Critical Junctures and Constitutional Reform: A Single Case Study of the Agreement to hold the Chilean Referendum of Constitutional Reform

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Critical Junctures and Constitutional Reform

A Single Case Study of the Agreement to hold the Chilean Referendum of Constitutional Reform

Christoffer Edberg

Bachelor Thesis in Political Science, 15 credits, Spring 2021 Department of Government, Uppsala University

Supervisor: Pernilla Tunberger Word count: 11872

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1.Introduction

“We are at war” declared Chilean president Sebastian Piñera in a highly debated press conference, held the 21st of October 2019, as a response to the tumultuous protests that had broken out in the Santiago metro system as a result of a recent increase in transportation fees (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara 2020: 8). Students in Santiago simply stopped paying the fees when the increase came into effect. Protests grew and protestors clashed violently with the police and subway stations were burned. The President declared a state of emergency and the Chilean military was put on the streets of Santiago (Piñera, 2019a).

The protests had uncovered deep divides in Chilean society. The protest movement addressed a multitude of issues reigning from areas such as low pensions, an unfair educational system and high costs of living that are considered to stem from the 1980 Constitution designed during the military dictatorship (Silva, 2017: 266). The popular protest slogan used during the

demonstrations “it is not 30 pesos, it is 30 years” gives an indication of the public discontent that has been brewing since the return of democracy. While Chile transitioned back to democracy in the year 1990, the Constitution of the military junta has survived until this day. Although reforms of the 1980 Constitution have been made throughout the years, none has succeeded in

completely breaking with the system that is considered to safeguard a neoliberal economic model that has created deep social inequality within the country (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 24).

Chilean society has been no stranger to massive protests. In the 2010s there was a wave of social upheaval where many Chilean social movements demanded change in their various areas of contestation. The question of the Constitution has been raised by many of them. However, changes regarding elements of the Constitution have been more cosmetic than substantial which has left the “Chilean model” intact (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020:26).

Roughly a month after the protests started in October 2019, a political agreement was reached declaring that a national referendum should be held in April 2020 regarding A: if the constitution should be replaced and B: if the entity replacing the constitution should be of individuals elected

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Chileans voted to overturn the 1980 Constitution in favor of a new one, drafted by a publicly elected body (SERVEL, 2020).

1:2. Aim and Research Question

When the referendum was announced on november 15, 2019, and resulted in the decision to draft a new Constitution it might seem like the process went fairly fast. However, given how

politicians and previous social movements have raised the question of constitutional reform since the return of democracy, but have been unable to induce reform in the course of 30 years, the problem seems a lot more complex. Undeniably, this problem contains many pieces that needs to be accounted for, and it is therefore the aim of this essay to lay this puzzle and create a

comprehensive picture to the problems associated with the Constitution as well as using this information to identify a possible explanation to why the decision to hold the national referendum was taken when it was.

By departing from the idea that institutional patterns that endure over time are created during key moments, where choices during these moments heavily constrain actors from future divergence from the path embarked upon (Mahoney, 2001: 112f), my hope is that a path-dependence perspective on the quest to reform the Chilean Constitution will help to solve this problem.

Path-dependence explanations through the method of process tracing might help explain why decisions were (or were not) taken during times of contingency. This requires going back in time and trying to distinguish key moments where their similarity or dissimilarity to what occurred in 2019 can help make sense of why politicians called for the referendum. Given the aim of this essay this study strives to answer the following research question:

Why did the protests between October and November 2019 result in the call for the national referendum regarding constitutional reform?

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1:3. Disposition

After this introductory part, previous research and theoretical framework will be discussed and presented. This passage will be followed by methodology which will describe how process tracing has been applied in this study, together with a presentation of material and how it was approached. The analysis consists of four parts: the first part focusing on how the Constitution and the problems associated with it can be explained. The reason for this is to give a point of reference to why it has been hard to reform the Constitution. The three remaining parts focus on moments in time where the constitution has been questioned, including the critical month of protests leading up to the referendum agreement. Following the analysis, conclusions will be presented.

2. Previous Research and Theoretical Framework

Research relevant to the study will be presented in this section together with the theoretical framework that will guide this essay. This section will be concluded with a brief discussion of this study’s contribution.

2:1. Critical Junctures and Path Dependency

Within the field of Historical Institutionalism, theories regarding critical junctures and path dependency are often used. Scholars have applied these concepts to show how seemingly stable institutions develop, fall apart and/or make way for new ones. Thus, institutions do not just develop by themselves as better alternatives appear, institutional development should rather be considered to be a product of a period where one or several alternatives are favoured above others.

A Critical Juncture can be defined as a rather short period of time marked by a high level of contingency where “there is a substantially heightened probability that agents choices will affect

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is higher than before, or shortly after the critical juncture. A rather short period of time should be understood as brief in context to “the path dependent process it instigates” (Capoccia &

Kelemen, 2007: 348). Therefore, a critical juncture should not be confused with incremental (gradual) change over time, what characterizes a critical juncture is its relatively short duration and the wider range of choices available to actors with respect to “normal” times. If there would not be a choice between at least two alternatives there would not be a critical juncture. When actors have chosen an alternative above others, the pool of available outcomes is drastically reduced, this implies that not all choices can be considered a critical juncture; only the choices that considerably limits the range of possible future outcomes, and directs future choices onto a certain path, possess the characteristics of a critical juncture (Mahoney, 2001: 113).

Thus, path-dependency can be seen as the period of time followed by a critical juncture. This time period is characterised by agents having less choice as the choices taken during the critical juncture creates “institutional patterns that endure over time” (Mahoney, 2001: 112). The

implications of this is that even when the original processes (formed during the critical juncture) disappear, the institutions created will persist change even in the absence of the original

processes responsible for its formation leading to what is called institutional reproduction (Mahoney, 2001: 114).

2:2. Permissive and Productive Conditions

Soifer (2012) argues that a comprehensive causal logic of critical junctures is often not accounted for, and develops the terminology of permissive and productive conditions to deal with this shortcoming.

