Chile’s Pinochet-era constitution continued to block reform long after redemocratization.

Evidence

The students managed to win very wide support from the broader population. But when it came to translating their leverage into policy outcomes, they kept hitting the same wall, said Giorgio Jackson. It was the constitution put into place under Pinochet and still in effect. The Chilean redemocratization movement had never overcome that major hurdle. By contrast, Brazil adopted a new, relatively progressive constitution in 1988 after the fall of its dictatorship, offering many rights to the population including free medical care and free public universities (though real-life inequality has often gotten in the way of its more ambitious promises). — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 277

Categorization

• XREF: A constitutional-stickiness parallel to how institutions outlive their founding regimes, echoing material on how institutional arrangements freeze power distributions in other sources. — connects to: Chile’s Pinochet-era constitution remained the structural barrier to student demands — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 277; Chilean governments preserved Pinochet’s austerity model after the dictatorship fell — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1739

Broader Connections

• Chile’s Pinochet-era constitution remained the structural barrier to student demands #exemplifies (0.88) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 277
• Chilean governments preserved Pinochet’s austerity model after the dictatorship fell #expands (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1739