The technocratic barrier to wage policy: theoretical insights from the Chilean Concertación

Juan A. Bogliaccini

Third World Quarterly, 2021, vol. 42, issue 4, 831-854

Abstract: After Latin America’s transition to a market economy in the 1980s and 1990s, most left-wing governments in the region recognised the importance of committing to macroeconomic equilibria and successfully managed to combine this goal with a wide array of social policies. Wage policy, however, proved a conflictive arena in the wake of a period of harsh austerity measures. This article provides unique insights from the experience of the Chilean Concertación governments (1990–2010) about the important role intra-left conflicts played in the advancement of collective labour rights. My working hypothesis is that the conflict between technocrats and non-technocrat political cadres in conjunction with a perceived trade-off between growth and distribution was a major determinant of wage outcomes. My analysis relies on a mixed-methods approach combining regression analysis and process tracing. Chile’s attempts at labour reform during the Concertación governments help explain how the perceived trade-off mentioned above may have unfolded not only in Latin America but also in other regions of the developing world. The novelty of this analysis lies in highlighting intra-left conflict as an important and understudied driver of labour and wage policies and elucidating the political economy of distributive strategies during the period 1990–2010.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2020.1819784

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