How Do Think Tanks Broker Market Governance? Structural Holes, Digital Strategies, and Elite Networks in Chile

This article examines the role of two pro-market think tanks in Chile—the Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP) and Fundación para el Progreso (FPP)—in sustaining market-oriented policies via distinct but complementary strategies. Employing a mixed-methods approach combining social network analysis, media corpus analysis, and social media analytics, it conceptualizes these organizations as relational infrastructures that mediate elite cohesion and facilitate the circulation of market rationality in the public sphere. Drawing on the concept of social capital—understood as resources embedded in networks and activated through strategic affiliations—CEP and FPP enact different forms of influence: the former through technocratic legitimacy and elite connections, the latter mostly via ideological outreach particularly targeting youth audiences. The findings reveal how overlapping fields of power stabilize and dynamically rearticulate neoliberal rationalities amid political uncertainty. We argue that recognizing the hybrid and evolving nature of think tanks is essential to understanding the persistence and transformation of market-centred governance in contemporary public and political action, particularly within the specific context of the Chilean political economy shaped by its authoritarian past.