Abstract
This chapter analyzes the extent to which Chilean post-transition social movement protest in the early 2010s is comparable to the cycles of anti-neoliberal contestation that shook the emblematic cases of Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Venezuela in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It discusses whether social mobilization in Chile can be considered a Polanyian backlash to the consolidation of a neoliberal economic, social, and political model as occurred in other Latin American cases. While there are important similarities there are also significant differences between Chile and the emblematic cases. The chapter concludes that while the protests in Chile are significant, they should be considered as part of normal democratic politics and not as destabilizing events.
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I presented an earlier version of this chapter entitled “Polanyi in Chile? Counter-Movements, Lags, and Other Questions,” at a most enjoyable graduate student-sponsored conference on “Chile’s Winter of Discontent,” at Cambridge University, May 11, 2012; my thanks to all of the participants for their insightful commentary. I also thank Marisa von Bülow and Sofía Donoso for their careful and insightful editorial guidance and Mart Trasberg, Tulane University, for his able research assistantship.
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Silva, E. (2017). Post-Transition Social Movements in Chile in Comparative Perspective. In: Donoso, S., von Bülow, M. (eds) Social Movements in Chile. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_9
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