Transnational strategic networks and policymaking in Chile: CORFO's high technology investment promotion program

Once prey to government patrimonial practices, the Corporación de Fomento de la Producción (CORFO), Chile's economic development agency, overcame this problem in the early 1990s. In 2000 CORFO established a High Technology Investment Promotion Program to promote foreign direct investment in high technology and other nontraditional sectors. This article applies concepts of political survival and cooperation to explain how CORFO moved from patrimonialism to technocratic independence. Then it demonstrates that governments possessing technocratic independence but lacking other characteristics typically associated with successful investment promotion efforts can develop transnational strategic networks of individuals, business associations, and universities to facilitate their learning process in order to devise more effective strategies to promote nontraditional FDI.