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Hegemony and Frustration: Education Policy Making in Chile under the Concertación,
1990 −2010
Guy Burton
Latin American Perspectives 2012 39: 34 originally published online 14 March 2012
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X12439048

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 Hegemony and Frustration
Education Policy Making in Chile under
the Concertación, 1990–2010
by
Guy Burton

What is the nature of government policy making and its relations with social actors
in post-1990 Chile? A case study of the education sector shows a shift in the Concertación
government’s approach to participation from market (1980s) to weak representative (i.e.,
involvement of organized groups) (1990–2006 and since 2007) and deliberative (2006)
forms. The reasons for this shift include the relative strength of (right-wing) political
actors in representative institutions such as Congress and the weakness of (left-wing)
social actors in organizational and electoral terms.

¿Cuál es la esencia de la creación de políticas y su relación con los actores sociales en

el Chile post-1990? Un estudio de caso sobre el sector educativo muestra un cambio en
el enfoque del gobierno de Concertación, de uno que se centraba en el mercado (en la
década de los ochenta) a uno con representación limitada y mayor amplitud de
deliberación (1990–2006) antes de volver a la representatividad restringida después de
2007. Las razones de este cambio obedecen al relativo poder que actualmente esgrimen
actores de la derecha política en instituciones representativas como el Congreso y la
debilidad de la izquierda en términos organizativos y electorales.

Keywords: Concertación, Education policy, Policy making, Participation, Social movements,

Political parties

In April and May 2006 Chile’s democracy seemed to be on the verge of

change. Social mobilization challenged the political status quo in a way
unseen since the final years of the military dictatorship (1973–1990). With an
estimated 1 million mainly secondary-school-aged protesters demonstrating
in the streets and occupying schools throughout the country, it seemed that
Chilean democracy was becoming more participatory. The protests stemmed
from a growing separation between the government and the wider society
over both the educational system and politics more generally. The
Concertación government and its new president, Michelle Bachelet (2006–
2010), were surprised by the strength and depth of the demonstrations and
quickly responded by setting up a presidential advisory commission with a
wide remit and membership.
Guy Burton is a research associate in the Latin America Programme at the Ideas Centre, London
School of Economics. He thanks Alejandra Fallabella at the Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo
de la Educación (Education Research and Development Centre—CIDE), Universidad Alberto
Hurtado, and Victor Figueroa-Clark in the International History Department at the London
School of Economics for their suggestions on early drafts of this paper and the reviewers for
their comments.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 185, Vol. 39 No. 4, July 2012 34-52
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X12439048
© 2012 Latin American Perspectives

34
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 Burton / Education Policy Making     35

What did the Concertación’s response say about the nature of government-
society relations and the state of democracy and policy making in Chile until
this point? Did the introduction of more participation prove lasting? To
address these questions, this article examines the development of the gov-
ernment’s social relations in the educational sector since 1990. It considers
three ways in which democratic governments enable “participation” in
the education sector: representative (where government engage social con-
stituencies that are organized), deliberative (where government-stakeholder
engagement is organic and open-ended and is not limited to organized
groups), or in terms of rational choice (where participation is based on the
market) (Anderson, 1999). The case of the Concertación in Chile demonstrates
the use of all three models. None of these uses, however, was complete or last-
ing. While the Concertación has maintained the previous regime’s market
orientation in education since 1990 through the presence of influential private
interests, its commitment to representative or deliberative forms has been
limited, largely because of the relative weakness of wider social actors and the
Concertación’s emphasis on institutional representation, especially political
parties in Congress. The result has been the sidelining of (mostly left-wing)
social movements in favor of the right-wing opposition.
To account for the Concertación’s approach in this context, the article
makes extensive use of the observations and reflections of many of the con-
certacionistas (members of the Concertación) involved in the education policy-
making process.1 While this has provided useful insight into the attitudes and
positions of key education figures on the question of participation within the
governing left, these findings have been tested against archival material of the
period and secondary literature.
The article is laid out in several sections. The first covers Chile’s society,
politics, and education from the 1970s to 1990, the period in which the market-
based education system that the Concertación inherited was constructed. The
following sections examine the Concertación government’s relations with
social actors in the education system between 1990 and 2006 and the social
pressure of that year that prompted a shift from (extremely limited) represen-
tative to deliberative participation. The article then considers events since
2006 and the construction of a political-party-oriented agreement and legisla-
tive package that effectively excluded the social constituencies. That this
occurred illustrates the argument made throughout the article: that the Con-
certación’s approach to policy making and participation is influenced by the
relative weakness of Chilean social movements and the relative strength of
political representation since 1990.

SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND EDUCATIONAL

CHANGES IN CHILE SINCE THE 1980s

Chile has experienced political and educational trends similar to those in

much of Latin America, with rising levels of social liberalization alongside
growing dissatisfaction with the prevailing system and its inability to repre-
sent those changes. Among Chilean scholars there is consensus in this regard:
Funk (2006), Salcedo (2005), and Tironi (2005) have noted more liberal,

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36    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

individualist, and consumerist attitudes and behavior since the 1980s (e.g., the
declining role played by traditional actors such as the Church, the rise in
unmarried cohabitation and children born out of wedlock), while others have
made reference to the low-intensity nature of Chilean democracy and the
relative absence of social actors in the decision-making process (Águila, 2005;
Barrett, 2001; Fernandez, 2004; Moulian, 2002; Nef, 2003; Olavarría, 2003;
Salcedo, 2005; Silva, 2003; Taylor, 2003).
Chile’s incomplete democratic transition has its roots in the military regime
prior to 1990. In 1973 a junta led by General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the
Socialist government of Salvador Allende on the grounds of increasing social,
political, and economic instability. In contrast to other military regimes in Latin
America in the period, the Chilean experience was especially repressive and
bloody, with Congress being shut down and political parties and social organiza-
tions (especially those associated with the left, such as trade unions) banned. By
the early 1980s the regime felt sufficiently confident of its position to begin mak-
ing changes, including plebiscites in 1980 for a new constitution and on Pinochet’s
continued rule and economic changes in favor of the market and privatization.
The economic measures occurred against the backdrop of the 1982 debt
crisis. The resulting austerity led to the first demonstrations since the early
1970s, which involved activists from what would become the Concertación:
the centrist Partido Democráta Cristiano (Christian Democrat Party—PDC)
and the Partido Socialista (Socialist Party). That these two parties, opposed to
each other before 1973, were working together in opposition to the Pinochet
regime revealed the political change that each had undergone. By contrast, the
Socialists’ pre-1973 ally, the Partido Comunista de Chile (Chilean Communist
Party—PCCh), abandoned the Concertación’s moderation in favor of armed
struggle during the 1970s and 1980s (Garretón, 2003; Roberts, 1997). The
PCCh’s increasingly marginal position was compounded by the Concert-
ación’s acceptance of the 1980 constitution and its binominal electoral system
after 1989. The electoral system requires the most-voted election list (which
can be either a single party or a coalition made up of several parties) to defeat
the second-most-voted election list by a margin of two to one if it is to win
both seats (the lower house and the Senate) in a constituency. If it does not do
so, then the second seat goes to the second-largest list, which since 1990 has
been the right-wing Alianza coalition. The effect of the binominal electoral
system has therefore not only polarized competition between the center-left
and the right but also produced an overrepresentation of the right at the
expense of smaller parties and lists that are not affiliated with either coalition.2
The changes in education implemented by the military regime in this
period introduced a market-oriented model. In contrast to the national, public,
and participatory school proposed by the Allende government, the military
created one that was decentralized, privatized, and (ideally) depoliticized.
Between 1981 and 1986 local government became responsible for schools and
private participation in primary, secondary, and higher education was encour-
aged. This resulted in a threefold division of the school system between pub-
licly funded municipal schools, independent private schools (both of which
had existed before 1973), and state-subsidized private schools.
The new subsidized private schools were able to select students even as
they drew on public money. They were funded by a state subsidy allocated

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 Burton / Education Policy Making     37

2,500,000

2,000,000

1,500,000

1,000,000 Municipal
Subsidized Private
Private
500,000
Delegated Municipal

0
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Figure 1. Numbers of students by school type, 1980–2008 (Ministério de Educación, 2005; 2008).

for each student. That the “voucher” went directly to the school disappointed
some in the regime, who would have preferred to see it given to parents to be
redeemed at the school of their choice (Dittborn, interview, 2007). The subsi-
dized private schools transformed the Chile’s school system fundamentally:
between 1981 and 1990 the number of students in municipal schools fell by
over a fifth while the number matriculated in subsidized private schools more
than doubled. The process continued during the 1990s and 2000s: although
the Concertación government has maintained the number of municipal school
students, the number enrolled in subsidized private schools rose by more than
half between 1990 and 2005 (Figure 1) and since 2008 has exceeded the num-
ber enrolled in municipal ones (Elacqua, 2009).
At the same time, the 1980s school system has led to greater social and aca-
demic segmentation (Table 1). Socially, students from poorer family back-
grounds tend to end up in municipal public schools while those from the
wealthier classes go to private schools (both independent and state-subsidized).
Academically, the results of the national Sistema de Medición de la Calidad
de la Educación (Quality of Education Measurement System) tests in Spanish,
math, and science for fourth and eighth grade students show that since their
introduction in 1987 those from poorer backgrounds and municipal schools
have achieved lower scores than those in private schools. Meanwhile there is
a growing gap between the results of municipal and (independent) private
schools, and there has been little or no significant change in subsidized private
schools over time (Aedo, 1998; Matear, 2007).

CONCERTACIÓN HEGEMONY IN POLICY MAKING

AND WEAK SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, 1990–1995

It was into this political and educational context that the new Concertación
government was projected in 1990. For the next decade and a half it would be

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38    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Table 1
Social Class Segregation by School Type (Percentage), 2003
Quintile Municipal Subsidized Private Total

Low 79.4 20.6 0 10

Lower middle 81.9 18.1 0 32
Middle 47.8 52.3 0 37
Upper middle 13.0 81.6  5.4 14
Upper 0  6.1 93.9  7

Source: Ministério de Educación (2006).

