The 1973 military coup, which overthrew the democratically elected left-wing government of Salvador Allende, gave previously peripheral authoritarian elements of the right the opportunity to exercise almost unlimited political and economic power. These sectors--principally the economists of the Chicago School of free market economics and the gremialistas, a traditional Catholic movement inspired by the corporatism of such figures as Spain's Franco and Prima de Rivera--remained the dominant political, economic and ideological expression throughout the military regime of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-90). This book examines how this right has adapted to functioning as "loyal opposition" in the new democratic order, after having exercised power for seventeen years within an authoritarian political system.
