Social Movements, Political Parties, and the Institutional Continuity of the Chilean Social Outburst in the Constitutional Convention

The social outbreak of 2019 caused a deep crisis in the Chilean political system, which political parties sought to solve by opening a constitutional change process through the Constitutional Convention. This institutional response appeared to indicate the outbreak had ended and that social movements and political parties acted separately. However, this article contends that both actors directly interacted, arguing that the Convention institutionally prolonged the social outbreak. To understand the scope and obstacles of the interaction between these actors, I conducted 45 interviews with members of the Constitutional Convention (convencionales) both party members and those coming from the social movements. By contrasting both perspectives, this article finds that the persistence of mutual distrust across members of the constitutional convention, along with the time constraints imposed by the institutional design of the process, hindered the construction of broad agreements. This study offers a detailed view of the internal dynamics of the Convention, contributing to the understanding of the interaction between activists and parties both at the institutional level and in the context of the Chilean social outbreak.