CHILEAN POLITICS AND SOCIAL SECURITY POLICIES

The core of this dissertation is the analysis of the origins, evolution and transformation of social security policies in the cotext of Chilean politics.;The third period under study is the Frei regime (1964-1970) which represented a major attempt to restructure the social, economic and political organization of Chile along the lines of the Communication State proposed by the Christian Democrats. Attempts to reform the social security system were an integral part of this process of socio-economic and political reform.;Christian Democratic reforms even if unable to transform entirely the political organization ended with the exclusion of the rural sector and the marginals, generating crucial political processes that beared on the election of Salvador Allende in 1970.;The major breakdown on Chile's political history ocurred on September 11, 1973 which marks the beginning of the Authoritarian State in Chile. The Pinochet regime has transformed both the nature of the State and the society along the lines of a personalistic authoritarian regime and neo-liberal economics. Among the most important reforms enacted by the military government has been the reform of the social security system that, following neo-liberal precepts, has eliminated the employers' tax and privatized the administration of the system. This and the other "modernizations" have adapted Chilean society to the needs of the market economy.;The policy analysis as well as the political analysis covers four distinct periods: the birth of the modern political organization and the social security system in the mid-1920; the period between the 1930s and the mid-1960s, during which both the political and the social security system expanded within the limits set by the Populist State created in the 1920s. Crucial of this political arrangement was the inclusion of the organized urban sectors and the exclusion of the rural sector, and the democratic regime based on a multiparty system established by the 1924 Constitution.