1. Introduction

The control of power has been a constant concern in Western political and legal thought. Over time, institutional and legal systems have developed mechanisms aimed at limiting its exercise, ensuring its subjection to legality, and preserving the legitimacy of institutions. In this framework, the external control of the State Administration presents itself as an essential tool for auditing the public function and safeguarding the principles of legality, probity, and transparency, nowadays incorporating that of good administration.

In Chile, this control has been traditionally centered on the actions of the Comptroller General of the Republic (Contraloría General de la República), a technical and autonomous body responsible for ensuring the legality of administrative acts and the correct use of public resources. However, currently, this function is exercised through a broader network of bodies and institutions that, from diverse perspectives, participate in the oversight of public management activities, which will be analyzed in subsequent sections.

In this context, the problem that guides this work is that, despite the expansion of bodies and mechanisms that exercise oversight functions over the Administration, doctrine and practice still tend to identify external control almost exclusively with the Comptroller General of the Republic. This traditional view makes it difficult to account for the mutations in the control system, its overlaps, and the gaps in coordination and effectiveness observed in recent experience.

The main objective of this article is to propose an updated synthesis of the polycentric design of external control in the State Administration in Chile, examining its doctrinal evolution, its conceptual foundations, and the institutional framework that configures it. The central question that guides the analysis can be formulated as follows: to what extent does a functional and polycentric understanding of external control allow for a better description and evaluation of the role currently played by the different bodies that oversee the Administration, as well as the challenges they face in terms of coordination, legality, and accountability? The paper starts from the hypothesis that the reconceptualization of external control as a network of bodies and mechanisms, and not only as an attribution of a single body, contributes to identifying with greater precision the strengths and weaknesses of the Chilean system and to outlining criteria for its institutional improvement.

The present work employs a qualitative approach, analytical-descriptive in nature, based on the legal-dogmatic method and a systematic review of normative sources, doctrine, and jurisprudential criteria, with selective support from comparative law. This approach is framed within “speculative” (non-empirical-statistical) legal research, which works with categories, normative systematization, and valid inferences based on recognized sources and methodological standards (Abásolo, 2023).

2. Historical and doctrinal background of the control of power

The concentration of power has historically been a concern in political thought. As Seguró Mendlewicz (2014) warns, “whoever exercises political power in any type of governmental structure intends to do so without limits, and their often-unconfessable goal is to evade any kind of control or, failing that, to conceal or reduce its effects” (p. 47; editorial translation). This intuition has accompanied philosophy since its origins, evidencing the need to establish effective limits to the exercise of power.

Plato (2016) exposes this dilemma in the Republic through the allegory of the Ring of Gyges. The narrative illustrates how an individual endowed with unchecked power—in this case, invisibility—ends up transgressing the principles of justice. In the philosopher’s view, no one is just by conviction, but by fear of the consequences. Justice, thus understood, arises from the existence of external limits that prevent impunity.

Aristotle, for his part, delves into this concern from an institutional perspective. In his work Politics (1988), he distinguishes between correct regimes, oriented towards the common good, and deviant ones, which respond to private interests. His analysis anticipates legitimacy based on the public purpose of power and underscores the need for structures that impede its despotic exercise. Cicero (1991), meanwhile, directly links the private morality of rulers with the stability of the State, warning that corruption in the personal sphere affects institutional decomposition.

In the dawn of the modern State, the concern for power acquires a structural dimension. Niccolò Machiavelli, in Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius (2017), posits that the conflict between social groups must be institutionalized to prevent the concentration of power in a single class. With a realistic—and even cynical—outlook, he recognizes that corruption and the desire for domination are inherent to politics, and that stability can only be achieved through effective checks and balances.

Thomas Hobbes, in his book the Leviathan, expands upon this view from a pessimistic conception of human nature. In the absence of a common power to impose order, he warns, life is reduced to a “war of all against all.” Although he justifies the necessity of an absolute sovereign, he acknowledges that all power tends to exceed its limits if it encounters none: “Every man seeks his own benefit by nature” and “no man’s word can be more easily broken” (Hobbes, 2019; editorial translation).

Immanuel Kant offers a rational way out of this dilemma. In Towards Perpetual Peace (2018; editorial translation), he maintains that even «a nation of devils» could live under a just constitution, provided the laws are formulated so that opposing interests balance one another. For Kant, the control of power does not depend on the virtue of the rulers, but on the normative design that allows their inclinations to be neutralized through a system of universal and rational rules.

This logic of institutional containment finds its most influential formulation in The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu, who warns that “[…]eternal experience has taught us that every man invested with authority abuses it. There is no power that does not incite abuse, to overreach. Who would have thought it! Not even virtue can be limited.” (Montesquieu, 1906, p. 225; editorial translation). His celebrated maxim—“to prevent the abuse of power, it is necessary that, by the arrangement of things, power checks power”—does not refer to a mere division of functions, but to a permanent dynamic of equilibrium between institutions.

According to Jiménez Asensio’s interpretation (2016), Montesquieu proposed a constitutional design of checks and balances that, far from weakening power, redistributes it to prevent its arbitrary use. In this logic, the checks do not diminish power but channel it: “they operate as growing, not decreasing, forces” (p. 16; editorial translation).

This tradition has consolidated two fundamental pillars of contemporary constitutionalism: the democratic state and the rule of law state. While the former answers the question of who holds power, the latter establishes how it must be exercised. As Jiménez Asensio (2016) points out, democracy legitimizes the rulers; the rule of law state limits their actions through law (p. 19). In this perspective, control is not an institutional option, but a structural component of every legitimate constitutional architecture.

In recent political theory, this thesis has been reaffirmed. Alt and Lassen (2007) argue that the separation of powers is not sufficient to prevent abuse if it is not accompanied by mechanisms that allow the decisions of other actors to be curbed or reversed: vetoes, judicial review, and regulatory oversight. The principle of horizontal accountability, developed by O’Donnell (2004), points in this direction: it is indispensable that autonomous state agencies exist, with legal powers and effective capacity to supervise, investigate, and sanction other public powers.

In this context, Pierre Rosanvallon (2007) has developed the concept of counter-democracy to describe the set of institutional and social mechanisms that, beyond suffrage, exercise permanent vigilance and demand for accountability over power. It is an organized form of distrust that responds to the growing complexity of public life and the need for control beyond the electoral circuit. These practices do not replace representative democracy, but complement it and critically tension it, allowing for its correction and adaptation in the face of deficits in legitimacy, effectiveness, or integrity.

The institutions that fulfill these functions—such as comptrollers, ombudsmen, transparency councils, or specialized bodies—operate as vigilant third parties within the state framework. Their legitimacy is not based on direct popular representation, but on their autonomy, their technical role, and their capacity to act independently of political powers, deploying mechanisms of supervision, evaluation, and denunciation. This institutionalized vigilance represents a contemporary form of democratic balance, where control not only limits power, but also reinforces public trust through the continuous scrutiny of authority.

