Contemporary Environmental Politics In Chile: The Struggle Over The Comprehensive Law

Abstract

This article examines the politics of environmental policymaking in newly democratized Chile in relation to two questions. What are the key axes of conflict over environmental policy? How and when do ideas, international actors, social forces, and state institutions influence policy outcomes? With respect to the first question, the paper argues that differences in two major competing views of sustainable development—a market-friendly and a pro gressive, alternative one—lie at the core of dissention in environmental poli tics. In the Chilean case, the recently enacted comprehensive environmental law facilitates a market-friendly approach. With respect to the second ques tion, the paper contends that international actors (principally the U.S. gov ernment and the World Bank) played an indirect, or permissive, role in the shaping of policy agendas through "green" conditionality on aid and trade negotiations. Ideas also shaped the policy agenda. They offered diagnoses of the problem and policy prescriptions. As a result, in the newly established democratic government of Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994), competing coalitions of state and social actors formed around the market-friendly and alternative interpretations of sustainable development. The final outcome largely depended on the fact that the former controlled a larger measure of state- institutional and economic power. The conclusion explores the implications of the Chilean case for the rest of Latin America.