Permissive and productive conditions are two causal conditions working together during a critical juncture. Both permissive and productive conditions are necessary conditions for divergence to occur, but when one condition is present and the other is not, divergence will not occur. Thus, they are necessary but insufficient conditions on their own, but when operating together they induce a path divergent outcome (Soifer, 2012: 1573). The permissive conditions in a critical juncture “represent the easing of constraints of structure and make change possible”

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(Soifer, 2012: 1573), and is further defined as those factors or conditions that “change the

underlying context to increase the causal power of agency or contingency and thus the prospects for divergence” (Soifer, 2012: 1574). This is in line with what has already been accounted for above, but it takes the definition of critical junctures further as Soifel (2012) argues that

permissive conditions can tell us why some moments in time are marked by higher contingency than others and thus set up a time frame for the length of the critical juncture as it comes to a close when the permissive conditions disappear. However, a set of permissive conditions are in themselves not enough to identify a critical juncture as periods of heightened contingency might not always have a path divergent outcome. Permissive conditions should thus be seen as the opening of a window of opportunity where divergence might occur, and if it does occur, it might produce long-term consequences (Soifer, 2012: 1575).

Productive conditions are factors that “determine the outcome that emerges from a critical

juncture” (Soifer, 2012: 1575). In contrast to permissive conditions, productive conditions do not define the limits of the critical juncture. Productive conditions shape the initial outcomes within the window of opportunity produced by the permissive conditions. These outcomes are

“locked-in” when the window of opportunity comes to a close. A productive condition is defined as “the aspects of a critical juncture that shape the initial outcomes that diverge across cases”

(Soifer, 2012: 1575).

Identifying and incorporating these two concepts in this study will strengthen the explanation of the causal links in the events that took place between October 18 and November 15, 2019.

2:3. Protests as Critical Junctures

In the recent developments regarding the Chilean Constitution the impact of the massive social movement had on the decision to hold the referendum cannot be disregarded. Social movement studies often focus on protest tactics and movements succeed in provoking change or not. Della Porta (2018) describes how social movements can be incorporated within the critical juncture

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producing abrupt changes which develop contingently and become path dependent” (Della Porta 2018: 559).

Adding what she calls cracking, protest vibration and sedimentation to the terminology of critical junctures, Della Porta (2018) presents a way to bring social movement studies into the field of critical junctures. Cracking happens when protest- or social movements disturb routines, creating effects that challenges the established order and thereby form transformative moments.

Protest vibration is the reproduction of similar events that takes place after the initial “crack”.

Movements gain momentum as protests grow in number and intensity, urgently forcing actors to choose between alternatives to respond to the existing contingency exposed by the protests.

Sedimentation of protests is basically the long term legacy (different from the previous conditions) remaining after the movement has stabilized, this can refer to legacies within the movement itself but also in institutions (Della Porta 2018: 559ff).

These concepts will be used to describe what happened in situations where social movements were present and provoked change to achieve a more context near description of a sequence of events.

2:4. Modes of Incremental Institutional Change

As stated in the introduction of this essay, attempts have been made to change the Chilean Constitution which has resulted in various amendments since the return to democracy (Ansaldi &

Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 26). Most changes to institutional arrangements are not the result of critical junctures as most changes occur gradually over time (Streeck & Thelen, 2005: 18). Since changes occurring from critical junctures should be distinguished from incremental changes, these types of changes also need to be addressed. Two modes of incremental changes in institutional arrangements are of interest in this study.

Layering: When lock-in effects of existing institutions become too costly to change, mixing systems through revisions and additions to an existing set of institutions can change the

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arrangements to serve new purposes. As this happens layering occurs (Streeck & Thelen, 2005:

22ff).

Drift: Active maintenance of institutions is fundamental for institutional stability. As the political and economic environment changes, a need to renegotiate and revise certain features becomes crucial to keep the effects of the arrangement from drifting from its original purpose (Streeck &

Thelen, 2005: 24ff).

These two modes will be used to explain gradual changes to the 1980 Constitution that were not an outcome of a critical juncture, and did not fundamentally challenge the existing constitution.

2:5. Contributions

Using critical junctures and path dependency to explain institutional change is, as stated, often used by scholars. Since this study will rest largely on the work of others, this study will account for yet another case where the stated terminology will be used to explain a chain of events, and therefore contribute to the cumulatively in this field of research. Given that little time has passed since both the decision to hold the plebiscite and the actual implementation of it, my hope is that this study will constitute one of the first accounts incorporating critical junctures as explanatory factors in these more recent developments regarding the Chilean Constitution.

3. Methodology and Research Design

This section explains the scientific method used and its design in order to obtain the results from the analysis. Part 3:1 and 3:2 generally explains what a case study respective process tracing is and also how this relates to this study. 3:3 presents the material, or sources, under investigation.

3:4 explains the operationalization. Lastly, section 3:5 will discuss the validity and reliability.

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3:1. Case Study

A single case study is an in-depth empirical investigation of one (or a small number of) certain events or phenomena, that seeks to explain the interlinkage between them, and outline common features shared with a larger group of similar events or phenomena (Vennesson, 2008: 226). In order to investigate a certain event the researcher needs to engage in what is called Casing:

“Cases are not waiting out there to be studied. The process through which researchers delimit, define and describe cases contributes to carving an aspect of reality that is different from the ways in which the phenomenon, or the event, is taken for granted” (Vennesson 2008: 229f). In order to “make a case” out of a certain phenomena the researcher needs to ask how the case under investigation relates to other similar cases i.e. what is it a case of?

The “event” under investigation is the period of time between October 18 to November 15, 2019 that resulted in the decision to hold the plebiscite regarding constitutional reform. This particular case will be studied from the theoretical perspective of critical junctures. As it has been hinted, both in the introductory- and previous research part of this essay, Social movements have been influential in bringing the Constitution to the table as a problem creating social divides and injustice. Therefore, I argue that the impact of Social movements along with the neoliberal economic system of Chile needs to be addressed when discussing this case.

Previous Chilean protest movements have been referred to as cases of anti neoliberal protests (Roberts 2017: 221). A rather broad category, that shares many similarities to cases from the region such as Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela during the 1990s and 2000s, where anti neo-liberal mass movements protested the commodification of public goods and steered politics to the left (Silva, 2017: 250f). This is a description fitting both the Chilean economic model and demands posed by previous social movements. Looking at the demands from the movement that came to life following the increase of transportation fees, this case could also belong in the same category as the cases mentioned above: anti-neoliberal protest movements.

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3:2. Process Tracing

Process tracing is a method used when the outcome, the value of the dependent variable, of a certain chain of events is known. This puts the process leading up to the outcome in focus for the investigation. This method is constructed to identify the causal mechanisms leading up to the result of a certain event or decision i.e. trace the process between cause and effect (Teorell &

Svensson 2007:247ff).

