Abstract

The year 2023 in Chile has been an intense year on the political front. The challenges faced by the government were exacerbated by opposition pressure on security and migration issues and the emergence of corruption cases. In this context of turmoil, the country ex-perienced a second constitutional failure after the resounding rejection of the proposal for the first Constitutional Convention in 2021. Political parties agreed on a new process, but the final proposal was rejected by 56% of voters in December. For many, this event reveals structural problems in Chilean democracy, with fragmented political actors and a volatile citizenry. Two data sources were used to analyze what happened in 2023 further. The first is Congressional information on parliamentary benches and floor votes. The second is a longitudinal survey of three moments during the constitutional process. These tools al-lowed us to observe the difficulties that the breakdown of legislative discipline created for the expectations of the government, as well as the low evaluation that citizens had of the political system in general and the constitutional process in particular.