broadly the same set of academics and scholars, including Cristian Cox, José
Joaquín Brunner, Ivan Nuñez Prieto, Carlos Eugenio Baker, and Juan Eduardo
García-Huidobro, who would direct educational policy. All shared the experi-
ence of having been activists during the late 1960s. Following the military
coup several were detained and went into exile or studied abroad following
release. During the 1980s they were able to return to Chile, where they became
professionally and personally close through collaborative work in various
independent research and education centers. Their shared experience enabled
them to transcend any ideological differences among them, which ranged
from support for a more state-led form of education to greater use of the mar-
ket (Cox, Brunner, Elacqua, Muñoz, interviews, 2007).
The dominance of these policy makers was in marked contrast to the role
of two of the most visible social movements in education on the left: teachers
and students. Both organizations’ capacity to mobilize independently was
hampered by the close affinity of their leaders and members to the Concer­
tación and by their relative weakness (Palmidessi, 2003). The economic auster-
ity of the 1980s reduced the number of teachers and their salaries (which by
1990 had only a quarter of their early 1970s value) while also making their
terms of employment more precarious (Centro de Estudios Nacionales de
Desarrollo Alternativo, 2000; Escobar, 1987; La Opinión, 1987; Lomnitz and
Melnick, 1991; Rojas, 1998; Soto, interview, 2007). Students found their move-
ment limited by restrictions on student organizations in the growing private
university sector and their concentration in the few traditional universities,
the most prominent being the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de
Chile (Federation of University of Chile Students—FECH) (Grau, interview,
2007).
Other than teachers and students, the most organized educational constitu-
ency was the private sector, whose numbers had grown since the 1980s. Their
objectives centered around three main areas: school autonomy, the right to
make a profit, and the right to select the students they wanted (Velasco, Bosch,
interviews, 2007). Like the teacher and student organizations, the private sec-
tor was not especially active in the policy-making process, in part because of
the Concertación’s acceptance of the 1980s school system. This acceptance, in
turn, was partly due to vested interests: a number of the government’s
supporters in the PDC and center-left Partido por la Democracia (Party for
Democracy—PPD)3 were also managers of subsidized private schools (Bosch,
interview, 2007).
If challenges to the Concertación from among social movements were few,
the same could not be said of challenges from the right. Politically, Pinochet

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 Burton / Education Policy Making     39

continued to be chief of the army, and the 1980 constitution granted the mili-
tary the designation of several senators. In addition, right-wing parties were
overrepresented in Congress through the binominal electoral system, and this
meant that Concertación policy makers had to take the right into account. This
was especially so in education, given the high threshold required to change
the outgoing military regime’s Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza
(Constitutional Statutory Law of Education), which guaranteed the market-
oriented educational model (Bloque Social, 2006).4 Given the circumstances,
the Concertación adopted a relatively narrow set of priorities that could be
achieved by executive order rather than through the legislature (Scope, 1997);
any attempt at reforming the education law would have to wait.
The Concertación’s limited policy arena meant that it would concentrate on
rectifying years of state underinvestment in education and the teaching pro-
fession after 1990—material concerns that were reflected in the teachers’ 1991
strike and student complaints regarding insufficient financial support for
their tuition and living costs in 1992 (Arrate, 1993b; Nuñez, interview 1, 2007;
Roco, 2005). Its response was to increase spending, expand the grants and
credit system for university students, and target greater resources to schools
in poorer areas through the Programa de Mejoramiento de la Calidad y
Equidad en Educación (Improvement of Education Quality and Equality
Program—MECE) and P900 programs5 and to codify teachers’ working and
financial conditions in a teachers’ statute (Aylwin, 1994a; 1994b). That the
Concertación undertook these measures illustrated the change in policy mak-
ing after 1990: in contrast to the previous authoritarian regime, the new gov-
ernment was more democratic and responsive to social demands, especially
from those constituencies that were organized, however weak. The years after
1990 showed how policy making moved from being primarily concerned with
the market to being more representative.
However, this participation was extremely limited. The teachers’ statute,
for example, was more the product of Ministry of Education policy makers
than of any collaboration between them and the teachers’ union, the Colegio
de Profesores (Teachers’ College) (Soto, interview, 2007; Nuñez, interview 2,
2007). While the Concertación took teachers’ concerns into account, the bulk
of the discussion over its content occurred between the Finance and Labor
Ministries, which wanted wage negotiations to be decentralized to the munic-
ipal level, and the Ministry of Education, which wanted them at the national
level. It was the latter position that ultimately prevailed, its appeal being
based on its simplicity and the avoidance of conflict between hundreds of
municipalities and local teachers’ associations (Nuñez, interview 2, 2007).
The teachers saw the statute as both limited and rigid; not only did it not
include teachers in private schools but it lacked a teaching career path and
established an extremely low minimum salary (Aedo, 1998; Colegio de Profe-
sores, 2003; Cortes, 1994; CTERA et al., 2005; Ministério Secretaría General del
Gobierno, 1993). It was, however, in fact a gain for teachers, the unions, and
the left: the right in Congress had opposed it, claiming that it introduced spe-
cific and unequal legislation for different groups while imposing financial
costs on municipalities and providing few incentives for teachers to improve
their teaching (Larraín, 1997). The right’s position set it against some of its