More specifically for this study, a narrative process tracing will be applied. According to Capoccio and Kelemen (2007) this specific type of method is often used in research using process tracing to describe an institutional crisis. The advantage of this approach is that it can be applied to different units of analysis, it helps account for why some choices were taken instead of others and describes how key decisions and choices produce the outcome. Using a narrative process tracing should not be misunderstood as undisciplined storytelling, it is still theory driven, in this case by critical juncture theories, which demands the stating of key actors, their

preferences, decisions and the events that influenced them to take those decisions (Capoccia &

Kelemen, 2007: 357ff). In the case of this investigation the crucial actors identified are the president of Chile, Sebastian Piñera, the Senate, widely representing the political elite; both the governing coalition and the opposition, as well as the social movements protesting.

The starting point of a process tracing is called a formative moment. A formative moment is an event that can be isolated and considered to trigger the chain of events leading up to the outcome (Esaiasson et al 2017:130). The outbreak of the protest in October, due to the increase in

transportation fees, can thus be seen as the formative moment, leading up to the agreement, reached by the government and opposition to hold a national plebiscite regarding the rewriting of the constitution on November 15, 2019. This rather short period of time is interesting from a scientific point of view considering how earlier calls for constitutional change have been unsuccessful.

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3:3. Material

Previous research regarding the Chilean Constitution and previous Social Movements have also been singled out to provide the information necessary to understand how the current Chilean Constitution can be perceived as a problem, as well as it offers a point of reference to how similar demands of constitutional reforms (or change) have been handled. This is important from a path dependence perspective as it will help understand if, or how, the outcome from the period under investigation differs from previous periods marked by high contingency.

The material selected for the part of the investigation focusing on the period 18th of October to 15th of November, 2019, consists of a number of first hand sources: during the period of the investigation president Piñera helda number of speeches addressing the protests and the demands presented by them. These speeches have been taken from the official presidential website (www.prensa.presidencia.cl) where the president’s public undertakings, speeches and agenda are published. The Chilean Senate assembled numerous times during this month; both in ordinary scheduled meetings and “special” and “extraordinary” sessions, diagnosing the political situation in the country and in votations over new law proposals handed to them by the president in order to meet the demands of the protestors. Transcripts of these meetings are published in their entirety on the website of “the National Library of the Congress of Chile” (Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile: www.bcn.cl). Manifests and statements from social movements have also been included.

This material has been chosen on account for their relevance in relation to the theory. These sources represent the national political elites, whose response towards the protestors and their demands expose choice points and the reason to why a decision was taken.

3:4. Operationalization

To determine why change does or does not occur, the permissive and productive conditions will have to be operationalized. The permissive conditions is defined as “those factors or conditions that change the underlying context to increase the causal power of agency or contingency and

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thus the prospects for divergence” (Soifer, 2012: 1574). In this particular case, a “change in the underlying context” will be operationalized as a phenomenon such as a major social crisis, social mobilizations or changes in the political balance of power. The productive conditions are defined as “the aspects of a critical juncture that shape the initial outcomes that diverge across cases”

(Soifer, 2012: 1575). The productive conditions in this study will be seen as the pool of viable options, or ideas, and strategies of how to improve or reform the institutional arrangements presented by different actors as responses to “the change in underlying context”.

This following section presents the analytical instrument applied in the analysis. To trace the process leading up to the referendum of constitutional change one needs to identify the causal mechanisms. The permissive and productive conditions as described by Soifer (2012) is a way of doing this. When the permissive and productive conditions work together we are able to

distinguish firstly, what opened the window of opportunity (the permissive condition), and secondly, the productive condition(s) operating within this window of opportunity to produce the initial outcomes. The outcomes of these two measurements can be summarized as followed:

Table 1: Outcomes of Permissive and Productive Conditions (Soifer, 2012: 1580)

Permissive Condition

Productive Conditions Absent Present

Absent Status quo Crisis without

change or missed opportunity

Present Incremental Critical Juncture

change

Using these possible scenarios will help explain why change occurs in some cases while it is absent in others.

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3:5. Validity and Reliability

Regarding the validity of this study, the closeness of the theoretical definitions of permissive and productive conditions in regards to the empirical indicators, can be discussed. Both theoretical definitions are broad and can include many phenomena. The empirical indicators chosen in this study have been singled out to fit the context of this particular case. The broad theoretical

definitions of the permissive and productive conditions offer many possible empirical indicators, and the ones singled out here do not claim to cover all of these, but are regarded as valid

indicators in this case.

To assess the reliability of this study, one has to consider other possible interpretations of the empirics. One historical event can be interpreted in different ways. However, to guide a potential reproduction of this study, the analytical instruments applied provide for a categorisation which can strengthen the reliability since the myriad of empirics are reduced to the two empirical indicators of permissive and productive conditions.

4. Analysis

This part will be divided into four main parts. The first will explore how the constitution was formed and why it is intertwined with the economic model of the country. The following three will investigate three separate periods where the constitution came into question: the 2005 reform, the protest wave 2011–2013 and finally the protests between October and November 2019. This will be followed by a discussion where an answer to the research question will be proposed.

4:1. The 1980 Constitution

What caused the military junta to design the Constitution in the way that it did? Before the military coup september 11, 1973, socialist president Salvador Allende had made efforts to reform the socioeconomic model of the country. What this entailed was redistributing assets and

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strengthening workers’ rights. These reforms transferred power from the traditional economic elite into the hands of previously marginalized groups such as workers and the peasantry. These redistributive measures caused anger among the business and land owning class who were furious with these reforms as they saw it as an assault on private property rights (Teichman, 2019: 147 ).

The rule of Salvador Allende came to an end in the military coup of 1973 which steered the country into yet another path. The military junta, under the rule of Agosto Pinochet, were

determined to reform the socioeconomic system and introduced neoliberal economic reforms that favored private property rights and where market forces were let to rule, diminishing the role of the state in favour for private companies in the public sector (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020:

14). At first these reforms were gradual to stabilize the Chilean economy, but as the market crashed in 1975 these reforms were accelerated and more rigid. A group of technocratic

economists, known as “the Chicago Boys” (because of their connection to the Chicago School of economy) were appointed to help Chile out of the crisis, and did so by creating a market society by introducing reforms in the labour, health, social security and education sectors (Clark, 2017:

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In this very brief account over how the neoliberal economic model came about in Chile it can be argued that it was itself formed during a critical juncture. The permissive condition in this context was the economic crisis which opened up a possibility for the Chicago boys to

implement their ideas. These ideas were the productive conditions leading to the introduction of neoliberal economic reforms. As the military regime had eliminated all opposition, the Chicago boys were given a lot of power to implement their economic policies unchallenged, which created a swift change from the economic policies of Allende (Clark, 2017: 1354).

