CLASES MEDIAS Y TRABAJADORES FRENTE A LA POLÍTICA: SOBRE EL ASCENSO ELECTORAL DE LA DERECHA EN CHILE

Abstract

This paper aims understanding the rise of right-wing political sectors in Chile during the last decade through the analysis of two social groups: the middle classes and workers in Santiago City. More than three decades after the liberal structural reforms, both sectors have experienced crucial transformations, which heavily impacted in their political identification processes. The proposed hypothesis is that these changes in social stratification-dependent on the reforms-established new forms of identity articulation which are particularly compatible with political organizations with certain features: emphasis in the local space, clientelistic dynamics and leaderships based in the idea of the "apolitical", all these core elements of the political proposal of right-wing parties in Chile. To sustain this hypothesis, set out in a first step a quantitative analysis with CASEN 2006 data and the election data from 2005 and 2006 presidential elections. In a second step, this paper presents a qualitative analysis based on the description of historical trajectories and the main elements of the articulations of the identity the selected groups, establishing their impact on the political phenomenon.