The Rise of Alternative Presidential Candidates in Chile, 2009-2017

This article explores the growing popularity of alternative presidential candidates — those from outside the two dominant coalitions — in Chile from 2009 to 2017. Following a theoretical discussion that focuses on the causes of voter discontent with the political establishment, we formulate four hypotheses. We view support for alternative presidential candidates as a function of ideological detachment, declining political engagement, the economic vote, and socio-demographic shifts in the electorate. We use three pre-electoral Centro de Estudios Públicos surveys to present probit models and predicted probabilities. Our findings suggest that a distinct segment of Chilean voters is behind the rise of alternative presidential candidates. Younger and more educated voters who identify less with the traditional left-right ideological scale and political parties and suffer from economic anxiety—viewing the economy as performing well nationally while remaining pessimistic about their financial prospects—comprise this subgroup.

Domestic Coalitions, Internationalization, and War: Then and Now

Recent commentary on the centenary of World War I evokes similarities between Germany then and China now, and between globalization then and now. The nature of dominant coalitions in both countries provides a conceptual anchor for understanding the links between internal and external politics in 1914 and 2014. Coalitional dynamics draw greater attention to agency in debates that all too often emphasize structure, impersonal forces, and inevitability. Two core claims rest on this basic analytical building block. First, despite apparent similarities in domestic coalitional arrangements of putative revisionist challengers—Germany and China—important differences defy facile analogies. China now is not Germany then. Second, the regional coalitional cluster and the global political economy—and hence the links between domestic and external politics—differ across the two periods. The “world-time” against which coalitions operate today is significantly different as well. Thus ahistorical analogies between then and now may not only be imperfect; they can infuse actors with misguided and perilous protocols for international behavior. There is plenty that may recall World War I today but even more that does not, and all must make sure that gap never narrows.

Coalitional Dynamics, Power Structure and Financial Markets in East Asia

The main argument to be developed in this article posits that fundamental changes and variations in the financial market structure of East Asian economies have been predicated on the emergence and configuration of the dominant coalitions. The coalitions have been forged by private market agents, economic policymakers and political elites who have developed particular interests in financial market changes as a response to economic and political imperatives both at home and abroad. In East Asia, the dominant coalitions that have borne crucially on regulatory rules and market practices have differed in the policy preferences of key actors in the coalitions and the power structures of these coalitions. It is these differences that have exerted divergent shaping influences on financial market development.

Introduction to Sociocybernetics (Part 2): Power, Culture and Institutions

The purpose of this article is to understand, from the perspective of third order cybernetics, three important and well regarded subjects in sociology and political science: Power, Culture and Institutions. Regarding the study of power, four questions will be asked: What is it? What is its exercise? Who exercises it? And how it is exercised? To answer the first, a typology of power will be produced, the second question is answered by means of the distinction between the capacity of doing something and the intentionality that puts it in action, while the third and fourth questions will be answered by means of dominant coalition theory and the viable system models. The model then will consists of the interactions of dominant coalitions within a viable system, which bargain and struggle over the means to use power and which have different forms, like coercion, preferences and cultural setting of power among others. Culture will be understood as a cosmovision, that is, the way in which a grouping of individuals conceive their environment and themselves in relation to one another, but also the communications that take place in ascertaining the content of such conceptions; that is, culture is at the same time a repository of information and the process in which this information is created or altered. Institutions are the interplay between Culture, Society and Power, they are the roles that different actors and coaltions have in their search for altering shared meanings and acceding collective resources, they are also the rules and values that inform such process and they are the shared meanings that revolve around power.