In 1980 the military regime announced a new Constitution. It contained many authoritarian enclaves, among them the appointment of senators not democratically elected, a lifetime seat in the Senate to any former president, enclaves heavily prohibiting political pluralism and the creation of a security council to impede any political process from taking place. The Constitution

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where the armed forces and the General Director of the Police would name one candidate to be installed as president after a referendum (Ansladi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 18f). Pinochet was named the only candidate in the 1988 “election” but did not win which ultimately led to the breakdown of the military regime and the transfer back to democracy in 1990 (Fuentes, 2015:

99).

However, this did not mean an abrupt end to the policies of the military regime. The regime had institutionalized the neoliberal economic model in the 1980 Constitution, making socio economic reforms extremely difficult to implement even as Chile returned to democracy in 1990. This is because the design of the 1980 Constitution contains three mechanisms that prevent fundamental reforms to the system. These three mechanisms are a set of laws requiring a high quorum to alter, known as Organic Constitutional Statutes (OCSs), the binomial electoral system and the

Constitutional Court (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 20f).

The Constitution protects a wide set of laws known as OCSs by giving them importance above the levels of regular laws. OCSs regulate a broad range of areas such as education, healthcare and the pension system. Changes in these laws require a quorum of 4/7 of the deputies and senators in office, in favour of modification (Cosou & Coddou 2009: 11). OCSs also regulate how deputies and senators are elected. Elections to the Congress goes through a binomial electoral system, meaning that there are two seats in parliament available for the two candidates with the most votes per district. How this plays out in reality, is that unless one candidate gets twice as many votes as its competitor, one seat each will go to the two main political coalitions;

one to the right-wing and one to the left-wing. The implications of this is that there will be a tie in Congress, or at best a small majority. Since any change to an OCS requires the quorum to be reached, there is an imbalance of power in favour of a minority who can easily veto the

proposition (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara 2020: 21).

The Chilean Constitutional Court performs two types of preventive judicial reviews: One that can be requested by the President or the Parliament when questions of the constitutionality of any statute arise, and one that is mandatory and does not need to be requested. The second type involves OCSs, which means that any bill passed through the Parliament related to an OCS

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cannot be enacted without the consent of the Constitutional Court whose very mission is to protect the 1980 Constitution (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 21).

These mechanisms set up a protection for any path-divergent reforms to come after the military regime came to an end. In addition to these mechanisms the right-wing, consisting of parties loyal to the military regime, were given a head start as Pinochet had appointed nine senators before he left office (Teichman, 2019: 151). This would grant the small minority needed in the senate the ability to prevent reforms to the model imposed during the dictatorship. In 1990 the first democratically elected government since the military coup in 1973, headed by president Patricio Aylwin, took office (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 23). The new government

consisted of a center-left coalition of groups that had opposed the regime during the dictatorship.

This coalition was to remain in power until 2010, and even though they have attempted to make fundamental reforms to the socio-economic system they have not succeeded since these

mechanisms favour the right-wing and the hiers of Pinochet’s political legacy.

After a critical juncture has come to its close, with time, institutions become increasingly hard to modify as decisions taken during the critical juncture are institutionalised. Even with the military regime gone, the effects could reproduce themselves. This was of course not in the interest of the new government, however, a feature of institutional stability lies in the power balance where some actors, the right-wing in this case, benefit from existing structures relative to other actors (Mahoney 2001: 114). The left-wing was thus left restricted in what could and could not be done politically.

4:2. The 2005 Constitutional Reform

As has already been stated, the 1980 Constitution clearly protected the right-wing, giving them an unequal amount of power to their benefit. In the early days of Chilean democracy, the right-wing also held a majority in the Senate, making the government's efforts to reform the political system without far reaching agreements with the right-wing difficult. At three times

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autocratic texts in the Constitution but were all voted down by the right-wing as these proposals were sent to the Senate (Fuentes 2015: 105).

Pinochet himself was still a key political player in Chilean politics during the 1990s. Even though he had been forced to give up executive power, he was still in the political spotlight as he enjoyed the position as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and later as Senator when he embarked on his lifetime tenure in 1998, granted to him by the Constitution. In addition to this the public was divided in their opinion of the military regime and public support for the ex-dictator also remained quite high during the 1990s (Fuentes 2015: 110ff).

However, as time passed and events unfolded in the beginning of the 2000s, not only did support start to wane - the first real effort to reform the 1980 Constitution was also made. In the

beginning of the new millennium changes in the right-wings political position in regards to the constitution began to appear. In 2005, ten years after the last attempt of constitutional reform and fifteen years after the return of democracy, the right-wing agreed to major changes of the

constitutional texts. It could be easy to see this turn of events as a victory for the left-wing who had fought for reforms since winning the first election - but in reality many of these reforms strengthened the position of the right-wing and had effects that further entrenched Pinochet’s constitution. As it appears, some conditions had changed which made the right-wing agree to the reforms initiated by the left-wing. Among these conditions were that the right-wing started to near the left-wing coalition in votes in the presidential elections, the insight that the

Constitutional texts, if left unchanged would start to benefit the left-wing in the Senate, and ultimately the decreasing support of Pinochet (Fuentes, 2015: 109).

As the country returned to democracy the right-wing did not gain enough popular support to win the presidential elections. This pattern was continuous and the right would not return to hold executive power until 2010 (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 23). However, as time had passed, parties on the right saw an increase in public support which became evident in the election of 1999, where the right threatened the left for the first time since the return of democracy. The outcome of the election favored center-left coalition leader Ricardo Lagos, but since the victory was slim it brought hope back to the right (Fuentes, 2015: 109).

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One of the enclaves of Pinochet’s constitution stipulated the designation of senators that could not be replaced. Since the left-wing had won three consecutive elections, and started to designate senators on their own, there was a fear that the majority that the right held in the Senate would soon turn into a minority, which would further empower the left-wing. Of course the intention of the designation of senators had been to strengthen the right-wing’s political position, but as it appeared this institutional feature had taken an unwanted turn (Fuentes, 2015: 112).

