ABSTRACT
The Ford Foundation's Office for the Andes and Southern Cone reopened in Chile in 1991, after an absence of twelve years. In its long-term development perspective, the Ford Foundation has always sought to address its programs to specific circumstances and to the particular historical moment of the countries its serves. Efforts to promote good and democratic policy making are of course neither new nor original to the Ford Foundation. Exercise of authority over the state occurs periodically through the mechanism of competitive elections, arranged under rules approved by the community of citizens as part of a general constitution. The concept of "civil society" stems primarily from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment but its roots go back to the Middle Ages. As larger nation-states became politically and administratively feasible, the consequent social reordering saw the emergence of classes of nobles, merchants, and craftsmen who began to create institutions to fill the widening gap between the national authority and the governed.