3. Conceptual foundations of external control in the State Administration

Control within the State Administration constitutes an essential function for the validity of the rule of law and the preservation of democracy. Its purpose is to limit the exercise of public power, ensure the legality of administrative acts, and guarantee compliance with fundamental principles such as legality, probity, transparency, and good administration. Therefore, control must be conceived not as an accessory function, but as a structural component of the democratic State. A similar idea is that added by Laura Vercellone (2024, p. 254; editorial trnaslation), when defining public control as: “(…) all those activities aimed at evaluating the performance of the public administration and the adherence of its decisions to the system of laws and values of a community. It is a function that is inherent to political life since, from the moment collective problems began to be managed and public work was delegated to representatives, mechanisms were also designed to monitor its exercise”. This understanding is consistent with Chilean doctrine, which conceives public control as the set of rules and institutions through which the legal system subjects the administrative activity in an increasingly complex State to scrutiny (Cordero Vega, 2009, pp. 17-23).

From a broad perspective, control can be defined as any action aimed at supervising, overseeing, or verifying the conformity of a conduct or decision with respect to a set of norms, principles, or purposes. In the state sphere, its purpose is to guarantee that public bodies act in accordance with the legal system and the constitutionally established ends. In similar terms, professor Cordero Vega describes public control as a system of bodies, procedures, and standards that channels the social demand for scrutiny over the Administration, especially regarding legality, responsibility, and efficiency of expenditure (Cordero Vega, 2009, pp. 17-20).

Consequently, control represents an essential and irreplaceable dimension of the democratic regime of any State, with which it is intimately linked. Indeed, it could be argued that there is no democracy without control, nor control without democracy. Beyond the different forms that control can assume in a State — such as political, parliamentary, social, or judicial control— all share a common idea. As stated by Aragón Reyes (1994, p. 122; editorial translation): “[…]to make effective the principle of limitation of power. All means of control, in the constitutional State, are oriented in a single direction and all respond, objectively, to a single purpose: to oversee the activity of power to avoid abuses.”

A basic distinction must be established between internal control and external control. The former is exercised within the administrative body itself, through hierarchical mechanisms, internal audits, or functional supervision, and is oriented to ensuring the fulfillment of organizational objectives with criteria of efficiency and effectiveness. External control, on the other hand, is characterized¹ by its origin outside the hierarchical structure of the audited entity and by its functional autonomy. Letelier Wartenberg (2015) recalls that the etymology of the term, stemming from the French contre-rôle, alludes to a “parallel register that allows contrasting or counteracting another, reinforcing the idea of an independent instance that acts as a counterweight to power” (pp. 293-294; editorial translation). In this sense, professor Pantoja has reconstructed this evolution showing the transition from a classic model centered on a causal and formalized control, based mainly on legality and accounting, towards a plural scheme of political, administrative, and jurisdictional controls over the Administration’s actions (Pantoja Bauzá, 2005, pp. 199-205). More recently, Obando and Allesch (2016, pp. 285-287) propose reserving the expression ‘external administrative control’ to designate the set of autonomous bodies that, without being part of the hierarchical structure of the Administration or the Judicial Power, oversee its actions from outside, in particular the Comptroller General of the Republic (Contraloría General de la República) and the Council for Transparency (Consejo para la Transparencia).

For this reason, external control not only fulfills a corrective function, but also a preventive and restorative one. It is not limited to penalizing administrative infringements, but also contributes to anticipating irregularities, inducing behavior that conforms to the legal system, and restoring or protecting citizens’ rights, when appropriate. Along the same lines, it constitutes an essential mechanism for preserving public trust, the basis of democratic legitimacy. This relationship between control, trust, and legitimacy is part of what Rosanvallon (2007, pp. 23-35) calls a “society of distrust”, in which electoral democracy is complemented by a “counter-democracy” based on practices of vigilance, obstruction, and prosecution through which the citizenry exercises a permanent power of correction over those in government.

It is also worth noting, as legal scholars have pointed out, that there is no single model of control. Aragón Reyes (1994) posits that all control mechanisms in the constitutional State “are oriented in a single direction and all objectively respond to a unique purpose: to scrutinize the activity of power to prevent abuses” (p. 122; editorial translation). Nevertheless — the author warns—, given the diversity of objects, procedures, and effects, “it is impossible to maintain a single concept of control” (Aragón Reyes, 1994, p.123; editorial translation). Each legal system designs its control system according to its legal tradition, political culture, and social demands. This diversity is expressed both in the subjects who exercise control—constitutional bodies, autonomous entities, the citizenry—and in the objects on which it falls: administrative acts, public policies, financial management, fundamental rights, among others.

Consequently, external control can adopt multiple modalities:

1. political control —Congress over the Executive—,
2. legal or technical control —Comptroller’s Office or other public bodies over the Administration—,
3. jurisdictional control —courts of justice—, and
4. social or citizen control —through mechanisms of transparency, participation, or whistleblowing channels— .

A particularly relevant conceptual framework for understanding this function is that of horizontal accountability. According to O’Donnell, this implies “[…] The existence of state agencies that have legal authority and are factually willing and empowered to undertake actions ranging from routine oversight to criminal sanctions or even impeachment, in relation to acts or omissions by other state agents or agencies that can, in principle or allegedly, be classified as illicit” (O’Donnell, 2004, p. 12; editorial translation).

It is not enough for these bodies to exist formally; it is essential that they have operational capacity and effective will to exercise their oversight function.

In the Chilean case, beyond its historical centralization in the Comptroller’s Office, the function of external control is currently deployed in a diversified set of bodies, whose specialization reflects the growing complexity of the state apparatus. This institutional diversity expresses the expansion of the principle of control to different spheres of public administration, in response to greater citizen demands for transparency and accountability.

The strengthening of these instances also responds to a transformation in the forms of state legitimation. Facing an increasingly critical and informed citizenry, control institutions acquire a leading role in the construction of democratic legitimacy. Their work is not limited to verifying the legality of administrative acts but incorporates substantive dimensions associated with safeguarding the public interest, the efficiency in the use of resources, and the protection of rights. Within this framework, external control ceases to be an accessory procedure and becomes a pillar of institutional balance in complex democratic regimes.

In Chile, this logic has been expressed with particular clarity in the evolution of the Comptroller’s Office (Contraloría), whose function has transcended the accounting and legal spheres to encompass tasks of auditing public policies—without evaluating the aspects of merit or convenience of the decisions—. This functional expansion has been configuring a polycentric control system, where multiple bodies— technical, jurisdictional, political, and citizen-based— converge to oversee the state apparatus from different approaches, thus reinforcing the democratic architecture from a plurality of sources and perspectives.

Ultimately, the external control of the Administration is not only reduced to the correction of specific illegalities. It is a structural function of the rule of law, indispensable for containing arbitrariness, ensuring the legality of administrative action, and reinforcing the bonds of trust between the citizenry and public power.

4. Current structure of external control in the State Administration of Chile

In this section, the aim is not to offer an exhaustive catalog of bodies, but rather to propose a functional reading of the Chilean external control system. The selection criterion is, therefore, polycentric and not merely organic. It considers those bodies that, located outside or inside the hierarchical structure of the State Administration, decisively influence the oversight of its actions, whether through preventive, corrective, or remedial controls. In what follows, the analysis focuses specifically on the control that these bodies exercise over the actions of the State Administration and its various services, and not on the totality of their powers over private subjects; even in those cases where, as occurs with certain superintendencies or other regulatory bodies, their oversight powers also extend to private parties. This perspective allows external control to be understood as a network of horizontal accountability that projects onto different dimensions of the State Administration, rather than as the isolated function of one or a few specialized entities.

