Sofia Donoso | Universidad de Chile (original) (raw)
Articles by Sofia Donoso
World Development, 2023
Scholars have long sought to establish the strategies through which social movements can impact p... more Scholars have long sought to establish the strategies through which social movements can impact policy adoption. Yet, there is little evidence on the role they may play in policy expansion. We study the role of social movements in broadening the scope of social policies by analyzing whether Chile’s student movement impacted the expansion of the free college tuition policy between 2015 and 2020. We evaluate three mechanisms to assess the student movement’s influence on free tuition expansion. First, movements may use protests to affect the expansion process through disruption. Second, they can make use of their connections with and presence in parties and the bureaucracy to channel their demands and influence decision-making instances. Finally, movements may also try to shape public opinion to affect the scope of the policy through mobilizations and other forms of influence. We use a process tracing design to examine these mechanisms. We collect and analyze evidence from 32 elite interviews, congressional and administrative records, web scraped news, and public opinion and protest event data. Our results show that students influenced the implementation and expansion of the free tuition policy through all mechanisms using different strategies. First, students used protests to set free tuition in the public agenda. Second, and the most important strategy, by means of connections with incumbent parties and the presence of former student activists in the Education Ministry and in Congress, they indirectly influenced policy expansion. Finally, and indirectly, they shaped public opinion in favor of free tuition. Students played a role in defining the pace and scope of the policy but could not imprint all their demands. Overall, our analysis sheds light over the ways in which social movement can influence the implementation of policies, thus, expanding the scope of equity-enhancing social policies in Latin America and beyond.
en D.A. Snow, D. della Porta, D. McAdam, y B. Klandermans (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (Nueva York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.). , 2022
Starting in the early 2000s, Chile experienced a series of protest waves spearheaded by high scho... more Starting in the early 2000s, Chile experienced a series of protest waves spearheaded by high school and university students, environmentalists, feminist activists, indigenous groups, and workers among others (Donoso and von Bülow 2017). In contrast to previous years, the massive protests staged across the country in 2019 were not led by one social movement organization, but by thousands of seemingly unconnected ordinary citizens. Beginning on 18 October, protests by high school students, originally triggered by a rise in the cost of metro fares, evolved into the largest and most sustained protest wave the country had seen since the end of the dictatorship in 1989. Only the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit Chile in mid-March 2020, eased the pace of the "social uprising" (estallido social), as it was called in public discussions. A protest event analysis based on almost 20 national and regional media sources demonstrates the intensity and features of the 2019 protests (Somma et al. 2020). Compared to the previous decade and a half, there were nine times more protest events in the 2019 uprising alone. Protestors resorted to all kinds of tactics, including marches, demonstrations, seizing squares, and destroying property. Violent tactics were comparatively more prevalent than in previous years, with a predominance of actions against public and private property, looting stores and supermarkets, setting objects on fire, and burning cars and buildings. Nevertheless, the uprising also resulted in the largest demonstration in Chile's history on 25 October, in which an estimated 1.2 million people-about 15 percent of the national population-peacefully took to the streets in Santiago, the national capital, and other major cities. The 2019 protests brought changes in the relative salience of protest demands. While labor and educational demands had dominated the Chilean protest landscape since the early 2000s, these two became less common during the uprising. Instead, one of the most common rallying cries was "dignity," with a wide range of other demands emphasized, such as better housing, health services, and pensions, ending violence against women, and a new Constitution. These claims were deeply rooted in the socioeconomic exclusion of popular sectors. While usually over 90 percent of Chile's protests tended to voice clear demands, this plummeted to 25 percent during the uprising, a telling sign of its disorganized nature. The Social Unity Table (Mesa de Unidad Social), an umbrella organization composed of worker, student, and pensioner organizations, tried to gain recognition as representing the mobilized masses, but the Mesa was outpaced by the overwhelming and disparate demands of the larger protest movement. While it is difficult to explain the exact timing of the uprising, long-term factors include socioeconomic inequalities, a rigid political system, a growing discontent with the country's political and economic elites, and better mobilizing infrastructures (Somma et al. 2021). In the 1970s, Chile became a "neoliberal laboratory" when dictator Augusto Pinochet liberalized the labor market, retrenched social services, and opened the economy to greater foreign trade and investments. After democracy was regained, living conditions improved and the
Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior, 2022
Journal of Politics in Latin America, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic started in Chile as the country was experiencing massive protests and a dee... more The COVID-19 pandemic started in Chile as the country was experiencing massive protests and a deep political crisis. Sanitary measures restricting movement and gatherings were implemented while the process of constitutional change responding to this crisis developed. In this context of conflict, we study why people continued participating in street protests despite the restrictions and the health risks involved. Using two surveys, we test key factors addressed in extant scholarship: biographical availability, perceived risks, and grievances. We find that grievances related to the pandemic were the most important factor, while biographical availability was much less relevant in the pandemic context. There is no evidence that perceived health risks mattered when deciding whether to join a street protest or not. These results suggest that under conditions of political crisis, grievances related to the administration of the pandemic can motivate political participation even when the latter put people's health at risk.
