Friday, March 5th 2-4pm
Kurtulus Gemici - Historical Efficacy of
Ideas, Ideological Work, and Economic Policy:
Chile, 1975-1994
Though existing scholarship analyzes how ideas affect policy-making, there is an absence of theoretical elaboration on why some ideas have more historical efficacy than others. This article advances a set of propositions on the dynamic links between ideas and policy by investigating the logic of ideological struggle in the field of economic policy. It introduces a theoretical framework that relates competition between different ideological carriers to the power struggles and relations of domination that enable access to authority in policy-making. This framework is used to compare and explain the efficacies of radical neoliberalism (promoted by the Chicago Boys) and pragmatic neoliberalism (advocated by the CIEPLAN Monks) in shaping two distinct regimes of openness to international capital inflows in Chile between 1975 and 1994. Using historical data, macroeconomic aggregates, and interviews with key Chilean policy-makers, the analysis shows how particular constellations of ideological, economic, and political power underlay the authority of the Chicago Boys and the CIEPLAN Monks, and how and why such power struggles produced different capital mobility regimes.