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Chile's massive 2019 protests indicate a pronounced discrepancy between the country's alleged establishment of social democracy and the public's perception of pervasive inequity. To understand this discrepancy, this analysis evaluates the extent to which Chilean social welfare policy conforms to social democratic norms of promoting solidarity, equity, and universalism. Analysis of poverty reduction, pension, health care, and education policy demonstrates that Chile's center-left governments succeeded in mitigating some of the more extreme elements of the social welfare policies inherited from the Pinochet regime. However, they failed to reverse their underlying logic, which reinforces stratification and inequity and undermines incentives for the cultivation of solidarity among the working and middle classes. As a result, social welfare policy in Chile continues to resemble the neoliberal welfare regime implemented by the Pinochet dictatorship while the establishment of a social democratic welfare regime remains an aspiration for present and future leftist governments to realize.

This analysis evaluates the Chávez regime by its own standard for democracy and citizenship, what it referred to as protagonistic, participatory democracy. Rather than committing itself to the realisation of this project, and the expanded notion of citizenship that it entailed, the Chávez regime employed the rhetoric of participatory democracy in the service of populist rule. As a result, it failed to promote the participatory form of democracy and citizenship promised in Twenty‐first Century Socialism. Accordingly, this analysis demonstrates how the concentration of top‐down, executive power characteristic of rentier populism impedes the egalitarian and solidaristic mission of participatory democracy.

AbstractThis analysis addresses two interrelated questions: what were labor conditions like under Hugo Chávez? and what do those conditions suggest about the relationship between populism and leftism in Latin America? The answer to the first question is unequivocal. Despite its socialist rhetoric, the Chávez regime fragmented and weakened organized labor, undermined collective bargaining, and exploited vulnerable workers in cooperatives. Thus the regime's primary foible was not its radical leftism but its pursuit of populist control at the expense of the leftist goals of diminishing the domination of marginalized groups and expanding their autonomous participation in civil society. This appraisal of labor politics under Chávez indicates substantial tension between the realization of these leftist goals and populist governance. It further suggests the need to distinguish more clearly between leftism and populism and their respective impacts on democracy.

AbstractThis article argues that housing reforms imposed by the military regime, and largely preserved by the center‐leftConcertaciónsince the 1990 transition to democracy, represent substantial impediments to collective action and the development of social capital among Chile's urban poor. In particular, housing policy exacerbates social stratification, reinforces workers' vulnerability to market forces and undermines social trust. These dynamics and the institutional structures which perpetuate them constrain social cohesion and collective action among the urban poor. The broader implication which this research suggests is that social reforms structured in a manner similar to Chile's housing program vitiate the cohesion of disadvantaged communities, thus making it difficult for them to work together to improve their welfare and to hold public officials accountable. The World Bank, Inter‐American Development Bank and other development institutions would do well to consider these negative repercussions of targeted assistance programs (as typified by Chile's housing program) if they are indeed serious about addressing the social dislocations wrought by structural adjustment and strengthening democracy through the promotion of social capital.RésuméAu Chili, les réformes du logement imposées par le régime militaire, et en grande partie reconduites par laConcertaciónde centre‐gauche depuis la transition démocratique débutée en 1990, gênent considérablement l'action collective et l'amélioration du capital social dans la population urbaine pauvre. En particulier, la politique du logement accentue la stratification sociale, rend la main‐d'æuvre plus vulnérable aux forces du marché et ébranle la confiance publique. Ces dynamiques, et les structures institutionnelles qui les perpétuent, limitent la cohésion sociale et l'action collective dans la population urbaine pauvre. On peut suggérer plus largement que les réformes sociales qui ont une architecture similaire à celle du programme chilien pour le logement compromettent la cohésion des communautés défavorisées, compliquant leur coopération lorsqu'elles veulent améliorer leur bien‐être et impliquer la responsabilité des fonctionnaires. Banque mondiale, Banque interaméricaine de développement et autres organisations en faveur du développement feraient bien de s'intéresser à ce genre de retombées négatives des programmes d'assistance ciblés (dont le programme chilien pour le logement est une illustration) si elles veulent vraiment s'attaquer aux dislocations sociales dues au redressement structurel et renforcer la démocratie en développant le capital social.