In September of 2025, just months before the presidential election, two contentious reforms were passed to change voting laws in Chile to curb the voting capacity and the obligation to vote for non-citizen residents in Chile. Not only will non-citizens be exempt from monetary penalties for failing to participate in compulsory voting, the minimum residency requirement for non-citizens to vote in elections will increase from five to ten years. Chile first expanded voting rights to immigrants when suffrage was extended to “small groups of white men” in 1925, when immigration was welcomed as it came largely from European nations, an immigration inflow that came to eventually inform the national identities of some Chileans.
Some have theorized that this is a plot by the left wing government to stymie the growing public support for conservative and far right parties in Chile. This may be true to some extent, however the general shift toward attitudes more critical of immigration and concerned with crime, which have heavily impacted this past election cycle in Chile, problematizes this perspective as the shift is within the broader population and not only Venezuelan immigrants, many of whom will be eligible to vote in only a few more years.
It is also arguable that this is an attempt to align Chilean policy more with the policies of other countries in Latin America and the world at large, although even with this recent change this policy remains comparatively progressive. Whether or not this is a process of democratic erosion in a stronghold of progressive politics and democratic stability in South America certainly warrants further examination. This rollback of suffrage rights constitutes a decrease in the overall strength of democracy in Chile as it challenges longstanding liberal democratic norms.
In spite of its initial restraints, Chile became one of the first states to open up suffrage rights to immigrants more broadly, alongside the US. After expanding these rights further, Chile became a pioneer in the extension of suffrage rights to migrants and was especially progressive even compared to other states that also granted the right to vote to immigrants. Chile would go on to grant suffrage to all foreign born residents after five years of residency and thus remained a pioneer of progressive enfranchisement until recently. This change comes at a time when the foreign-born population in Chile is exploding as Venezuelan and Haitian migrants continue arriving in Chile as a destination country. Much like the US’s ongoing imposition of policy to curb black voters participation, Chile’s changes in suffrage law are imposing barriers to voting along racialized lines and pose a threat to proper accountability of the government and the legitimate representation of a whole group.
Widespread suffrage is a key marker according to some definitions of democratic presence in a given state. Though widely used definitions like Robert Dahl’s cite suffrage for as many citizens as possible as a marker of the maximization of public contestation, these definitions still reveal that the broad extension of suffrage is incredibly important to proper democratic function. To extend that suffrage to a larger number of persons residing in a given state cannot be said to be undemocratic and to roll those rights back can easily be taken as an erosion of democracy in that state. More widely available suffrage increases the base upon which vertical accountability, or the government’s accountability to its citizens, of the government is established. As xenophobic attitudes continue to become stronger defining characteristics of Chilean politics, this change not only constitutes an attempt to disempower a voting block that is increasingly right leaning by a decreasingly popular left leaning government, but also to align legislation more with that increasingly xenophobic element of modern Chilean politics.
Though this xenophobic tide began on the right with the rise of far right politicians like José Antonio Kast, the left has since begun to try and adopt a softened version of the right’s anti-immigration rhetoric. As the immigrant population grows in Chile, the passage of legislation to curb immigrant’s democratic participation puts these new arrivals in increasingly precarious situations as visa laws and media coverage become harsher. This precarity is worsened by this new legislation as it restricts the size of a pro-immigrant rights voting bloc. It deepens the instability already experienced by immigrants and cuts them out of a fundamental pathway to contesting these harsh policies and holding the state even remotely accountable to the vulnerable group that has been selected as a scapegoat in the wake of recent economic and social shifts.
On top of decreasing vertical accountability to an increasingly vulnerable population, this legislative shift away from the progressive extension of suffrage to immigrants has also done away with a previously established democratic norm in Chile. The removal of such a long held normative democratic practice in the country undermines the strength and extent of its political society, an element of democratic transition and consolidation. Political society in this context refers to “the arena in which the polity [, or people,] specifically arranges itself to contest the legitimate right to exercise control over public power and the state apparatus” according to Linz and Stepan’s 1996 book Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. It is not only a determinant of the consolidation of a democracy, or the process whereby democracy becomes solidified as the only conceivable and permissible system of governance, but also a prerequisite to democratic transition.
This is not to say that the legislative attempts to decrease the pool of foreign born voters constitute a move toward authoritarianism, but merely it calls attention to the importance of the extension of suffrage and the reason that a decline in the extent of suffrage might prompt an examination of the underlying causes at play. Not only does it shrink the size of political society, it also does away with an established norm of Chilean democracy that had extended suffrage rights to immigrants starting in 1925.
Norms and institutions compose a democracy and to do away with one. To trade an extremely progressive norm in favor of a slightly less progressive norm constitutes backsliding not necessarily toward authoritarianism outright but toward a weaker, less complete form of democracy. In a media space in which we are consistently inundated with more and more news about far more overt or more extreme eschewals of norms or authoritarian power grabs, it is important to also pay attention to the less immediately apparent issues where possible. To see these events and understand them for what they are within the complex tapestry of an individual democracy and a global political system gives us a better base of understanding for the myriad forces that drive democratization and democratic erosion.
Hi Kaya, your post brings up a really important point about Chile’s policy and I think that’s why Chile is such an important case study to look at as a warning sign. One idea that I would add to this point is how this change is a part of a broader pattern that we’ve seen where governments will narrow the the scope of political participation when having to deal with social pressure or population changes. Instead of keeping voting rights as a essential democratic norm, it becomes conditional where it is subject to differing political interests or changing circumstances. This is where the danger lies then.
What especially interesting in Chile‘s case is the timing of it all. As you mentioned, the foreign born population has increased, but instead of integrating these communities into the political structure as Chile has previously done, the state instead is now changing who “counts” in their system. Voting rights aren’t just ways of being represented, but they also symbolize belonging to that state. Changing the voting rights subtly redefines who is considered part of the state, even without having explicit authoritarian intent.
Chile demonstrates how democratic erosion often starts and involves the groups with the weakest political standing. When states redefine the limits of participation, long-term affects begin to come about with weak norms, diminishing accountability, and allowing for future emotions to become more normalized.
Hi Kaya,
I really enjoyed how clearly you lay out the tension between Chile’s long history of immigrant enfranchisement and the new restrictions passed in 2025. One theme that stood out to me, and that helps deepen the analysis, is how these reforms fit into a broader pattern where democratic backsliding can occur through popular pressures rather than only through elite manipulation. As you note, growing public anxiety about immigration and crime complicates the idea that this is simply a partisan strategy by the left. It raises a bigger question about what happens when public opinion itself shifts in exclusionary directions while democratic norms depend on broad inclusion.
Another angle worth highlighting is how these voting changes reshape vertical accountability in a country undergoing rapid demographic transformation. Immigrants in Chile are disproportionately affected by economic volatility and discrimination, yet the reforms structurally limit their ability to influence policies that affect their lives. Instead of merely reducing turnout, the change creates a hierarchy of political voice. This resembles patterns observed in the United States, where facially neutral election rules often disproportionately burden specific communities as their political power grows.
You also point out the erosion of norms, and I think the Chile case shows how vulnerable democratic norms are when they rely on national identity narratives. Chile’s self image as unusually inclusive becomes harder to maintain once immigrants are no longer imagined as culturally aligned with the nation. In this sense, the rollback represents not only a legal shift but a narrowing of who the political community imagines as belonging.
Overall, your post shows that democratic erosion is not always dramatic or authoritarian in appearance. Sometimes it begins quietly, through narrowing who is allowed to participate in the democratic process.