The difficulties of devising suitable systems of political choice - the case of Chile

[IvanV]

The Chilean voters have just rejected a draft constitution prepared by a constituent assembly with a strongly right-wing make-up.

Before that, they rejected a draft constitution prepared by a constituent assembly with a strongly left-wing make-up. And in the aftermath of the rejection, elected the replacement consitutent assembly with the heavy right-wing lean.

Before that, there were violent demonstrations complaining about the inadequacy of the present constitution, which one might call right-wing in its orientation, being rather weak on civil liberties, aboriginal rights, etc.

We have to wonder whether a more balanced draft constitution would also be rejected by voters on both left and right, but also whether it would even be possible to elect an assembly capable of producing such a document.

Chilean politics has been heavily polarised for a long time, albeit the swings today are not as wide as the swing from Allende and Pinochet.

[Sciolus]

Constitutions (for countries, charities, clubs or whatever) are hard to get right. Their primary function is to protect against abuse by a usurper with a large but possibly temporary (and possibly artificial) power base. For a state, that requires a constitutional court that is wholly independent of other power structures (unlike the US, say). It also needs to be difficult to change, requiring a large popular supermajority (unlike the UK, where the entirety of the constitution is "a PM with a sufficient number of tame MPs and a bit of savvy is an absolute dictator"). When drafting it, even if there are strongly opposing parties, as long as they are not too extreme, each side should realise that anything in the constitution that they can use against their opponents, their opponents can use against them; so you would hope that a mutually agreeable text would be possible. But maybe (definitely) I'm naive.

[dyqik]

On that, as a reminder, it took 6 years to get the US Constitution from the point of having just about won the War of Independence, to 9 of 13 states having ratified it. The Articles of Confederacy were already known to be barely workable, even when under existential threat at the start of that period.

There was an awful lot of politicking between the drafting of the Constitution and ratification by the states, including the set of essays that make up the Federalist Papers, John Jay's pamphlet targeting a more common audience, and numerous anti-Federalist pamphlets (see a recent episode of In Our Time for details).

Getting a new constitution in place should be hard, even with an almost entirely broken old one. For Chile, why is there such a strong push for new constitution, rather than amending and fudging the old one?

[monkey]

For Chile, why is there such a strong push for new constitution, rather than amending and fudging the old one?

The old one is from Pinochet's time. They'd been fudging it since he got booted. A referendum was held asking if people wanted it changing in response to massive protests around 2019 and 2020.

[dyqik]

For Chile, why is there such a strong push for new constitution, rather than amending and fudging the old one?

The old one is from Pinochet's time. They'd been fudging it since he got booted. A referendum was held asking if people wanted it changing in response to massive protests around 2019 and 2020.

Ok.

But until there's a constitutional convention representing the whole of the people, including both right and left, and those on both sides of other dividing lines, and that produces a document that wins support on both sides of each, there isn't going to be a constitution that's acceptable to a supermajority, or that can last.

The way the US constitution got produced was with a convention with representatives from each of the thirteen different states, which had competing interests and political ideas, and not all of whom were committed to the idea of a single nation of states*. A national election on party lines for a convention isn't likely to produce a lasting document.


*And without the external threats of three European imperial powers on the US's borders, it may not have resulted in a federal system. It may be that you need an external threat or e.g. independence movement from previous colonial power, to get sufficient unity to write a decent constitution