In late 2019, Chile and Colombia witnessed mass protests of historic dimensions that united different generations, ideologies, and sectors of civil society in their dissatisfaction with their...Show moreIn late 2019, Chile and Colombia witnessed mass protests of historic dimensions that united different generations, ideologies, and sectors of civil society in their dissatisfaction with their governments, the current neoliberal model, its socio-economic policies and malaises like inequality, poverty, and violence. The mostly peaceful and brutally repressed protests vary in their immediate political outcomes. While the Chilean case can be considered a success story, which achieved the start of a constitutional reform process, Colombia’s protests did not induce any significant political transformation. Why do protests with similar characteristics lead to different short-term political outcomes? Applying a comparative case study of the most-similar cases of the 2019-2020 mass protests in Chile and Colombia, this study argues that classic explanations regarding endogenous and exogenous variables of social movements fall short of explaining these different outcomes. Instead, this article suggests that short-term protest “success” and “failure” can be better explained by a society’s history of repression and its consequences for collective experience with protest mobilization. This proposed hypothesis is based on a theoretical framework combining social movement literature and research on the repression-mobilization relationship and is examined in a document analysis of material from a wide array of sources on the protests.Show less