Coinciding with this was the waning popularity of Pinochet and his legacy which paved the way for the right-wing to break with some of the more authoritarian enclaves of the Constitution. In 1998 Pinochet travelled to London where he was arrested by Interpol on counts of human rights violations. He was put in house arrest by British authorities until he was eventually released because of health related issues in March 2000 (Fuentes, 2015: 110 ). As he returned to Chile he was stripped of his prosecution immunity and what followed was investigations into alleged kidnappings and illegal fiscal activities. Public support for the ex-dictator dropped in the beginning of the 2000s which affected right-wing politicians: if they aspired to win elections they needed to “pass the test of democracy” (Fuentes, 2015: 109ff) . Facing the critique of the left-wing, in regards to protecting the authoritarian enclaves of the Constitution, the right and left-wing began negotiations of constitutional reform in the beginning of 2000 - negotiations which would not finalize until 2005 (Coddou & Couso, 2009:7).

The outcome of years of political negotiations resulted in the elimination of the designation of life-time senators, a reduction of the power of the national security council, the reduction of presidential term from six years to four years without the possibility of consecutive re-election, it gave the president power to remove the commander-in-chief of the armed forces together with the head of the Chilean police force and it gave more power to the Constitutional Court of Chile (Fuentes, 2015: 99f).

However, the effects these changes had on the political were not as great as it might seem. Many features were left unchanged, and giving the Constitutional Court more power paradoxically entrenched the Pinochet Constitution even further, creating a new veto player in Chilean politics

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which significantly reduced the power of elected deputies and the President (Ansaldi &

Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 21).

After the 2005 reform, the Constitutional Court has gradually adopted a wider interpretation of what constitutes an OCS and thus taken upon itself to expand the issues regulated by the 4/7 quorum. Since it is the court’s job to ensure the constitutionality of any statute related to the OCSs the democratically elected parliament’s power to legislate was reduced as they can strike down any proposal they consider an OCS that does not reach the necessary quota (Cosou 2011:

1535). Thus, the reforms of 2005 did not diverge significantly from the path instigated during the dictatorship, rather it created a new institutional pattern that ended up entrenching the effects of the system already installed.

Coddou and Couso summarise the motives of both the left- and right-wing parties prior to the reform of 2005, the left-wing wanted “to democratize the Constitution” while the right-wing wanted to “put an end to the process of political transition” (2009:7, my translation). The reform of 2005 can be discussed from a democratic viewpoint as it on the one hand managed to rid the Constitution from its most authoritarian enclaves, but on the other hand continued to grant the right-wing unproportional political leverage and left the constitutional mechanisms intact. The impact this reform had on the socioeconomic model of the country has been virtually none. Since then it seems like there has been a political consensus that making organizational, legal and procedural amendments to the Constitution is enough: Changes that do not alter the Constitution substantially (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 26).

The changes in the underlying context, did not question the economic model of the country, thus missing a permissive condition in which productive conditions could produce outcomes that would steer the economic model away from neoliberalism, assuming that such productive conditions actually existed at this time. The absence of both permissive and productive conditions in this aspect of the reform explains why the “status quo” was withheld and the economic model sustained. Rather than a critical juncture, the reform of 2005 seems like an outcome of change because of institutional drift which occurs as an act of maintenance to an institution in order for it to remain stable (Streeck & Thelen, 2005: 24). The right-wing saw how

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their original position of advantage as given them by the design of the Constitution had started to weaken and slowly shifted to the left-wing. By bargaining with the left-wing over the

designation of senators they could strengthen their position as a veto player in the legislative branch and by transferring veto powers to the Constitutional Court this would ensure that the Constitution was upheld. By conceding to this the right-wing could maintain their political position of advantage (Fuentes, 2015: 112).

4:3. The Protest Wave 2011–2013

It could be argued that the fight for constitutional reform during 1990 until 2005 had been a project limited to the political elites. As it would turn out in the following years, the fight for constitutional reforms would make it out onto the streets. In the period 2011–2013 there were massive protests in the country: student, feminist, Mapuche (indigenous people in Chile), miner and environmentalist movements openly criticised the institutional legacy of the military regime.

These movements came to question the steps taken by politicians since the return of democracy and managed to re-politicise social issues while trying to provoke politicians to make efforts to embark on new paths of social development (Donoso & Von Bülow, 2017: 4f).

It should be noted that the first democratically elected conservative government in 50 years had taken office in 2010, as Sebastian Piñera embarked on his first term as president of the country (Silva, 2017: 269). However, the public discontent displayed between 2011–2013 did not just target the newly elected government but also the center-left governing coalition who had been incapable of inducing change in the socioeconomic model of the country during their 20 year rule. Thus, the focus here shifts from making the constitution more democratic to the actual system it protects. The main difference between this period and the reform of 2005 is that the protest wave can be seen as the first major step where the public regained some political agency in questions regarding the Constitution (Silva, 2017: 273).

The wave of protests seen in 2011–2013 has confused scholars. The democratic transition period

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of the most stable countries in South America with no political crisis in sight. Even though the Chilean economy was in a seemingly good position, inequality levels in the country had remained high (Jara, 2014: 29ff).

Some possible explanations to the outbreak of the protests wave are that the economic development had led to higher levels of education among the population which “may have triggered a rise in expectations, along with social awareness of issues such as the model’s origin and inequality” (Jara, 2014: 40). This in combination with what Silva (2017) calls a “heightened sense of alert” as to if the right-wing government would continue Pinochet’s socioeconomic politics, and that previous social movements felt that they could no longer rely on their center-left allies which whom they had fought for democratization (Silva, 2017: 268f).

This will be exemplified with the Chilean student movement who had formed close ties to the center-left governing coalition and staged big protests in 2011–2013 (Donoso, 2017: 73). It became increasingly clear to them that the more far-reaching reforms of the educational system that they called for were limited by the Constitution and required political steps that their allies were not willing to take. The evolution of the student movement as presented by Donoso (2017) shows how its demands have shifted throughout the years. In 2001 the movement’s demands were more specific including a free travel pass, to and from school, and lesser restrictions on clothing codes. In 2006, when the so called Pengüino movement (penguin, for their black and white school uniforms) staged massive protests with hundred and thousands of participants their demands focused on changing the legislation to promote public education. The movement was successful in gaining public support and Michelle Bachelet (leader of the center-left coalition;

who had embarked on her first presidential term at this point) put the problem on the political agenda, including most of the student’s demand into law proposals that were rejected by the Senate, both from center-left and right-wing senators. However, the protest did result in the drafting of a new law proposal subsidizing tuition fees for students of lower incomes, and the creation of two new state agencies whose mission was to supervise and guarantee the quality of education and legislate how public resources were used in the educational system. However, this was not seen as a victory by the Pengüino movement as they saw it as mere modifications to the neoliberal policies already in place in the educational system (Donoso, 2017: 77f).

