The Reawakening of the Student Movement in Chile: A Discussion of the Incorporation of Protest as a Manifestation of Citizenship Through the Lens of Public Opinion Data

Tear gas, water cannons, and violence were for years a common sight in the center of Santiago, Chile. This paper aims to assess whether such protest in Chile further fractured the already weakened citizen-state obligations, or conversely, served as a catalyst for a deeper citizenship bond. Focusing on the presidencies of Michelle Bachelet and Sebastian Piñera, and their reactions to the student movement, analysis of public opinion data finds evidence that the citizen-state relationship has progressively evolved to becoming more responsive and productive, particularly in the process of extending recognition of formal social rights. Despite the violence, which could be interpreted as disarticulating citizenship, as in Pinochet’s times, the democratic system managed to incorporate protest and address protesters’ demands for reform as part of an evolving definition of citizenship.

1 Derived from Giddens' Structuration Theory defined in "The Constitution of Society" (1984; cited in van der Ree, 2011). It follows that "the state acts as a structure which imposes a certain formation of citizenship (either expansive or restrictive) that produces certain social identities and meanings for different sectors of the population" but that civil society is not necessarily victim to these identities and can seek to create alternatives through various response-strategies from as mild as passivity to at the other end, contestation (van der Ree, 2011). the circle continues" (van der Ree 2011: 25). Likewise, Foweraker and Landman (1997) argue that civil and political rights are a measure of power that are continually used to develop a multitude of movements in which citizens organize to defend their own interests and identities. Following this approach, it may be argued that there is a mutual interaction between social movements and citizenship rights in that the very struggle defines these rights and enable citizenship to be defined and known (Moseley & Layton 2013: 2).
Through such movements, it is argued, citizens "define freedoms that the state cannot invade" (Foweraker & Landman 1997: 15). Ultimately, citizenship, as discussed here, is a constructivist phenomenon, which evolved due to simultaneous and successive interactions between the state and civil actors. This perspective, which is ever-relevant for the Chilean case, can be explicitly followed through the progression of public opinion about the bonds of citizenship and in the interaction between civil society and government personnel facilitated by the outbreak of mass protest-in pickets and changes, symbols and images, and ideally in face-to-face negotiations as well-because of the duality in the roles of the state and of civil society in the outbreak and recognition of protest and the people's plights.
Furthermore, Alcántara (2005) posits that while political citizenship throughout Latin America has been successfully implemented and rather equitably achieved, both formally and in practice, civil and social citizenship have shown a divergent path. Because of this, it is no longer sufficient to assess the quality of citizenship by formal government types. Instead, one must also look to the political experiences of social actors. Indeed, social movements provide an interesting point of departure for the study of citizenship in Chile as social actors seek to "close the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of citizenship…" (Foweraker & Landman 1997: 17).

Citizenship Relations in Chile: Historical Trends and Recent Developments
In the Chilean socio-political fabric, students have traditionally played an important political role and have been encouraged to take part in politics as a component of their university experience, which often includes participation in protest and social movements of varying forms. Furthermore, the university was often deemed to be something exceptional-a "laboratory for democracy," with a unique progressive and correcting mission whose natural regeneration (due to student turnover every four to eight years) provided it with an edge in understanding and adapting to new mores and challenges (Scott 1968;Hennessy 1972;Liebman, 1972;Caviedes 1979). Since the 1920s, students have constituted one of the largest, and in some cases the only firm resistance to authoritarian regimes or democratic governments that were seen as corrupt and inadequate (Avritzer 2013).
The military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile sought to actively demobilize citizens and reduce the ability of voters to shape politics. Due to the scale of repression, many potentially socially active individuals were depoliticized and deterred from political participation (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2011: 79-80;Turner 2013). However, despite this active repression of civil engagement, students managed to continue their activism and ultimately played an important part in the movement that brought an end to this authoritarian period in Chile (Foweraker & Landman, 1997, Figure 5.6.2;Schneider 1995). In the words of Manuel Antonio Garretón, "the most important sociopolitical expression of the crisis inside the regime, which many opposition sectors mistook for a terminal crisis, was the sparking of protest movements… This represented the rebirth of the mass movements and forced the regime to an incipient opening (apertura)" (Garretón 2003: 125).