Consequently, the design of external control in the State Administration has undergone a significant evolution, in close relation to changes in the configuration of the state apparatus and in the predominant conceptions regarding the exercise of public power. For much of the 20th century, this control was structured around a centralized model, in which the Comptroller’s Office played an almost exclusive role in overseeing the administration (see Jiménez, 2023). This configuration responded to a State with a more limited set of functions and a less complex structure, where concentrating control in a legal-technical body made it possible to ensure the administrative action’s subjection to the principles of public law.

However, the process of State expansion—especially since the second half of the 20th century—brought with it new demands for sectoral oversight and the need for more specialized mechanisms. The increasing state intervention in economic, social, and public service areas evidenced the limitations of a centralized scheme, which was unable to respond effectively, efficiently, and legitimately to an increasingly heterogeneous Administration.

This transformation also responds to a deeper doctrinal evolution, linked to the consolidation of the checks and balances model². In this scheme, the containment of power does not rest solely on the formal division of functions, but also on the existence of horizontal mechanisms of control and counterweight between state bodies, aimed at preventing abuses, correcting deviations, and guaranteeing accountability.

Consequently, the emergence and strengthening of specialized control bodies reflect the progressive internalization of this dynamic equilibrium logic. These institutions not only limit administrative power, but also act as instruments of moderation, correction, and institutional legitimation, by promoting legality, responsibility, and transparency in public management. In this context, external control ceased to be a merely corrective function to become a structural component of the constitutional architecture, indispensable for safeguarding the rule of law and democratic legitimacy.

Thus, the current external control system in Chile— although diverse and diversified—constitutes a functional and articulated framework, in which different actors exercise specific, but convergent, competencies around common principles:

1. oversight of power,
2. protection of the public interest, and
3. strengthening of citizen confidence in institutions.

Although the Comptroller’s Office continues to occupy a central place, the complexity of state action has made the existence of a plurality of oversight bodies, each with particular attributions, indispensable.

In this framework, the Comptroller’s Office fulfills an articulating and referential role. Its rulings, audits, and legal pronouncements constitute a normative standard that, directly or indirectly, guides other State bodies. Its constitutional, functional, and technical autonomy³ has allowed it to consolidate its position as a guarantor of the principle of legality and as an interpretive reference in the Chilean administrative legal system.

However, external control does not rest exclusively with the Comptroller’s Office. Within the framework of a logic of institutional equilibrium, multiple instances of what we call external control have been developed, namely:

4.1. National Congress (El Congreso Nacional)

It is the body that exercises political control over the Executive through a series of constitutional and infra-constitutional mechanisms, making it an essential actor within the external control system. Among these instruments, investigative commissions and interpellations of State Ministers stand out, embodying the most typical forms of parliamentary oversight, as well as the constitutional accusation, regulated as an exceptional mechanism for political-constitutional accountability concerning certain authorities. Its oversight competence is recognized in Article 52 of the Constitution and is expressed with particular intensity in the work of the Chamber of Deputies, conceived as the «oversight chamber».

The interaction between Congress and the Comptroller General’s Office is one of the most relevant examples of inter-institutional coordination in oversight matters, given that the Comptroller General’s Office will be obliged to preferentially exercise its legal powers when there is a complaint or request for investigation founded on an agreement adopted by the Chamber of Deputies (Law No. 10.336, article 1, second paragraph). This provision is directly linked to the exclusive constitutional attribution of said chamber to oversee the acts of the Government and seeks to provide operative effectiveness to this power through the intervention of an autonomous and technical body.

However, in institutional practice, this prerogative has also been extended to agreements adopted by the Senate or individual requests from its members, despite the fact that said chamber does not formally hold the oversight function according to the constitutional text. The Comptroller General’s Office has accepted to process requests from both chambers, consolidating a functional and expansive interpretation of the principle of collaboration between state bodies. This practice reflects how the system of checks and balances in our country unfolds beyond the strict regulatory design, allowing for more extended parliamentary control in response to the growing citizen demands for oversight and accountability.

This dynamic is reinforced by the provisions of the Constitutional Organic Law of the National Congress. Firstly, the duty of public bodies to collaborate with the commissions of Congress is established (Law No. 18.918, article 9 A) and, secondly, the Comptroller General’s Office is empowered to administratively sanction service chiefs who fail to comply with their obligations to report or appear before these instances (Law No. 18.918, article 10). Indeed, the infringement of these duties may be sanctioned, following the instruction of the corresponding administrative procedure, with a fine of up to one monthly remuneration, duplicable in case of recidivism. This legal framework makes the Comptroller General’s Office not only a technical collaborator but also a guarantor of the effectiveness of parliamentary control, by providing the Chamber with indirect instruments of coercion over the Administration.

Therefore, the relationship between Congress and the Comptroller General’s Office is not merely instrumental, but structural: while the former exercises political control based on representation, the latter provides legal, technical, and auditing tools that allow for sustaining said control with evidence and normative foundation. This articulation has given rise to a hybrid oversight model, where the political and the technical combine to respond to current demands for greater integrity in the public function, and constitutes one of the clearest examples of the polycentric nature of external control in Chile.

4.2. The Public Prosecutor’s Office (El Ministerio Público)

In accordance with the Constitution, this is an autonomous body whose main function is to direct the investigation of crimes, exercise criminal action, when appropriate, and protect victims and witnesses. Although its nature is essentially criminal, its action has a direct impact on the oversight of public power, especially regarding the control of legality in the exercise of public functions and the sanctioning of acts constituting corruption.

From a functional perspective, the Public Prosecutor’s Office constitutes a fundamental component of external control, as it is responsible for prosecuting official crimes such as embezzlement of public funds, bribery, fraud against the treasury, influence peddling, incompatible negotiations, or illicit enrichment, among others. These crimes, by definition, compromise legality, probity, and trust in the public apparatus, and their investigation ensures elements of impartiality, objectivity, and rationality in the scrutiny of the actions of public authorities and officials. Within the framework of this work, it is precisely this facet, relating to the criminal prosecution of illicit acts linked to the exercise of public function, that is of interest, and not the set of its powers regarding private individuals.

In this sense, the Public Prosecutor’s Office operates as a relevant actor in the system of horizontal accountability, insofar as it has its own legal powers, institutional independence, and the authority to undertake criminal actions even against public authorities and officials. This constitutional autonomy is a structural element of control, as it guarantees that the investigation of illicit acts in the state sphere does not depend on other public powers.

Furthermore, the intervention of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is often articulated with the actions of other external control bodies, such as the Comptroller General’s Office —which can refer background information from audits or rulings that reveal facts constituting a crime—, the State Defense Council —which acts as a plaintiff representing the fiscal interest— or the National Congress —whose investigative commissions can refer information about eventual illicit acts—. This articulation reinforces the logic of a polycentric oversight system, in which different institutions fulfill differentiated but complementary functions to guarantee the accountability of public agents.

