Democratization and the Decline of Urban Social Movements in Chile and Spain

Abstract

Page 275: The rise and fall of urban social movements in Chile and Spain, as Schneider argues, raises critical questions regarding the nature of political life in transitional situations and the conditions inhibiting the mobilization of protest. Unfortunately, most of the literature on these movements fails to address these questions. Scholars have tended to conceive of protest as a response to economic grievances or the postindustrial crisis of urban development. In Schneider argues, the economic crisis of the early 1980s was effective in alienating certain sectors, particularly the middle class, from the military government; however, the crisis in and of itself did not lead to protest. Rather, it weakened and divided the regime, creating the opportunity for protest. (Cathy Lisa Schneider, Radical Opposition Parties and Squatters Movements in Pinochet's Chile, in Sonia Alvarez and Eduardo Escobar, eds., The Making of Social Movements in Latin America [Boulder: Westview Press, 1992], pp. 261, 262, 264).