Why Is the Transition to Democracy Proving So Difficult in Chile?

the political and economic arrangements for the period of the transition: and even the normally monolithic unity of the Pinochet regime displays some signs of disagreement over the best way to institutionalize the 'achievements' ofthe dictatorship.2 The Chilean system of authoritarian government stands as a contrast in its continuing control over political life compared with the former military governments of Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Uruguay.3 There is little doubt that the Pinochet regime has been much more united than other military regimes, not least because of the higher degree of unity of the armed forces.4 It could also be argued that the Chilean military had, at least after 1975, a clearer and more coherent political and economic project; that the government enjoyed a continuing and significant level of support from crucial economic and social sectors; and that the multiple divisions of the opposition contributed to the permanence of the regime. The characteristics of the Pinochet regime derive in part from reaction to the period of Popular Unity government. That government was seen by supporters, and possibly even more by opponents, as actively pursuing a policy of revolutionary transformation. To reverse that policy, and to remove the political circumstances that made it possible, the military government felt impelled to implement a drastic restructuring of the political and economic order.The military enjoyed support for that restructuring not only from the dominant economic sectors, but also from large sectors of the middle and even working classes, who were not necessarily opposed to the structural transformations proposed by the Allende government, but who were opposed to the chaos, shortages and black market that developed after a year of UP government. The point, therefore, is that the military had support not just for a coup, but also for some kind of drastic transformation of the political order, even at the price of considerable hardship in the immediate post-coup period. These factors laid the basis for the consolidation of the authoritarian