The right and the danger of a democratic regression in Chile

The world of the Cold war post, the one that Álvaro García Linera catalogs in the uncertainty of “collective stupor, of a certain paralysis, in which time seems to be suspended,” has entered a period of proliferation of hybrid political regimes of an authoritarian/populist nature, usually of the extreme right, which has strengthened a tendency towards a democratic regression that many believed over Democratization ”indicated by Samuel Huntington at the beginning of the 90’s.

The last one, and perhaps the most important turn towards a hybrid regime (competitive authoritarian as Steve Levtisky would say), occurred on 01/20/2025 when Donald Trump assumes for the second time as the 47 president of the United States and with a supposed majority “control” of the state (of the three powers) and his desire for deep transformation: as Timothy Naphtali said Presidential of Columbia University, “Donald Trump Takes All.” That is, this country had no problem choosing a convicted person, denialist, with no concern for democracy, civilizational advances, justice or “truth” and less for the stability of the international scenario. One that aspired from the first day to be “dictator” (autocrat) and who swore to impose “reprisals” against his “enemies” (public administration/deep state, press, judges, law firm, universities, etc.) in a kind of macartism or the witch hunt described in the work “The Witches of Salem” by Arthur Miller. In the end, one that, in its conservative ideological/cultural crusade based on the realism of the power and deregulation of the country, is not only eroding democracy and its institutions, but deepening the clivatives that caused the civil war of 1861-1865 (“dangerous cracks in the pillars of American democracy” as stated by the Brooking Institute of Washington).

Embraced in the uncertainty of today same), the relevance that these regimes have acquired has led to the Academy to produce a variety of terms to catalog them. Thus, for example, we find terminologies such as semi-democracy “,” virtual democracy “,” electoral democracy “,” pseudo-democracy “,” illiberal democracy “,” semi-authoritarianism “,” soft authority “,” electoral authoritarianism “or” partially free “. Reactivation of international networks around the unification of an ideological discourse of social mobilization and political justification (eg there are the “international coordination anti-Radicals of the left” or the “Political Network for Values” by José Antonio Kast).

The common thing in all this hybrid regimes, which differ from full democracy but also from pure authoritarian regimes, is that formal democratic institutions are widely seen as fundamental means to obtain power and exercise political authority through the replacement of partisan offer (programs and platforms) by a repeated personification, in a sort of anti-political and/or non-political, which only produces holders and only produces. Populist claims (generally empty and/or insustestable), perfectly wearing what Ilvo Diamanti and Marc Lazar call “Pueblocracy.” However, and the power, authority and officials frequently violate the rules and laws, to the point that the regime fails to have the minimum conventional standards to be defined as democracy. We speak, among others, of democratic principles as universal and fair political participation; respect for fundamental rights; equality before the law; political pluralism; separation of powers according to the “check and balances” (control and balances); majority principle; etc

Steve Levitsky and Lucan A. Way (2004) say respect for competitive authoritarian governments, for example, that “although elections are regularly given without fraud, officials constantly abuse the state’s resources, do not offer the opposition an adequate covering of the media, they chase the opposition candidates and their followers and, in some cases, manipulate the results of the elections. Opposition politicians and other government critics can be spied, threatened, persecuted or arrested.

Chile is no stranger to this world democratic involution. In a recent interview, Evelyn Matthei defended the civic-military dictatorship of General Pinochet, justifying that “it was necessary” to prevent Chile from aligning with the Cuban model. “If not, we were going straight to Cuba. There was no other alternative.” Adding that in the first years of the dictatorship the deaths were inevitable … this “false in essence” statement and that it was a repetition of one made in 1999, being shared by a significant number of people not only revealed that in the Chilean policy right (except exceptions) it is still present an incongruous authoritarianism with democratic institutions and values ​​and, therefore, that transitional bleach of which these actors of which these actors of which these actors of which these actors of which these actors of which these actors are. and right -wing parties (by the way, helped by the democratic elites that led the transition), but their current three presidential candidates (including Ja Kast and Johannes Kaiser who have also defended the dictatorship), with small variations, are of authoritarian essence and, in some way, advocate hybrid formulas for Chile.

Taking advantage of the uncertainties of the present (conflicts and various world threats), but particularly the war on drugs and organized crime that monopolize the television grill and discourse not only opposition, together with the lack of alternative information and counter -argumentations in the narrative, it has given a fertile field to the three candidates on the right to promote armed governments and securitized in essence (petition ABUSE OF THE FF.A.The progressive parties in hostages of these electoral messages, those that have an authoritarian, repressive and mass imprisonment position in matters of citizen security (Bukele -style prisons in the desert or islands), forgetting complex proposals, legal senses or the necessary democratic reforms of the armed institutes, simply because it is increasing complex and everyday real.

This is a speech formatted in a class dye as it anchor rather in poverty (it is exemplified in the young drug trafficker, he is the enemy to fight) and not in institutions such as bank secrecy or others. It is a speech away from prevention and cooperation as a substantial part of the background solution of the security dilemma. It is one that in the end becomes contradictory and/or with negative effects in terms of the limitation of freedom, universality, rights and justice in an integral sense. It is the one that hides ideological and cultural mechanisms of an economic model whose “theology of well -being, peace and prosperity” rests in the fruit of individual faith and entrepreneurship (personal success), that is, in an individualization that It replaces social justice, rights, organization and mobilization or state and public policies. We talk about the false belief in the meritocracy for success, which is criticized by Michael J. Sandel in several interviews and in his book “The tyranny of merit”, among others.

This strategy, in addition to contemplating the deregulation of the markets (talk about “permissology” as if the norms hide only a meaningless bureaucracy and not the protection of something), the minimum reduction of the State, the privatization of the few companies or institutions that remain in the State as the great co -codelco mining The woman, ignoring diversity, criminalizing immigration (Kaiser speaks of expelling 200 thousand migrants and building confinement camps), consecrating the concept of traditional family ignoring the multiplicity of parental structures, fighting against abortion and even practicing censorship in different dimensions as Kast did in front of the book “Nicolás has 2 dads” (we still have the cesura and repression practiced during the dictatorship)

It is not trivial, then, to begin to reveal that there is behind the populist and securitizing proposals on the right, at the same time to rescue more comprehensive proposals from progressivism such as justice and the participatory democratic method in the solution of the great dilemmas without detracting from security issues.