State Prerogative: Political Uses of Knowledge and “Scientific” Government by the Technopols in Chile (1990–1994)

Between 1990 and 2010, Chile was governed, uninterrupted, by the center-left coalition known as the Concertación. Part of the explanation for this long hegemony lay in a small group of powerful agents who, as cabinet ministers and undersecretaries, provided government action with leadership and consistency. This small group consisted of technopols, a category of individuals who bring together two types of capital: on the one hand, the symbolic or “tech” capital that allowed them to draw on the main currents of thought in economics, political science, and sociology and, on the other, political or “pol” capital in the form of positions of party leadership held before their first government appointment. These two types of capital explain the leading role of 20 agents, which is examined through the systematic analysis of 113 private briefs prepared for the guidance of the president of Chile during the early years of the transition to democracy.