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40    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

allies in the private school associations, which supported greater financial and
labor security for teachers even as they criticized the greater amount of regu-
lation to which subsidized private schools were supposedly subject (Bosch,
interview, 2007).
The relatively low level of representative participation and the extent to
which it was skewed toward political rather than social actors in Concertación
policy making was evident throughout the 1990s. First, like the teachers’ stat-
ute, the 1992 changes to the primary school curriculum were led from within
the Ministry of Education. Second, in 1994 an education commission was set
up and chaired by José Joaquín Brunner, a former director of the Facultad
Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (Latin American Faculty of Social Sci-
ences) and an education researcher who was a key policy adviser in the Min-
istry. The commission was the initiative of the new Concertación president,
Eduardo Frei (1994–2000), who wanted to chart a new path for education. Its
membership was largely restricted to the political, business, and education
elite. It did not deviate from the main priorities identified by the government
in 1990 (Rivero, 1999); indeed, Brunner has acknowledged that the main point
of discussion was making the existing system work better by managing and
financing its decentralized structure (interview, 2007).
Third, following the commission’s report, the Concertación focused atten-
tion on finding cross-party agreement. In early 1995 it signed a framework
agreement with the right-wing parties in Congress. The narrowness of its
remit was evident in its key points, which included acceptance of the decen-
tralized school system and more municipal autonomy, greater flexibility for
schools to hire and fire teachers, and increasing education spending from 5
percent to 7 percent of the gross domestic product, with contributions coming
from private actors such as families, tax incentives, and business (Gobierno de
Chile, 1995).

CONCERTACIÓN POLICY MAKING AND CHANGES

WITHIN THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, 1995–2000

While the Concertación maintained a very limited form of representative

policy making that accommodated the right in the 1990s, the external environ-
ment for social groups associated with the left began to shift in the second half
of the decade. Although they did not enjoy mass support or sufficient capacity
to mobilize beyond their own limited membership base, in the education sec-
tor there was a change in both their leaderships and their demands, from
issues of quantity to issues of quality (Cox, 2007; Diaz, interview, 2007). This
shift was associated with the idea that while the 1990s had seen enrollments
and financial resources increase, this had not been matched by an improve-
ment in student performance and test results.
In 1995 the Colegio de Profesores and the FECH held elections that saw
defeat for their Concertación-aligned leaderships. In the Colegio de Profesores
a PCCh activist, Jorge Pavez, became president, while a crisis in the financial
management of the FECH prompted its disbanding between 1993 and 1994
and contributed to a change of leadership by a nonparty social-movement-based

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 Burton / Education Policy Making     41

coalition with left-wing tendencies (Grau, interview, 2007). These political

changes occurred against the backdrop of a wider debate within the extrapar-
liamentary left. On one side were Pavez and his supporters, who wanted the
social movements and the PCCh to remain organizationally distinct and
autonomous. On the other side was the PCCh leadership, which wanted to
enlist the social movements in the service of the party and its goals (Soto,
interview, 2007). The two sides split, with Pavez and like-minded activists
(mainly from the education sector) forming a network of social organizations
called the Fuerza Social (Social Strength) in 2001. The Fuerza Social’s
demands for education reform concentrated on improving the system’s qual-
ity as opposed to material and corporate interests such as higher teachers’
salaries and resources for schools (Nuñez, interview 2, 2007). This became
apparent at the national education congress convened by the Colegio de Pro-
fesores in 1997, the first time since the national debate in 1971 under the
Allende government that education had been discussed in a formal setting by
civil society (CTERA et al., 2005). Despite the challenge that the Fuerza Social
appeared to represent to the PCCh, it struggled. It was both limited in size,
with most of its leadership coming from the teaching union (and only partial
support from other unions), and not ideologically distinct enough from the
PCCh to have much impact across society.
The Concertación paid only limited attention to these changes and was
selective in the demands it addressed. Policy makers’ selectivity reflected their
view that the social movements were more concerned with material and cor-
porate interests than with the overall education system (Cox, Brunner, inter-
views, 2007). The Ministry of Education was therefore concerned with finding
ways to develop and improve teachers’ performance through more courses,
incentives, and performance-related pay (Arrate, 1993a; Bitar, interview, 2007;
Concertación, 1994). In addition, the Concertación questioned the representa-
tiveness of the social movements (Cox, Brunner, interviews, 2007). By the late
1990s government-commissioned polling suggested that nearly half (48 per-
cent) of the teachers surveyed considered the government’s educational
changes “very good” or “good” while almost the same number (45 percent)
considered them “fair” and only 7 percent “bad.” Significantly, a third of them
thought that the Ministry was more concerned with improving educational
quality than their own trade union (MORI, 1998). At the same time students
were finding it difficult to organize: by 1998 efforts to improve coordination
of the 14 most established and traditional university student unions through
a national Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile (Confederation of Chilean
Students—CONFECH) had largely broken down (Roco, 2005). In the larger
private university sector, few student organizations were allowed to form,
and those that were permitted proved relatively weak (Grau, 2005; Grau,
interview, 2007).
If domestic social actors remained weak in the formation of these policies,
those at the international level were more prominent. The World Bank pro-
vided funds with conditions attached, among them the continuation of finan-
cial support for subsidized private schools beyond the term of the loan and a
concentration on primary education (a condition that Concertación policy
makers rejected) (Cox and Avalos, 1999).