In the 1980s, as the power of the dictatorship began to decline, mass opposition groups organized formally under the campaign of the No, in which, not surprisingly, students played an important role. The "No!" won the plebiscite and democracy was set to return to Chile. However, the transition did not lack complications. Due to the character of the transition, the new administrations were placed in a difficult situation to both mobilize a previously closed society while simultaneously trying to maintain firm order and control. Biekart's analysis of Latin America applies to Chile: "the social movements that recently gave rise to the new progressive governments in Latin America are running the risk of suffering a similar backlash as these new governments will try to co-opt the leaders of these movements and to neutralize their autonomous social power" (Biekart 2005: 90). Following the transition, the Chilean powerholders chose to prefer governability over "political dialectics and popular participation" (van der Ree, 2011: 32;Milanich et al. 2014). Along these lines, and quite ironically, the social forces that organized to help facilitate the democratic transition were in some ways marginalized in the first years of democracy as the general fear of chaos surged throughout the new government and various sectors of the population (Milanich et al. 2014;Sznajder, 2013, p. 413).
Ultimately, in the initial post-dictatorship period, the governments maintained political citizenship in its restored form of electoral democracy, with street manifestations and civil citizenship slowly gaining recognition, and social citizenship largely left in the hands of the state yet limited by to the "ossification" of Chilean politics, economic policy, and extremely persistent income and social inequalities (Garretón 2003;Biekart 2005;Ferretti 2013;Milanich et al. 2014;Schneider 1995: 195;van der Ree 2011: 32;Whitehead 2013: 28). This trend continued until tensions peaked in the past 10 years under the first government of President Michelle Bachelet. The student manifestations broke out in 2006. Dubbed the Penguin Revolution, this wave was unique in that it was largely led by high school students and paved the way for many more street mobilizations in the future. Additionally, the protests signified the official, generational recognition of the failure of the transition-coalition to meet the promises made, and revealed the hold of the authoritarian-made constitutional measures that served as points of contention between the broader social public and all-too-content government circles. As stated by Bakamjian, "having attempted to change these policies through more formal political means in the past, the students believed that a mass uprising was the only method that would gain sufficient government attention… [and their strategy, i.e., protest] suggests that these students, who have grown up entirely under democratic rule, are unsatisfied with the effectiveness of traditional channels of democratic representation, and that they feel comfortable" doing so (Bakamjian, 2009: 2-3).
After years of repression of popular public and street participation, Chilean students united under common banners and actively pursued their political and civil rights via the right to assembly, gathering in the streets and revitalizing the tradition of protest and petitioning for the advancement of social citizenship.
"The people of Chile have suddenly arisen once again as forceful protagonists and advocates for social change and democratization, after years of silence and underlying trauma that were a legacy of the state terror of the Pinochet years" (McSherry & Molina 2011: 30). As the perceptions of the student protests progressively achieved acceptance, the government still faced the question of how to preserve stability in a highly-polarized society while promoting a re-activation of civil society in the public space and recognizing the student movement and its demands.
Throughout the two administrations of Bachelet and the one of Sebastián Piñera, the student movement served as a catalyst for further, widespread demonstrations and created watershed moments for a true "re-opening" (apertura) and acknowledgement of potential areas for citizenship expansion. At the same time, media reports published that denounced the violent repression of protest, to some extent placed pressure on the government to pay greater attention both to the plight of the student movement and to the way in which it is responded to. This created space for protest to serve as a manifestation of citizenship and encouraged formal recognition of the petitions voiced throughout the streets.
In particular, the 2011 student movement protests were larger, demanded more, lasted longer, and achieved wider cross-societal support than the protests five years earlier. As an example of size and reach of that wave of protests, the Marcha de las Marchas carried out in 2014, rallied 25,000 protesters representing 40 different groups. The movement was organized at the university-level, yet mobilized not just university students, but also high school students and multiple other sectors in society (André 2012).
