Chile is finally moving ahead with a second shot at constitutional reform! It only took them 3½ months from the flaming wreckage of the first referendum to settle on a new process.1 The relevant Senate committee just moved out the proposal unanimously. If it gets a 4/7th vote in both houses it will become law. You can read it here.
TLDR: This time the elected constitutional convention will not have the authority to do whatever it wants to do. Rather, it will be hemmed in by checks and a commitment to keep the substance of the current constitution. It would be fair to call the new process semi-democratic: not quite undemocratic, but also not democratic, not the way that the previous process was democratic.2
Pretty much all the parties signed on to the proposal except the far-right People’s Party and the farther-right Republicans.3 Considering just how conservative the new process will be, I hope that you’ll see why I find the rightist opposition to be more than a little surprising.
Somewhat less surprising (for reasons I’ll discuss below) is the support from the Communists and the Democratic Revolution and the Green Social Regionalist Federation and all that. It’s all just so … reasonable. At the end of the day, it’s made me into an admirer of President Boric.

Here is a bit more detail.
The process
The process will start with the 24-person Committee of Experts, elected by Congress, half by the Senate and half by the lower house. The experts need at least ten years professional experience or a higher degree: they may be political appointees but the idea is to appoint people who have gravitas. They will also need a 57% supermajority of the respective house of Congress to be appointed. Their job will be to write the first draft of the new constitution.4
The draft then goes to the Constitutional Council, a 50-person body elected by popular vote (or by indigenous communities). Unlike the previous convention, however, voting will be obligatory (with fines approaching $200 for failing to turn out) and so the body should be more representative than the one elected in 2021 (i.e., conservative).
The Council’s new draft then goes back to the Committee, which can make changes. Here it gets complicated. If the Committee’s changes can muster a 3/5ths vote on the Council, then they will be accepted. If the Committee’s changes can’t even get 1/3rd of the Council to say yes, then they will be rejected. But if the Committee’s revisions fall between those thresholds (that is, more than 17 but less than 30 votes on the Council) then they will go to a Mixed Committee, consisting of six of the “Experts” and six people from the Council. If the changes can get eight or more votes on the mixed committee, then they’ll go into the new constitution.
Finally, there is the Technical Admissibility Committee (TAC), which will consist of 14 judges and law professors chosen by Congress. Their job is to make sure that the new constitution conforms to the 12 principles that the parties agreed should be in any new magna carta. Should the TAC veto something as contrary to the principles (or perhaps even insufficiently respectful of them), then that will be the end of that.
The Twelve Principles
So let’s turn to the 12 principles. They are remarkably small-c conservative! When combined with the aforementioned process, they insure that the new document will look a lot like the old document. The numbered entries are direct translations from the proposal; my comments follow each one in italics.
Chile is a democratic republic whose sovereignty resides in the people.
No change here. Article 5 currently begins as follows: “Sovereignty rests essentially with the Nation. It is exercised by the people through plebiscites and periodic elections.” And Article 5 comes on top of Article 4 which declares, “Chile is a democratic republic.”
The Chilean state is unitary and decentralized.
This restates Article 3 of the current Constitution.
State sovereignty is limited by human dignity and the human rights recognized in treaties currently ratified by the Chilean state. The Constitution will enshrine that terrorism in all its forms is a fundamental violation of human rights.
The first sentence restates the second paragraph of Article 5. The second sentence restates Article 9.
The Constitution recognizes that indigenous peoples are part of the Chilean nation, which is one and indivisible. The state respects and promotes their rights and cultures.
This is new.
Chile is a social democratic state under the rule of law, whose reason for being is to promote the general welfare, which recognizes fundamental rights and freedoms, and which promotes the progressive realization of social rights subject to the principle of fiscal responsibility and via both public and private institutions.
This ironically moves the new constitution in a conservative direction by stating that all the current social rights in the current constitution (such as the right to social security, which is in Article 18) will be subject to fiscal constraints.
Chile’s national symbols are the flag, the coat of arms, and the national anthem.
This is the current Article 2.
Chile has three separate and independent branches of government, which are: (1) the executive, with a chief of government with the sole authority to introduce spending proposals; (2) the judiciary, with unitary jurisdiction and whose final and enforceable sentences will enjoy full respect; (3) a bicameral legislature, composed of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, without prejudice as to its attributions or competences.
This is the structure laid down by the current constitution. If you’re thinking that the current constitution makes the President very powerful by giving him or her the sole right to introduce spending bills, which Congress can either reject or accept, well then you would be correct. Unlike the document that recently failed at the polls, the new magna carta won’t change that.
Chile’s constitution will establish the following autonomous bodies, among others: the central bank, the electoral courts, the Attorney General, and the Comptroller General of the Republic.