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42    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

CHANGES WITHIN THE CONCERTACIÓN AND

THE WIDER EDUCATION COMMUNITY, 2000–2006

The Concertación continued to dominate even as new social actors, includ-

ing nonteaching school staff, parents/guardians, and secondary school stu-
dents, began to organize in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Rodriguez, Cáceres,
Velasco, Catalan, interviews, 2007). These groups would soon become identi-
fied with the Fuerza Social and aligned with the extraparliamentary left. They
continued, however, to lack a critical mass either electorally or as a result of
wider social and political pressure. What action they pursued in the early
2000s was limited and fragmented: while secondary students took to the street
against increased transport costs in 2002, they were unable to connect with
other social groups. There were no strong social movements at the time, the
groups that existed (e.g., labor, Mapuche, and others) being both weakly orga-
nized and fragmented across a range of disparate topics. As a result, there was
no opportunity to build a common cause. In addition, although the new non-
teaching staff and parent/guardian organizations were growing, their distri-
bution and strength remained patchy. Their situation was not helped by their
relative electoral weakness. Their alignment with the non-Concertación left
meant greater identification with the PCCh, which failed to progress elector-
ally. As we have seen, the binominal electoral system worked against parties
like the PCCh in Congress, and public support for their demands was gener-
ally low: the extraparliamentary left’s share of the vote fell from 10.4 percent
in 1997 to 6.3 percent in 2001.6 In between, the three left-wing non-Concertación
candidates managed only 4.1 percent jointly in the 2000 presidential election.
In an increasingly consolidated democracy like Chile’s, the absence of any
significant support therefore discouraged any pressure for change.
In the absence of any significant external pressure for a change in policy
direction during the early 2000s, it was within the Concertación that the most
notable development occurred. More specifically, this change was a genera-
tional one as older policy makers were replaced by younger scholars and
researchers in the Ministry of Education and other state institutions involved
in the educational sector (e.g., regional agencies). For these younger concerta-
cionistas, the lines of attachment to the government over the opposition were
blurred, being based more on issues of inequality than on acceptance or rejec-
tion of the situation under Pinochet (Elacqua, interview, 2007). In addition, by
the 2000s the number of officials and institutions associated with education
policy had expanded beyond the Education and Finance Ministries to include
the regions and the development ministries (Muñoz, interview, 2007).
That the change was mainly cosmetic was evident in the persistence of the
Concertación in policy. Michelle Bachelet’s 2005 presidential election mani-
festo presented a direction broadly similar to that of previous governments.
This included expanding pre-schooling and the Jornada Escolar Completa
(Whole School Day—JEC) program,7 more targeted funding for important
subjects such as math, science, information technology, and English, and peri-
odic accreditation for universities receiving state support. The governing
coalition continued to see education in narrow terms reflected by its approach
to citizenship, which it portrayed as something to be taught and directed

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 Burton / Education Policy Making     43

through state-sanctioned community action rather than as being claimed out-

side the classroom (Bachelet, 2005: 14–19).

THE 2006 DEMONSTRATIONS AND THEIR AFTERMATH

By 2006 the nature of Concertación policy making appeared to be set, being

directed from above even as some of the concerns of the social movements
(e.g., the teachers’ statute, curricular reforms, more resources) appeared to
have been taken on board. While this increased attention to social concerns
suggested a more representative than a purely market-based approach to
education policy, the extent of participation remained extremely limited.
It was in this context that the Concertación approach was put to the test
with a series of initially spontaneous social protests and demonstrations that
were the largest the country had seen since the 1980s. From April to June 2006
between 600,000 and 1 million secondary school students took to the streets,
along with teachers, parents and guardians, and university students (Gutiérrez
and Caviedes, 2006). The origin of the protests had been primarily material,
with students disgruntled at the gap between policy aims and reality (e.g., the
deficiencies of the JEC program) and the rising cost of university entrance
exams and transport fares. As the protests escalated, the demands changed to
a broader criticism of the education system as a whole (García-Huidobro,
interview, 2007; Nuñez, interview 1, 2007). This reflected growing concern
that the system was not only failing to deliver improvements (as expressed
through rising domestic and international test scores by Chilean students) but
also in the increasing social segregation as a result of the segmented school
system.
Just as the Concertación had undergone a generational shift, the 2006 dem-
onstrations constituted one for wider Chilean politics. The leaders of the “pen-
guin” revolution (“penguin” being a slang term for secondary school students
based on the look of their uniforms) included people too young to remember
the military regime. This was significant, since in contrast to those protesting
against the military regime in the 1980s, the 2006 demonstrators operated in
an environment that was less politically risky and repressive and subject to
greater media scrutiny (Pancani, interview, 2007): police violence prompted
Bachelet to fire the chief of the riot police (BBC News Online, 2006). However,
it should not be assumed that protest was a risk-free activity; many student
activists faced suspension and expulsion from their schools as a result of their
actions.
The strength of public pressure led to a shift in Concertación policy making
from a representative to a deliberative process. In an effort to regain the initia-
tive, President Bachelet convened a presidential advisory committee under
Juan Eduardo García-Huidobro, an adviser in the Ministry of Education from
1990 to 2000. It was broader in its remit and its membership than the 1994
commission, including a large number of teachers and secondary school stu-
dents who were members of the Bloque Social (Social Block), an education-
oriented social movement associated with the Fuerza Social. Their presence
countered the position of the commission’s other, more “technocratic” mem-
bers, including university professors, economists, and civil servants from the
Ministry and the municipalities. This meant that the commission was more
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44    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Key Educational Positions within the García-Huidobro Commission
Bloque Social
(Extraparliamentary left)
Oppose for-profit schools, school
fees
Favor reform of education law
Advocate stronger state role/less
municipalized system
Oppose schools’ ability to select
students
Table 2
Concertación (Center
and center-left) Alianza (Right)
Hold differing internal Defend for-profit schools
positions on for-profit schools
Hold differing internal Propose altering education law
positions on education law
reform
Advocate stronger state role/ Advocate weaker state role/
maintain municipalized municipalized system and
system greater school autonomy
Advocate regulating selection Defend selection

