Student Protest and the Nueva Mayoria Reforms in Chile

Chile's Nueva Mayoria government (2014-2018) responded more forcefully to student demands for a more assertive public role in education than any of its post-authoritarian predecessors. Existing scholarship suggests that this change reflected the success of the 2011 student protests in tapping into latent public discontent with neoliberalism and the politics of consensus. This article argues that it is also crucial to understand how the wave of protest interacted with the dynamics of party politics at the elite level. Public support translated into substantive policy and institutional changes because it contributed to a coalition and platform shift that favoured more extensive reform.