The Political Legacy of Politician Trajectories During the Pinochet Regime

This chapter investigates the determinants of political survival across Chile’s military dictatorship (1973–1990) using individual-level biographical data on the universe of congressional politicians paired with archival data on their trajectories under the Pinochet regime—whether they were incorporated into the dictatorship, sent into exile abroad, subject to violent repression, or employed in the domestic private sector. Jane Esberg and Adriane Fresh find that former democratically elected elites on the ideological left were the least likely to return to congressional office after 1990, consistent with Chile’s authoritarian-preserving democratization protecting the electoral fortunes of more conservative candidates. Those conservative politicians incorporated into the regime as mayors, ministers, and ambassadors were the most likely to return to office. Despite the trauma associated with experiencing repression by the state, they show that neither politicians repressed nor those who experienced the regime in the domestic private sector returned to office. Instead, it was exiled politicians who reconstituted the pre-Pinochet political left after democratization. Their results suggest that politically relevant resources are capable of resilience in the face of specific forms of state repression.