It should be noted that the action of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is not limited to investigations seeking to sanction completed acts. Its mere existence and capacity for action have a dissuasive effect on the behavior of public servants and authorities, operating as a mechanism of preventive control that limits the margin of tolerance for abusive practices or those contrary to legality. Along this line, it has developed specialized units in official crimes, corruption, and money laundering, which allows for a more effective, coordinated, and expert criminal prosecution (see resolution No. 446/2023, of the Public Prosecutor’s Office).

Finally, its role acquires even greater relevance in contexts of citizen distrust toward institutions. The capacity of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate and, eventually, formalize charges against authorities or officials of the State Administration, municipalities, public companies, or law enforcement and public security forces, among others, constitutes a concrete manifestation that state power is subject to the law. This reinforces the legitimacy of the democratic system and demonstrates that the principle of legality (juridicidad) is not merely formal, but translates into operational and effective mechanisms of criminal control over the most serious infractions, complementing — and not substituting— existing administrative and disciplinary controls.

4.3. The Council for Transparency (El Consejo para la Transparencia)

The Council for Transparency has consolidated itself as a relevant institution in the external control ecosystem, by overseeing the compliance with transparency duties by State bodies. Its role unfolds both in active transparency—the obligation to permanently publish relevant information on institutional portals—and in passive transparency, relating to the right of individuals to request and receive public information from any body subject to the law.

Since commencing its operations in 2009, the Council for Transparency has exercised relevant powers such as:

a) ordering the release of information,

b) instructing administrative procedures,

c) requiring background information,

d) formulating recommendations, and

e) imposing sanctions for non-compliance with legal duties.

These powers have positioned it as a legally autonomous oversight body, with effective capacity for inspection and binding resolution in the face of institutional opacity.

In recent years, the Council for Transparency has faced significant regulatory and political challenges, which have driven a reform agenda aimed at strengthening its institutional capacity and adapting its competencies to the digital environment and the growing volume of information requests. Among the recent proposed modifications, the bill amending law n.º 20.285 (see Bulletin 12100-7) stands out, introducing relevant adjustments regarding the sanctioning procedure, access to information held by private legal entities that receive public funds, and transparency standards in autonomous bodies and public enterprises. These reforms respond to the need to expand the scope of the right to access information vis-à-vis new actors and forms of public management that, although not strictly part of the State Administration, perform functions of public interest or manage fiscal resources.

It is worth mentioning that the function of the Council for Transparency extends beyond the punctual delivery of documents. Its administrative jurisprudence has contributed to establishing interpretive criteria on the concept of public information, the legitimate limits to access, the protection of personal data, and the prevalent public interest. Its work has allowed for the creation of a body of norms that guides the conduct of public bodies and provides citizens with concrete tools to exercise their right to know.

Within the framework of the external control system, the Council for Transparency constitutes a paradigmatic expression of the principle of counter-democracy, insofar as it acts as a non-representative body that oversees the State from a position of technical independence, promoting accountability and reducing spaces for opaque discretion. Through its action, citizens can demand information, question administrative decisions, and activate institutional control processes from below, without the need for parliamentary or judicial intermediation.

In this way, the Council for Transparency reconfigures the manner in which external control over the Administration is exercised, shifting part of the emphasis from the ex post review of legality towards informational openness and the permanent justification of administrative decisions before the citizenry.

4.4. The superintendencies (Las superintendencias)

They represent a singular institutional category within the Chilean institutional architecture. Although their origin mainly responds to the needs for technical regulation in specific economic and social sectors, their functional evolution has turned them into relevant actors of external control in the State Administration.

These entities—created by special laws in sectors such as education, health, environment, pensions, or sanitation services—exercise regulatory, supervisory, and sanctioning powers that distinguish them from classic administrative bodies. Through their actions, they monitor compliance with legal and regulatory norms by public, private, or mixed organizations that operate in regulated markets or provide services of high public interest. Insofar as it is relevant to this work, their consideration as part of external control is circumscribed to the scrutiny they exercise over bodies and services of the State Administration, even when their powers also extend to private subjects operating in regulated markets.

Their inclusion within the external control system is not based solely on a formal consideration of organic location—in general, they are attached to ministries—but on functional criteria. As legal scholarship has underscored, this type of authority configures a ‘plural control of substantive object’ that transcends the old scheme centered on the mere accounting or formal review of administrative acts (Pantoja Bauzá, 2005; Obando Camino & Allesch Peñailillo, 2016).

From this perspective, the superintendencies fulfill an external supervisory role, inasmuch as their action is exercised from a technical, differentiated, and non-subordinate position to the controlled entity. They are not limited to an internal hierarchical control, but their capacity for inspection, auditing, issuing instructions and, in certain cases, applying sanctions or revoking licenses, converts them into guarantors of regulatory compliance within their respective scope of competence.

Furthermore, their intervention is projected over public and private actors who often co-execute public functions or manage fiscal resources. This is particularly evident in sectors such as:

a) health —Superintendencia de Salud—, where both Fonasa and the Isapres are supervised;

b) in pensions —Superintendencia de Pensiones—, where they supervise the legality and management of pension funds;

c) or in environment —Superintendencia del Medio Ambiente—, where they act before public bodies with environmental competences and also before private parties subject to evaluation and regulation instruments.

Although they are not constitutionally autonomous bodies like the Comptroller’s Office (Contraloría), nor do they possess the same degree of institutional independence⁴, the superintendencies functionally operate as relevant links of external control. Their supervision is not designed to reinforce the internal management of a ministry, but to supervise legality, efficiency, technical suitability, and the safeguarding of public interest, vis-à-vis state and private actors who exercise significant administrative or economic power.

As an example, this distribution of competences is clearly observed in the relationship between the Comptroller General of the Republic (Contraloría General de la República) and the Superintendency of Social Security (Superintendencia de Seguridad Social). In ruling N.º E487062, of May 13, 2024, the Comptroller’s Office rejects reconsidering a previous ruling and expressly declares that it is not its place to rule on the decisions adopted by the SUSESO in matters comprised within its exclusive competence, reiterating that it is said superintendency which, in the administrative sphere, establishes the interpretation of Law Nº 16.744.

The previous case illustrates to us that the external control of the Administration is not organized around a single hierarchy headed by the Comptroller’s Office, but through a network of autonomous bodies with their own material scopes, which reinforces the polycentric nature of the Chilean model and poses coordination challenges between general legality control and sectoral technical controls.

Finally, their inclusion in the external control system is justified from a modern institutional design perspective. In complex administrative regimes, state legitimacy is no longer sustained solely on classic control bodies, but on networks of specialized supervision that operate in a coordinated, albeit non-hierarchical, manner. The superintendencies are an essential part of this network, as they ensure compliance, promote good regulatory practices, and act as barriers against abuses, inefficiency, or institutional capture.

4.5. The State Defense Council (El Consejo de Defensa del Estado)

It has been traditionally understood as the body responsible for judicially representing the Treasury (fisco) and safeguarding the patrimonial interests of the State. However, its role transcends mere contentious litigation, positioning itself in practice as a relevant actor within the public administration’s external control system, both for its preventive function and for its capacity to activate civil and criminal liabilities derived from the irregular actions of public bodies or officials.