Furthermore, as the protests continued and spanned across presidential terms, the student leaders' motivations became proactive rather than reactive, explicitly signaling to President Bachelet at the beginning of her second, non-consecutive term that they were mobilized in order to hold the presidency accountable to the promises that had been made throughout the campaigning period. At the same time, protests began to achieve societal support and deeper citizen-state bonds were created, particularly as the students and the government started to explicitly cooperate. Ultimately, this suggests that throughout the student-led protests, the Chilean conception of formal citizenship was challenged to reincorporate the disenfranchised and heighten the overall activity of "the people" by institutionalizing protest as a form of political participation and by expanding the definition of citizenship to include other group-specific policies, including indigenous rights, inequality, and redistributive policies, to varying degrees of success. While this process has been slow and moderate at best in the grand scheme, the precedent has been set for a continued revitalization of Chilean civil, social, and political society assuming that the government and movement leaders continue to cooperate. In what follows, the research turns to the lens of quantitative data to assess whether protest has indeed been a catalyst for a deeper citizenship bond rather than a rupture of the social contract in Chile as posited through the anecdotal experiences above.

Empirical Assessment
The data used for the empirical assessment comes in two forms: data published and used by Chilean think tanks or previously published works (Geer 2004;Machado et al. 2011;Moseley & Layton 2013;Centro de Estudios Públicos 1996), and raw data (2006-2014 every other year) gathered from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), made available through Vanderbilt University. The LAPOP data was used in order to quantify trends discussed in earlier work and throughout this research, and observational data. The variables were organized in three sets for use in logistic regressions testing for differences between years; namely: 1) a set of variables representing public opinion about the government and their performance, 2) a set of variables indicating perceptions about specific presidents and their performance in predominantly social and economic areas, and 3) a set of variables representing support for "the people's cause or ideological and cause-specific preferences." The variables were coded to represent the "negative" scenario, that is, poor to very poor public perception of the government and economy, or little to no confidence in governmental institutions and affairs. A coding process was used to represent the "negative" in order to capture and highlight any decline in public opinion about the government in relation to periods of social uprising as a way to identify potential ruptures in opinion about the bonds of citizenship and democracy in the Chilean context. These results were used to test the key hypothesis that public opinion about the government and the bonds of the citizen-state contract were bolstered through the waves of student protest that began in 2006 and again in 2011, which were themselves mass-manifestations of citizenship-in-practice.
The LAPOP polls were chosen because they are systematically recorded, cover a variety of relevant topics to this research and were formulated to target the voting-age population, and therefore those most likely to impact politics in its most formal definition as well as via protest, strikes and mass movement. Respondents were asked a series of questions, and their responses were recorded in categorical ranking-form (typically 1 through 7) or in a single-answer dichotomous format. There were on average 1,530 observations for each variable within each year's dataset between the years 2006 and 2014, where some variables were omitted within one year and others present, or vice versa, which was taken into account throughout the analysis.
The first set of variables that represent public opinion about the overall performance of the government were chosen due to their explicit relationship to a multi-level analysis of the government. This group includes variables that illustrate the confidence individuals had in national politics, the Carabineros and the political parties, as well as the general support for the political system, the respect respondents have for political institutions, the feeling that the basic rights of the people are protected under the system, and the type of political system preferred (e.g., democracy). These variables were coded as binary variables where a value of one indicated, unless otherwise notified, a negative or highly negative perception of the government, or little to no confidence in governmental institutions and bodies. The only exception is the variable for preferred type of political system where, as a binary variable, a value of one indicates that democracy is the sole-preferred government type. This coding classification was chosen because as a relatively recent transition country, the permanence of democracy and its relation to citizenship continuity and expansion is critical. If, or where, there are ruptures in public opinion toward democracy, and therefore the populous favors instead an authoritarian system, this may indicate not only disenchantment with the way in which the government handles its power but an overall desire to overhaul the political system more generally. The implications for citizenship, especially via protest, in such an instance are potentially problematic and could create tension with the key concepts of this work-i.e. that protest, as discussed within the reach of this research, is a manifestation of citizenship petitioning for revisions and updates to the system rather than an outright denouncement of the state.
The second set of variables was constructed to represent president/person-specific public opinion information, with variables coded to represent the 'negative' outcome. These, when juxtaposed against the broader themes captured in the group-one variables, could be used to identify peak periods of dissatisfaction with the more idiosyncratic elements of the system (current leaders, e.g.) as compared with opinions toward the broader, more fundamental, elements of the political system as is. Lastly, the third set of variables, representing people's preferences, were coded into binary variables to represent the "extremes." For example, the variable representing the respondent's self-classification of ideological tendency graduated from "leftist" to "right-wing" and was coded to represent radically leftist or leftist selfascriptions. The statistical tests conducted utilized two main points of protest within the past 10 years-years in the logistic regressions). The statistical tests yielded results discussed as year-differentials with respect to these critical years.
