Retrenchment Reconsidered: Continuity and Change in the Postauthoritarian Institutions of Chilean Social Policy.

This paper analyzes the evolution of five neoliberal social and economic policies reformed under the Chilean military dictatorshipâ€"the value-added tax, the health care system, labor code, educational sector, and pension systemâ€"and argues that the very institutional features that the military government designed to ensure long-run stability have actually facilitated dramatic transformation after the return to democracy in the value-added tax, health care, and pension systems. In the education system and labor code, it was the inability of reformers to exploit authoritarian institutional features that stymied equity-oriented changes under democracy. The findings of this paper question received notions regarding the persistence of Pinochet’s institutions of social policy provision, and more broadly, the logic of institutional “lock-in” and entrenchment effects in sociological and political analysis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]