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In 2011, students had realised that in order to fundamentally change the unequal educational system they needed to call for constitutional reform. Through constitutional reform the hope was that free, quality education would be seen as a social right (Donoso, 2017:88). The experience from the 2006 protests had shown that they could not count on the support from the center-left coalition as they had not met with the structural demands. This pattern would repeat itself, but now with a new government in place. In massive protests, gathering hundreds of thousand participants in Santiago and elsewhere in the country, both high-school and university students called for an end to profits in the educational sector. The student movement attacked the

collusion between political and economic interests that was made possible as long as profiteering within the educational system was allowed. Both right and left-wing politicians were members on school boards and owned assets connected to private schools and universities, which was taken as evidence of their reluctance to induce substantial changes (Donoso, 2017: 81). Once again the movement had the support of the public and as the protests progressed between August to December, the government under Piñera were forced to concede to some of the demands.

These concessions were also deemed inadequate: lowering the interest rates on student loans from 6 to 2 percent, perhaps the biggest victory of the movement so far, was a mere adjustment and not a change or a challenge to the system in itself (Donoso, 2017: 81).

The protests between 2011–2013 did however leave a mark on Chilean politics. As president Piñera’s first term in office was about to close, Michelle Bachelet, who seeked to win her second term in office, went into the election campaign making promises of a new constitution (Silva, 2017: 266). Michelle Bachelet won the election and was reinstated as president in 2014. Her campaign had been based partly on introducing a tax reform that would help fund public

education as well as constitutional reform, which gained her support from these groups who were for abrogating the 1980 Constitution (Silva, 2017: 272). Fast forwarding to the end of her term in 2017, these promises had not been delivered. One seemingly important reform was the 2015 abolishment of the binomial electoral system, one of the mechanisms in the Constitution keeping it from being altered. Unfortunately this did not change the composition in the congress

remarkably as candidates were still forced to join one of the existing two political blocs to be able to have influence (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 27). This failure cannot solely be

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nor to the constitutional mechanisms. Bachelet sent the bill to the senate a few weeks prior to the end of her term, meaning that the bill would not be discussed until after she had already left office, knowing that it was unlikely that it would pass. These issues had not been a priority during her years in office, and the project died when Piñera won his second presidential election and was reinstated on the post 2018 (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 11).

It is tempting to look at the protest wave between 2011–2013 as a critical juncture. Using Della Porta’s (2018) terminology, we can see the protest cracking: they surely did break with

normality, demanding urgent political responses to deal with the public discontent that were evident in various fractions of Chilean society. Regarding protest vibrating: protest movements gained public support and spread throughout the country and impacted the presidential election where there is a strong argument that Bachelet won partly because of the promises she made during her campaign of constitutional reform. However, protest sedimentation seems to be missing. The promise of Constitutional reform was never fulfilled, instead both Piñera and Bachelet chose to make concessions that in the end, never challenged the structure of the

Constitution. As the protest wave passed, and Bachelet’s term in office was over, the equilibrium of the institutional pattern that had been dominating Chile since the return of democracy was (again) left largely intact. The ruptures produced by the protests did not have a lasting legacy - at least not if we see Constitutional reform as the desired outcome, even if electing a president who publicly supported the idea increased the probability of its implementation.

Using the possible outcomes of permissive and productive conditions as presented by Soifer (2012) the changes made to the constitution following the protest wave suggests that something is missing from the permissive condition as the outcomes are arguably incremental, such as the tax reduction in 2006 and the lowering of interest rates on student loans in 2011. The permissive condition here could be seen as the various protest movements who put issues related to the 1980 Constitution in the center of political debate, and the productive conditions as the various

solutions that were proposed. That Bachelet endorsed the idea of constitutional reform in the election campaign, and the fact that she successfully eliminated the binomial electoral system is an example of this. That the movements were not more successful can be attributed to the fact that the protest wave was not accelerated by a political or economic crisis, they also had

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organizational struggles as the various movements were not able to come up with a

comprehensive strategy of how to substitute the 1980 Constitution nor what it was going to contain (Silva, 2017: 265).

Besides the elimination of the binomial electoral system, the changes implemented such as the lowering of interest rates of student loans is rather a sign of layering. Layering occurs when some institutions are deemed too costly to change. In this instance this could be interpreted as too politically costly to try and change the economic model of the country. Instead it has been amended to work around the existing arrangement by introducing corrective measures such as the ones discussed.

Interestingly enough, reforms through layering are introduced to stabilize a system, but it can work as one of the factors setting fundamental changes in motion as they raise the question of how long new reforms to an old system can peacefully coexist before the old system is eventually replaced (Streeck & Thelen, 2005: 22ff).

As presidential power was again transferred from center-left wing leader Bachelet to right-wing leader Piñera in 2018, not much had changed, the Chilean socioeconomic model was “alive and well” (Ansaldi & Pardo Vergara, 2020: 25). However, in October 2019, an increase in oil prices caused a thirty peso raise in transportation fees (Piñera, 2019a). A social outcry that would surpass and go beyond the level seen during the protest wave was set in motion.

4:4. October-November 2019

Where did the period from the transition to democracy until 2019 leave the Chilean society?

Although attempts to reform the Constitution and various concessions had been made to social movements the short answer is that not much had changed in aspects regarding the economic system. The public and private spheres were deeply intertwined and the same social injustices remained largely unthreatened, creating social divides and discontent amongst the population.

After the protest wave, protest marches had become increasingly common: an example is the No

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income less than the minimum wage. AFP stands for Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones (Pension Fund Administrators) and are private companies. The No más AFP movement has since engaged in various protest activities trying to change the private system into a tripartite pension scheme where the state takes an active role in guaranteeing fair pensions (Rozas Bugeño &

Maillet, 2019: 11f).

In the end of August 2019, over sixty organisations (No más AFP among them), consisting of student, women, human rights and indigenous groups as well as various worker unions, formed a collective under the name of Unidad Social (social unity). Together they released a manifest where they called the people to unite with them in their quest to put an end to social injustices and the neoliberal model: “The political sectors are promoters and defenders of the neoliberalism imposed during the dictatorship and maintain, to this day, an illegitimate constitution and a social, institutional and economic network that prevents democratic changes and the retrieval of fundamental rights” (CUT, 2019a, my translation). This ongoing display of public discontent can also be seen as a political legitimacy crisis. Voter turnout is low in Chile, social movements have been distancing themselves from political parties as they do not see them as reliable allies, and presidential approval ratings have generally been low, with a few exceptions in the seven administrations that have been elected since the return of democracy (Jara, 2014: 32ff).

