Business-labour-state relations in new Chilean democracy

While Chile's economic elite is more powerful today than probably at any ti me during the past 60 years, including under military rule, the return to c ivilian rule has left Chilean labour politically marginalised, organisation ally weakened, and with only very modest and precarious material gains. Thi s article examines the pattern of labour-business-state relations embodied in Chile's new compromise. It contends that the evolution of those relation s during the 1990s can in large measure be traced to the strategy of opposi tion that the centre-left adopted toward the military regime and, as a by-p roduct of that strategy, its growing embrace of the regime's economic model and business.