The politics of policy implementation and reform: Chile's environmental impact assessment system

Abstract

This paper examines the policy impacts of social movement organizations in conflicts over mega-project development, focusing on the linkages between the politics of policy implementation and subsequent reform efforts. I argue for the utility of a comparative political economy approach to disentangle the relationship of structural context to movement specific factors, such as movement organization, strategies, and tactics, to explain the policy impacts of movements. This helps to specify systemic, medium and short-term conditions more rigorously, and, more importantly, how they affect the balance of power between movements and opposing socio-economic and political forces. I test these propositions in the case of the politics of policy implementation and how they affected efforts to reform the Chilean Environmental Impact Assessment System (SEIA) from 1994-present. Within shifting structural conditions, movement organization, strategies, and tactics had discernable impacts on outcomes: positive outcomes mediated by political allies under favorable conditions, and indirect impacts under unfavorable conditions when allied politicians killed a bill hostile to their interests in committee.