Rodolfo Disi Pavlic

Adolfo Ibáñez University · Escuela de Gobierno

In 2011, Chilean students mobilized in the largest demonstrations since the country’s return to democracy. Students in some other Latin American countries have also carried out mass demonstrations in recent years. What explains students’ participation in mobilizations in Latin America? This article argues that financial grievances generated by neol...

The decrease of political participation in Chile since the early 90s lead to a discussion about political disaffection in the beginning of the new century. To what extent does political disaffection affect the decrease in political participation? Previous studies on this subject have been theoretical and descriptive and have only linked disaffectio...

This article analyses the factors shaping the implementation of local participatory institutions (LPI) using evidence from Chile's 345 communes. Based on the literature on participatory politics, it identifies several factors associated with the implementation of LPI, which are categorised into two dimensions: municipal supply vs. civic demand, and...

Social movement research indicates that mobilization can effect change in political attitudes, yet few works have systematically tested the effect of protests on public opinion. This article uses survey and protest event data to assess the spatial and temporal effect of mobilizations on political attitudes Chile. It combines the 2008, 2010, and 201...

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 fre...

This chapter focuses on “gender protests,” defined as social conflicts motivated by equality issues concerning men and women as well as sexual majorities and minorities. Feminist protests resurged massively in May 2018 in what has been referred to as a “third wave” of Chilean feminism (Fina Gonzalez and Figueroa Vidal in Revista Punto Género 11:51–...

This profile examines Peru’s unexpected popular uprising of 2022–23, which is distinct from its neighbors due to decades of relativecalm. We combine three concepts emphasizing time-varying pro-cesses: deep-rooted societal inequality across class, ethnicity, andregions resulting in a fragmented civil society (long term);a mounting crisis in politica...

Political scientists have studied state democracy for decades using sophisticated methods for conceptualization and measurement to evaluate the explanatory power of various theories. They have paid little attention, however, to democracy in nonstate political systems. This paper fills this gap by characterizing democracy in college student governme...

This article analyzes the paradoxical outcome of Chile’s 2022 constitutional referendum, where a draft recognizing indigenous rights was rejected despite inclusive efforts. By employing a mixed-methods approach, the research juxtaposes statements from indigenous public figures with a statistical analysis of municipal-level data to assess indigenous...

En este capítulo nos preguntamos cómo la percepción sobre las instituciones, políticas y servicios entregados por los gobiernos locales, afectan las dinámicas de la participación política de la ciudadanía en la región de La Araucanía en Chile. Para hacer esto, utilizamos una encuesta original aplicada a una muestra representativa de alrededor de 50...

En septiembre de 2022, la opción "Rechazo" triunfó en el plebiscito que dio fin al proceso constituyente de Chile iniciado en 2019. Con una alta participación del 85,9%, un 61,9% del electorado votó en contra de la propuesta de texto de la Convención Constitucional. Este capítulo busca comprender los factores detrás de este inesperado resultado, ut...

The 2019 social outburst in Chile marked a significant turning point for the nation’s politics and society, with widespread reports of human rights violations committed by the armed forces and the Police during demonstrations and riots. Despite the attention given to these events, few studies have systematically analyzed perceptions of human rights...

Las brechas de género en participación, interés y ambición política son temas persistentes en el estudio de género y política. Las brechas de participación tienen consecuencias para la democracia, porque se traducen en diferencias de poder político e influencia en la toma de decisiones. Tradicionalmente, las mujeres han votado menos que los hombres...

In 2020, Chile held a historic plebiscite that decided, by a broad margin, to hold a constitution-making process. The vote took place in a tumultuous context, marked by the 2019 social outburst and the COVID-19 pandemic. This article explains how these circumstances were associated with turnout, which increased slightly compared to previous electio...

Dentro de un contexto de desafección política y baja participación electoral, se han hecho esfuerzos para que la formación ciudadana en las escuelas aumente el compromiso político de los chilenos. Vale la pena analizar, por lo tanto, cómo distintas modalidades de implementar la formación ciudadana – como asignatura separada, transversalmente, o com...

Aunque la formación ciudadana ha sido utilizada como componente del currículo oficial escolar para superar los bajos niveles de participación política en Chile, todo indica que su implementación curricular en la experiencia escolar no ha sido exitosa. Si bien su aplicación en Chile tiene larga data, su efecto sobre la disposición de los estudiantes...

What explains variation on Chile’s foreign trade and investment policies toward the United States? While previous studies have underscored international and country-level factors, this work focuses on how subnational economic differences lead to conflicts that shape the country’s policymaking. It examines Chile’s history of commercial policies towa...

We analyse the Chilean Spring of 2019-2020 – the fiercest social outburst in Chile during the last three decades. After discussing the combined role of long-standing grievances, political attitudes, and cultural change in triggering the outburst, we study the interplay among peaceful and violent protests and criminal activity. We argue that brutal...

Introduction: Activists mobilize using various protest strategies to advance their demands but few studies analyze protest events to explain their choice of peaceful, disruptive, and violent methods. This paper argues that when movements have few supporters and allies-major resources for mobilization-they privilege violent tactics. Conversely, when...

What explains variation in the emergence of college student protests in Latin America? This study uses an original dataset of 4,700 college student protests to carry out a systematic analysis of student mobilization in the region. This article tests three hypotheses based on two distinct but complementary explanations. The political explanation arg...

Social movement research indicates that mobilization can effect change on public opinion, yet few works have systematically tested the effect of protests on individual attitudes. This article uses survey and protest event data to assess the spatial and temporal effect of mobilizations on public opinion in Chile. More specifically, it combines the 2...

The decrease of political participation in Chile since the early 90s lead to a discussion about political disaffection in the beginning of the new century. To what extent does political disaffection affect the decrease in political participation? Previous studies on this subject have been theoretical and descriptive and have only linked disaffectio...

Social actors in Latin America have mobilized during the 21 st century using myriad different protest strategies to advance their demands. We know little, however, about the reasons for choosing one protest tactic over another, and in particular why they sometimes choose peaceful, disruptive, or violent strategies. This study advances an explanatio...

This article evaluates two theories that seek to explain the outcomes of asymmetric conflicts. It uses evidence from a case study of the Arauco War (1536-1883) between Spanish and Chilean colonizers, and the Mapuche in Chile. The war resulted, unlike most other instances of European colonization, in the victory of the weaker side. The first theory...

Explaining variation in social mobilization has been a main goal of all strands of social movement theory. Different theories have offered political, social, and cultural accounts to explain variation in the levels of mobilization across time, space, and social groups. Most explanations nevertheless do not problematize a key issue: what do we mean...

What explains variation in the frequency of college student protests in Latin America? Recent studies tend to focus on one or a few cases of frequent mobilization, or to advance explanations based on one theory. This study uses an original dataset of college student protest events to carry out a comparative analysis of student mobilization in the r...

Latin American college student protesters have been historically a force to reckon with. Scholars have argued, however, that the introduction of neoliberal policies would discourage mobilization. Yet, some of the most liberalized higher education systems in the region have witnessed relatively frequent and massive mobilizations in recent years. Wha...

During most of the twentieth century, higher education students in Latin America were an active force in national politics through massive protests, but with the rise of authoritarian regimes in the region in the 70s and 80s, and the privatization higher education institutions, students lost their mobilization power. In recent years, however, stude...

The objective of this paper is explaining the emergence and characteristics of university student movements in Latin America after the third wave of democratization. The paper asks when changes in higher education policy and student-party linkages affect the likelihood and features of student mobilization. I hypothesize that, the larger the enrollm...