The State Defense Council (Consejo de Defensa del Estado) can be considered a mechanism of horizontal accountability, insofar as its intervention does not depend on the internal hierarchy of the bodies it represents or controls, but on its own legal mandate that allows it to act with technical autonomy against acts or omissions that compromise the fiscal interest. This capacity to act against other public bodies, in defense of the State’s patrimonial interest, places it in an external position relative to the structure of the entity potentially affected.

In this context, its control function unfolds clearly in two dimensions:

1. Prevention and control of the misuse of public resources: The State Defense Council has the power to assess the advisability of initiating legal actions in cases of embezzlement, fraud against the Treasury (fraude al fisco), bribery (cohecho), or other forms of administrative corruption. This function not only involves prosecuting the responsibility of the perpetrators but also establishing institutional conduct criteria regarding legality, probity, and efficiency in the management of public funds.
2. Collaboration with other control bodies: In many situations, the action of the State Defense Council is a consequence of reports issued by the Comptroller General’s Office or investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office. In turn, it can refer background information to these bodies when it detects irregularities that exceed its scope of action. This dynamic of inter-institutional collaboration reinforces the logic of polycentric control, in which each body acts from its specialization, but within a functional network of oversight.

Although the State Defense Council is neither an autonomous constitutional body nor has a statute analogous to that of the Comptroller General’s Office, its legal design allows it to act independently of the bodies it controls or represents, especially when the defense of public resources or compliance with administrative legality is at stake. In contexts of corruption or misuse of public power, the intervention of the State Defense Council contributes to reinforcing citizen trust in institutions by ensuring that irregularities do not go unpunished and that improperly used funds are restituted. Likewise, its mere existence generates a deterrent effect on potential illicit or negligent conduct within the administration, which gives it a preventive function.

Ultimately, the State Defense Council participates in the external control system from a singular position: it exercises ex post control, based on the judicial defense of the fiscal interest, with functional autonomy, the capacity for self-initiative, and powers to take action against excesses, negligence, or illegalities in the State Administration. Its role is not limited to the procedural representation of the State, but constitutes a specific expression of external control materialized in the decision to initiate, sustain, or desist from legal actions and in setting criteria for the prosecution of fiscal damage, contributing to restoring violated legality, recovering resources, and generating incentives for more responsible administrative management.

4.6. The Directorate of Labor (La Dirección del Trabajo)

It is a body dependent on the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, whose main mission consists of ensuring compliance with labor and social security regulations. Although its formal structure corresponds to that of a traditional public service and not to an autonomous body, its external oversight function, especially regarding the State Administration in its capacity as an employer, makes it a relevant piece of the external control system.

Indeed, the Directorate of Labor (Dirección del Trabajo) exercises a specialized and external control over the bodies of the Administration when they hire personnel governed by the Labor Code (Código del Trabajo), as occurs in municipalities, municipal corporations, State-owned enterprises, and certain public entities subject to private law labor regimes. This control encompasses not only the verification of compliance with regulations relating to hiring, working hours, remuneration, and hygiene and safety conditions, but also the protection of fundamental rights at work, such as non-discrimination, freedom of association, and the protection of the physical and psychological integrity of workers.

From a functional perspective, the Directorate of Labor can be understood as an external control body of sectoral legality in the field of administrative labor relations. While it does not oversee the institutional work of public bodies as a whole, it does exercise direct surveillance over a structural aspect of their operation, which is the fulfillment of the labor regulations applicable to public workers subject to the Labor Code. This characterization has also been recognized by the Comptroller General, which has reiterated that, in the case of personnel dependent on municipal corporations, the interpretation and application of labor standards primarily corresponds to the Directorate of Labor, leaving the knowledge of controversies over labor rights and matters inherent to that legislation outside the sphere of competence of the Oversight Institution (Institución Fiscalizadora).

Recent administrative jurisprudence is especially illustrative. In Ruling No. E303942, of 2023, the Comptroller General recalls that municipal corporations are subject to its oversight only regarding the use and destination of their resources, the fulfillment of their purposes, and the regularity of their operations, specifying that such oversight does not include ruling on claims for labor rights, matters which fall within the competence of the Directorate of Labor.

Similarly, in the context of State-owned enterprises, Ruling No. 7,116, of 2018, concerning the State Railway Enterprise (Empresa de los Ferrocarriles del Estado), highlights that, since the incorporation of these companies into collective bargaining processes, the interpretation, oversight, and control of compliance with the labor regulations of their employees is rooted in the Directorate of Labor, which becomes the competent body to resolve interpretive divergences in that matter.

Now then, this primacy of the Directorate of Labor in the interpretation and oversight of labor regulations does not exclude the intervention of the Comptroller General when public resources or principles inherent to administrative law are compromised, such as probity and efficiency in the use of fiscal funds. In particular, this is clearly observed in the field of severance pay for the termination of the employment relationship. Thus, Ruling No. 58,928, of 2011, concludes that it is improper to agree upon “a todo evento” (for any eventuality) severance payments between a municipality and a worker, whatever the cause of termination of the relationship may be, as municipalities are not empowered to agree upon indemnifications other than those established by labor law, which, in these cases, operates as statutory public law regulations that limit the contractual freedom of the public employer.

Along the same lines, Ruling No. E20443, of 2025, determines that a municipal corporation cannot finance, charged to those funds, severance payments agreed upon by mutual consent with workers who decide to resign voluntarily. The Comptroller General underlines that the legislator created a specific benefit and regulated its payment only for certain scenarios of termination of the employment relationship; therefore, it is not legally admissible to extend it to other causes, such as mutual consent, nor to agree upon severance payments that exceed the legal framework, further invoking the principles of administrative probity and efficiency in the management of public resources.

In turn, Ruling No. 2,094, of 2020, referring to the Council for Transparency, offers another example of this interaction. Therein it is established that, when the employer is a body of the State Administration, the imputation to the severance pay for years of service of the contributions made by the employer to the individual unemployment account, provided for in Article 13 of Law No. 19,728, constitutes a legal obligation, and that the Administration cannot waive making said imputation without violating its duty to safeguard fiscal interests. In this case, the Comptroller General departs from the interpretation held by the Directorate of Labor regarding the facultative nature of that imputation and affirms that, in the case of public resources, the authority is obliged to exercise it.

These precedents show that the relationship between the Directorate of Labor and the Comptroller General is not one of substitution, but of complementarity and delimitation of competences. The Directorate of Labor exercises specialized external control over public sector labor relations governed by the Labor Code, with the exclusive power to interpret and oversee compliance with labor regulations. The Comptroller General, for its part, intervenes to ensure that the exercise of those regulations remains within the margins imposed by the public law order, particularly regarding the use of fiscal resources, the configuration of severance benefits, and respect for the principles of probity and legality.

