Constellating ideas and beliefs in Pinochet’s Constitution Or how knowledge was put together in Chile’s antidemocratic constitution-making process

Abstract

This thesis addresses the problem of how ideas and beliefs, or knowledge, are selected, articulated, and put together in constitution-making contexts. It does this by analysing the organising principles of the knowledge elaborated to make Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution. This constitution, still in effect, built a ‘protected’ democracy through its authoritarian and anti-democratic laws and institutions.

The research draws on Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to enact a qualitative case study of the Proceedings of the Ortúzar Commission (1973–1978). Over 417 sessions, the commissioners invoked a variegated array of ideas and beliefs to discuss their constitution, from law to political and moral notions, religious doctrine, literary references, common sense opinions, and more. LCT’s Constellations was used to show how these variegated concepts were grouped together. Then, the organising principles of these concepts were analysed using LCT’s Specialization to reveal their underlying legitimation bases.

The thesis analysed the organising principles of the Commission’s justifications for writing of a new Constitution, of the Commission’s main sources and inspirations that structured their knowledge-building, and of how they put together all these variegated ideas and beliefs to construct their Constitution. These findings are a step toward a deeper understanding of the socio-political aspects of knowledge used to make constitutions. The thesis concludes that the authoritarian aspects of the 1980 Constitution cannot be reduced to its explicitly anti-democratic laws and political institutions. Rather, its anti-democratic and anti-political character underpins the entire constitution-making effort of this Constitution. In sum, the thesis explores and evidences the socio-political aspects of constitution-making processes.