Chapter 3 presents a comparative analysis of the healthcare reforms in Chile, Mexico, and Peru during the 2000s. It focuses on whether political parties or technocrats shaped the legislative and implementation process. The core argument is that reforms closely aligned with political parties’ core values (programmatic commitment) resulted in higher-quality policy, better funding, and more effective, sustainable access to healthcare. Chile’s AUGE (Acceso Universal con Garantías Explícitas; Universal Access with Explicit Guarantees) reform exemplifies a programmatic path: parties were directly engaged in agenda-setting, debate, and implementation, leading to policy endurance and real improvements in coverage, funding, and infrastructure. In contrast, Mexico’s Seguro Popular (Popular Insurance) and Peru’s AUS (Aseguramiento Universal en Salud; Universal Health Insurance) followed a technocratic path, with disengaged parties and reforms dominated by technocrats. These reforms achieved expanded formal coverage but suffered from unstable funding, inadequate infrastructure, and an inability to deliver on the promise of effective access. The study finds that other factors – such as economic growth, state capacity, clientelism, or federalism – do not, by themselves, explain the variation in reform quality. Only genuine party commitment to the reform’s core values ensured its success and longevity. The chapter underscores the importance of aligning party values with social policy to achieve meaningful, lasting reform outcomes in Latin America.

I begin Chapter 9 by situating the lessons from the Irish case study within a broader theoretical context. Although there are particularities to all case studies, theoretical frameworks can be developed from in-depth investigations in specific contexts. In this chapter, I explore the relevance of the moral psychology of fairness and feelings of relative deprivation across several other case studies: in the United States, Sudan, Chile, France, and during the Arab Spring in North Africa and parts of the Middle East. Economic inequalities across multiple global regions are a key explanation for civic unrest, feelings of unfairness, and attempts at radical social change. The rise of populism and authoritarian leaders is the subject of the following chapter.

Chapter 5 provides an in-depth analysis of the far right in Chile, focusing on José Antonio Kast and the Republican Party (PR). It begins by elucidating the ideological bedrock of authoritarianism, nativism, and neoliberalism that fuels the ascent of the far right. Central to this exploration is how these ideologies manifest in the politicization of punitive justice, traditional gender roles, and restrictive immigration policies – all within a framework marked by a staunch anti-communist stance. The chapter then seamlessly connects these political strategies to the tactics of otherization targeting indigenous communities, immigrants, and leftist elites. By doing so, it places these exclusionary practices within the broader context of identity politics, providing a comprehensive understanding of how these dynamics interact and reinforce each other in shaping the far right’s impact on Chile’s political landscape.

This chapter examines the relationship between human rights and Chile’s 1990-1991 National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, and the way this relationship continues to shape state-society relations in the aftermath of Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990). The argument is two-fold. First, the Truth Commission draws on the language of human rights to authorize its account as the ‘major’ truth. Second, in doing so, the Truth Commission displaces from public life ‘minor’ truths, specifically the experiences of state-violence by Indigenous communities (Mapuche people) and women (Arpilleristas). The argument is based on an analysis of the representation of truth and authority embodied in Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights. The chapter shows how the Museum gives continuity to the work of the Truth Commission by giving it a material (spatial and experiential) form. While the Truth Commission and the Museum remain two distinct institutions, in visiting the Museo/Truth Commission it becomes apparent how human rights authorizes the Truth Commission’s account, and how the Museo gives it continuity in public life.

This chapter explores the role football played in Cold War South America in the 1970s, including World Cup winners Brazil and Argentina. It focuses on one of the most bizarre one-sided football matches of all time: between Chile and the Soviet Union in Santiago’s Estadio Nacional on 21 November 1973. The Soviets refused to turn up for the match, arguing that Chile’s new leader, General Augusto Pinochet, had recently used the Estadio Nacional to execute left-wing opponents. The game went ahead anyway, lasting all of seventeen seconds. Chile ‘won’ 2–0 and thereby, unlike the Soviet Union, qualified for the 1974 World Cup finals. The chapter shows how the ‘game of shame’ took place at a time when Chile, due to the recent death of Marxist president Salvador Allende, was briefly at the centre of the Cold War. It explores FIFA’s investigation into goings-on at the Estadio Nacional and the international row the match generated. The peculiar Chile–Soviet Union match shows how football could be used as a powerful tool of political protest during the Cold War. It also reveals how political grandstanding could sometimes hide something more mundane – the fear of losing on the pitch.