4:4:1. Protest Cracking

As the increase in transportation fees was announced in the beginning of October 2019, students in the Metropolitan area of Santiago started to evade the barriers leading into the metro.

Organized on social media, large numbers of students gathered at the entrances of the subway in Santiago, and videos of hundreds of students running past the barriers began to surface. On October 18 the situation turned critical (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 8). What had started as quite peaceful acts of defiance spiralled out of control as police and students clashed. At the same time more violent acts of insurrection began to appear as subway stations were burned (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara, 2020: 8).

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President Piñera responded by declaring two municipalities and two cities within the

Metropolitan area under state of emergency resulting in a curfew and military presence in said zones. In a speech on the 19th of October the President motivated this decision: “The purpose of this State of Emergency is very simple, but very profound: to secure the public order, to assure the tranquility of the inhabitants of Santiago, and to protect public as well as private goods, and above all, guarantee the rights of all and everyone of our compatriots, who have been gravely violated from the actions of true criminals” (Piñera, 2019a, my translation).

The initial days of protests, In Della Porta’s words, had created a rupture with normality, interrupting routines and challenging the established order (2018: 560).

4:4:2. Protest vibrating

This decision did not lead to the desired outcome, rather than returning to normality the public was outraged by the desciscion and took to the streets in unprecedented numbers, gathering more than one million people protesting. The protests that had been largely contained to the

metropolitan area of Santiago also spread to other parts of the country. As protests grew, and left the stations of the metro, the scope of the protestors’ demands widened, showing that it was not the increase in transportation fees that was the issue, rather than multiple movements protesting in various areas, this movement was unified and centered around the belief that the 1980 Constitution needed to be overturned in order to deal with the social inequalities in the country (Ansaldi & Pardo-Vergara 2020: 10). As the movement gained momentum, protests grew in number and intensity, urgently forcing actors to choose between alternatives to respond to the existing contingency exposed by the protests.

The ensuing political crisis was a fact, and as the situation did not seem to go away, politicians began searching for solutions.What follows is a period where many political decisions regarding OCS regulated issues are passed down from the president to the senate at a rapid pace. The first decision is the reversal of the increase in transportation fees that sparked the protests. The 21st of

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The session handled the immediate reversal of the increase in transportation fees, which was approved unanimously by the 39 senators participating in the votation (Senado de Chile 2019a).

Interesting in the debate prior to the votation is that many of the left-wing senators who

interjected, expressed the inadequacy of the law discussed, calling for more profound solutions to the claims vocalised by the social movement. Senator Alejandro Navarro demanded a total constitutional reform in order to change the economic model and called the whole session a

“historical error” and accused both President Piñera and his colleagues in the Senate of

committing a grave error limiting the discussion to transportation fees. After his interjection he left the session (Senado de Chile 2019a: 47ff). The left-wing sentiment can be contrasted by the interjection of right-wing senator Jacqueline Van Rysselberghe Herrera who objected to the idea of a model change with the motivation that “socialist economies have been a failure everywhere in the world” (Senado de Chile 2019a: 56, my translation).

Unidad Social held a press conference on the 22nd of October announcing nationwide strikes on the 23rd and 24th of October. With these strikes Unidad Social demanded that the state of emergency should be withdrawn, that the congress should strike as long as the state of emergency was imposed and the formation of a national constitutional assembly that would develop a new constitution with citizen participation. Finally they called for President Piñera’s renouncement with the motivation that his inability to handle the crisis (CUT, 2019b).

The political responses to the movement developed quickly, and already on the 22 of October the President had declared that a new social agenda was to be presented. The agenda was presented by the President in a speech on the 24th of October alongside with the proposal of a new law, this time directed at controlling the electricity prices. The “New Social Agenda” included the increase of pensions, a minimum wage for working Chileans, an insurance to price increases of medications together with an agreement with state owned pharmacies to reduce the prices of medications, a tax increase to the highest earning sectors, higher territorial equality between different municipalities and the reduction of the number of deputies in the parliament together with limitations to their re-election and a reduction of their wages (Piñera 2019b, my translation).

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What was acknowledged here is that the people were not satisfied with the reversal of the increase in transportation fees, which suggests that politicians, including the President, saw the problem as more complex and more comprehensive. The reforms proposed by the President above, are all OCS matters and are clearly directed at decreasing the social inequality, he called upon the Senate to pass the bills necessary to implement “The New Social Agenda”:

We know that this Social Agenda does not solve all problems, but we do know it constitutes an important relief and an important support to solve these problems and increase the life quality of our countrymen [...] And in the following days, with will and with a clear sense of urgency, I will continue to send these projects to the Congress in order to implement this Social Agenda(Piñera, 2019b, my translation).

The sense of urgency was also present in the Senate where some made remarks that they would not have passed these bills in normal times. This next quote is an example from the ensuing debate of the limit to re-election to public office where Senator Ebensperger on the one hand states that he will vote in favor of the proposal but on the other that he has doubts:

I am going to vote in favor of this Constitutional reform, which limits the re-election of Senators to one term [...] And I am going to do this as a signal, effectively, to what is happening in our country. Without doubt I think that this subject is absolutely debatable. All authorities who today intend to limit the re-election are elected by the people. And to not allow the people to continue to elect the authorities that they want seems like an attack on sovereignty to me (Senado de Chile, 2019b: 44f, my translation).

If anything, this quote shows how the social outcry impacted politicians to make amendments to the Constitution that, from what has been learnt from the previous attempts, has been preceded by lengthy debates if even passed through the Senate. Even when senators debated to limit their own political power they easily passed the quorum stipulated by the Constitution, as was the case with the New Social Agenda. It should also be noted that four Senators voted “no” to this

proposal even if their number did not threaten its passing (Senado de Chile, 2019b: 98, my translation).

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4:4:3 Protest sedimentation

On the 12th of November Piñera held another speech. This time he called for the people to unite under an agreement which he referred to as the agreement of Social Peace, Justice and a New Constitution in which he made references to the four weeks of protests, condemning the violence but also suggesting a way out of the crisis. The agreement proposed included the New Social Agenda but also an agreement of a new constitution formed with the participation of the Chilean people in the formation of its contents and ultimately its ratification in a referendum (Piñera, 2019c).