participatory than the other two commissions set up by Bachelet during her
first year, on social security and health, in which civil servants and profession-
als in these sectors predominated (Aguilera, 2007). While the commission was
welcomed by many of the participants within and outside the government,
not all sections of the Concertación approved: some felt that the commission
would undermine representative political institutions such as Congress by
introducing a new space in which policies would be debated and negotiated
(Elacqua, interview, 2007).
Although the commission’s membership was diverse, three main positions
were identifiable: the Concertación, the right-wing political party opposition,
and the social-movement left (Table 2). This last group was dominated by the
Bloque Social (Bloque Social, 2006). The right supported for-profit schools and
greater school autonomy and questioned the extent to which the “structure”
of the educational system was being discussed. It saw critics of the education
system as primarily motivated by political or ideological concerns while ques-
tioning what the government’s goals were beyond greater infrastructure
investment and improvements in an unspecified “quality” (Dittborn, Velasco,
interviews, 2007). The Bloque Social rejected for-profit schools and sought
greater central control of schools. It viewed the military regime’s decentraliza-
tion of education responsibility to hundreds of municipal-level governments
as weakening both the state’s duty to provide adequate schooling and its abil-
ity to halt social segregation. It believed that parental choice was unviable,
especially for poorer families, and defended subsidized private schools’
ability to select (Bloque Social, 2006). The Concertación’s position meanwhile
included individuals whose opinions ranged between the Bloque Social and
the right, although they were generally less concerned with profit and munic-
ipalization (García-Huidobro, Cox, interviews, 2007).
The commission’s chair acknowledged the difficulty of accommodating the
positions of the three groups in the final report. In a search for common
ground, García-Huidobro suggested a consensus on the following recommen-
dations in December 2006: the use of both public and private education;
greater participation by students and their families in school management;
measures to encourage teachers and school directors to remain in their posts;
changes to the education law to guarantee the right to education; an increase
in state funds; new educational standards; an end to arbitrary forms of
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 Burton / Education Policy Making     45

discrimination; and changes to the state’s supervisory institutions for educa-

tion (Consejo Asesor Presidencial para la Calidad de la Educación, 2006).
Another year would pass before a legislative agreement was reached
between the government, the Concertación, and the Alianza in November
2007. It included the repeal of the education law in favor of a new general
education law establishing new supervisory agencies focusing on standards
and educational quality, identifing the duties and responsibilities of students,
parents and guardians, teachers, school directors, and managers, and increas-
ing the number of years of required schooling to 12 (a measure that policy
makers noted was common both in the developed world and in higher-
performing educational systems). In addition, schools would have greater
financial and administrative accountability, have more time to experiment
with their own curricula, and see their public subsidy per student increased
by 15 percent. Finally, in addition to guaranteeing the mixed system of public
and private education, both the Concertación and the Alianza would end
selection in pre-school and primary schools (Gobierno de Chile, Alianza, and
Concertación, 2007).
The agreement did not receive universal support from the groups and orga-
nizations associated with the Bloque Social, which claimed that it had been
reached among the existing system’s supporters. In particular they argued
that the agreement would not prevent schools from being profit-oriented and
failed to provide a greater role for the state in supplying public education
(Observatorio Chileno de Políticas Educativas, 2007). This separation between
the social-movement left on the one side and the government and opposition
on the other not only showed how the three commission groups continued to
be divided but signaled an end to the Concertación’s deliberative approach
and a return to representative policy making, with greater weight given to
political (i.e., Alianza) over social (i.e., Bloque Social) actors.
Moreover, seen from the end of the Bachelet presidency, the largest social
protests seen in Chile between the 1980s and the end of the Concertación’s
rule ultimately failed to achieve lasting change to forms of government-
society relations. First, despite the generational change within the Concer­
tación, it had not altered concertacionistas’ preference for representation over
deliberation. Second, any educational changes would require legislative
approval, which meant that political parties represented in Congress would
need to be accommodated and, in turn, that the Concertación’s primary inter-
locutors would be the right-wing political parties rather than social organiza-
tions. Indeed, during the debate over the new education law the right had
threatened to vote against it if certain provisions, among them those dealing
with selection and access to public funds by subsidized private schools, were
not watered down (Kubal, 2009). Third, the extraparliamentary left remained
relatively weak, at least in the final years of the Bachelet presidency. Socially,
teachers and secondary school students continued to protest against the edu-
cational model after 2007 to little effect (Elacqua, 2009). However, when in
2011 university students engaged in the most visible and volatile street pro-
tests in defense of public education and against the now right-wing govern-
ment of Sebastián Piñera this appeared open to change. The students’ influ-
ence was sufficiently felt to discourage the Concertación from voting for the