Este artículo analiza las emociones durante la participación en el movimiento por la igualdad de ... more Este artículo analiza las emociones durante la participación en el movimiento por la igualdad de derechos de Lesbianas, Gays, Bisexuales, personas Transgénero, Intersexuales y Queer (LGTBIQ) en Argentina y Chile. En base a encuestas aplicadas in situ en su principal marcha anual, buscamos contribuir a la literatura sobre movimientos sociales especificando la relación entre emociones y acción colectiva. Demostramos que las emociones no se distribuyen aleatoriamente entre los manifestantes, sino que son moldeadas por características individuales y nacionales. Entre los manifestantes con mayor compromiso activista y mayor movilización cognitiva encontramos las emociones negativas más intensas.
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2020
Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters' attachment to inst... more Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters' attachment to institutional politics, defined as their emotional and attitudinal connection with the political system. We show that Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators are on average more attached to institutional politics than Chilean ones. This can be explained neither by differences between Argentines and Chileans in general, nor by demonstrators' individual characteristics. Instead, expanding the political process model, we argue that achieving a substantial part of the LGBTIQ agenda in Argentina, and limited success in Chile, contributed to build a stronger attachment to the political system among Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators than their Chilean counterparts.
Journal of Latin American Studies, 2013
Focusing on the first large-scale protests in Chile after the reinstatement of democracy in 1990,... more Focusing on the first large-scale protests in Chile after the reinstatement of democracy in 1990, this article examines the emergence of the 2006 Pingüino movement and shows how it succeeded in mobilising thousands of secondary school students against the neoliberal education model. It argues that several distinct but intertwined dimensions explain the movement's emergence. In 2006, secondary school student groups merged to form a single organisation and adopted a horizontal and participatory decision-making mechanism. At the same time, shortcomings in the education reforms of the 1980s and 1990s were revealed in terms of quality and equity, creating grievances that were fed into the movement's collective action frame. Finally, President Bachelet's rhetoric of a ‘government of citizens’ as an attempt to counteract the elitist nature of the Concertación's governance formula signified an opening of the structure of political opportunities that the students knew to take advantage of.
Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change, 2016
When do social movements constitute a democratising force? Going beyond a procedural concept of d... more When do social movements constitute a democratising force? Going beyond a procedural concept of democracy, in this article I stress the importance of the equality involved in the process of making collective decisions. In line with debates on deliberative and participatory democracy, I argue that social movements can be considered to be promoting democratisation when they are able to compel governments to increase effective participation in the policy-making process, and/or when their democratic claims are translated into public policy. Attaining agenda and/or policy impact showcases that a social movement has increased the responsiveness of the government it is challenging. Based on this premise, in this article I trace the political impact of the Student Movement in Chile. Spearheading the largest protests since the reinstatement of democracy, in 2006, and most notably, in 2011, the Student Movement forced a debate on education and political reforms, and a series of policies to address the issues at stake. The analysis is grounded on more than 50 interviews, and an exhaustive analysis of organisational documents and newspaper data. The case examined in this article illustrates how the expansion of political opportunities that is necessary for pursuing democratising reforms not only is driven " from above " , but also " from below ". Studying this process, social movement scholarship can learn a great deal from recent cases of social mobilisation in Latin America. These experiences also call for more attention to the role of social movements in democratisation studies.
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2020
Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters´ attachment to inst... more Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters´ attachment to institutional politics, defined as their emotional and attitudinal connection with the political system. We show that Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators are on average more attached to institutional politics than Chilean ones. This can be explained neither by differences between Argentines and Chileans in general, nor by demonstrators´ individual characteristics. Instead, expanding the political process model, we argue that achieving a substantial part of the LGBTIQ agenda in Argentina, and limited success in Chile, contributed to build a stronger attachment to the political system among Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators than their Chilean counterparts.
Books by Sofia Donoso
Book chapters by Sofia Donoso
en della Porta, D., Cini L. y Guzmán-Concha, C. (eds.) Student movements in late neoliberalism. Dynamics of contention and their consequences. Londres: Palgrave McMillan, 2021
In democratic regimes, governance encompasses the institutional mediation between government and ... more In democratic regimes, governance encompasses the institutional mediation between government and non-govermental forces through which interests are represented, and social and political inclusion is secured and sustained in accordance with the rule of law. When governance is in place, then, governments are able to exert effective and accountable public authority. Yet, this is not set in stone; governance is produced through an interactive process in which actors' interests are constantly redefined. Social movements play an important role in this redefinition. Hence, one cannot understand how governance is generated and upheld without analysing the role played by social movements in this process. A cursory review of South America's recent history shows numerous examples of social movements articulating grievances, exerting pressure on the political authorities to address their demands, andwhen not hearddisputing power on the electoral arena on their own or in alliance with other political forces. In 2001, the world witnessed how massive uprisings in Argentinaspearheaded by the Piqueterosdemanded Que se vayan todos! and forced the resignation of five presidents in one week. Since the early 2000s, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), a political party that emerged from the Cocalero movement under the leadership of Evo Morales, has dominated politics in Bolivia. The student movement in Chile, in turn, has put into question the political consensus in place since the return of democracy, and influenced the last years' policy agenda in significant ways. Lastly, recent protests in Brazil, both supporting former President Dilma Rouseff from the Workers' Party and calling for her impeachment, shacked the country with important implications for governance. These are only a few examples of how social movements have driven the restructuring of state-civil society relations in contemporary South America. There are many more. In a region where political and socio-economic exclusion has been persistent throughout history, pressure "from below" has put into question both the content and the 2 procedures of the region's predominant political and development models. Since the early 2000s, especially, social movements have articulated old and new demands, and by doing so, altered the terms through which governance is maintained and shaped democratisation in fundamental ways.