Chapter 8 examines political systems with the highest values of T, or time since the last successful coup. It explains how and why dictatorships as different as the PRIs in Mexico (1929–2000) and the Somoza family’s in Nicaragua (1936–79) effected an autocratic exit out of the coup trap. And it analyzes how the republics of Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay escaped from golpismo by constructing constitutional democracy. Successful transitions away from the Coup Trap, I find, occur if they survive what I call “trial by fire” – assaults on their authority – that allow them to purge the armed forces of sedition. Escapes from the Coup Trap are also a function of convincing the political opposition to desist from joining coup coalitions, which dictatorships and democracies accomplish in slightly different ways.

In 1902, shortly after Pastor Willis Hoover took charge of the Valparaíso Methodist Church, an intense revival began that eventually gave rise to the Chilean Pentecostal movement. The Valparaíso revival reached its climax in 1909, but in August of that year, the sudden charismatic leadership of “Sister Elena” (Nelly Laidlaw) attracted the attention of the pastors of the First and Second Methodist churches in Santiago (Rice and Robinson). On September 12, when Elena visited both churches, the pastors refused her request to address the congregations, becoming a pivotal moment in the history of the movement. According to local accounts, Chilean Pentecostalism was born that day. Juan Kessler (1967) offers the most rigorous and influential academic reconstruction of the events of that day, although he provides a very negative evaluation of Sister Elena as well as the reasons for the Pentecostal schism. However, Kessler did not consider the story or the reflections put forth by Enrique Jara in the newspaper Chile Evanjelico (Concepción, November 19, 1909), published under the title “Echoes of awakening in Santiago.” This chapter will introduce and revisit Jara’s account of the events of that fateful day.

José Victorino Lastarria (1817–1888) was a Chilean writer and politician closely aligned with the opposition to the three consecutive governments of Joaquín Prieto (1831–1841), Manuel Bulnes (1841–1851), and Manuel Montt (1851–1861). A liberal, he later turned into a Comtean positivist. As a politician, he served in the Congress and later in government as diplomat and cabinet member. A prolific writer, he was the author of Recuerdos literarios (1878), one of the best, if biased, accounts of Chilean intellectual life in the nineteenth century. He was also the author of La América (1865), Lecciones de política positiva (1874), and numerous contributions to the press. The fragment included here is the introduction to his work on the legacies of the colonial past, which he presented at the first anniversary of the inauguration of the University of Chile (1844). He promoted a view of history that saw in the past the guidance for shaping the present and future, meaning specifically the demolition of colonial institutions and ideas. This presentation became a part of a significant debate on the writing of history in the 1840s.

Francisco Bilbao (1823–1865) was a Chilean writer and political activist educated at the Instituto Nacional. He rose to notoriety when he published an essay, the “Sociabilidad chilena” (1844), condemning the role of both the Catholic Church and the legacies of colonialism in Chile. He was brought to trial for violating the laws regulating press freedoms. As a result, he left Chile for Europe, where he established contact with Edgar Quinet and Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais and witnessed the European revolutions of 1848. Returning to Chile, he founded the Society of Equality in 1850 and participated in the uprising of April 1851, which led to his exile in Peru, Europe, and Argentina, where he died. His principal works, in addition to “Sociabilidad,” are La América en peligro (1862), and El evangelio americano (1864). The essay included here is representative of his views regarding the radical contradiction between Catholicism and republicanism, which was in turn an expression of his views on the struggle between despotism and freedom.

Valentín Letelier (1852–1929) was a Chilean educator, philosopher, and jurist who, after an assignment in Prussia in the early 1880s, contributed to the reform of the Chilean educational system, particularly through the creation of the teacher-training institute, the Instituto Pedagógico attached to the University of Chile. A committed positivist and leader of the Radical Party, Letelier was a chaired professor of law who became rector of the University of Chile for two periods beginning in 1906. His principal works include Filosofía de la educación (1892), La evolución de la historia (1900), Génesis del Estado (1917), and Génesis del derecho (1919). As a member of Congress, he joined the opposition to the government of José Manuel Balmaceda, signing the articles of impeachment that led to his arrest and exile in 1891, the year of the Civil War that ended with the victory of the congressional forces. The current selection provides Letelier’s rationale for the opposition to Balmaceda and advances a passionate defense of the role of organized political parties in a democracy, the rule of law, and the meritocratic selection of public officials.