Malaise and democracy in Chile

Abstract

How much malaise is there in Chile today? Some recent data suggests that a great deal. In 2011, for example, 240 marches were authorized in Santiago alone, representing the highest level of citizen mobilization seen since the early 1990s (Segovia and Gamboa 2012). The number of people estimated to have participated in protest activities in 2011 was, indeed, close to the sum of all those who did so in 2009-2010 and 2012-2013 (UNDP 2014: 257). In the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2013, only 49.35 percent of those eligible to vote did so and, in the second round of the presidential election, this dropped to 41.98 percent (www.servel. cl). There has also been a clear decline in trust in the country’s principal institutions. This is seen, for example, in the opinion survey carried out in April 2015 by the Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP), a Santiago-based think tank, which found that a mere 3 percent of Chileans reported having "a lot" or "quite a lot" of trust in the political parties (www.cepchile. cl). However, as will be shown below, indicators like distrust of the political system have long been a feature of Chile and, rather than indicating a sudden crisis, reflect the sustained change in Chileans’ attitudes that has taken place over the past 20 years.