Abstract

Determining the level of power amassed by a president has proven to be a highly complex task due to the multiple factors that make up its sources, use, and variation. This has been a key issue when discussing institutional design and reforms in Latin America, where intellectuals and politicians often label their political systems as hyper-presidential: those in which the president concentrates excessive power. This chapter examines whether it is accurate to categorise Chile’s political system as hyper-presidential, as it is usually claimed, and how this view affected the drafting of a new Constitution. Based on historical and comparative data, our analysis rejects the existence of hyper-presidentialism in Chile. Since hyper-presidentialism - in Chile and elsewhere - has been mostly defined in terms of presidents’ formal prerogatives, it was not surprising that the constitutional proposal drafted by the Constitutional Convention (2021-2022) limited them. However, the proposal, at the same time and contrary to initial expectations, incentivised the concentration of power around the chief executive when considering the changes introduced to the legislative branch and presidential re-election. The case of Chile illustrates how ideas about the political system - even if mistaken or inaccurate - may significantly affect processes of constitution making.