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Since the mid-nineties, an extension of social policies was deployed in Latin America. Although part of the literature attributes such extension to left-wing governments, both centre-right and right-wing goverments also had a contribution. This paper aims at opening up the debate on Latin American right wing social policies. The goal is to discuss the possible reasons for the extension of social policies as well as to suggest an analytical framework that emphasizes topics such as the relevance of electoral competition, the strategic adaptation of political parties or the cost-benefit assessment of maintaining or expanding social policies. ; Desde mediados de los años 1990s, Latinoamérica exhibió una marcada ampliación de las políticas sociales. Aunque parte de la literatura atribuye a los gobiernos de izquierda dicha ampliación, ésta también tuvo lugar bajo gobiernos de derecha y centro-derecha. Este trabajo procura abrir el debate en torno a las políticas sociales de la derecha latinoamericana. El objetivo central es revisar las posibles causas de la ampliación de las políticas sociales y proponer un marco analítico que enfatiza la relevancia de la competencia electoral, la adaptación estratégica de los partidos y los cálculos costo-beneficio de mantener o expandir las políticas sociales.

AbstractThis 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.

This article analyzes the key political, economic, and social events that took place during the last year of President Sebastian Pinera's government. For the officialism, this was a particularly complex year, not only because of the definition of presidential candidacies within the center-right coalition, but also because of a series of unanticipated conflicts and challenges. The article pays special attention to the primary, parliamentary, and presidential elections, in a process that culminated with the reelection of Michelle Bachelet. Adapted from the source document.