ABSTRACT
Since the mid-1980s, Latin America has undergone a series of judicial reform initiatives as part of a wider process of democratization that has aimed to strengthen legal and political institutions throughout the region (Cafferata 1999:1; De la Barra 1999:140). These initiatives have generally been analyzed by the same local and international agents that have promoted them, and also by those seeking to contribute to the discussion regarding the direction of these processes. The analysis has focused mainly on the direction that judicial reform policies should follow in this region, thus contributing to the reproduction of this field in Latin America. However, very few studies have offered a critical analysis from a social science perspective regarding the conditions of possibility of these efforts at judicial and institutional reform (Binder and Obando 2004:40; Pásara and Faundez 2007:1). This chapter intends to complement the efforts1 toward filling the void in this area by specifically analyzing the Chilean Criminal Procedure Reform2 from the perspective of sociology of the legal field.3