Multiple logistic models were run (for each government-perception variable) using the annual data as independent variables in order to determine significant differences (or lack thereof) between years. This model reports outcome coefficients for the predicted model in odds ratios as compared to a reference year.
The key reference year was 2006 rather than 2010 for chronological clarity. A logistic regression model was determined as the most appropriate modeling form for this research due to its favorable properties for modeling the probabilistic differences in public opinion across time as compared to a reference year.
Furthermore, this method leads to results that are easily interpretable with respect to the research question being examined about the evolution of public opinion surrounding pivotal periods of protest. The results are reported as odds ratios (e.g., eᵝ 1(X) ) and provide information about the likelihood for differences between the included years (as compared to the reference year) among public opinion responses. 2 First, with respect to the outbreak of the Penguin Revolution, because it was the first social movement of its size since the transition to democracy, I expected that tensions would need to be sufficiently high in order to incentivize such high levels of organization and opposition. Accordingly, I assumed the variables of group one and group two to indicate high levels of dissatisfaction and distrust of the government and president in 2006, respectively. Due to the way in which the model was set up, and due to the lack of data for years before 2006, the Penguin Revolution case was considered in comparison to later years. Nevertheless, these estimations still provide important information about the general trends of public opinion surrounding citizenship and the potential merits of protest. Furthermore, I expected that the variables for set 3 (that represent popular support for the social movement and other individual-level preferences) would show limited support of, or maybe opposition to, the student movement-the first of its kind since the return to democracy.
With respect to the 2011 protests (2010 or 2012 data due to availability), one could similarly expect high levels of dissatisfaction for variables in set 1 and set 2, which may be the key underlying factors that precipitated the desire to organize and petition the government through protest. However, due to achievements toward greater cooperation between the key stakeholders, it is likely that the data indicate lower levels of dissatisfaction in set one in later years than those observed in 2006. Additionally, because protests in 2006 initiated the process of re-incorporation of mass movements into societal "norms," expectation was to see results that indicated greater support for protest of this kind (set 3 variables) by the populace across time.

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Public Opinion (e.g., confidence in the national government) = ᵝyr2 + ᵝyr3 + ᵝyr4 + ᵝyr5 Where yr1 (2006)  Also important to understanding the evolution of public opinion as explained here is the governmental response or lack thereof to the outbreak of protest. In response to the first round of protests, President Bachelet's delayed and lackluster 3 response was to establish a presidential commission with a focus on student participation and input on education. The ultimate goal of this commission was to address the nation's legal framework for education and the funding and creation of government agencies that would supervise the quality and financing of education in the future (Christensen 2014). After multiple tedious rounds of negotiation with then Minister of Education, the government agreed to various additional reforms. 4 This particular government response was paramount to the evolution and expansion of both protest-in practice and in its aims-and as a precedent for the governmental response to these mass 3 On May 19: students occupy high schools to "encourage" Michelle Bachelet to "address the movement and the general issue of education in her speech to the nation…she failed to do so." … May 29: the Minister of Education "finally announced his willingness to negotiate in a meeting" and instead sends his sub-secretary. These events, among others, led to the coordination of the "largest nationwide strike to date," which finally inspired a response by recent president, Michelle Bachelet (Bakamjian 2009: 7). 4 College admission exams for free to students within the bottom four socioeconomic quintiles, gradual work to reform and replace the LOCE with a new education law. movements in the future. Protest, as an abrupt and overt act of civil defiance, was not brutally suppressed and the eventual cooperation by the two vested parties, despite its deficiencies, highlighted a mutual recognition that the current format of citizenship was insufficient and needed to be addressed. President Bachelet did not succumb to the regeneration of memories of social chaos that this type of manifestation was linked to; rather, she and her government slowly worked to cooperate with the student movement and to foster a revitalization of civil society by promising change and social advancement. These decisions may, in part, explain the improved trust in the government and in its systems, that is observed in the data and persisted through 2010 (statistically significant likelihood for stronger confidence and support for the current political system and for governmental bodies as compared to 2006) despite the transition of power to an opposition political party.