In 2007, contract workers of CODELCO, Chile’s main copper-extracting company, staged a 37 day-lon... more In 2007, contract workers of CODELCO, Chile’s main copper-extracting company, staged a 37 day-long strike. The Contract Workers’ Movement, the most important labour unrest since the reinstatement of democracy in 1990, was the result of years of previous organising. In this chapter, Donoso analyses the rise of this movement and its claims for more equal labour rights. Particular emphasis is put on the links between the neoliberal transformation of the labour market, and the movement’s articulation of the resulting grievances. Donoso shows that while the Contract Workers’ Movement succeeded in constructing a collective action frame that both resonated with public opinion and challenged CODELCO, it also unearthed resistance from other key actors of the labour field. Ultimately, this restricted the movement’s agenda impact and the prospects of advancing labour justice in Chile.
Working papers by Sofia Donoso
En esta entrevista Sidney Tarrow describe el recorrido intelectual que ha realizado a lo largo de... more En esta entrevista Sidney Tarrow describe el recorrido intelectual que ha realizado a lo largo de su carrera académica. En particular, reflexiona sobre cómo fue cambiando su mirada analítica desde enfoques estructuralistas a un fuerte énfasis sobre los procesos e interacciones que constituyen las olas de protesta. Asimismo, se abordan las fortalezas y debilidades de los distintos cuerpos teóricos disponibles actualmente para el análisis de los movimientos sociales. Por último, Tarrow se refiere al auge de la movilización social reciente en Chile y en el resto del mundo y cómo este proceso desafía a los estudiosos de los movimientos sociales a repensar las herramientas teóricas a partir de las cuales explicamos este fenómeno.
Book Reviews by Sofia Donoso
Interviews by Sofia Donoso
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1DEIxZTpuI
World Development, 2023
Scholars have long sought to establish the strategies through which social movements can impact p... more Scholars have long sought to establish the strategies through which social movements can impact policy adoption. Yet, there is little evidence on the role they may play in policy expansion. We study the role of social movements in broadening the scope of social policies by analyzing whether Chile’s student movement impacted the expansion of the free college tuition policy between 2015 and 2020. We evaluate three mechanisms to assess the student movement’s influence on free tuition expansion. First, movements may use protests to affect the expansion process through disruption. Second, they can make use of their connections with and presence in parties and the bureaucracy to channel their demands and influence decision-making instances. Finally, movements may also try to shape public opinion to affect the scope of the policy through mobilizations and other forms of influence. We use a process tracing design to examine these mechanisms. We collect and analyze evidence from 32 elite interviews, congressional and administrative records, web scraped news, and public opinion and protest event data. Our results show that students influenced the implementation and expansion of the free tuition policy through all mechanisms using different strategies. First, students used protests to set free tuition in the public agenda. Second, and the most important strategy, by means of connections with incumbent parties and the presence of former student activists in the Education Ministry and in Congress, they indirectly influenced policy expansion. Finally, and indirectly, they shaped public opinion in favor of free tuition. Students played a role in defining the pace and scope of the policy but could not imprint all their demands. Overall, our analysis sheds light over the ways in which social movement can influence the implementation of policies, thus, expanding the scope of equity-enhancing social policies in Latin America and beyond.
en D.A. Snow, D. della Porta, D. McAdam, y B. Klandermans (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (Nueva York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.). , 2022
Starting in the early 2000s, Chile experienced a series of protest waves spearheaded by high scho... more Starting in the early 2000s, Chile experienced a series of protest waves spearheaded by high school and university students, environmentalists, feminist activists, indigenous groups, and workers among others (Donoso and von Bülow 2017). In contrast to previous years, the massive protests staged across the country in 2019 were not led by one social movement organization, but by thousands of seemingly unconnected ordinary citizens. Beginning on 18 October, protests by high school students, originally triggered by a rise in the cost of metro fares, evolved into the largest and most sustained protest wave the country had seen since the end of the dictatorship in 1989. Only the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit Chile in mid-March 2020, eased the pace of the "social uprising" (estallido social), as it was called in public discussions. A protest event analysis based on almost 20 national and regional media sources demonstrates the intensity and features of the 2019 protests (Somma et al. 2020). Compared to the previous decade and a half, there were nine times more protest events in the 2019 uprising alone. Protestors resorted to all kinds of tactics, including marches, demonstrations, seizing squares, and destroying property. Violent tactics were comparatively more prevalent than in previous years, with a predominance of actions against public and private property, looting stores and supermarkets, setting objects on fire, and burning cars and buildings. Nevertheless, the uprising also resulted in the largest demonstration in Chile's history on 25 October, in which an estimated 1.2 million people-about 15 percent of the national population-peacefully took to the streets in Santiago, the national capital, and other major cities. The 2019 protests brought changes in the relative salience of protest demands. While labor and educational demands had dominated the Chilean protest landscape since the early 2000s, these two became less common during the uprising. Instead, one of the most common rallying cries was "dignity," with a wide range of other demands emphasized, such as better housing, health services, and pensions, ending violence against women, and a new Constitution. These claims were deeply rooted in the socioeconomic exclusion of popular sectors. While usually over 90 percent of Chile's protests tended to voice clear demands, this plummeted to 25 percent during the uprising, a telling sign of its disorganized nature. The Social Unity Table (Mesa de Unidad Social), an umbrella organization composed of worker, student, and pensioner organizations, tried to gain recognition as representing the mobilized masses, but the Mesa was outpaced by the overwhelming and disparate demands of the larger protest movement. While it is difficult to explain the exact timing of the uprising, long-term factors include socioeconomic inequalities, a rigid political system, a growing discontent with the country's political and economic elites, and better mobilizing infrastructures (Somma et al. 2021). In the 1970s, Chile became a "neoliberal laboratory" when dictator Augusto Pinochet liberalized the labor market, retrenched social services, and opened the economy to greater foreign trade and investments. After democracy was regained, living conditions improved and the
Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior, 2022
Journal of Politics in Latin America, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic started in Chile as the country was experiencing massive protests and a dee... more The COVID-19 pandemic started in Chile as the country was experiencing massive protests and a deep political crisis. Sanitary measures restricting movement and gatherings were implemented while the process of constitutional change responding to this crisis developed. In this context of conflict, we study why people continued participating in street protests despite the restrictions and the health risks involved. Using two surveys, we test key factors addressed in extant scholarship: biographical availability, perceived risks, and grievances. We find that grievances related to the pandemic were the most important factor, while biographical availability was much less relevant in the pandemic context. There is no evidence that perceived health risks mattered when deciding whether to join a street protest or not. These results suggest that under conditions of political crisis, grievances related to the administration of the pandemic can motivate political participation even when the latter put people's health at risk.
Este artículo analiza las emociones durante la participación en el movimiento por la igualdad de ... more Este artículo analiza las emociones durante la participación en el movimiento por la igualdad de derechos de Lesbianas, Gays, Bisexuales, personas Transgénero, Intersexuales y Queer (LGTBIQ) en Argentina y Chile. En base a encuestas aplicadas in situ en su principal marcha anual, buscamos contribuir a la literatura sobre movimientos sociales especificando la relación entre emociones y acción colectiva. Demostramos que las emociones no se distribuyen aleatoriamente entre los manifestantes, sino que son moldeadas por características individuales y nacionales. Entre los manifestantes con mayor compromiso activista y mayor movilización cognitiva encontramos las emociones negativas más intensas.
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2020
Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters' attachment to inst... more Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters' attachment to institutional politics, defined as their emotional and attitudinal connection with the political system. We show that Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators are on average more attached to institutional politics than Chilean ones. This can be explained neither by differences between Argentines and Chileans in general, nor by demonstrators' individual characteristics. Instead, expanding the political process model, we argue that achieving a substantial part of the LGBTIQ agenda in Argentina, and limited success in Chile, contributed to build a stronger attachment to the political system among Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators than their Chilean counterparts.
Journal of Latin American Studies, 2013
Focusing on the first large-scale protests in Chile after the reinstatement of democracy in 1990,... more Focusing on the first large-scale protests in Chile after the reinstatement of democracy in 1990, this article examines the emergence of the 2006 Pingüino movement and shows how it succeeded in mobilising thousands of secondary school students against the neoliberal education model. It argues that several distinct but intertwined dimensions explain the movement's emergence. In 2006, secondary school student groups merged to form a single organisation and adopted a horizontal and participatory decision-making mechanism. At the same time, shortcomings in the education reforms of the 1980s and 1990s were revealed in terms of quality and equity, creating grievances that were fed into the movement's collective action frame. Finally, President Bachelet's rhetoric of a ‘government of citizens’ as an attempt to counteract the elitist nature of the Concertación's governance formula signified an opening of the structure of political opportunities that the students knew to take advantage of.
Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change, 2016
When do social movements constitute a democratising force? Going beyond a procedural concept of d... more When do social movements constitute a democratising force? Going beyond a procedural concept of democracy, in this article I stress the importance of the equality involved in the process of making collective decisions. In line with debates on deliberative and participatory democracy, I argue that social movements can be considered to be promoting democratisation when they are able to compel governments to increase effective participation in the policy-making process, and/or when their democratic claims are translated into public policy. Attaining agenda and/or policy impact showcases that a social movement has increased the responsiveness of the government it is challenging. Based on this premise, in this article I trace the political impact of the Student Movement in Chile. Spearheading the largest protests since the reinstatement of democracy, in 2006, and most notably, in 2011, the Student Movement forced a debate on education and political reforms, and a series of policies to address the issues at stake. The analysis is grounded on more than 50 interviews, and an exhaustive analysis of organisational documents and newspaper data. The case examined in this article illustrates how the expansion of political opportunities that is necessary for pursuing democratising reforms not only is driven " from above " , but also " from below ". Studying this process, social movement scholarship can learn a great deal from recent cases of social mobilisation in Latin America. These experiences also call for more attention to the role of social movements in democratisation studies.
