No description available.

How are Centre parties distinct from Left and Right parties in term of their policy preferences? The scholarship on political parties either ignores Centre parties or treats them as a residual category. In this study, I attempt to rescue Centre parties from obscurity by looking at a quintessential Centre party: the Chilean Christian Democratic Party (PDC). Between 1990--2000, the PDC led two centre-left Concertacion coalition governments under Patricio Aylwin (1990--1994) and Eduardo Frei (1994--2000). It was the PDC's responsibility to negotiate the 'Chilean paradox': a country that had achieved economic success with neoliberalism and become a "model" for Latin America but where the "social debt" increased exponentially during 17 years of military rule under Augusto Pinochet (1973--1990). Health was one of the main concerns for Chileans through the decade but there was little headway made in the policy arena. My study seeks to explain why this was so. / I make a distinction between (1) the "defensive" Centre which aspires to be neither left nor right; and (2) the "encompassing" Centre parties that are both left and right. Christian Democratic parties are "encompassing" Centre parties par excellence since they incorporate elements of both left and right ideologies in a manner consistent with their social Catholic beliefs. They are known to combine a conservative position on social and moral issues with a pro-poor orientation on welfare issues. The main policy dilemmas of the PDC emerged from its status as an "encompassing" Centre Party as it sought to reconcile left and right. During the 1990s, the PDC shifted allegiance from state-led development policies to neoliberalism. As a result, the scope of the party's commitment to welfare issues was defined within the range of options available within the neoliberal model. However, while neoliberals dominated key policy positions, statists retained influence in the Congress and within the party organization. The uneven nature of adaptation to neoliberalism became one of the main obstacles in reaching a consensus for reform. My study also gives due emphasis to the constraints introduced by the country's institutional framework, notably the 1980 Constitution inherited from the military regime.