Four Dead in Ohio by Johanna Solomon

Four Dead in Ohio by Johanna Solomon

Author:Johanna Solomon [Solomon, Johanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800718081
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:00+00:00


Final Thoughts

The student movements were always in sync with the government's reaction and vice versa. However, during the period under study for this paper this interaction did not take place in a vacuum, it happened within a context of great public visibility and attentiveness to movements that were unfolding and gaining momentum. This paper helps shed light not only on the reasons why students managed to obtain such great visibility in Chile, but also why they became such a great threat for the government to the point of being harshly repressed. The evidence showed that students had higher likelihoods of being repressed when they targeted the national government and when they employed externally disruptive tactics. This supports the theory that proposes a threat approach to security (Davenport, 2007). As the demands of students escalated and amplified, so did the likelihood of repression and police/student confrontation (which was highest under Piñera's administration). But their targeting the national government was itself a factor in attracting the support of the public, thus creating a situation in which repression would be interpreted as an oppressive regime seeking to silence legitimate complaints.

The quantitative findings of this paper show that externally disruptive tactics have had higher chances of being repressed in Chile, but repression also gives students more visibility and it can usher even more support and further mobilization. We found that while the types of tactics students used each period shifted, and sometimes included more disruptive forms, the underlying threat theory is confirmed. Put differently, the more threatening the protest or the movement is to police or authorities, the more efforts – which could be force and violence – they will put to stop it. However, it is difficult to establish clear causal mechanisms as tactical decisions and violence on the part of activists could well be the result of state force presence and/or action. Student activists and authorities weigh up these calculations into the equations when making decisions about whether to act, when to act, and how to act. Strong support networks usually make the costs of repression higher for the government. However, these decisions are not made mechanically, actors often dispute pre-established assumptions about tactics, and they look for ways to innovate and catch the public opinion and authorities off guard, so as to avoid repression and gain greater visibility.

Changing political landscapes implied changing relationships between students and security forces, with the more leftist coalition opting for a more mediated approach to protest control and the right-wing government exhibiting a more confrontational tone. While educational demands were a common thread from the second wave of student protest in 2006–2007 to the third wave in 2010–2011, the students' interpretation of the causes of those educational problems and the solutions that needed to come about amplified significantly; the students came to question the very nature of the Chilean society and economy. When the public discourse changed as a result of students' mobilization efforts – from understanding education as a consumer good to understanding it as



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