Élites políticas en el poder legislativo chileno: la Cámara de Diputados (1990-2014)

Abstract

This article analyses the social composition of political elites in the Chilean legislative branch, specifically in the Chamber of Deputies between 1990 and 2014. The personal characteristics and re-election rates of deputies in that period (n = 720) are analysed. The degree of homogeneity in the educational background for each legislature is complemented with interdependence models, specifically cluster analysis with a non-hierarchical grouping algorithm, as well as social network analysis. The findings suggest that the closer a legislative period is to the democratic transition, the more homogeneous/dense it is social composition. Despite the confirmation of the sociocultural elitisation of deputies, this does not imply, generally speaking, a greater concentration of density in the post-transitional legislatures.

Bastián González-Bustamante

Post-doctoral Researcher

Post-doctoral Researcher in Computational Social Science at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs at Leiden University, Netherlands.

Carla Cisternas

PhD Researcher

PhD Researcher in the Department of Latin American Studies at the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University, Netherlands. Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Arts at the Universidad Mayor, Chile.