2024-08-24 05:18:00
Although the vast majority of citizens want profound changes, the report from the international organization reflects the turbulent times that Chilean society is going through, which has caused reforms to stagnate due to individualism and distrust in political leaders.
After almost a decade, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Chile delivered a new report on human development, which was titled: Why is it so hard for us to change? whose report addresses the difficulties that Chilean society has faced in carrying out social changes.
At the same time, it reveals the aspirations and discontent of citizens after living through three complex processes: the social outbreak of October 2019 and the failure of two constituent processes.
Although almost five years have passed since the popular uprising, social demands are still pending. In this context, the UNDP report warns about the stagnation of reforms, where various key points are highlighted to understand the difficulties of the process, what citizens want and the socio-political challenges for the coming years.
Key points of the UNDP report on social reforms in Chile
Gradualness in changes
Within the figures presented in the report, it is evident that the majority of people want profound but gradual changes (57%). Likewise, 83% of the people who were in favor of the demands of the social outbreak, continue to be so today.
The UNDP report “not only confirms the high levels of citizen distrust, the high levels of disinterest and disaffection in political issues, but also the relationship between this and the speed of change,” he began by saying. THE DYNAMOMario Herrera, academic at the Center for Political Analysis at the University of Talca.
The demands of the social uprising remain and in fact in all the surveys they always appear as one of the main problems of the country associated with health, with foresight and with crime, but what changes is that citizens no longer want the changes to be in the short term, but rather they want them to be progressive over time,” he added.
In this sense, “Gradual strategies are preferable to accelerated changes because they are less traumatic, because the costs can be mitigated to a certain extent. This is how a large number of changes are promoted in a short period of time. That is why people often prioritize certain changes, they do not propose a set of changes but rather They tend to prioritize or to posit that there are certain priorities. And on the other hand, that these changes must be formulated and carried out gradually, because that facilitates greater adaptation by citizens“, he explained to THE DYNAMO Octavio Avendaño, director of the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Chile.
Dysfunctional relationship between elites and citizens
Another of the points that stand out the most in the report regarding the reasons that make it difficult to lead changes in the country has to do with the dysfunctional relationship between elites and citizens, which points to a disconnection between the parties and is manifested in aspects such as distrust, lack of agreements, ineffective leadership, among others.
The UNDP report makes it clear that people attribute the stagnation and deterioration what
perceive the political leaders and big business.
The above is due to the fact that the testimonies collected for the report consider that these actors have consistently failed to fulfill important promises of change made in the past, linked to access to rights and social protection. In fact, for the citizens they are “villains” of change and they are accused of prioritizing their electoral and economic interests to the detriment of the well-being of the population.
The fact that the report on human development in Chile warns that a very significant percentage is still in favor of the demands of the social outbreak, means that after almost five years, the country is still facing the same problems with fairly isolated or scarce solutions, with more promises than solutions Regarding what was behind these citizen demands, says Dante Castillo, sociologist and academic at USACH.
“This shows that conditions have not changed, and that may also be due to a certain lack of trust. We do not have the conditions that allow us to resolve demands that are easy to express but difficult to implement, because these solutions imply radical changes in the functioning and ideology of the society we have today,” added Castillo.
To which he added: “That is why this report also warns of the distrust that a significant percentage of the population claims to have regarding political leaders. This perception does indeed have a concrete support, that is, the inability to meet those demands of everyday life that were expressed in the social outbreak and that have to do with a a dignified retirement, with fair salaries, with a health systemetc.”.
Taking the above into account, social cohesion is effectively being lost, “which is why they are becoming more distrustful, and therefore, social changes may be expressed by more individual manifestations. Deep down, too This frustration generates more individualism, more distrust in others representing my interests, Because in general there is a lack of trust in the elite,” Castillo said.
In addition to this, Octavio Avendaño emphasized the polarization that has been extended in recent yearswhich was demonstrated in the two failed attempts to change the Constitution.
“A fragmented, weakened political system, or a party system and representation spheres that are completely fragmented and atomized, prevent citizens from adequately channeling their demands,” explained the academic from the University of Chile.
A willingness to assume costs that is not in line with the desire for change
On the other hand, Chilean society shows a low willingness to assume the costs of the desired changes.
“One of the factors that influence (the changes) is being willing to assume the costs. People are in favour of change, but they are not necessarily willing to pay the costs involved.” said Avendaño.
An example of this is that half of the population indicates that they are willing to allocate part of their pension contributions to a solidarity component to improve the pensions of the most vulnerable people, and Just over a third are willing to pay more taxes if it reduces income inequalityAlong these lines, the UNDP report shows that aspirations for change are weakly related to the willingness to assume costs in favor of transformations.
Challenges for the elite and the political system in the future
According to what was stated by the political analyst of the University of Talca, Mario Herrera, as a result of the social outbreak and the two constituent processes, the citizens saw in some way the “possibility of rapid change to either extreme.”
“In the long term, this generated a kind of resistance to change, although I would rather talk about resistance to change, because Chileans want change, than about the speed with which these types of changes have to be promoted,” he said.
In this sense, the academic said that “in terms of governance it poses a challenge, because Chile has mandates that are short, Chile has presidential terms that are four years without re-election, which means that there is a citizen pressure to generate these changes in the short term to be able to render accounts in the face of the next presidential election, and at the same time this has to be combined with the speed of the changes that are often not seen in such a short time horizon.”
Taking into account the above, Herrera said that this situation “affects governance in the sense that for slow changes to occur, “Longer terms or the possibility of immediate re-election are required.”
The expert also addressed the concept of a “crisis of representation” and argued that it is “rather a discontent with the functioning of democracy.”
In this context, he explained that with the 2017 reforms, progress was made in having more representation in the House and that it is now a much closer reflection of what the different political forces mean than what they were in the past with the binomial.
“However, these changes in terms of representation and the maintenance of democratic legitimacy have not been transformed into a change in the demands of the citizens. Citizens continue to be disaffected and continue to prioritize the same three issues that appear systematically in almost all surveys from 1990 onwards. In this way, the problem is not so much one of representation, but rather the capacity of the political class to respond to the problems of the citizens,” concluded Mario Herrera.