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46    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

government’s budget for 2012 on the ground that it did not provide sufficient
resources for education (Reynolds, 2011a; 2011b). The Concertación’s position
was supported by the growing perception among Chileans that the quality of
education had declined over the previous decade: between 2003 and 2011 the
proportion reporting that it had improved fell from 48 percent to 25 percent,
while the proportion that said that it had worsened increased from 14 percent
to 28 percent (CEP, 2011). Electorally, though, the Chilean public arguably
lacked appetite for more radical change when offered the opportunity for it.
Despite education’s being seen by the public as one of the three biggest prob-
lems in the country (CEP, 2009), the most critical voices offering change to the
education system were overlooked. In the 2009 presidential election, the non-
Concertación left’s candidate, a former education minister, Jorge Arrate,
offered a break with previous education policies by ending municipal control
and increasing the state’s role. However, he only achieved 6.2 percent of the
vote. Meanwhile, another “outsider” candidate, a former Socialist deputy,
Marco Enriquez-Ominami, challenged the government from the center rather
than the left and won 20.1 percent of the vote with a manifesto that offered no
significant change to the education system. He proposed to maintain the
mixed public-private school system and target more resources toward teacher
preparation, science, and technology (Cassasus, 2009). Both, however, were
defeated in the first round by the Concertación’s uninspiring candidate, the
former president Eduardo Frei, and the right-wing candidate, Sebastián
Piñera (Siavelis, 2010); the latter would go on to win the second round runoff
in January 2010 with 51.6 percent of the vote.

CONCLUSION

The Concertación’s experience of policy making and approach to participa-

tion presents a case study for other democratic governments in Latin America.
Until the 1980s the response across much of the region was broadly the same:
the authoritarian nature of these governments meant that policy makers were
largely able to impose their own preferences with minimal opposition. Chile
was no different in this respect, with a market-oriented education system
being imposed after a decade of extreme military repression. The restoration
of democracy meant that governments like the Concertación operated in a
new context in which they had to accommodate competing social and political
demands, even if they tended to operate in a largely top-down manner. That
this is so is evident in the way that the Concertación shifted in its approach to
policy making from one that was market-oriented (1980s) to limited represen-
tative (1990–2006) and deliberative (2006) participation before returning to a
restricted representative form (2007–2010).
The Concertación’s journey is significant in both the change and continuity
evident in these shifts. It has engaged other social and political actors while at
the same time either rejecting or even ignoring some of their demands.
Democracy has meant that the Concertación has adopted some of the demands
made by social organizations, especially those with which it shared its opposi-
tion to the Pinochet regime. At the same time, its entry into government has

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 Burton / Education Policy Making     47

meant that its perspective and priorities differed from those of former allies
such as teachers and students, two important social groups that were rela-
tively weak organizationally because of the legacy of military repression and
compromised by the overlap between their leaderships and that of the Con-
certación in the 1980s–1990s. Although social movements constituted a broad
opposition movement to the Pinochet regime, in the final years of the dictator-
ship the pro-democracy movement was steered by the political parties of the
Concertación. That legitimacy and the deliberate policy of social demobiliza-
tion after Aylwin’s victory meant that the government effectively neutralized
any pressure from the left in the first years after it took power.
At the same time, the Concertación had to accommodate a wider section of
society than those in the center and on the left, including the demands of subsi-
dized private schools (now a substantial component of the school system) and
the political right (which retained influence in Congress, especially in relation to
constitutional issues such as the education law). Consolidating the new democ-
racy meant contact with the right and reducing the potential for political conflict.
By the early 2000s the Concertación approach appeared to be under chal-
lenge. Civil society was beginning to reassert itself—albeit weakly—for the
first time since the 1980s. Something similar was taking place elsewhere in
Latin America, where many social actors on the left were taking to the streets
in protest of the apparent inability of representative democracy and markets
to achieve substantial change and growing pressure for more participatory
and social forms (Petras, 1999). However, the extent to which it made a differ-
ence varied. In less consolidated democracies the impact was significant, lead-
ing to presidential resignations and government collapse (e.g., in Venezuela,
Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina), but in more consolidated democracies, such
as those of Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, social pressure was insufficient in
itself; it had to be coupled with electoral representation to be sustained.
The penguin revolution in Chile in 2006 and subsequent events reinforce
this point. Following the publication of the 2006 commission report, the capac-
ity for social pressure to achieve change largely disappeared as the Concert-
ación government resorted to engagement with the elected political opposi-
tion rather than with the social organizations of the left. Given the course of
policy making in Chile after 1990, it would not be too contentious to suggest
that this process is likely to continue into Chilean democracy’s third decade.
Certainly the signs in the education sector are of policy continuity and domi-
nance by the political-bureaucratic core within the Education Ministry. This
appears so despite the end of Concertación rule and its replacement by a new
right-wing government under Sebastián Piñera, whose priorities for schools
included more direct resources and greater involvement by principals and
families in the school system (Ministério de Educación, 2010). Indeed, the
Concertación’s approach in opposition since 2010 suggests that it is not yet
able to overcome its commitment to representative institutions. This is most
apparent in its response to the university student protests in 2011, when its
proposals for change were broadly in line with the government’s in its com-
mitment to maintaining a mixed public-private education system with changes
limited to administrative and financial measures (Libertad y Desarrollo,
2011a; 2011b) and challenging the government within Congress during the
debate over the 2012 budget.

