Is Pinochet the Model?

Angelo M. Codevilla

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 1993

Summary:  The "Pinochet model," a potent mixture of authoritarianism and liberal economic reform, is sold as the elixir to nearly any country ailing under socialist transition. But the years of improvisation by Chile's reformers actually leave scant recipe to follow. The secret of Chile's turnabout, if any can be found, was simply the inspiration to shrink the state. Any country can do it, without a caudillo in charge.

WITHERING AWAY THE STATE

Victory comes only when the adversary concedes, something which the military regime's opponents never did explicitly. In the 1988 referendum, which was specified in the transitional articles of the constitution, the regime's adversaries found echoes for their accusations against Pinochet, but far fewer against the system he had established. In their hearts and from the historical depths of their organizations, the regime's opponents still do not like Pinochet's reforms. But they lack a compelling alternative vision, never mind public support to roll the reforms back.

In 1988, the voters ended Pinochet's presidency by a vote of 54 to 43 percent. Had the vote come closer to the recession, the margin would have been wider. Had it come in 1991 or 1992, Pinochet might well have won, just as he won a referendum on constitutional reform during the boom year 1981. The winners of the 1989 presidential and congressional elections were the Christian Democrats, socialists and the center-left parties loosely allied in a concertacion. They are likely to repeat their victory in 1993.

The 1992 municipal elections gave the parties of the left (including communists) 30 percent of the vote, the centrist Christian Democrats 29 percent, and the parties of the right (including one that calls itself centrist) 38 percent. As in 1970, the Christian Democrats have an uneasy alliance with the left. On the surface, then, it can be argued that the Chilean political scene is little different from what it was in the 1960s and before.

But in a new country the old parties cannot be the same. The Christian Democrats can no longer be comfortable describing themselves as a party of the center that is moving to the left, one that espouses big government either for the same pragmatic reasons as its European counterparts or in pursuit of liberation theology: European Christian democracy is dying; liberation theology is yesterday's fad. The socialists, a party whose label has itself become a heavy burden, feel the need to redefine themselves even more.

Thus Chile's left-leaning alliance, which in the 1960s was based on shared ideology and in the 1980s was patched together against Pinochet, is in the 1990s unlikely to endure. The population's chief concerns-crime and public morality, economic growth-as well as its growing appetite for primaries and conventions to choose political candidates do not augur victories by party coalition. Rather, they indicate a style of politics more reminiscent of that in the United States. In personal affairs as well as in politics, true reform usually comes only after hitting bottom, rejecting one's old ways, and recalling the nasty experience whenever tempted to waver. The Chile model is best understood as a reaction against something that most Chileans felt had gone too far in 1970-73. Allende showed Chileans what statism could mean far more believably than any number of brilliant op-ed pieces by the Chicago boys, never mind speeches by Pinochet himself. If the Chile model holds, then, nations only learn the hard way-that is, by their own trials and experiences. Nonetheless, Chile's revolutionary example-the withering away of the state-stands for those inspired to follow.