In synthesis, the Directorate of Labor is inserted into the external control system as a sectoral body for the protection of labor legality in the administrative sphere, while the Comptroller General maintains a transversal control over the correctness of spending and the observance of statutory limits. The result is a polycentric control scheme in which decisions regarding the labor relations of the State Administration are subject to both the technical-sectoral oversight of the Directorate of Labor and the legality and probity scrutiny of the Comptroller General, preventing the application of labor regulations from serving as a basis for generating undue benefits or an inefficient use of public resources.

4.7. El Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos y la Defensoría de la Niñez

The National Institute of Human Rights (Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos) and the Office of the Children’s Ombudsman (Defensoría de la Niñez) constitute two autonomous bodies with statutory rank, whose essential function consists of ensuring respect for and the guarantee of fundamental rights, acting as a technical and institutional counterweight to the exercise of public power. Although they are not part of the traditional administrative control system, nor do they exercise hierarchical, sanctioning, or jurisdictional powers, their work falls squarely within the framework of external control, understood in a functional and democratic sense, centered on the surveillance of legality, respect for human rights, and the limitation of state power.

From this perspective, the National Institute of Human Rights and the Office of the Children’s Ombudsman must be understood as part of a control subsystem based on rights standards, which operates outside the Executive’s hierarchical structure, with functional autonomy and through predominantly “soft” instruments—reports, recommendations, judicial actions, and public pronouncements—whose legal, political, and social consequences compel authorities to justify, correct, or reverse actions that affect the exercise of fundamental rights.

4.7.1. The National Institute of Human Rights

The National Institute of Human Rights (Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos) has the mandate to promote and protect the human rights enshrined in the Constitution and in international treaties ratified by Chile. Its autonomy is recognized by law, and it possesses specific powers to observe and evaluate the conduct of State organs in human rights matters. Its functions include:

a) The preparation of annual reports on the situation of human rights,

b) The issuance of recommendations,

c) The oversight of prison and police conditions, and

d) The filing of judicial actions—such as recursos de protección (constitutional injunctions) or criminal complaints—in defense of individuals or groups whose rights have been violated by the actions of state agents.

In functional terms, the National Institute of Human Rights fulfills a role of normative and ethical control over the state apparatus. It does not oversee administrative legality in a strict sense, but rather the conformity of public action with the standards emanating from the protection of human rights. Its oversight is exercised from a transversal perspective, applicable to any authority or public entity, with special attention to the protection of vulnerable groups. Along these lines, it has been particularly active in contexts of social protest, institutional violence, structural discrimination, and the excessive use of force by state agents.

From the prism of external control, the National Institute of Human Rights operates as a transversal supervisory body that introduces into the public agenda a rights-based reading of administrative action, influencing policies as well as judicial interpretation and the work of other control bodies. Its annual and special reports are utilized by Congress in legislative debate, by the courts in resolving cases, and by agencies such as the Comptroller General or the Public Prosecutor’s Office as inputs to define audit plans or lines of investigation; thus, its role transcends mere denunciation and is integrated into the polycentric oversight network of the State Administration.

4.7.2. The Office of the Children’s Ombudsman

The Office of the Children’s Ombudsman (La Defensoría de la Niñez) acts as a statutory autonomous body, specialized in the promotion and protection of the rights of minors. Its creation addresses the need to strengthen the institutional mechanisms for guaranteeing children’s rights, in accordance with the commitments undertaken by Chile under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Said body, therefore, oversees, evaluates, and formulates recommendations regarding public policies, administrative acts, and state omissions that may affect the rights of minors. It may also intervene in judicial proceedings as a third-party intervenor (tercero coadyuvante) and possesses powers to request information from public agencies. Although it lacks sanctioning powers, its capacity to make visible harmful or negligent practices by State organs allows it to influence institutional design and the correction of administrative conduct contrary to the best interests of the child.

In terms of external control, the Office of the Children’s Ombudsman exercises thematic surveillance over the actions of the State Administration in fields as diverse as protection, education, health, juvenile justice, or care policies, introducing the standard of the best interests of the child as a parameter for evaluating the legality and legitimacy of public decisions. Its reports and recommendations feed into the work of investigative commissions, legal reform processes, and judicial rulings, and have contributed to making visible structural practices of rights violations that classical mechanisms of administrative control failed to capture, which reinforces its status as a specific link within the polycentric framework of external control.

4.8. The Financial Analysis Unit (La Unidad de Análisis Financiero)

The Financial Analysis Unit (Unidad de Análisis Financiero) is a public body dependent on the Ministry of Finance, created by Law No. 19,913, whose mandate consists of preventing and impeding the use of the financial system and other economic sectors for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing. Although formally attached to a ministry and lacking constitutional or statutory autonomy, its technical design, its independent oversight capacity, and its critical function in protecting the integrity of the state apparatus place it as a functional component of external control within the State Administration, especially regarding operations involving public bodies or fiscal resources.

The Financial Analysis Unit operates in a highly specialized and sensitive field, centered on the collection, analysis, and processing of financial information from “obligated entities” (sujetos obligados), both public and private, that could be directly or indirectly linked to suspicious operations. These entities include banking institutions, brokerages, exchange houses, notaries, casinos, real estate companies, and also public entities that manage or oversee public funds.

Although it does not investigate crimes or impose sanctions directly, the Financial Analysis Unit fulfills an essential role in the prevention and early detection of illicit conduct by analyzing “suspicious transaction reports” (reportes de operaciones sospechosas) and cash transactions above regulatory thresholds. Once sufficient evidence is detected, it refers the findings to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, contributing to the initiation of criminal investigations for offenses such as money laundering, tax fraud (fraude al fisco), bribery, or illicit enrichment.

In this sense, the Financial Analysis Unit acts as a financial intelligence body with ex ante control powers, oriented toward protecting the economic and financial system from the misuse of illicit resources, including those originating from the public Administration. Its work has become especially relevant in the face of administrative corruption, where practices such as price gouging, sham contracts, or fraudulent awards seek to legitimize themselves through sophisticated financial mechanisms.

From the standpoint of the horizontal accountability system, the Financial Analysis Unit fulfills a preventive and technical function with high added value in terms of oversight. While it does not act directly upon the legality of administrative acts, it does influence the transparency and traceability of economic operations linked to the State, especially in cases where officials or politically exposed persons (PEPs) are involved.

Furthermore, its capacity to demand information from obligated entities, order preventive measures, instruct improvements in prevention systems, and generate early warnings in coordination with national and international bodies positions it as a strategic piece of the national integrity system.

It should be noted that its action is often invisible to the general public, but it is decisive in creating conditions for systemic control over the risk of corruption, embezzlement, and the undue capture of public resources, especially in areas where administrative power and significant fund volumes converge, such as public procurement, service contracts, subsidies, or social programs.

In summary, from the perspective of this work, the relevance of the UAF within the external control system lies in the fact that it introduces an oversight logic based on the monitoring of economic flows and risk patterns, rather than on the direct review of administrative acts. Its action does not substitute for the Comptroller General or the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but complements them by providing strategic information on the circulation and potential “money laundering” of public resources linked to the Administration. In this way, the UAF is integrated into the polycentric framework of external control as a specialized node in financial integrity, without which it would be difficult to detect and confront sophisticated forms of corruption and embezzlement hidden behind seemingly neutral market operations.

