Social Rights for Chile: Drawing Lessons (also) from Italian Constitutional Design

Adriano Dirri

University of Rome

Drafting Social Rights in a Peculiar Constitution-Making Process 

On 15 and 16 May, Chilean citizens were called to the polls to elect a Constitutional Convention, after a postponement due to a rise of both coronavirus cases and hospitalisations. Chile’s current Constitution of 1980 (“the Pinochet Constitution”) was a product of an authoritarian regime. Nevertheless, in the last thirty years, the Chilean political system has pursued the path of democracy, which began with the 1988 referendum and the 1989 free presidential elections; since then, regular general elections have been held, as well as many constitutional amendments to the Pinochet Constitution. Now, Chile’s Constitutional Convention faces a difficult task and hard choices - above all, related to constitutionalising social rights. In fact, among the several features which make the Constitution making process in Chile peculiar is the question of whether to include justiciable social rights, on equal footing with civil and political rights, in a way that the judiciary has the duty to evaluate them as parameter of the constitutionality of legislation and norms. If that question is answered in the affirmative, the Constitution would directly task the legislative and executive bodies with implementing the social rights embodied in constitutional provisions. The argument for constitutionalising social rights, side by side with the first generation of rights – “freedoms from” – is grounded on the high level of economic inequality in Chile, and on the fact that the 1980 Constitution does not recognise social rights. For example, the World Bank has recently underlined that the recent social unrest in Chile was fuelled by persistent inequalities, such as “segregated” access to quality education and health care.  

In this regard, alongside and beyond lessons from Weimar and Bonn offered by other scholars, the Italian Constitution may serve as an additional valuable example for Chile’s constitutional drafters. In Italy, the codification of social rights, strictly connected to fundamental principles, was driven by the explicit aspiration to seek substantive equality, which made the Italian Constitution unique among the European constitutions after World War II. Thus, the Italian constitutional experience may assist the cause of the Constitutional Convention of Chile. First and foremost, the Italian Constitution exemplifies an agreement reached among very different political forces, driven by a mutual understanding and inclusion in framing the Constitution. The results of the elections for the Chilean Constitutional Convention gave opposition forces more than 2/3 of seats in the Convention, but this is not an obstacle to the purpose that the Constitution shall “belong to everyone”, as was declared in the 15 November 2019 Agreement for Social Peace and the New Constitution in Chile.  Secondly, constitutionalising social rights was one of the most contentious issues for the Italian Constituent Assembly, as it is likely to be in Chile. Thirdly, the structure of the Italian Constitution may inspire the Chilean drafters not only because it strives for substantive equality per se, but also because it strives to place the human person, in its personal and social dimension, at the centre of the constitutional project. 

The Social Question 

One of the most contentious issues in the Chilean constitution-making process is the role of the State in the economy. The huge social upheaval in late 2019 was clearly connected to the current Constitution and its entrenchment of a radical market logic. As Moya and Goldoni have argued, the current Constitution of the authoritarian regime (the Constitución tramposa), even though amended several times in the decades since it was made, contains significant mechanisms for safeguarding the economic and political logic underpinning the regime. Hence, inequalities were linked to the Pinochet Constitution, which was the symbol of the “economic” status quo.

One such mechanism is the entrenchment of constitutional locks. For example, in order to amend social and economic policies, among others, a super majority of 4/7 is necessary. In tandem, the constitutional provisions related to the economy and the role of the State therein have remained the same since 1980. Further, the current Constitution does not recognise economic, social or cultural rights. This constitutional design, inherited from the previous regime, has privileged the private rather than the public sector. As a result, the former has become dominant in providing basic services such as education, health care and pensions. This has favoured a pure market economy, with very little intervention in the market by public bodies. This has limited the redistribution of economic and political power and boosted inequalities, which have become multidimensional and structural.  

The social turmoil was grounded in many unsolved issues inherited from the past and calcified in the Constitution, as argued by Ansaldi and Pardo-Vergara. Even though the last straw was the increase of the subway ticket fares in Santiago, the social movement’s main demands centred on reform of the private pension system, health care and education. Even before 2019, the pension system, dominated by private companies, provoked huge protests in 2016 and the pension replacement rate still remains among the lowest in the OECD area. The health care system is basically still that introduced by Pinochet and limits access to adequate medical care for a large majority of the population, because of expensive health insurance. Therefore, the only option for more than the 80% of the population is an underfunded and ill-equipped public health sector. Finally, the education system, despite some reforms, has remained a pillar of inequality between those families that can afford private education and those that cannot, with the latter only having the option to accept lower quality education for their children.   

