This article systematically analyses the inner circle of the coalition that governed Chile between 1990 and 2010. To this end, it takes the notion of ‘technopol’ and transforms it into a sociological category by clearly identifying the nature of the ‘technical’ and ‘political’ resources of 20 agents who served as ministers and undersecretaries in key government posts. Over two decades these agents provided the governing coalition, the Concertación, with a form of collective leadership. The article thus shows that only this small group of powerful agents can be termed technopols since only they exhibited ‘tech’ and ‘pol’ resources as well as a particular form of political competence, making it possible to differentiate them from technocrats and politicians.

Artículo de publicación ISIPolitical participation has frequently been associated with individual resources; that is, individuals with higher incomes, higher educational levels and more time tend to participate in the political process to a greater extent than other individuals do. The present study suggests that in addition to resources, an individual's beliefs about economic distribution are an important determinant of participation both in elections and in protests. Based on the analysis of the Chilean data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) 2012, the results suggest that distributive beliefs are associated primarily with participation in protests.CONICYT/FONDAP/1513000

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How does a change from a compulsory voting system to a voluntary one affect election turnout? It is often argued that an electoral regime under which voting is voluntary reproduces class bias or, in other words, that the rich vote more than the poor. This bias is corrected either by the introduction of compulsory voting or the existence of strong left-wing parties and trade unions able to mobilize poorer segments of the population. In this article, we put forward an alternative argument. We assert that when voting is voluntary, class bias can disappear if an election is very competitive since this affects both turnout and its socio-economic composition. To evaluate this argument, we examine the case of Chile's 2012 municipal election when voting was voluntary for the first time, instead of compulsory.

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