The Sources of Infrastructural Power: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Chilean Education

Abstract

The striking development of Chilean public primary education during the nineteenth century has often been noted. Existing explanations emphasize industrialization and social change in shaping societal demand for schooling, and elite consensus, the role of individual leaders, and low levels of inequality and social heterogeneity in shaping the state's educational provision. This article complements existing state-centered arguments by showing that the institutions of local and regional administration were also crucial in transforming policy changes into real progress in primary education. As Chilean schooling spread and became systematized over the course of the nineteenth century, local state officials not only effectively carried out the state's educational policies but also refined it independently and even pushed for the deepening of educational development, and particularly the systematic control of schooling.