More broadly, Chile’s current constitutional provisions, and especially the right to establish a business and property rights (Art. 19, para. 21, 23, 24), support a neoliberal economic model, which has deepened inequalities. Thus, the clarion call of the 2019 protests was for a paradigm shift in favour of a different relationship between the Constitution of the country and the society. 

Rome, 1948, for Santiago, 2021  

The 1948 Italian Constitution was adopted after the demise of fascism at the end of World War II, formally replacing the 1848 Statuto Albertino. The drafters of the Italian Constitution were aware of the lessons from Weimar and, at the same time, considered Weimar an archetype of constitutionalism. The Italian drafters agreed on connecting social rights to the fundamental principles of the Constitution itself. The design went further, beyond the simple inclusion of social rights as “welfare rights”. In fact, the main goal is the development of the human person, in both its individual and social dimensions (Article 2). The Italian Constitution inspired the Spanish and the Portuguese Constitutions – both drafted at the demise of authoritarian regimes in the 1970s – especially in relation to the substantive equality principle. 

The debate over social rights within the Italian Constituent Assembly was highly divisive, especially in relation to their implementation and enforceability. Despite that, the main political parties – the Communist Party and the Christian Democratic Party – eventually agreed on the codification of a long list of social rights strictly connected to fundamental principles of the Constitution. Hence, the Republic recognises the inviolable (social) rights of the person, both as an individual and in the social groups where human personality is expressed, beginning with the family. The contribution of the recognition of social rights to the achievement of the purposes of the Constitution is to support the constitutional purpose of unifying the Nation. In this constitutional “project” social rights and basic principles were designed to play a key role. This is the crucial point for Chile: the recognition of social rights can be a tool to integrate those (social) interests, previously excluded, in constitutional design.  

In addition, the Italian Constitution, through Article 3, states that all citizens have equal dignity and that “it is the duty of the Republic to remove those obstacles of an economic or social nature”. The Italian constitution-makers were able to build the constitutional scaffolding on the principle of substantive equality in its interplay with human dignity and equality before the law. The social and ethical meaning of that principle is, thus, related to the concrete dimension of the social relationships between individuals. The guarantee of substantive equality and justiciable social rights were considered mutually reinforcing tools for guaranteeing equal opportunities and equal liberty. 

Therefore, a set of justiciable social rights should be considered by Chile’s Constitution drafters. The example of Italy may be useful for the Chilean framers, not only for the long list of social rights the Constitution contains, but also for the way they are structured within the Constitution. In fact, the Italian text carefully balances social rights with civil rights and anchors both in fundamental principles. I argue that social rights may be better entrenched by placing them side by side with the “older” generation of rights. This, within a project which promotes the person in their social and individual dimension, with the duty to contribute to and to receive from their own community – “a giver and a taker” – according to their capacity. 

In this sense, social rights permeate the purpose of the Italian Constitution, without undermining civil and political rights. The Italian model may be considered a valuable example for the Chilean framers as it has been for Spain and Portugal. In the Italian constitutional experience Chilean citizens may find another tool to assist in achieving their aspiration to build a new bill of rights on a different basis: in a way that the “older” civil and political rights are harmonised and balanced with the inclusion of a comprehensive set of justiciable social rights. 

Codifying Social Rights for Undertaking a New Course 

The desire of Chilean citizens is clearly to frame a new constitution which may guarantee a more robust welfare State, in order to reduce inequalities. Therefore, I argue for the constitutional codification and implementation of social rights in Chile. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that social rights, as has been seen over the last decade in Europe, tend to depend on the availability of resources and on the political attitude of the government towards the economy. Thus, the drafters should be careful when formulating social rights and making promises, to prevent “droits des pauvres” “pauvres droits”.  

Finally, social rights and the “right to welfare” may be understood as part of a project. The Italian Constitution built that project around the human person, in both its individual and social dimensions, moving away from a regime which promoted segregation and gross violations of human rights. This means that, on the one hand, social rights are the key to reducing inequalities. On the other, the objective was the development of the person within a community and her emancipation. Social rights might be imprinted  with the purpose of drafting a Constitution sensitive to the environmental protection and issues of formal and substantive gender equality (as is the “high hope” in the case of Chile). This will be only one of the major challenges for the Chilean drafters.  

Adriano Dirri is a Lecturer at the University of Rome – La Sapienza and Teaching assistant in Constitutional Law at LUISS Guido Carli University - Rome. 

Suggested citation: Adriano Dirri, ‘Social Rights for Chile: Drawing Lessons (also) from Italian Constitutional Design: Drafting social rights in a peculiar Constitution-making process’, IACL-IADC Blog (24 June 2021) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/2021-posts/22-6-24-social-rights-for-chile-drawing-lessons-also-from-italian-constitutional-design.