ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes, through the issue of foreign direct investment, how constitutional reforms have been an essential tool to enshrine and hopefully make bulletproof a specific view of economic development. At the same time, it argues that constitutional transformations, including a specific economic model, have been embraced by politicians and legal scholars on the right as well as on the left. Placing such faith in a foundational document has been consistent through time and space, starting in the early twentieth century and reaching to present-day discussions regarding the Chilean constitutional assembly. Economic and social transformation has remained elusive, and the chapter argues that this elusiveness is a result of the interactions between contradictory provisions within the same text, as well as the relationship between constitutional provisions and other legal regimes such as property, corporations, trade and family law. The second part of the chapter brings in the cases of two ideologically opposing governments and their attempts at reforming constitutional texts in order to stifle democratic deliberation regarding the characteristics and possibilities of a specific economic development model.
