Ruiz-Tagle’s Five Republics and One Tradition poses a conundrum for a historian reviewing it in a history journal (even a journal identified with interdisciplinary methodologies): Ruiz-Tagle is a leading legal scholar, and the book, despite its title, is not a work of history, not even legal history. Since it does not employ primary sources, it contains no original research. Nor does it engage with the considerable historiography of modern Chile, often to its detriment. How then to assess its contributions? It is probably most useful to approach the book as a primary source, as the product of a particular historical moment (a “constitutional moment” in the author’s own words) and a particular political-ideological perspective (liberal.) Rather than a work of history, Ruiz-Tagle’s book is a legal brief for a new constitution free of the excessive presidentialism that he views as a legacy of Chile’s republican tradition.
In 2019, a small...