This paper analyzes the institutional position of local and regional governments in Chile and its institutional design, based on the comparison with the Spanish case. Chile’s decentralization process is analyzed in the light of comparative experience and an from a legal and political science approach, to understand this process as widely as possible. The weight of history and tradition is emphasized to understand current institutional designs, with a special mention to the two dictatorships and later transitions, that shape the institutional present in both countries. The work takes as a paradigmatic example the educational policy and its municipalization during Pinochets’ dictatorship. This example demonstrates how the implementation of such an hybrid institutional design, between a decentralized and a centralized structure, generates serious dysfunctions designs. Thus, the debate is reviewed regarding the need to reorganize the Chilean state from two of the main proposals for new constitution that have arisen and the way they conceive the place of local governments and the decentralization process of the whole system.
Keywords:
Local governments, Institutional design, Decentralization, Constitutional design of local government, municipalization of education policies
Medir, L. (2015). The decentralization of the chilean State : a comparison with France and Spain illustrated from education policy. Revista De Derecho Público, (82), Pág. 79–110. https://doi.org/10.5354/rdpu.v0i82.37284
