Ben G. Burnett’s Political Groups in Chile is a descriptive, rather than analytical, study of Chilean political institutions, both formal and informal. An admirably concise introductory chapter acquaints the reader with basic demographic and economic problems of the country. Further chapters deal with the mass media and their influence, with the main interest groups—military, clergy, students, management and labor—and with the political parties, whose organization and programs are described in detail.
The picture that emerges is that of a democratic political system capable of promoting gradual, evolutionary social change. This, indeed, is the impression which the country made on openminded foreign observers in the early and middle nineteen-sixties, the period in which Professor Burnett carried out his field research. In a concluding chapter, he sketches the course of events in the second half of the decade, which, as he puts it, “raised serious questions about the Chilean political system . . . and its ability to convert groups’ aims into effective policy formation and greater group satisfaction.” The pace of change since Salvador Allende’s presidential inauguration in November 1970 has been such that in his account of the economic and political power structure and of the relations between the various interest groups the author already appears to be relating the history of a past epoch. But even if this should prove to be the case, Professor Burnett’s well-written, carefully researched book will still be of value. As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out, even a cataclysm on the scale of the French Revolution did not interrupt historical continuity to such an extent that knowledge of the pre-revolutionary past became irrelevant to an understanding of the post-revolutionary era.
