Fear of despotism and totalitarianism in Chilean administrative law: reconstruction and criticism of an Administrative State phobia

Abstract

This article aims to reconstruct and criticize the idea that the administrative State is a potentially and inevitably despotic-totalitarian structure. This doctrine, elaborated by professor Eduardo Soto Kloss in his influential works regarding administrative intervention in property and economic activity, as well as the Administration’s use of its powers and privileges, reproduces to a large extent the arguments against the absolute monarchy, ignores the architecture of the contemporary administration of the capitalist democracies and eludes the infrastructural perspective of the administrative power as exercised today. That conception constitutes a case of “phobia” to the administration.