The ‘Withdrawn Citizen’: Making Sense of the Failed Constitutional Process in Chile

Chile's recent constitutional process (2019–2023) is a case in point of a democratic, bottom-up collective effort of constitution-making. It was also an opportunity to bring to closure Chile's long transition to democracy, in which the Constitution – written during the military dictatorship of General Pinochet – had remained in place. As a response to large-scale social unrest, the process was set in motion after a referendum in favour of constitutional change. However, the draft of the new constitution ended up being rejected by more than 60 percent of Chileans. While this puzzle has hitherto been explained by factors relating to the constitution-making process itself, this article emphasises a different variable: Chilean voters. By process-tracing different pieces of quantitative evidence, the article provides an answer that focuses on the characteristics of the ‘withdrawn citizen’, a type of citizen who is disengaged from formal and informal politics. This citizen did not vote in the first referendum and only voted in the second because compulsory voting was introduced. Our explanation sheds light on the structural factors that impacted the constitution-making process, relating to a type of citizen arguably produced by Chile's four decades of neoliberalism and by the very same Constitution that the process aimed to replace.