Michelle Bachelet's 2006 election as Chile's president was a watershed moment in Latin American politics. She was the first woman president in Latin America who did not owe her rise to power to family connections. She is a feminist who came to power as the Socialist head of Chile's centre–left coalition, with a broad mandate for social, economic, and institutional change. She campaigned, and attempted to govern, on a promise to democratise Chilean politics, by undermining the historic elitism of Chilean politics, bringing in ‘new faces’, especially of women, and pursuing policies that promoted gender equity. This deeply-researched and wide-ranging volume examines Bachelet's two administrations (2006–10; 2014–present) and the extent to which she has succeeded in these goals. Through a thorough examination of Bachelet's attempts at institutional reform and policymaking, the authors conclude that Bachelet has succeeded in important ways but has ultimately (to date) fallen short of her ambitious agenda. The volume illuminates the intransigence of Chile's formal and informal political institutions, the difficulties in opening the political system to broader citizen participation, and the often contradictory pressures of being a female (and feminist) head of state.
This volume will be of interest to Latin Americanists, as well as to scholars of gender and politics and democratisation. This work offers the opportunity to examine a ‘self-made’ female executive. To what extent can female executives – particularly feminists like Bachelet – transform the structure and process of politics, and to what extent can they help reorient policymaking toward gender-friendly (to use the book's term) or gender equity policies? The case of Bachelet also represents an opportunity to examine how authoritarian enclaves, of which Chile had many, are (or are not) dismantled in consolidating democracies. How open is the state to new actors? Can marginalised groups be brought in? Can they participate in policymaking in meaningful ways? At their root, these questions point to a deeper issue: how intransigent are the formal and informal norms and institutions that structure democratic politics?
This is a tall order for any book to answer definitively, and both the strength and limitations of this volume lie in its reliance on a single case study. The detailed focus on Bachelet's time in office, across two administrations and multiple policy areas, allows for a deep analysis of her strategies and challenges, as well as of the ways that her policy agenda and efforts to open the political system to greater participation were met with opposition within and outside her coalition. This work is valuable reading for the clarity it provides in a critical case study. It will also serve as an excellent comparison for scholars researching other cases. What this study is not able to answer, but which further research on other cases can ideally illuminate, is the question of the extent to which the Bachelet case is generalizable – to other Latin American cases, to other female heads of state, and/or to other consolidating democracies.
The first part of the volume, particularly the chapters by Georgina Waylen, Peter Siavelis, Susan Franceschet and Gwynn Thomas, examines the institutional constraints in post-transition Chile and the inflexibility of Chile's formal and informal norms and institutions. These chapters are helpful in placing in context the competing pressures Bachelet faced, particularly as she entered her second term: these were pressures due to voter discontent, to demands for economic and social reforms and to Bachelet's need to hold together a far-ranging coalition, from centrist Christian Democrats to Communists and student leaders. As detailed in the chapters by Siavelis and Franceschet, for example, in staffing her cabinet Bachelet was forced to make three promises that were impossible to fulfil at once: to comply with the cuoteo (the need to proportionately appoint members of each coalition party to cabinet posts), to bring in ‘new faces’ (no one who had previously served as minister), and to create a gender parity cabinet. This left Bachelet with a small pool of candidates, and she faced problems early on with lack of expertise within the executive branch. Bachelet's desire to undermine the cronyism and elitism of previous administrations also meant she was forced to rely less than her predecessors on trusted advisors. Perhaps as a result, in her second administration, Bachelet placed less emphasis on gender parity in her cabinet posts.
In the second half of the volume, chapters by Silke Staab, Jasmine Gideon and Gabriela Alvarez Minte, and Carmen Sepúlveda-Zelaya look at Bachelet's attempted policy reform efforts in a number of different areas, some specific to women's rights (reproductive rights, childcare) and some with broader mandates but clear implications for gender equality (pensions, health care reform). Staab's chapter on the 2008 pension reform and the expansion of childcare in Bachelet's first administration, and Gideon and Alvarez's chapter on health sector reform, conclude that policy legacies and existing political institutions hampered Bachelet's ability to translate her mandate for reform into actual policies. Gideon and Alvarez also detail the unravelling of Bachelet's reforms under the subsequent conservative administration of Sebastián Piñera, highlighting the problem of sustainability of gender-friendly reforms.
Sepúlveda-Zelaya's chapter on reproductive rights is the volume's most optimistic and highlights the possibilities for progress even in the challenging political context outlined throughout the book. Bachelet's successful effort to legalise emergency contraception, and her attempts in her second administration to reverse Chile's ban on therapeutic abortion (the first time this was attempted at executive level), demonstrate the ways Bachelet used formal and informal political strategies, including a full range of executive powers, to successfully battle the Constitutional Tribunal for the right to make policy in this area.
The Bachelet case prompts us to ask, to what extent were the various goals and commitments of the Bachelet presidency inherently in conflict? If some were, such as a commitment to more women at the expense of expertise, or a commitment to bringing in new people at the expense of loyalty to party leaders, is this a universal problem? A problem with newer democracies that have historically low election/appointment rates for women? For more conservative societies? This volume explores a number of important themes that have broad applicability: the challenges faced by female executives, the impact of gender quotas, the difficulty in dismantling authoritarian enclaves in consolidating democracies, the tension between participation and expertise, and that between insiders and outsiders. Scholars of comparative politics, gender and politics, and democratisation will find ample data here to begin trying to answer these questions.