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2020
Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters´ attachment to inst... more Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters´ attachment to institutional politics, defined as their emotional and attitudinal connection with the political system. We show that Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators are on average more attached to institutional politics than Chilean ones. This can be explained neither by differences between Argentines and Chileans in general, nor by demonstrators´ individual characteristics. Instead, expanding the political process model, we argue that achieving a substantial part of the LGBTIQ agenda in Argentina, and limited success in Chile, contributed to build a stronger attachment to the political system among Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators than their Chilean counterparts.
en della Porta, D., Cini L. y Guzmán-Concha, C. (eds.) Student movements in late neoliberalism. Dynamics of contention and their consequences. Londres: Palgrave McMillan, 2021
In democratic regimes, governance encompasses the institutional mediation between government and ... more In democratic regimes, governance encompasses the institutional mediation between government and non-govermental forces through which interests are represented, and social and political inclusion is secured and sustained in accordance with the rule of law. When governance is in place, then, governments are able to exert effective and accountable public authority. Yet, this is not set in stone; governance is produced through an interactive process in which actors' interests are constantly redefined. Social movements play an important role in this redefinition. Hence, one cannot understand how governance is generated and upheld without analysing the role played by social movements in this process. A cursory review of South America's recent history shows numerous examples of social movements articulating grievances, exerting pressure on the political authorities to address their demands, andwhen not hearddisputing power on the electoral arena on their own or in alliance with other political forces. In 2001, the world witnessed how massive uprisings in Argentinaspearheaded by the Piqueterosdemanded Que se vayan todos! and forced the resignation of five presidents in one week. Since the early 2000s, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), a political party that emerged from the Cocalero movement under the leadership of Evo Morales, has dominated politics in Bolivia. The student movement in Chile, in turn, has put into question the political consensus in place since the return of democracy, and influenced the last years' policy agenda in significant ways. Lastly, recent protests in Brazil, both supporting former President Dilma Rouseff from the Workers' Party and calling for her impeachment, shacked the country with important implications for governance. These are only a few examples of how social movements have driven the restructuring of state-civil society relations in contemporary South America. There are many more. In a region where political and socio-economic exclusion has been persistent throughout history, pressure "from below" has put into question both the content and the 2 procedures of the region's predominant political and development models. Since the early 2000s, especially, social movements have articulated old and new demands, and by doing so, altered the terms through which governance is maintained and shaped democratisation in fundamental ways.
In 2007, contract workers of CODELCO, Chile’s main copper-extracting company, staged a 37 day-lon... more In 2007, contract workers of CODELCO, Chile’s main copper-extracting company, staged a 37 day-long strike. The Contract Workers’ Movement, the most important labour unrest since the reinstatement of democracy in 1990, was the result of years of previous organising. In this chapter, Donoso analyses the rise of this movement and its claims for more equal labour rights. Particular emphasis is put on the links between the neoliberal transformation of the labour market, and the movement’s articulation of the resulting grievances. Donoso shows that while the Contract Workers’ Movement succeeded in constructing a collective action frame that both resonated with public opinion and challenged CODELCO, it also unearthed resistance from other key actors of the labour field. Ultimately, this restricted the movement’s agenda impact and the prospects of advancing labour justice in Chile.
En esta entrevista Sidney Tarrow describe el recorrido intelectual que ha realizado a lo largo de... more En esta entrevista Sidney Tarrow describe el recorrido intelectual que ha realizado a lo largo de su carrera académica. En particular, reflexiona sobre cómo fue cambiando su mirada analítica desde enfoques estructuralistas a un fuerte énfasis sobre los procesos e interacciones que constituyen las olas de protesta. Asimismo, se abordan las fortalezas y debilidades de los distintos cuerpos teóricos disponibles actualmente para el análisis de los movimientos sociales. Por último, Tarrow se refiere al auge de la movilización social reciente en Chile y en el resto del mundo y cómo este proceso desafía a los estudiosos de los movimientos sociales a repensar las herramientas teóricas a partir de las cuales explicamos este fenómeno.
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1DEIxZTpuI
Este proyecto tiene por objetivo general entender las dinámicas individuales de la protesta colec... more Este proyecto tiene por objetivo general entender las dinámicas individuales de la protesta colectiva en Chile y Argentina. Para esto estudiaremos los sujetos que participan en manifestaciones (quiénes son en términos sociodemográficos, socioeconómicos y actitudinales), los motivos que tienen para protestar, y las trayectorias de movilización que llevan a las personas a manifestarse. Buscamos responder las siguientes preguntas. Primero, ¿hasta qué punto varía la composición social de las manifestaciones entre países, y entre manifestaciones con distintas demandas? ¿Y a qué se deben estas diferencias? Segundo, ¿cuánto varían los motivos que empujan a distintas personas a protestar? ¿Qué explica tales variaciones? Tercero, ¿por qué distintos manifestantes tienen distintas trayectorias de movilización? Abordar estas interrogantes nos permitirá profundizar nuestro conocimiento sobre el tejido social y la articulación de las demandas colectivas en ambos países.
