2010 CPSA Prize in Comparative Politics

Winner: Pablo Policzer

The Rise & Fall of Repression in Chile (Notre Dame University Press, 2009)

Excerpt from jury report: Pablo Policzer’s The Rise & Fall of Repression in Chile (Notre Dame University Press, 2009) asks a Weberian question: how is coercion controlled and used by authoritarian states? To explain variations over time in the use of coercion in Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship, Policzer distinguishes between two types of monitoring of agents: external and internal. A principal-agent theory is used to reconstruct the history of coercion in the Chilean state drawing on original archival research. Policzer shows how improvements in internal and external monitoring brought the coercive apparatus under greater control within the regime, and thereby reduce the personal power of Pinochet.