Friends in High Places: Congressional Influence on the Bureaucracy in Chile

Latin American Politics and Society, Summer 2008 by Ferraro, Agustín

Siavelis makes an important point by regarding informal mechanisms of congressional influence as a recent phenomenon in Chile, a response of the elites to the difficult circumstances of the democratic transition (Siavelis 2002, 110, 2006, 55). Such informal practices are therefore potentially unstable, and, according to Siavelis, they could disappear as the dangers of the transition recede. Of course, an end to the spirit of interbranch cooperation would not mean a loss of political power for Congress. As noted earlier, for Siavelis the most probable result of an open conflict between the president and Congress would be that the latter begins to act systematically as a veto player, the president becoming thus very weak or moribund (1997, 335). Siavelis concludes that the consolidation of Chile's democracy depends on the institutionalization of informal rules of interbranch cooperation (2002, 110).

Then again, it can be shown that informal practices of congressional influence over the public bureaucracy are quite traditional in Chilean politics. They were certainly useful for dealing with the dangers of the transition. Yet it is clear that they were in force long before the last military dictatorship, as confirmed by several sources in the literature of that time. They seem to represent traditional unwritten rules of Chilean democracy and not merely, as described by Siavelis, transitory arrangements of the posttransition period.

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

This section is based on interviews conducted in Chile in 2005 and 2006 with 29 key informants. The use of the key informant technique (Tremblay 1957) is well established in organizational and public administration research (Kumar et al. 1993; Huber and van de Ven 1995; McNabb 2002, 85; Yeager 2006). This section describes informal mechanisms of congressional influence as perceived and reported by members of the public bureaucracy. In this context, the employment of classic research methods in public administration appears justified.

More than that, however, a crucial factor made it necessary to employ the key informant technique for this study. Some of the most effective influence mechanisms used by Chilean legislators are very much informal and not the subject of casual conversation. In some cases, informal practices violate statutory law and even constitutional law. Interviewees cannot be expected to describe their own actions, or actions undertaken by friends, that are technically illegal, unless a relationship of trust has been previously established and confidentiality is assured.6 This kind of information simply cannot be obtained through structured interviews and random sampling methods.

For this research, informants were selected and contacted through "snowballing," a common device in the key informant technique, where contacts and recommendations are asked from the interviewees themselves (Yeager 2006, 913). The first informants chosen were local experts on public administration, or members of the public administration with whom a relationship of trust could be first established in the context of academic activities.7 Those informants were asked to refer the interviewer to public officials with established political or management reputations, long experience of bureaucratic service, former or current positions of influence, or similar qualifications. The resulting sample of 29 informants included 5 local experts on public administration, 6 career civil servants, and 18 political appointees. Among the public officials interviewed were 5 former ministers, 2 directors of administrative divisions, 1 director of an administrative subdivision, and 1 director and 1 deputy director of government agencies, along with advisers, program directors, and middle-level officials.8