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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
Scholars have long pondered why Chile was the first
country in
Latin America to achieve stable civilian rule in a
constitutional,
electoral, representative republic. They have also asked
why Chile
was more successful at constitutional government
thereafter than
its neighbors. One part of the answer is that Chile had
fewer
obstacles to overcome because it was less disturbed by
regional,
church-state, and ethnic conflicts. The geographically
compact and
relatively homogeneous population was easier to manage
than the
far-flung groups residing in many of the other new states
of the
hemisphere. As the nineteenth century wore on, slow
settlement of
the frontiers to the north and south provided a safety
valve
without creating a challenge to the dominance of the
Central
Valley.
As with regionalism, the church issue that rent many of
the new
republics was also muted in Chile, where the Catholic
Church had
never been very wealthy or powerful. Some historians would
also
argue that Chilean criollos, because they lived on the
fringe of
the empire, had more experience at self-government during
the
colonial period. In addition, the Chilean elite was less
fearful
than many other Spanish Americans that limited democracy
would open
the door to uprisings by massive native or black subject
classes.
At the same time, the ruling class was cohesive and
confident, its
members connected by familial and business networks. The
elite was
powerful partly because it controlled the main exports,
until
foreigners took over trade late in the nineteenth century.
The
rapid recovery of the export economy from the devastation
of the
wars of independence also helped, as economic and
political success
and stability became mutually reinforcing. Capitalizing on
these
advantages, however, would require shrewd and ruthless
political
engineers, victory in a war against Chile's neighbors,
continued
economic growth, and some luck in the design, timing, and
sequence
of political change.
Data as of March 1994
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