Mobilization or Countermobilization? Explaining Anti-rights Collective Action in Chile

• In Event: 40420 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 16: The Politics of Social Movements 1

Abstract

Movements seeking to restrict or roll back minority rights have increased across the world in the past few decades. Their activists seek to defend privilege and preclude the social inclusion of historically disenfranchised groups such as women, ethnic, sexual and gender minorities, and immigrants. We call these groups anti-rights movements. Despite the global importance of these movements, few studies have systematically analysed their emergence in Latin America. Drawing on movement-countermovement theory, we evaluate the social, cultural, and political causes of anti-rights mobilization from Chile. Our findings highlight the reactive quality of anti-rights protests, the role that antagonistic national authorities play in triggering them, and the importance of local, national, and international support. To reach these results, we use a mixed-methods design. First, we use longitudinal, municipal-level data from the COES Social Conflict Observatory to carry out negative binomial regressions of anti-rights events in 2009-2019 in Chile’s 345 communes. Second, we delve into these processes with three case studies on movements against abortion (2015), LGBTQ+ rights (2017), and Indigenous people’s rights (2020).

Author

• Simon Escoffier, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile