Chilean President's Governance Style Debated: Liberalism, Conservatism, and Neoliberalism

Four months into his presidency, Chilean leader Gabriel Boric's governance style and policy agenda remain subjects of intense debate. Observers have applied various labels, including ultraconservative, due to his religious background, and possessing traits of paternalistic or "velvet" authoritarianism. Some analysts highlight that his government's program, prioritizing economic growth, deregulation, and state reduction over security concerns, signals a return to the neoliberalism of the Chicago Boys. Others point to his perceived ambivalence between being an outsider and an insider, and his party's tactics of casting suspicion on predecessors' administrations, as indicative of populism. A prevailing view among some scholars, like Peña and Brunner, is that Kast's political project is fundamentally illiberal. The author, Yanira Zúñiga, a Professor at the Public Law Institute of the Austral University of Chile, argues that the concept of illiberalism is particularly useful as it encompasses aspects not always captured by other labels. An illiberal government, she explains, can leverage majority rule to uphold traditional hierarchies or curtail rights and undermine core democratic institutions, often as part of a cohesive ideological agenda. Zúñiga suggests that illiberalism and neoliberalism, often seen as opposing forces, can be complementary. Illiberal regimes may exploit crises to consolidate autocratic power, enacting legal changes with neoliberal aims while eroding liberal democratic principles. She draws a parallel to Chile's current "megareforma" (mega-reform) proposal, which she contends exploits a perceived crisis and democratic gap to impose tax invariability, thereby limiting legislative sovereignty and potentially undermining democratic processes for partisan gain. Furthermore, she notes that proposals to restore expenses for investment projects whose environmental impact assessments are judicially annulled effectively dispossess courts of their functions, turning judicial oversight into an indemnifiable risk rather than a normal institutional check and balance inherent in liberal democracies.