Social Revolt in Chile: A political counter-hegemony challenging the Neo-Liberal narrative?

Abstract

On the 18th of October 2019, Chile began undergoing the biggest political and social upheaval since
the one that ended the Pinochet dictatorship. This upheaval slowly gave way to a process of
impeachment of the traditional institutions of The State. This paper looks at the political
dimension of the ensuing social revolt and its scope in the Constituent itinerary agreed on the
15th of November 2019. It seeks to answer the question of whether the mass movement was the
expression of a political counter-hegemony challenging the Neo-Liberal order. To this end, it draws
on the main theoretical currents questioning the fit between democracy and Neo-Liberalism,
especially Chantal Mouffe's ‘antagonistic’ notion of ‘the populist moment’. In practical terms, it
analyses, on the basis of past political and electoral behaviour, two cleavages that tie in with
the emergence of the populist moment, that of elite/people and parties/ independents. From the
analysis of the electoral data covering the last thirty years and that bearing on the results of
the 2021 election of the members of the Constituent Convention, it is concluded that political
weariness is mirrored in the two cleavages defining the populist moment. Moreover, there was a
strengthening of the various political forces that saw themselves as anti-Neo-Liberal.