In the Name of Reason is a synthesis of Patricio Silva's extensive research since the 1980s on technocratic influences in Chilean politics. Silva identifies a long-term battle between those who believe that policy decisions should be made by experts and those who privilege the role of voters, political parties and social movements. Among Silva's main conclusions are that since the 1920s, technocrats (unelected policymakers and advisors with high levels of specialised academic training) have ‘operated as a moderating force’ in Chile (p. 18), as ‘mediators between contending social and political forces’ (p. 234), and that the ‘present-day Chilean democracy not only “tolerates” technocratic groups but that the latter have played a fundamental role in facilitating [the] consolidation [of “technocratic democracy”]' (p. 173).

For the period before 1931, Silva sketches the influence of European positivism as a prelude to modern technocracy. He illustrates this part of the story by referring to the ideas of Chilean intellectuals José Victorino Lastarria (1817–88) and Valentín Letelier (1852–1919). Lastarria wrote on the ‘science of government’, favoured meritocracy and criticised the existing political parties. Letelier explicitly urged authoritarian measures when necessary to serve the public good: to impose vaccinations, education and regulation of prostitution, among other measures. Letelier's promotion of an expanded role for an authoritative state applying ‘scientific’ principles makes him a logical referent in any discussion of the antecedents to technocracy in Chile. In contrast, the choice of Lastarria as a precursor of modern technocrats is, for me, somewhat puzzling. As Silva notes, Lastarria was not willing to trade liberty for ‘order’ and ‘progress’ – the tonic of positivists throughout Latin America. His bombastic political rhetoric and support for radical, anti-government causes make him less an antecedent of modern technocrats than was Andrés Bello, Lastarria's mentor and then bitter rival, who was an advisor to Diego Portales, a founder of Chile's authoritarian republic, and who served in various capacities the governments of Manuel Bulnes (1841–51) and Manuel Montt (1851–61).

From Lastarria and Letelier, Silva fast-forwards to the influence of Pablo Ramírez during the dictatorship of Carlos Ibáñez (1927–31). Ramírez was a Radical Party prodigy who expressed his contempt for politics as usual, especially for Chile's so-called parliamentary regime. He became a key minister and advisor of the Ibáñez dictatorship and was, in Silva's view, an emblematic ‘technopolitician’. The Ibáñez government sought to modernise the public sector and created an array of new government institutions, what Silva calls ‘an Administrative State’ (p. 57).

Silva suggests that Chile's middle class embraced Ibáñez's authoritarianism out of fear of social upheaval. He gives little attention, however, to the dictatorship's widespread political purges, including that of the Chilean judiciary. Ibáñez deployed a vicious secret police force, incarcerated, tortured, banished into internal exile (relegación), and exiled opponents. He expressed admiration for Italian fascism. Time magazine called him the ‘bantam Mussolini’ (7 March 1927). A commission to investigate the crimes of this authoritarian experiment in 1931 found massive levels of corruption and nepotism. Thus, while Silva correctly highlights the role of the Ibáñez government in transforming the Chilean state – an important insight often neglected in writing on Chile – he misses an opportunity to question whether such a technocratic ‘experiment’ (p. 82) was, or can ever be, compatible with the construction and consolidation of democracy.

Silva next recounts the ebbs and flows of Chilean politics from 1932 into the 1960s, focusing especially on the tensions between party and ideological divisions and the role of technocrats in policymaking positions. The technocrats fought to shield public enterprise and industrial development from ‘political’ (that is, party) influence. According to Silva, the stalemate between contending ideological visions and political forces in Chile made government technocracy ‘a key facilitator of democracy in the country’. When the government of Jorge Alessandri sought to replace the technocrats who administered the state from the 1930s into the 1950s with technocrats from the private sector who supported a more free market agenda, the technocrats' buffer functions disappeared (pp. 85–6).

Technocracy took on a new meaning from 1964 to 1970 during the Christian Democratic ‘Revolution in Liberty’ as ‘structuralist economists defended an active role of the state in formulating developmentalist policies in order to transform Chilean society’ (p. 112). But the Christian Democratic government was afflicted by a fundamental contradiction: it simultaneously promoted an economic policy that was formulated and implemented in a top-down manner, and a social policy that privileged popular participation. This contradiction led to ‘a growing radicalization and consequent alienation from the Christian Democratic government’ (p. 131). The outcome: the election of Socialist Salvador Allende as president, heading the leftist Popular Unity coalition.

In the Allende government (1970–3), ‘technocrats were rapidly replaced by politicians and left-wing intellectuals as the main designers of the project for change’ (p. 131). A military coup and the subsequent almost 17 years of dictatorship would lead to ‘the awareness of the need to ensure good economic management in a future democratic government’ (p. 142). Silva is right that the dictatorship taught the political left and centre parties the dangers of populist economics, but it is highly unlikely that ‘good economic management’ would have insulated Allende from the Nixon–Kissinger onslaught and the Cold War alliance between the United States and the opposition parties that undermined the Popular Unity government.

The last half of In the Name of Reason retells the story of the military regime (1973–90), the Chicago Boys (economists, mostly trained at the University of Chicago or influenced by neoliberal economics) and their opponents (anti-regime academics in a variety of NGOs – the ‘technocratized opposition’, p. 167). Neglected is the fact that, like Ibáñez and his technocrats, some of the Chicago Boys, as well as General Augusto Pinochet and his immediate family, abused public office and committed financial crimes. Moreover, as in the 1927–31 dictatorship, Pinochet's technocrats joined with regime ideologues and entrepreneurial groups to eviscerate the labour movement and repress the political opposition. Ultimately, the political struggle against the dictatorship and changes in US priorities in the hemisphere – not technocratic mediation – allowed transition to an elected government.

Finally, Silva provides an account of the tensions between ‘politics’ and technocrats in the four post-dictatorship administrations from 1990 to 2008. Here the book is detailed, naming names, describing personal and ideological differences, and providing tables with the positions, professional credentials, accrediting institutions and areas of expertise of key policymakers in the four Concertación governments. Silva also describes the post-1990 competition for influence among different groups of technocrats connected to a variety of think tanks and NGOs. He concludes that the ‘embedded autonomy’ of Chilean technocrats after 1990 ‘may make it possible to attain an equilibrium between citizen participation and administrative efficiency’ (p. 233). Left unasked is the question of how ‘democracy’ (beyond periodic elections and relative stability) is compatible with the ‘embedded autonomy’ (lack of political accountability?) of technocrats.

Silva's detailed account of personalities and cliques in the post-1990 period is useful for Chilean specialists. His discovery of a permanent back-and-forth between politicians (parties and social movements), the Chilean presidents as independent actors and the technocrats is a fresh view of Chilean politics that may have significant comparative implications. This is especially true for what Silva calls ‘an uneasy triangular relation’ between presidents, political parties and technocrats, in which technocrats ‘constitute a buffer zone between the president and the political parties’ (pp. 222–3). Whether such uneasy triangular relations are unique to Chile or characterise politics in other western hemisphere nations and Europe would seem a fruitful direction of inquiry for students of modern multiparty democracies.