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48    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

In sum, then, if the policy-making process is to become more responsive to

the needs of Chile’s less privileged student majority and the teachers who
provide their education, the social organizations and their political party allies
that seek to change features of Chile’s democracy, institutions, and forms of
participation need to develop the sustained ability to exercise independent
pressure on the government from the outside as the penguin movement did
at its height. This is a challenge that confronts not only the education reform
movement but labor, environmental organizations, and other social groups
that throughout the Concertación era were unable to recreate the kinds of
mass mobilization that brought down the dictatorship.

NOTES

1. The interviewees, their positions, and the dates of the interviews are as follows: Sergio
Bitar, education minister 2003–2005 (August 21, 2007); Rodrigo Bosch, president of the Colegios
Particulares de Chile (Private Schools of Chile) since 2006 (November 27, 2007); José Joaquin
Brunner, chair of the 1994 national education commission, 1994 (August 28, 2007); Victoria
Cáceres, a leader of the Confederación Nacional de Asociaciones de Funcionarios de Educación
Municipalizada de Chile (National Confederation of Chilean Associations of Municipal Educa-
tion Workers—CONFEMUCH) (November 20, 2007); Eduardo Catalan, a leader of the Santiago
metropolitan parents’ association (November 15, 2007); Cristian Cox, ministerial adviser in the
Ministry of Education from 1990 to 2006 (August 28, 2007); Francisco Diaz, head of President
Bachelet’s policy unit (August 16, 2007); Paulina Dittborn, chief of staff (1981–1988) and under-
secretary of education (1989) in the Ministry of Education (November 19, 2007); Gregory
Elacqua, ministerial aide in the Ministry of Education from 2003 to 2005 (September 12, 2007),
Juan Eduardo García-Huidobro, ministerial adviser in the Ministry of Education from 1990 to
2002) and chair of presidential advisory committee on education (2006) (August 20, 2007);
Nicolas Grau, president of the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile (University
of Chile Students’ Union) in 2006 (November 22, 2007); Mauricio Muñoz, President Bachelet’s
education adviser (November 9, 2007); Ivan Nuñez, ministerial adviser at the Ministry of Educa-
tion (November 15 and 21, 2007), Dino Pancani, secondary school student leader during the
1980s (November 20, 2007); Carlos Rodriguez, a leader of CONFEMUCH (November 20, 2007);
Clodile Soto, a leader of the Santiago section of the national teachers’ union, the Colegio de
Profesores (August 24, 2007); and Carolina Velasco, education researcher at the Libertad y
Desarrollo (Liberty and Development) think tank (November 14, 2007).
2. The Concertación and the right have dominated congressional elections since 1989. Between
them they have accounted for over 85 percent of the vote for the lower house, with 85.6 percent
in 1989, 92.1 percent in 1993, 86.8 percent in 1997, 92.2 percent in 2001, 90.5 percent in 2005, and
87.9 percent in 2009. In contrast, between 1993 and 2009 the non-Concertación left achieved
between 5.2 percent (2001) and 7.8 percent (1997) of the vote for the lower house. Although Marco
Enriquez-Ominami’s outsider status won him a fifth of the vote in the first round of the 2009
presidential election, that popularity was not transferred to the congressional vote, where his
alliance received 4.6 percent. http://www.elecciones.gov.cl/ (accessed December 4, 2010)
3. Although the military regime lifted the ban on political parties in 1987, it kept it in place
for the Socialists and the PCCh. To get around this, members of the Socialist Party formed the
PPD to be able to participate in elections. Members of the Socialist Party were entitled to
be members of the PPD until 1992.
4. The education law was the military regime’s way of securing its education changes during
the 1980s on its last day in office (March 10, 1990). In contrast to an ordinary law, which can be
enacted through a simple majority, an organic law (which is designed to complement the consti-
tution) requires a four-sevenths vote of all legislators in support of any proposal to change,
repeal, or enact it. This is one step above an ordinary law and one below any change to the
constitution, which requires a three-fifths vote.

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 Burton / Education Policy Making     49

5. Both these programs were targeted at the schools considered the neediest. The MECE pro-
gram was begun in 1992 and involved directing funds, primarily from the World Bank, to pre-
school and primary and secondary schools. The 900 Program or P900 was targeted at the poorest
schools in the country in terms of levels of funding, the socioeconomic context, and school test
results. The proportion allocated through these two programs dwarfed the general resources
allocated by the Treasury for educational improvements.
6. These figures include the combined totals for the PCCh and the Humanist Party.
7. The JEC program was designed to extend the number of hours students spent at school
each day and to provide those who could not afford them with school meals. The assumption
behind it was that a longer school day would mean that students would have more time in class
and would therefore learn more.

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