4.9. The Judiciary

Lastly, while not being part of the State Administration, but no less relevant for the control of its actions, is the Judiciary. It constitutes, without a doubt, one of the pillars of external control over the State Administration. Through the exercise of the jurisdictional function, the courts of justice review the legality and constitutionality of administrative acts, resolve controversies between the Administration and private individuals, and guarantee respect for fundamental rights in the face of public power. Its role is essential within a broad conception of accountability, as it acts with independence, ex post, and from outside the hierarchical structure of the active Administration. In the Chilean case, this function is expressed primarily through the recurso de protección (writ of protection), the various special administrative litigation actions provided for in sectoral laws, and actions for State liability due to a “lack of service” (falta de servicio), which allow administrative actions to be subjected to the scrutiny of the courts of justice.

Various authors have recognized this judicial function as a substantive manifestation of external control. For example, Letelier Wartenberg (2015) underscores that jurisdictional control represents a structural guarantee of the rule of law, by allowing every administrative decision to be susceptible to review by an independent judge. Along the same line, Aragón Reyes (1994) points out that the possibility of submitting administrative acts to judicial control constitutes a concrete manifestation of the subjection of power to the law.

This type of control possesses an essentially reparative and protective nature (garantista), as it allows for the restoration of the rule of law and protects the citizen against abusive, irregular, or disproportionate acts. Its purpose is not the planning or direction of public policy, but rather the correction of its excesses or deviations, through the principle of legality and respect for the rights enshrined in the Constitution and international treaties.

In doctrinal terms, judicial control over the Administration has been described as an essential component of the principle of juridicity, insofar as it prevents the Administration from placing itself above the law or outside the scope of institutional scrutiny. As Jiménez Asensio (2016) argues, the courts operate as guarantors of the juridicity of administrative power by offering an effective means to challenge decisions based on abusive or erroneous interpretations of the legal system.

From a comparative perspective, jurisdictional control has also emerged as a safeguard against administrative capture, institutional opacity, and the infringement of rights by public agencies endowed with broad margins of discretion. Therefore, the consolidation of this function not only strengthens legality but also reinforces the democratic legitimacy of the State’s actions.

4.10. General observations on the actions of the aforementioned external control entities

These bodies, members of the external control framework that we have presented, do not constitute an exhaustive list. In the future and depending on their capacities, other entities could be incorporated, such as the Data Protection Agency (Agencia de Protección de Datos) (see Law No. 21,719, which enters into force on December 1, 2026) or the implementation of the new powers granted to the Public Procurement and Contracting Directorate (Dirección de Compras y Contratación Pública) (see Law No. 21,634).

In summary, the institutional evolution of the state apparatus, the diversification of its functions, and the increasing complexity of democratic standards demand a conceptual reformulation of the external control of the State Administration. For decades, this control has been strongly identified with the Comptroller General, which has consolidated a technical-legal vision centered on the oversight of legality as the guiding axis of the model.

Without prejudice to the structuring and referential role that the Comptroller General continues to exercise, this traditional vision is now insufficient to understand the totality of mechanisms and dynamics that operate in the control of administrative action. In the current context, characterized by a more demanding citizenship, an expansion of the State, and new institutional risks—such as corruption, opacity, or regulatory capture—external control can no longer be limited to the ex post verification of regulatory compliance.

Today, a broader, polycentric, and substantive conception of external control is necessary, one that recognizes the existence of multiple bodies—some autonomous, others sectoral or functional—that oversee the Administration from various dimensions: political, jurisdictional, ethical, labor, financial, environmental, or human rights, among other matters. This network of institutions is not limited only to overseeing or sanctioning the violation of regulations when they possess such powers, but also prevents, guides, corrects, and restores the actions of the State Administration when it departs from the principles of transparency, probity, legality, and good administration, among others.

In this new paradigm, external control not only guarantees the legality of administrative acts but also their democratic legitimacy. It is not merely a matter of monitoring whether the Administration acts within the framework of the law, but also of ensuring that it does so in accordance with constitutional principles and the ethical standards that structure the relationship between power and citizenship in a modern rule of law.

Updating the notion of external control implies, therefore, recognizing its institutional plurality, its functional expansion, and its anchoring in substantive principles that go beyond formal regulatory compliance. It involves assuming that the oversight of public power requires complementary approaches, independent mechanisms, dialogue between bodies, and a systemic view that privileges effectiveness in the protection of the public interest, citizen trust, and democracy.

From the perspective adopted in this work, the set of described bodies allows us to verify that the external control of the State Administration in Chile can no longer be understood as a function concentrated in a single entity, but as a polycentric network of actors with differentiated mandates, intensities, and oversight tools. This empirical finding reinforces the need to abandon a strictly organic conception of control and move toward a functional reading, giving relevance to the areas of overlap, coordination gaps, and power asymmetries among the various bodies that integrate this network.

5. Current challenges of external control in the State Administration

As evidenced above, the system of external control of the State Administration has undergone a significant evolution, shifting from a centralized scheme to a diversified and polycentric structure. Nevertheless, this functional and institutional expansion also raises challenges that must be addressed to ensure a more effective, coherent, and democratically legitimate oversight. In particular, the current configuration strains three interrelated dimensions: inter-institutional coordination (to avoid overlaps and gaps), the standards for the reasoning of control decisions (to ensure predictability and rationality), and the evaluation of results (to verify the actual impact of control, beyond its formal activity).

First, one of the main challenges facing the Chilean external control system is related to inter-institutional coordination. The coexistence of multiple bodies with oversight and dispute resolution powers, such as the Comptroller General (Contraloría), the National Congress, the Council for Transparency (Consejo para la Transparencia), the superintendencies, the courts of justice, among others, naturally generates areas of overlap, control gaps, or superpositions of actions.

These overlaps occur when different bodies oversee the same administrative action from different perspectives, without clear mechanisms for articulation. For example, a public procurement act may be subject to review by:

a) the Comptroller General —regarding its formal and substantive legality—,

b) the Council for Transparency —regarding compliance with access to information obligations in the bidding process—,

c) the Public Prosecutor’s Office —in case of indications of corruption, fraud, or official misconduct—, and

d) the Court of Public Procurement —concerning controversies related to the legality of the procurement procedure or illegal acts or omissions during the execution of administrative contracts—⁵.

Without adequate coordination, such parallel reviews result in duplication of efforts, inconsistencies in the applied criteria, or even conflicts of competence, all of which weaken the overall effectiveness of the external control system.

Control gaps, on the other hand, manifest when certain areas of public action, especially those of a transversal nature or involving multiple agencies, are not clearly or effectively overseen.

These gaps arise, for example, in matters where control responsibility is not clearly defined⁶ or where multiple bodies share partial competences without a lead entity effectively assuming oversight. The problem intensifies in areas such as the contracting of integrated public services, the execution of public-private partnerships, inter-ministerial programs, or the implementation of public policies with an inter-sectoral approach, where traditional institutional boundaries tend to blur. In these contexts, the lack of a defined attribution in external oversight allows critical situations to remain without sufficient supervision or to be diluted in shared responsibility.

