This study of bureaucratic politics during the Frei administration views history neither from above nor below, but from within. The author is a well-trained political scientist and an astute investigator. He describes in detail the goals, conflicts and strategies of government agencies concerned with the budget, construction and agrarian reform. The extensive data, drawn from interviews and published materials, make this book a major source for the 1964-1970 period.
The author states from the outset that his primary goal is to identify propositions which would contribute to the field of comparative administration. His vantage point is overwhelmingly that of the bureaucratic unit, its immediate “task environment,” and its day-to-day operations (p. 21). This essentially ahistorical approach, however, contains two weaknesses which limit and sometimes distort the analysis.
First, the book lacks a coherent overall analysis of the power relations among the groups and classes making up Chilean society. This is necessary precisely because the author concludes that government agencies were influential roughly in proportion to their outside political support and to whether or not they were located in “high-priority sectors” (p. 11). We must go beyond these factors, however, to explain why some groups (such as the business peak association of the construction industry) could forge profitable alliances within the bureaucracy from one administration to the next while other groups (such as the urban poor) could not.
Second, the book maintains that ideology explains little or nothing about bureaucratic politics. The author argues throughout that the Frei regime’s declining legitimacy merely reflected a normal exhaustion over the six-year term. Yet ideology determined in large part which agencies and goals received high priority and whose interests were served and injured as a result. Frei’s attempt to promote dependent capitalist modernization, for example, did contribute to eroding his popular support. In 1967, the President and his advisors decided that the cost of reviving the capitalist economy and forging new links to foreign companies should be borne by the working class. This provoked the conflict over the budget described in chapter two. Also, in 1966, the government cut funds for housing and instituted a program designed to encourage good savings habits among the urban homeless.
