8. Social conflict in a democratic context. The role of the student movement in Chile

Abstract

In the context of the present process of democratic advancement that the region is going through, with progressive of left-wing governments in many countries, the emergence of social problems becomes an original and promising battlefield. Altogether, this gives rise to new theoretical and conceptual challenges defying the classic notion of democracy. The exhaustion of the mediation typically carried out by the political class and the political parties has allowed for the emergence of new situations in which the citizenry and the social movements seek for wider spaces to act themselves as interlocutors, in a context characterized by recurrent political and social conflicts centred around the opposing interests existing in society. Within this frame, this article reflects on the role of the social movements, especially the student movement, in the widening of democratic practice and the design of public policies addressed to solving the needs of the population.