Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Chile's Democracy Enters a Rough Patch

A right-leaning billionaire is rallying angry voters. Sound familiar?

November 18, 2017 at 1:00 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

Piñera country.
Image: Encyclopaedia Britannica/UIG via Getty Images

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One frequent (and accurate!) criticism of political scientists is that we tend to stick too closely to our specialties -- at the expense of learning from what those in other areas of the discipline know. That's why I'm going to pay more attention to world elections, beginning with Chile, which votes on Nov. 19 for president, congress, and regional offices. To kick things off, I spoke with Kristina Mani, an associate professor at Oberlin College and author of "Democratization and Military Transformation in Argentina and Chile: Rethinking Rivalry." The following transcript of our conversation was lightly edited.

Jonathan Bernstein: What should those of us in the United States and the rest of the world know about the upcoming elections?