Populismo constituyente, democracia y promesas incumplidas: el caso de la Convención Constitucional Chilena (2021-2022)Constituent populism, democracy, and failed promises: The case of the Chilean Constitutional Convention (2021-2022)

Abstract

Abstract Mechanisms of popular participation, such as constitutional conventions and citizen assemblies, emerge as a near-universal canon of every political discussion on how constitutions should change. This article offers a cautionary approach to the way these participatory mechanisms work in constitution-making. In democratic contexts including populist narratives and representative institutions functioning in flawed ways, constitution-making can fail not simply despite the existence of participatory mechanisms but in part because of them. We identify two types of failures. First, the authoritarian failure, which consists of constitution-making processes that lead to authoritarian outcomes or become part of democratic backsliding or abusive processes. Second, the activation failure, by which constitutions are not passed. We claim that this later failure can likely occur when reforms attempt to bypass established, functioning institutional actors, whatever their flaws, and use a comparative approach to the Chilean Constitutional Convention (2021-2022) as an example.