Constitutional referendums and integrity in Chile

In the contemporary era, constitutional referendums have been observed to incorporate a greater number of instruments designed to encourage deliberation and participation, including constitutional assemblies, mini-publics and online deliberation. The present article employs the Direct Democracy Integrity Index to analyse the Chilean constitutional referendums of 2022 and 2023. Subsequent to considerable protest and demonstration, an initiating referendum was implemented in 2017. This culminated in the establishment of an elected constitutional assembly, which utilised a combination of online and offline deliberative processes to formulate a progressive and contemporary draft constitution. The inclusive process was regarded as a success. Nevertheless, the draft constitution was unsuccessful and was rejected in the referendum that took place in 2022. In the subsequent process, a group of experts, public administration and politicians collaborated to formulate a new draft conservative constitution, excluding civil society groups and with limited participation from political parties. The draft constitution, which was of a conservative political leaning, was also rejected in the 2023 referendum. As demonstrated by the Direct Democracy Integrity Index, there are issues with integrity in both constitutional referendums in Chile, which are a consequence of a lack of deliberative democracy during the campaign phase.