Governing interdependence: Chile’s selective hedging in a fragmented geoeconomic order

This article examines whether Chile’s external behaviour can be understood as selective hedging under conditions of great-power rivalry and geoeconomic fragmentation. It argues that the country represents a constrained Latin American form of swing-state behaviour, expressed less through military balancing than through regulatory discretion, economic diversification, and sectoral engagement in domains where interdependence has become politically consequential. Drawing on an interpretive qualitative case-study design that combines documentary analysis, issue-specific secondary literature, and semi-structured interviews, the article traces this pattern across three strategic domains: critical minerals, green-transition infrastructure, and digital connectivity. The findings show that the state engages multiple partners while managing dependence, avoiding rigid alignment, and preserving room for future policy choice. Yet this strategy remains uneven, constrained by weak regional coordination, domestic institutional fragmentation, and asymmetrical insertion into global value chains. The article contributes to debates on hedging and swing states by identifying a Latin American modality of hedging: geoeconomic rather than military, sectorally concentrated rather than comprehensive, and constrained without forfeiting strategic agency.