The findings associated with the perception of President Piñera and the 2011 student protest provide an interesting example of the ways in which protest and peak levels of dissatisfaction with the current president and policies did not undermine the perception of confidence in the current political system's structure in Chile during the years studied. As an explicit example, in 2012, respondents largely lacked confidence in the president and in some of the economic policies, but continued perceive that their rights were protected under the current political system as compared to responses in 2006. Moreover, respondents were more likely in 2012 as compared to 2006 to support protest, signaling its reincorporation to the norms of "citizenship" as perceived by the masses. The simultaneity of these statistics signal that public opinion of the bonds of citizenship under the existing democratic system improved despite the outbreak and persistence of protest, and in fact in conjunction with stronger approval for protest.
Ultimately, the 2011 student movement led to negotiations between the Piñera administration and the leaders of the student movement. The precedent was set by Piñera's predecessor with the Penguin Revolution and it seemed that the students would allow nothing less than this recognition. The transition from protest to open negotiation between the movement's leaders and the president was described as a "positive response…related to political, legal, and social rights" (Ortiz 2013: 37). Furthermore, the cooperation between the government and the student movement leaders illustrated that the social contract was maintained, and the reach and definition of citizenship improved upon-bolstered by data on confidence in both the political system and in the student movement.
At the same time, however, there is some indication that although the accumulated findings present a rather optimistic picture of the evolution of public opinion related to the bonds of citizenship in Chile and the place of protest, there are also findings that suggest that the future of Chilean protest is less positive and productive. Specifically, while support for legal manifestations increased statistically significantly in the years following the Penguin Revolution, so too did support for violent manifestations which in fact increased more than the support for legal avenues in a consistent manner from 2008 through 2014 in comparison to 2006 levels. Furthermore, and potentially more problematic, are data indicating that support for democracy was significantly lower in 2014 than in 2006. If these trends continue into the future and negatively influence other opinions about government and the current system, an escalating protest climate and lack of confidence in democracy as a political system that responds to these petitions could instead fracture the citizen bond with the state. This statistical finding along with media reports about the way in which the student movement is "radicalizing" indicate the need for continued monitoring of public opinion, especially where the use of data is becoming increasingly important for the steering of state policy (Slattery 2015).

Conclusions
This evaluation of public opinion about the bonds of citizenship and democracy through the lens of public opinion polls indicates that citizenship has expanded, and bonds strengthened, surrounding periods of protest, and in some capacity in response to protest. The "new" wave of protest in Chile was momentous in that it represented a resurgence of a more active form of citizenship following years of de-politicization. characterized through public opinion polls by peak-levels of dissatisfaction across various measures of distrust in government institutions and dissatisfaction with the way in which the country was moving, the steps taken by the Bachelet administration to address the plight of the movement would prove momentous in the long run. Protest began to be recognized as a viable tool for the people to petition the government for policy changes without it necessarily signaling an impending crisis, and a tool for the government to interact and self-acquaint with the desires of the masses and the social climate. This can be noted in the slow progression toward acceptance and support for protest and the simultaneous improvement in perceptions of the government and system more generally as described through public opinion polls. Additionally, instead of protest solely breaking out at the peak of tensions, as in 2006, protest was utilized as leverage by the Student Movement in order to ensure accountability of the government to the promises that were made (as was the case in the Marcha de las Marchas).
Ultimately, citizenship has expanded and updated in important ways in Chile over the past 10 years, which can be tracked and analyzed through the evolution of opinion about these bonds of citizenship and democracy as documented in public opinion polls. Further examining this topic will reveal important information regarding the continuation of these trends in the Chilean context. The data and discussion here within indicate that protest in Chile has been more proactive in recent years, that protest has gained support as a viable mechanism to practice citizenship and petition the government for change, and simultaneously, that support for and trust in the government and its various political arms has also improved across time. However, statistical findings from the final year in the sample (2014) present the possibility for puzzling trends going forward. These latter findings indicate that preference for democracy has declined and that support for violent means of protest have increased. Therefore, it is important to continue monitoring and analytically testing public opinion of various forms of political participation, pp. 23-40.