Comparamos Chile y Argentina porque ello permite explorar nuestra hipótesis central: que las formas de organización de la sociedad civil y política afectan las dinámicas individuales de la protesta. En el marco de un “diseño de sistemas más similares” (Przeworski y Teune 1970), ambos países son comparables porque comparten un mismo contexto histórico, cultural y geográfico, tienen similares niveles de desarrollo socio-económico y político, y en las últimas décadas experimentaron transiciones hacia la democracia y hacia un modelo económico neoliberal (Centeno 1994). Sin embargo, ellos difieren en la manera en que se combinaron ambas transiciones (reformas neoliberales bajo un régimen autoritario en Chile y bajo uno democrático en Argentina), generando distintas trayectorias de la sociedad civil y distintas formas de articulación de las demandas políticas y sociales. Argumentamos que esto habría repercutido en las dinámicas individuales de la protesta colectiva. Adicionalmente exploramos cómo variaciones en el tipo de demanda de la protesta (laboral, derechos de minorías sexuales, estudiantil, etc.) y en las características demográficas, socioeconómicas y actitudinales de los manifestantes, impactan en las dinámicas individuales de la protesta.
En términos metodológicos combinaremos tres fuentes de datos. La primera – y principal– se basa en encuestas a manifestantes realizadas en el acto mismo de la protesta. Ello nos permitirá indagar quiénes se manifiestan, por qué lo hacen, y cómo se movilizan. Esta novedosa metodología forma parte del proyecto internacional ‘Caught in the Act of Protest’ (en adelante CCC), al cual buscamos incorporarnos, y que hasta el momento ha sido aplicado en 8 países europeos y 4 países latinoamericanos. Proponemos aplicar 150-300 encuestas en 8 manifestaciones (4 en Chile y 4 en Argentina) vinculadas a distintas demandas de modo tal de poder comparar ambos países. Las manifestaciones tendrán un mínimo de 5000 participantes y seguiremos un procedimiento de selección gracias al cual todos los activistas tienen una probabilidad similar de ser encuestados. Complementaremos las encuestas con un análisis socio-histórico para caracterizar las formas de organización de las sociedades civiles en Chile y Argentina, y un análisis de varias encuestas aplicadas regularmente a la población adulta de ambos países.
Financiado por:
- Centro de Estudios de Conflicto y Cohesión Social (2015)
- Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT) Nº 1160308 (2016-2018)
Miembro de la red: PROTEST SURVEY
Call for panels - Fourth ISA Forum of Sociology
El Desconcierto, 2018
¿Cómo se relacionan los manifestantes con la política? Encontramos un público altamente politizad... more ¿Cómo se relacionan los manifestantes con la política? Encontramos un público altamente politizado pero que recurre poco a los partidos políticos y canales institucionales. Por ejemplo, solo el 28% se siente cercano a un partido político, menos del 10% participa en uno, y menos de la mitad votó en las elecciones presidenciales de 2013.
The Clinic, 2018
¿Quiénes son los que reivindican las causas del movimiento de los derechos humanos en Chile? La r... more ¿Quiénes son los que reivindican las causas del movimiento de los derechos humanos en Chile? La respuesta a esta pregunta la podemos encontrar en una encuesta que realizamos a los participantes de la marcha conmemorativa por el 11 de septiembre del año 2017.
Página/12, 2019
¿Por qué protesta la gente? ¿Quiénes protestan? ¿Qué hay de particular en la forma de protestar e... more ¿Por qué protesta la gente? ¿Quiénes protestan? ¿Qué hay de particular en la forma de protestar en Argentina? ¿Y de la forma usada en Chile? Comparamos aquí datos de encuestas en protestas que recolectamos durante tres años en Argentina y Chile con el objetivo de comprender las características de las personas que se manifiestan políticamente en la calle y los efectos de la doble transición –a la democracia y al neoliberalismo– en las tradiciones nacionales de protesta. Los datos que aquí resentamos se basan en 1935 encuestas a manifestantes realizadas “en caliente” en protestas sindicales, estudiantiles, las Marchas del Orgullo LGBTIQ y las manifestaciones por la democracia (24 de marzo en Argentina y 11 de septiembre en Chile), en Buenos Aires y Santiago, entre 2015 y 2017. Ello nos permite indagar quiénes se manifiestan, por qué lo hacen, y cómo se movilizan. Los datos son de au- topercepción y sobre la base de un cuestionario común que utilizamos en la red internacional “Caught in the Act of Protest”, que comprende ocho países europeos y cinco países latinoamericanos con una metodología única creada para este fin.
Desafíos, 2024
Existe un consenso cada vez mayor sobre la naturaleza complementaria de la política institucional... more Existe un consenso cada vez mayor sobre la naturaleza complementaria de la política institucional y no institucional como medio para impulsar las agendas políticas. Sin embargo, la mayor parte de la investigación tiende a concentrarse en un aspecto de esta relación, a saber, cómo los movimientos sociales influyen en la arena política, por ejemplo, impactando diferentes etapas del proceso de formulación de políticas y creando nuevos partidos políticos. Hay comparativamente menos comprensión de la dinámica inversa: el grado en que los partidos políticos también influyen en el ámbito de la protesta al adoptar y utilizar estrategias y tácticas —comúnmente asociadas con los movimientos sociales— y al conectarse con los manifestantes. Centrándose en Argentina y Chile, dos países que han experimentado oleadas masivas de protestas en los últimos años, este artículo examina la presencia de los partidos políticos en la organización, realización y canalización de manifestaciones. La recepción de los partidos políticos en las manifestaciones está estrechamente ligada a si son bienvenidos o no en el ámbito de la protesta. También analizamos cómo los manifestantes argentinos y chilenos perciben a los partidos políticos y el nivel de identificación que sienten con ellos. Nuestra principal fuente de datos proviene de 1 935 encuestas realizadas como parte de la red Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation (CCC) entre 2015 y 2017. Encontramos que los partidos políticos en Argentina exhiben vínculos más fuertes con los movimientos sociales en comparación con los de Chile. Buscamos vincular este resultado con patrones divergentes e históricamente arraigados de dinámicas de protesta en ambos países y discutimos las implicaciones de nuestros hallazgos en la conclusión.
Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior, 2022
This article analyses the renewal process of the actors and ideas in Chile’s political arena duri... more This article analyses the renewal process of the actors and ideas in Chile’s political arena during the last decade, focusing mainly on the last three years. The 2019 social uprising accelerated this incipient opening of the political arena by igniting a process of constitutional change that is currently underway. The uprising activated previously institutionally marginal actors and social movements and contributed to the victory of the current left-wing Government of Apruebo Dignidad, led by Gabriel Boric. Our analysis shows that the dividing lines between institutional and non-institutional actors are more fluid than usually recognised and that this helps explain the renewal of Chile’s political arena during the last decade.
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 22, 2023
World Development
Scholars have long sought to establish the strategies through which social movements can impact p... more Scholars have long sought to establish the strategies through which social movements can impact policy adoption. Yet, there is little evidence on the role they may play in policy expansion. We study the role of social movements in broadening the scope of social policies by analyzing whether Chile’s student movement impacted the expansion of the free college tuition policy between 2015 and 2020. We evaluate three mechanisms to assess the student movement’s influence on free tuition expansion. First, movements may use protests to affect the expansion process through disruption. Second, they can make use of their connections with and presence in parties and the bureaucracy to channel their demands and influence decision-making instances. Finally, movements may also try to shape public opinion to affect the scope of the policy through mobilizations and other forms of influence. We use a process tracing design to examine these mechanisms. We collect and analyze evidence from 32 elite interviews, congressional and administrative records, web scraped news, and public opinion and protest event data. Our results show that students influenced the implementation and expansion of the free tuition policy through all mechanisms using different strategies. First, students used protests to set free tuition in the public agenda. Second, and the most important strategy, by means of connections with incumbent parties and the presence of former student activists in the Education Ministry and in Congress, they indirectly influenced policy expansion. Finally, and indirectly, they shaped public opinion in favor of free tuition. Students played a role in defining the pace and scope of the policy but could not imprint all their demands. Overall, our analysis sheds light over the ways in which social movement can influence the implementation of policies, thus, expanding the scope of equity-enhancing social policies in Latin America and beyond.
The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements
Journal of Politics in Latin America
The COVID-19 pandemic started in Chile as the country was experiencing massive protests and a dee... more The COVID-19 pandemic started in Chile as the country was experiencing massive protests and a deep political crisis. Sanitary measures restricting movement and gatherings were implemented while the process of constitutional change responding to this crisis developed. In this context of conflict, we study why people continued participating in street protests despite the restrictions and the health risks involved. Using two surveys, we test key factors addressed in extant scholarship: biographical availability, perceived risks, and grievances. We find that grievances related to the pandemic were the most important factor, while biographical availability was much less relevant in the pandemic context. There is no evidence that perceived health risks mattered when deciding whether to join a street protest or not. These results suggest that under conditions of political crisis, grievances related to the administration of the pandemic can motivate political participation even when the lat...
Este artículo busca contribuir a la comprensión del Movimiento Estudiantil en Chile desde una per... more Este artículo busca contribuir a la comprensión del Movimiento Estudiantil en Chile desde una perspectiva hasta ahora insuficientemente explorada, a saber, analizando tanto su desarrollo organizacional como la construcción de su marco de acción colectiva desde la reinstauración democrática en 1990. Con este fin, estudia las principales olas de protesta de estudiantes secundarios y universitarios que conjuntamente han contribuido a la reconstrucción de la acción colectiva estudiantil en el Chile post-transición: el Mochilazo (2001), el Movimiento Pingüino (2006) y el actual auge de movilización social liderado tanto por estudiantes universitarios como por estudiantes de las escuelas secundarias. El análisis se basa en la premisa de que los movimientos sociales, tal como lo señala Diani, se asemejan a una cadena de eventos más o menos conectados, dispersos a lo largo del tiempo y el espacio, y que no pueden ser identificados con una organización específica si no que más bien con un gr...
IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021), Feb 24, 2021
Revista argentina de sociología, 2020
Este artículo analiza las emociones durante la participación en el movimiento por la igualdad de ... more Este artículo analiza las emociones durante la participación en el movimiento por la igualdad de derechos de Lesbianas, Gays, Bisexuales, personas Transgénero, Intersexuales y Queer (LGTBIQ) en Argentina y Chile. En base a encuestas aplicadas in situ en su principal marcha anual, buscamos contribuir a la literatura sobre movimientos sociales especificando la relación entre emociones y acción colectiva. Demostramos que las emociones no se distribuyen aleatoriamente entre los manifestantes, sino que son moldeadas por características individuales y nacionales. Entre los manifestantes con mayor compromiso activista y mayor movilización cognitiva encontramos las emociones negativas más intensas.
IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021), Feb 24, 2021
Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism, 2021
This dissertation investigates the emergence and impact of social movements in Chile since the re... more This dissertation investigates the emergence and impact of social movements in Chile since the reinstatement of democracy in 1990. Seeking to make an important contribution to the understanding of the reconstruction of collective action in post-transition Chile, I focus on two cases which have been particularly successful in questioning the benefits of market-friendly policies introduced by the military regime (1973-1989) and continued to a great extent by the Concertacion governments (1990-2010). The first case is the 2006 Pinguino movement, named after the secondary school students’ penguin-like black and white school uniforms, which forced a substantial discussion on the education system’s segregating effects and its neoliberal underpinnings. The second case is the 2007 Contratista movement, composed of subcontracted workers of CODELCO – Chile’s main state-owned copper-extracting company. The Contratistas repoliticised a long-dormant debate on labour issues and revitalised a trad...
World Policy Journal, 2016
Protest and Democracy, 2019
Global Labour Journal, 2020
An Exceptional Crisis or an Indication of Widespread Malaise? The massive protests that exploded ... more An Exceptional Crisis or an Indication of Widespread Malaise? The massive protests that exploded in Chile in October 2019 have left the country reeling from shock. The extensive participation of the population in demonstrations in Santiago and in all regional capitals, as well as the exceptional degree of violence and destruction that accompanied them, prompted President Piñera to declare a state of emergency that lasted for nine days, put the military on the streets and imposed a curfew. This has left many international observers wondering what went wrong in a country that has often been held up by mainstream opinion as the poster child to other Latin America countries. Relatively high growth rates have been accompanied by sharp declines in poverty, steady improvements in educational outcomes, and even recent declines in inequality 1-all in the context of a relatively high-functioning democracy. The question emerges whether these protests are an exceptional occurrence limited to the context of Chile, or whether they are an indication of a more widespread malaise in one of the world's most unequal regions. In this article, we argue that the eruption of the social protests observed since October 2019 should not have surprised any close observer of Chile; in fact, they are paralleled by other protests in the region, such as in Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia. However, the degree of violence, looting and incendiary attacks on metro stations, supermarkets, pharmacies and other businesses were indeed unexpected, as was the extent of human rights violations resulting from the response of the police and armed forces to the disturbances. From Evading the Metro Fare to a Constitutional Debate: The Events as they Unfolded On 4 October 2019, the Chilean government announced a slight increase in metro fares. Rather unexpectedly, high school students spontaneously began to protest, took over metro stations, confronted the police and called for people to avoid paying the fares. On October 18, protests suddenly escalated. Hooligans joined in and violence spread. Approximately half of Santiago's metro stations were under siege and damaged. Twenty were set on fire and completely burned out. The violence spread to the streets where hooligans vandalised or looted supermarkets, pharmacies, banks and other businesses while further damaging public infrastructure. The chaos prompted the government to close down the entire metro system, leaving passengers stranded and forcing them to spend hours walking home. The following day, shocked by the scale of the destruction, President
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2019
Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters' attachment to inst... more Focusing on LGBTIQ demonstrations in Argentina and Chile, we study protesters' attachment to institutional politics, defined as their emotional and attitudinal connection with the political system. We show that Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators are on average more attached to institutional politics than Chilean ones. This can be explained neither by differences between Argentines and Chileans in general, nor by demonstrators' individual characteristics. Instead, expanding the political process model, we argue that achieving a substantial part of the LGBTIQ agenda in Argentina, and limited success in Chile, contributed to build a stronger attachment to the political system among Argentine LGBTIQ demonstrators than their Chilean counterparts.
Social Movements in Chile, 2017
In the past few years, Chile has become the stage for widespread demonstrations. This introductio... more In the past few years, Chile has become the stage for widespread demonstrations. This introduction situates this recent upswing of social movements in contemporary scholarly debates. It does so by offering an overview of the intertwined relationships between social movements, the state, and political parties in Latin America’s history. The introduction then outlines some of the theoretical challenges that derive from this. It is argued that only a framework centered on the interactions between social movements and institutional actors can help us understand the shift to contentious politics that Chile is experiencing, and its impacts. Grounded on this approach, the chapter offers an overview of these interactions in Chile’s recent history. The chapter concludes by outlining the structure and the content of the edited volume.
Social Movements in Chile, 2017
The protest waves spearheaded by students in recent years have shaped the political agenda in Chi... more The protest waves spearheaded by students in recent years have shaped the political agenda in Chile in ways that few would have anticipated before 2011. This chapter traces the development of the student movement since 1990, with a focus on the 2001, 2006, and 2011 protests. It emphasizes the movement’s strategy-making as a relational process in which the responses of the political establishment to movement demands shape the subsequent formulation of petitions and tactics to employ. It is argued that the student movement’s accumulation of experiences has motivated the concurrent employment of “outsider” and “insider” strategies. The chapter concludes that while always in tension, the development of the student movement has resulted in an increased capacity to use both types of strategies in complementary ways.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.