All in the current constitution.
Chile will protect and guarantee fundamental rights, such as the right to life, equality under the law, property rights in their diverse manifestations, liberty of conscience and religion, the primacy of children’s welfare, freedom of education and the responsibility of families to choose their children’s schooling, among others.
All in the current constitution.
Chile will constitutionally establish, subject to the civil authorities, the existence of the armed forces and police services, with specific mention of the Carabineros de Chile and the Criminal Investigations Police (PDI).
All in the current constitution.
The constitution will establish at least four states of emergency: foreign war, armed rebellion, domestic disturbance, and natural disaster.
All in the current constitution.5
Chile will constitutionally mandate the care and conservation of nature and its biodiversity.
This is new, although Article 8 currently grants the right to live in an unpolluted environment, Article 24 states that private property rights may be restricted to protect the environment, and Article 20 establishes the right to sue the government over a failure to protect against pollution. I can’t say what adding the words “conservation” and “biodiversity” will do.
In short, ten of the twelve principles enshrine stuff that’s already in the current constitution. I would bet good money that the Technical Admissibility Committee will interpret any substantial deviation from the current constitution as a violation. And Principle 5 if anything will move the new founding document in a conservative direction.
There may be new rights for indigenous peoples and for environmental protection, but it is hard to see the Committee of Experts allowing them to be particularly expansive.
In other words, Chile is going to wind up with a new text that looks a lot like the old text.
The Politics
So why this burst of reasonable semi-democratic small-c conservatism?
The Yellow Menace
Chile now has the Yellow Movement, which will become the Yellow Party once the next elections roll around. The party is aggressively moderate and has the left running scared.
In Chile, “Yellow” has been used to denounce people with amorphous and mushy political beliefs. In 1908, the term “yellow unions” was used to describe non-socialist unions aimed at getting benefits for their members but completely unconcerned with social or economic reforms, as opposed to genuine red unions. Later the term came to be associated with scabs. In the 1970s, the term came to be used by on the left to describe fake socialists who collaborated with the center or the dictatorship; on page 49 here is evidence that the Communist regularly employed it as a epithet against the Socialists.6
During the debate over the earlier constitutional proposal, a Chilean Spanish professor (in case you needed evidence that Chile is really not like the United States) Cristián Warnken started the Movement of Yellows in opposition to the draft. On September 23rd, it started the process of becoming a political party.
It’s not clear how much actual support the Yellows have, but the fact that a not-yet-official party signed the constitutional pact speaks volumes.
Hope Over Experience
The 12 principles leave a lot of space for constitutional change, at least in theory. The Senate (sadly) isn’t going anywhere. Nor is the president’s agenda-setting power. But there are other problems that could be fixed.
And there is space to try to introduce new social rights. A right to abortion is a non-starter, but others could be introduced, and conservatives might be willing to go along now that there is the “fiscal responsibility” firebreak. The failed constitutional draft was filled with references to “intersectionality” and “sexual dissidences” and other folderol—no reason that they couldn’t try again.
More substantively, the principle of conservation could enshrine a commitment to renewable energy. My fear is that it would also enshrine NIMBY the way that the National Environmental Policy Act has done in the United States, but that fear might also be a hope of some on the left.
Finally, the ruling coalition’s legitimacy is tied up with a new constitution. It’s simply better for them to get a new constitution, even if it looks just like the old constitution. President Boric said it best:
I prefer, as I’ve said before, an imperfect agreement over no agreement, because Chile needs a new constitution and a new social pact. Maybe it won’t be the epochal change that we would have liked, but that’s the chance we had and the chance we lost. Once an agreement has been reached it seems to me to be that there’s no space to try changing its essence. You don’t get into politics just to do stuff that you like.
“You don’t get into politics just to do stuff that you like.” If there was one quote that could make me really like President Boric, regardless of any and all ideological differences, it’s gotta be that one. The USA would be a better place if more of our leaders could just come out and say that.
Which brings me to the real mystery: why are the far-right parties so opposed? I mean, the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) was the goddamned house party of the dictatorship and even they have signed on. So what’s in it for the Republicans and the People’s Party?
No snark intended; that does seem pretty fast.
The previous process was also a disastrous mess. But that can be true of any political process, democratic or otherwise. Just look at the process that got you China’s policy on Covid or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Chile’s new far right parties are named after the conservative parties in the Kingdom of Spain and the United States, respectively. But neither do I understand why that is a politically attractive thing for a Chilean right-wing party to do.
In the spirit of the times, all the bodies in this process will be evenly split between men and women.
See Articles 39 to 45.
At least one person has told me that the term comes from the hard hats worn by construction workers, who were economically left but politically right, something which will amuse any American my age or older (see page 13 here). Sadly, however, that seems to be untrue.