration of country-city relations, particularly regarding the new features of rural-urban migration in regional contexts. Whereas until the sixties rural-urban migration was associated with an occupational shift from agriculture to urban employment, after the seventies this relation practically disappeared, leaving a virtual disassociation between the territorial mobility of the population and the occupational mobility of the labor force. This disassociation is a central trait of the current regional pattern of country-city relations." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

Coalition incentives and party bias in Chile

This article revisits the debate over Chile's binomial electoral rules and its consequences and examines how the new electoral system conceived by a democratic congress altered political competition. It utilizes a seat-vote model of multiparty competition to analyze party bias under the binomial rule. This approach differs substantively from prior studies of the Chilean case that focused primarily on the disproportionality of aggregate results. In contrast to earlier analyses, the findings reveal that the allocation of the seats under the binominal resulted in significant party bias benefiting the main parties of the right. This bias, however, was eliminated after the electoral reform. The new rule continues to provide majoritarian benefits to parties receiving larger shares of votes, but this effect is less pronounced than before. It is now easier for small parties to gain seats, which has increased party fragmentation. However, we show that coalition incentives, which were heralded as one of the main advantages of the binomial rule, are also significant under the new rule in use since 2017.     

Theory and evidence of municipal borrowing in Chile

Although Chilean municipalities are not permitted to borrow, they do so through arrears and leasing contracts. A formal model of municipal indebtedness is estimated, based on a sample of 345 municipalities with yearly data from 2004 to 2007. Variables that are positively and significantly related to borrowing through arrears are: mayors closely tied to the ruling central government coalition; politically diverse municipal councils; years close to elections; and deeper municipal involvement in education. While leasing contracts appear to be insensitive to political factors, they are positively and significantly related to municipal staff managerial skills and municipal revenues per capita.     

The decentralization of primary health care delivery in Chile

The article argues that during the 1980s the process of decentralization in Chile under the military government of General Pinochet shifted the delivery of primary health care to the municipal level. Despite the return to more democratic forms of government in 1990 the overall structure of local‐level service delivery has remained largely unchanged. The municipalities have retained responsibility for service delivery but resources remain centrally determined. In an attempt to enhance accessibility, choice and the responsiveness of the system to individual and local need, reform has been made to the financial transfer mechanisms and a new model of primary health care delivery has recently been introduced. However, problems of resourcing and implementation limit the effectiveness of some of the changes that have accompanied decentralization. Problems have resulted in primary health care delivery because administrative decentralization has not been accompanied by fiscal decentralization, nor effective political decentralization. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Continuity in Change: Leftwing Coalitions in Uruguay and Chile

Coalitions have been critical for the reemergence of democracy and stability in Uruguay and Chile. Where do they come from? Why are they successful? To explore the role of history and ideologies in the formation and successes of two leftwing coalitions, Uruguay’s Frente Amplio (Broad Front) (FA) and Chile’s Concertación por la Demcracia (Concertación), the author traveled to South America. In Montevideo and Santiago, she spoke with professors and politicians, government officials and former Presidents. This essay will introduce the Uruguayan and Chilean political party systems, discuss how they have dealt with crimes committed by the dictatorships (1973–1990), and highlight the significance of the two coalitions. It will use the term “left” to designate parties which favor egalitarianism and statism, and claim to speak for the people, especially the underprivileged; the term “right” for those which favor liberty, individual initiative, equality of opportunity, and limited government.     

Political Information, Political Involvement, and Reliance on Ideology in Political Evaluation

Many studies have focused on the relationship between political information and the use of ideology. Here, we argue that two “evaluative motivations”—general investment of the self in politics and extremity of partisanship—serve as moderators of this relationship. Specifically, we use data from two recent national surveys to test whether the possession of information is more strongly associated with a tendency to approach politics in an ideological fashion among individuals high in both types of evaluative motivation. Results supported this hypothesis, revealing that information was more strongly associated with ideological constraint and with a tendency to give polarized evaluations of conservatives and liberals among those who highly invest the self in politics and those with more extreme partisanship. As such, this study suggests that information and involvement interact to shape the use of ideology.     

Liberalism and Political Allegiance in Anti-Federalist Political Thought

Disagreement between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over theConstitution hinged largely on empirical expectations regardingthe ability of the proposed system of government to promotecivic allegiance. I examine the views of allegiance offeredby major Anti-Federalists and the political psychology on whichthey are based. I conclude, first, that Anti-Federalist politicalpsychology is flawed, leaving the Constitution's opponents vulnerableto charges made by the authors of The Federalist, among others,that sound functioning and durability of government, ratherthan size, are sufficient to generate civic allegiance. Second,the Anti-Federalists' positions on allegiance are grounded inliberal first principles of government. The arguments offeredare not those one would expect if the Anti-Federalists adheredstrongly to the tenets of civic humanism.