Politics of Chile

Chile's government is a representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Chile is both head of state and head of government, and of a formal multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the president and by their cabinet. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of the National Congress. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature of Chile. The Constitution of Chile was approved in a national plebiscite in September 1980, under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. It entered into force in March 1981. After Pinochet left power in 1990, saying this country was ready to keep going along with a plebiscite, the Constitution was amended to ease provisions for future amendments to the Constitution. In September 2006, President Ricardo Lagos signed into law several constitutional amendments passed by Congress. These include eliminating the positions of appointed senators and senators for life, granting the President authority to remove the commanders-in-chief of the armed forces, and reducing the presidential term from six to four years while also disabling immediate re-election. Statistical analysis suggests Chilean politicians in Congress "are not randomly drawn from the population, but over-represent high-income communities". As such Chileans of Castilian-Basque, Palestinian and Jewish ancestry are overrepresented in it. The autocratic and conservative republic (1831-1861) was replaced by the liberal republic (1861-1891), during which some political conquests were made, such as proportional representation (1871) and the abolition of the condition of ownership to have the right to vote (1885). When the era of the parliamentary republic began in 1891, the struggle between liberals (pipiolos) and conservatives (pelucones) had already evolved due to the emergence of a multi-party system.

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Related concepts (6)

Politics of Chile

Chamber of Deputies of Chile

The Chamber of Deputies (Cámara de Diputadas y Diputados) is the lower house of Chile's bicameral Congress. Its organisation and its powers and duties are defined in articles 42 to 59 of Chile's current constitution. Deputies must: be aged at least 21; not be disqualified from voting; have finished secondary school or its equivalent; and have lived in the corresponding electoral district for at least two years prior to the election. Since 2017, Chile's congress has been elected through open list proportional representation under the D'Hondt method.

Augusto Pinochet

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general and dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of the Republic by the junta in 1974 and becoming the de facto dictator of Chile, and from 1981 to 1990 as de jure president after a new constitution, which confirmed him in the office, was approved by a referendum in 1980. His rule remains the longest of any Chilean leader in history.