The Power of Protectors: Accounting for High-Risk Mobilization in Pinochet's Chile

Description

Consuelo Amat, the SNF Agora Institute assistant professor of political science, will give a talk titled "The Power of Protectors: Accounting for High-Risk Mobilization in Pinochet's Chile" as a Johns Hopkins Latin America in a Globalizing World works-in-progress seminar.

Please email Casey Lurtz at lurtz@jhu.edu for a copy of the paper and the Zoom link to attend virtually.

Abstract:

How can activists overcome the collective action problem under extreme repression? I argue that protest in these conditions is more likely when protectors—third parties that lend assistance to victims and potential victims, and that have ties to at least one of the parties to the conflict—are present. The article tests this proposition by examining the role of Catholic priests and bishops, and the emergence of the only type of public organizing that occurred at the height of repression during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Interview data from victimized communities in mobilized and demobilized localities, as well as two new datasets of Catholic churches, priests, and bishops, demonstrate the power of moderate protectors in particular. Moderate Catholic priests and bishops, as opposed to conservative or leftist ones, were effective in increasing the probability of mobilization because they provided localized assistance and certified potential activists. They contributed to the channeling of grievances against the state through nonviolent means, though they restricted the nature of the opposition.