Credibility and Precommitment in Socialist Constitutionalism

In this paper I examine Chile’s 1972 initiative to draft a new constitution under President Salvador Allende. I analyze the political and economic circumstances that gave rise to the project and the institutional mechanisms through which the draft sought to advance a socialist economic and political program centered on state ownership of means of production and central planning. I compare the Chilean proposal with the socialist constitutions of the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia. The draft, which was never submitted to a plebiscite, as Allende envisioned, subsequently disappeared and remained unavailable for nearly two decades. Remarkably, the proposal has attracted very limited scholarly attention.