Explaining Uneven Social Policy Expansion in Democratic Chile

Abstract

This article analyzes the uneven expansion of social policy, using evidence from Chile. It explicates the Chilean case to understand differences between two specific areas of social policy: pensions and healthcare. Most macroexplanatory factors, which the literature proves are crucial for cross-country analysis, are left constant. Instead, it focuses on accounting for differences in the scope of expansion across sectors. It carries out a hypothesis-generating type of case study and relies on inductive process tracing. The goal is to generate hypotheses that may be useful for theory building in the realm of intersectoral dynamics of social policy expansion. The findings suggest that three explanatory factors combine to account for such differences: policymakers’ perceptions of the budgetary constraints and fiscal costs of producing (or failing to produce) a reform; the composition, cohesion, and ideas of technical teams; and the relative power of nongovernmental, prowelfare actors in relation to market stakeholders.

Business Interests, Conservative Economists, and the Expansion of Noncontributory Pensions in Latin America

“…My analysis also qualifies recent theories that posit that the homogeneity of expert networks as such drives successful social reforms. 139 It suggests instead that Chile's noncontributory pension reform was passed because the policy experts who formulated the reform were homogenously conservative. If, by contrast, the policy network had been homogenously progressive and had excluded conservative economists, the resulting reform proposals would almost certainly have been strongly opposed by organized business and, as a result, never passed in Parliament.…”

Continuidad del sistema de AFP en democracia: el rol del poder de la elite económica

“…26. CASTIGLIONI (2005, 2018b Efectivamente, desde el retorno a la democracia la banca privada había estado presionando por incorporarse a la industria previsional 29 . Simultáneamente, las AFP se opusieron tenazmente a la entrada de los bancos por la amenaza que representaban a su participación de mercado.…”

Continuidad neoliberal ví­a tecnocracia: las comisiones asesoras presidenciales para la reforma previsional en Chile

“…Corresponde a un mecanismo de carácter solidario y subsidiario, con cargo a rentas generales, que busca corregir las insuficiencias del esquema de capitalización individual. En un primer momento, el Estado participaba en las pensiones entregadas al 40% más pobre del país, hasta que en 2012 se expandió hasta alcanzar el 60% (Castiglioni, 2018). No obstante, en atención a que no se transformó el principio nuclear de capitalización individual, sino que solo se le apuntalaba, esta reforma marca el paso desde un neoliberalismo ortodoxo hacia uno mixto, en atención a la mayor participación del Estado (Maillet, 2015).…”