Abstract

NAVIA, Patricio. If You Can Fix It, Why Replace it? Democratizing the Pinochet Constitution in Chile. Polít. gob [online]. 2018, vol.25, n.2, pp.485-499. ISSN 1665-2037.

I respond to George Tsebelis’s article that explains how difficult it is to amend the Constitution of Chile given the high majority thresholds for constitutional reforms, the broad scope of issues covered by those high thresholds and the cumbersome process to modify the amendment section. I review the history of constitutional change in Chile to show that, even though constitutional reform is difficult to achieve, it has happened 43 times since democracy was restored. I discuss how the demand for constitutional replacement is based on the illegitimacy of origin of the 1980 Constitution, but argue that Chileans should take pride in having built a full­fledged democracy despite the constraints of a constitution design to create a protected democracy under military tutelage

Keywords : constitutional reforms; veto players; constitutional moments; Chile.

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