Neoliberal Continuity and Functional Change: Growth Regimes and Social Blocs in Chile

This article examines Chile’s growth regime between 2000 and 2022 by combining post-Keynesian demand and growth regime analysis with a comparative political economy framework centered on dominant social blocs linked through the concept of growth strategies. Using national income and financial accounting decomposition, it identifies three phases: a weakly export-led regime in 2000–2008, a crisis and adjustment phase in 2009–11, and a debt-led private demand regime consolidating from 2012 onward. The article argues that this shift was a functional transformation within neoliberal continuity. It traces a causal sequence from institutional configuration and regime exhaustion under changing external conditions to bloc destabilization, bloc recomposition, policy recalibration, and macro regime transformation, showing how domestic conflicts and external constraints reshaped Chile’s growth trajectory, including the declining capacity of core business associations to veto redistributive reforms. JEL Classification : B50, E12, O54, P16