On thursday the 14th of November, the political leaders of left and right wing parties entered in a 15 hour long meeting. The meeting was kept behind closed doors and was not publicly

announced beforehand, which makes it impossible to know exactly what was said (Ansaldi &

Pardo-Vergara 2020: 28). What is known is that as they came out during the early hours on friday the 15th of November the President of the Senate presented the signed agreement of how a national plebiscite would take place, where Chileans would be able to vote to overturn the 1980 Constitution, and decide the body that was going to write its new Constitution: either a body consisting of both parliamentarians already in office together with representatives solely elected for the purpose or consisting only of representatives elected for the purpose of writing the new Constitution (BCN, 2019).

The decision to hold a referendum regarding constitutional reform should be seen as an initial outcome of the protests taking place between October and November 2019. This outcome varied from what has been seen in previous moments of contingency regarding the 1980 Constitution, as this held the promise of fundamental reforms to the system. As the referendum took place and the people voted to overturn the 1980 Constitution this variation was locked in. Even though it is still too early to tell what the new constitution will contain, this diverges Chile onto another path than the one instigated during the military regime.

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4:5. Discussion

In this section I will propose an explanation to why these protests led to the decision to hold the referendum. This will be compared to the other events brought up in this essay. What were the conditions that were present in October and November 2019 that were not present in 2005 and in the 2011-2013 protests wave?

The difference from 2005, although obvious but still significant, was that the process of reform was driven by politicians. It was not a process in which citizens participated. These reforms were the product of a long bargaining between the left and right-wing, in which the right-wing had refused earlier attempts to reform the Constitution. Why the reform came in 2005 rather than in 1990 when Chile returned to democracy can be attributed to the fact that over the years the political advantage the right-wing had inherited had gradually eroded. The right-wing agreed to reform some of the Constitution’s contents in order to keep their political position. The result of these reforms did essentially withhold the political power balance between the right and

left-wing.

The protest wave of 2011–2013, shares more similarities with the protests of 2019. In both instances we find the same president, mass mobilization and a demand of constitutional reform.

In contrary to the 2005 reforms, these two events brought back citizens as participants in the discussion of the constitution. However, the outcomes from these two periods of mobilization differ. The permissive conditions that led to protests in 2011–2013 were various problems left unamended related to the neoliberal model, which mobilized different actors in the civil society in various areas of contestation. Thus their various strategies represent the productive conditions and how politicians respond to them. A crucial aspect to why this period did not lead to any significant changes is that the movements did not turn into a decisive political force due to not having the ability of a unified mobilization. What opened up the possibility of social

mobilization in October 2019 was the increase in transportation fees. The initial political response of implementing the state of emergency accelerated this mobilization. However, prior to these events many social groups had united, as shown by Unidad Social, which provided the

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forced to acknowledge the demands of the protestors. This was expressed by various decisions taken during the four weeks of protests such as the reversal of the increase in transportation fees, the presentation of a new social agenda and finally the agreement to hold a national referendum of constitutional reform. Ultimately it was the strength of the social movement coupled with politicians feeling compelled to concede to their demands that produced this outcome. The presence of this permissive condition together with the productive conditions thus formed a critical juncture.

5. Conclusion

In the introduction of this study the reader was presented with a rather paradoxical problem:

Even though Chile returned to democracy in 1990, the Constitution that was written during the military dictatorship of Agosto Pinochet has remained largely untouched in the course of the 30 years since the return of democracy; allowing the legacy of the military regime to shape politics and social policies even when not in power.

The aim of this essay was to provide an explanation of the problems associated with the Chilean Constitution of 1980 in order to bring more clarity on the events that unfolded between October and November 2019, which resulted in the October 2020 Plebiscite, rejecting the Pinochet era Constitution in favour of a new one, drafted by publicly elected officials. To make sense of this, a hindsight perspective has been useful; This study has argued that the Chilean Constitution of 1980 was formed during a critical juncture, and that the long-lasting effects of this critical juncture can be explained through the terminology of path-dependency; which has shown in what ways actors have been constrained during the almost 30 years of democracy in regards to amending the Constitutional texts.

The question examined, “why did the protests between October and November 2019 result in the call for a national referendum regarding constitutional reform?”, resulted in the identification of permissive and productive conditions that resulted in the decision to hold the referendum. This essay has shown that the period of the social outburst can be seen as a critical juncture, where

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the people initially provoked decision makers to respond in the form of decisions regarding social reforms, suggesting that actors were less constrained while taking decisions of

constitutional nature that were unlikely to be passed during normal times. Parallels were made to the reform of 2005 and the protest wave of 2011-2013, where amendments to the Constitution were made but failed to challenge the structure of it, which left the socioeconomic policies of the country, protested against in 2019, unchanged. The first reform of 2005 has been described as a political project, and the protest wave, although sharing many similarities to the protests of 2019, seems to have lacked the unifying cause that made the later movement more successful.

Suggesting that the protests of 2019 caused a greater rupture with normality, and as protests grew rapidly and spread throughout the country giving the political actors the final push to unify under the movements’ demand to reform the Constitution. As the decision to hold the referendum was taken the probability of a new Constitution being drafted increased, suggesting that this period was in fact a critical juncture.

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6. References

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BCN (2019-11-15) Acuerdo Por la Paz Social y La Nueva Constitución. Available at:

https://obtienearchivo.bcn.cl/obtienearchivo?id=documentos/10221.1/76280/1/Acuerdo_por_la_

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Capoccia, G. Kelemen, R.D. (2007), “The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative, and Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism”, World Politics, vol. 59, no. 3, pp. 341-369.

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Otro Chile es posible; nos cansamos; nos unimos. Available at:

https://cut.cl/cutchile/2019/08/28/manifiesto-de-unidad-social-convocando-a-la-gran-protesta-na cional-de-este-5-de-septiembre-otro-chile-es-posible-nos-cansamos-nos-unimos/ (Accessed: 15 January 2020)

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Available at:

https://cut.cl/cutchile/2019/10/22/unidad-social-convoca-a-huelga-general-nacional-para-el-23-y- 24-de-octubre/ (Accessed: 15 January 2020).

Della Porta, D. (2020;2018), “Protests as critical junctures: some reflections towards a momentous approach to social movements”, Social movement studies, vol. 19, no. 5-6, pp.

556-575.

Donoso, S. (2017) “Outsider” and “Insider” Strategies: Chile’s Student Movement, 1990–2014.

In: Donoso, S. & Von Bülow, M (eds) Social Movements in Chile: Organization, Trajectories &

Political Consequences. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 249-280.

Critical Junctures and Constitutional Reform: A Single Case Study of the Agreement to hold the Chilean Referendum of Constitutional Reform