Benjamín Concha González (UCL) - 2023-24 Students
benjamin.concha.23@ucl.ac.uk

The Reconstruction of a Polis: An Intellectual History of the Concept of Democracy in Chile (1990-2022).

My doctoral thesis will study the reconstruction and later development of Chilean democracy after General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship through the historical analysis of the concept of democracy as it was used and understood by political elites. In this sense, this research examines the democratic imaginaries of political elites between 1990-2022. Therefore, I will use an intellectual history approach to identify the conceptions of democracy held by this period’s major political parties/coalitions.

By analysing this case study, I seek to contribute to a historically informed understanding and discussion of a crucial period of Chilean political contemporary history, which became a paradigmatic example of democratization processes in Latin America during the early nineties. Consequently, I aim to provide new insights into democratization debates insofar as establishing democracy in post-authoritarian contexts will be understood as both an institutional and an intellectual task of reconstructing legitimate collective meanings for a political community.

To study the different conceptions of democracy of this period, I will use multiple sources such as party documents, newspapers, political magazines, party conferences, presidential and parliamentary debates, political propaganda, and interviews with key political figures. As a work methodologically grounded on intellectual history, political discussions will be studied using a context-dependent approach. In so doing, ideas are analyzed as a complex interplay between language and reality, considering concepts’ semantic and pragmatic usage. In this case, special attention will be given to how individuals use language to resignify concepts, support contentious normative claims, create inclusionary/exclusionary boundaries, develop communities, specify meanings of bounding political decisions, and inform public policy.

Primary Supervisor: Dr Nicola Miller

Secondary Supervisor: Dr Thomas Rath