In these cases, each agency tends to oversee only its own scope of competence, without assuming a global view of the entire administrative phenomenon, which creates spaces where state action falls partially or totally outside the reach of systematic and effective control. Thus, while a superintendency may control technical aspects of a policy and the Comptroller General the formal execution of the resources involved, no body necessarily assumes the comprehensive evaluation of the public purpose, coordination between agencies, or the actual effectiveness of state action as a whole.

This phenomenon can lead to the existence of areas of opacity, in which accountability is reduced and the guarantee of respect for the principles of legality, efficiency, administrative responsibility, and coordination, among others, is weakened. Indeed, the principle of coordination requires that State bodies, even when acting with autonomy, exercise their powers in a harmonic and complementary manner, avoiding contradictions, omissions, or overlaps that harm the public interest. The absence of effective mechanisms for institutional articulation in the face of complex administrative actions not only weakens the effectiveness of control mechanisms but also compromises citizen perception regarding the efficiency and legitimacy of the State Administration.

Furthermore, control gaps open spaces for inefficiency, excessive discretion, or, in the worst-case scenario, for corruption. Therefore, one of the main challenges of the external control system is to timely identify these risk zones and design mechanisms that allow for a clear attribution of oversight responsibility, whether through preferential competence rules, inter-institutional referral protocols, or permanent coordination instances that ensure that no relevant area of public action remains outside the reach of control and accountability mechanisms.

The absence of formal coordination instruments can also generate interpretive contradictions between oversight bodies. Thus, a certain administrative action could be considered lawful by a technical body and, simultaneously, be subject to objections or reproaches by another control entity, generating uncertainty for both the Administration and the affected citizens.

All of this directly affects the overall effectiveness of the external control system. The dispersion of efforts, the lack of common priorities, the existence of dissimilar interpretations, or fragmented oversight weaken the system’s capacity to fulfill its essential functions: detecting irregularities, correcting deviations, sanctioning responsibilities, and preventing future violations of the legal order and the principles of the public service.

Overcoming this challenge does not involve suppressing the diversity of bodies —which is an expression of the necessary specialization in a complex State— but rather designing functional articulation mechanisms that respect the autonomy of each entity, while allowing for information sharing, case referral, establishing common priorities, and optimizing the use of institutional resources in oversight tasks.

In summary, the current challenge of external control is not to control more, but to control better: coordinating the polycentric architecture to avoid duplicities and gaps; raising standards of reasoning (motivación) that reinforce the rationality, transparency, and predictability of decisions; and measuring results to orient institutional capacities toward verifiable impacts on integrity, juridicity, and accountability. These three axes also allow for the operational translation of the need to abandon a strictly organic conception of control, moving toward a functional and systemic reading of the phenomenon.

6. Final reflections

This article aimed to respond to a specific problem: the insufficiency of a traditional understanding of external control centered almost exclusively on the Comptroller General of the Republic (Contraloría General de la República), within an institutional context in which multiple bodies exercise oversight over the Administration. Through a legal-dogmatic approach and documentary analysis, the objective was to offer an updated synthesis of the polycentric design of external control in Chile and, on that basis, visualize the problems that are accentuated within this logic.

Consequently, external control within the State Administration can no longer be understood as a function circumscribed to formal legality nor as an exclusive power of the Comptroller General. Normative, institutional, and doctrinal evolution has shaped a more diverse architecture, in which multiple bodies—jurisdictional, technical, political, social, and ethical—contribute to overseeing the exercise of public power through complementary approaches. This polycentric model reflects not only the complexity of contemporary state management but also the demands of a more informed and vigilant citizenry.

However, this functional expansion of external control entails tensions that must be addressed systematically. The overlapping of competences, oversight gaps, the lack of articulation between bodies, and the dispersion of interpretive criteria affect the system’s effectiveness and its legitimacy before the citizenry. Rather than a single structural reform, what is required is a coordinated strengthening strategy that combines normative clarity, institutional interoperability, and common standards of public integrity. The objective should not be to recentralize, but rather to optimize the capabilities of the whole under shared principles.

In this scenario, rethinking external control is not merely a technical necessity, but a democratic requirement. Ensuring that the Administration acts in accordance with the law, accounts for its performance, and respects the principles that legitimize it are essential conditions for sustaining a reliable rule of law. The current challenge lies not only in controlling the legality of acts but in ensuring that public power is exercised with accountability, transparency, and an orientation toward the general interest.

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Funding: This article has not received any funding associated with the public, commercial, or non-profit sectors.

Conflict of interest: The author declares no conflict of interest in the preparation of this article.

Contribution declaration based on the CRediT taxonomy: The author declares their contributions to this research article, using the CRediT taxonomy: Conceptualization: (100%); Formal analysis: (100%); Investigation: (100%); Writing - original draft: (100%); Writing - review & editing: (100%).

Use of AI: The author declares that no artificial intelligence tools were used in any phase of the manuscript preparation.

Notes

^1By functional autonomy, we must understand that it possesses an exclusive competence and public function, defined by the Constitution or its organic law, which it exercises independently from other state organs.

²Checks and balances are the mechanisms which distribute power throughout a political stem—preventing any one institution or individual from exercising total control. The words ‘checks’ and ‘balances’ are typically used together, but can be thought of as referring to subtly different (though overlapping) things. Checks are the mechanisms which allow political institutions to limit one another’s power—for example by blocking, delaying or simply criticising decisions. Balances, meanwhile, ensure that a wide variety of views and interests are represented in the democratic process. This includes structures like federalism, or broader features of democratic functioning such as the existence of multiple political parties ((The Constitution Unit, 2023).

³The autonomy to which the Constitution refers is of an administrative nature. Administrative autonomy implies the existence of organs that are part of the State administration, but whose relationship with the central power or the highest governing authorities is tenuous or almost non-existent, thereby allowing them to act independently when making their own decisions

⁴As mentioned by Muñoz, Reyes, and Guzmán (2024, p. 11): Regarding the lack of independence, it is argued that Superintendencies in Chile do not differ from the common organizational structure of other State Administration bodies. They are organizations with a single-person top leadership, subject to the common legal statute of all public services, with an appointment system by the President of the Republic based on ‘exclusive confidence’ (at-will appointment), lacking budgetary independence from the current Government, and further subject to the President’s oversight through a specific Ministry. They have even been labeled as ‘falsely autonomous’ administrative authorities. Thus, the necessary independence that operates in regulatory agencies in comparative law does not exist in our country.

⁵The jurisdictional powers of the Public Procurement Courts (Tribunales de Contratación Pública) were expanded by Law No. 21,634, enabling them to also hear cases regarding illegal or arbitrary acts or omissions occurring during procurement procedures and the execution of administrative contracts.

⁶Two illustrative examples of control gaps in Chile can be observed in the cases of the National Copper Corporation (Codelco) and National Television of Chile (TVN). In the former, Codelco has maintained on several occasions that, due to its status as a state-owned enterprise (empresa estatal) with unique characteristics, it is not subject to the same level of oversight by the Comptroller General (Contraloría). In the case of TVN, although it is also a state-owned enterprise, its particular institutional design—which includes a board of directors and editorial autonomy—has generated doubts regarding the scope of financial and management oversight.