A Strategic Approach to the Alliance-Formation Process Between Activists and Legislators in Chile

Abstract

Legislative allies are widely recognized as key to social movement success, but the emergence of their alliance with activists remains understudied. This article proposes a strategic approach to this phenomenon based on the cases of the environmental, labor, and LGBT+ movements in Chile and their allied legislators. According to this approach, an alliance emerges due to two necessary conditions. Movement organizations must display tactical capacity, which signals their adaptability and competence to participate in Congress. And a socially skilled leadership creates the trust required for movement leaders and legislators to cooperate during the lawmaking process. This approach emphasizes that alliances emerge from activists’ strategic efforts to build a social tie, whose effectiveness is mediated by legislators’ expectations and congressional norms. By specifying the strategic dimension of an alliance, this study highlights the capacity of activists to foster cooperative relations with state actors.

[About equal marriage] I don’t agree with it … we have a long way to go, but I also have the feeling that Chilean society is not ready to embrace this kind of proposal.

—Osvaldo Andrade, member of the Chilean Chamber of Deputies and president of the Socialist Party (La Tercera 2010)

[The legislative debate on equal marriage] lacks seriousness and coherence… days ago I talked on the phone with Andrade, and I proposed to him to join a panel discussion to move the marriage reform forward extending it to homosexual couples, and he agreed.

—Rolando Jiménez, MOVILH (La Tercera 2010)

With the first statement above, Osvaldo Andrade, then president of the largest leftist party in Chile, sparked a rift between himself and local LGBT+ groups that went over years. The tension illustrates a challenge in the study of the interplay of social movements and Congress. On the one hand, research on the political consequences of social movements usually assumes that partisan or ideological affinities suffice to explain the alliance between activists and legislators (Soule and King 2006; Johnson et al. 2010; Hutter et al. 2018), suggesting that left-wing parties would easily support progressive movements. Following this approach, Andrade should have been an unwavering supporter of the LGBT+ movement. On the other hand, legislative analyses show that political parties are not homogeneous groups (Morgenstern 2003). This internal diversity partially explains why social movements struggle to receive the attention of even ideologically sympathetic parties in Congress (Borland 2014; Mische 2015). Since the analysis of the emergence of an alliance remains largely unspecified (López 2022; Skrentny 2006; Steil and Vasi 2014), the question of what conditions explain the close and selective cooperation between activists and legislators remains unanswered.

Alternatively, this research develops a strategic approach to understand the relational and processual conditions under which such partnerships cohere, conceptualizing an alliance as a social movement outcome (Jasper 2015). Considering the role of activists’ reflexive choices and their dynamic interactions with legislators (Jasper 2004), an alliance in this article relies on two necessary conditions. First, social movement organizations (hereafter SMOs) must have tactical capacity, which signals their adaptability and competence to participate in Congress. Second, they must have a socially skilled leadership, which creates the trust required for movement leaders and legislators to cooperate during the lawmaking process. Without understanding the effect of these two conditions in the alliance-formation process, scholars risk oversimplifying the presence of allies and the tactical efforts of SMOs and their leaders to build a connection with a legislator.

This article develops this approach on the basis of interviews with environmental, LGBT+, and labor activists in Chile and their legislative allies. It situates the interplay of activists and legislators in the Chilean context and conceptualizes the relevance of leadership skills and tactical capacity. Then it describes the organizational field of these three social movements. It presents evidence on the role of tactical capacities and leadership skills as contributing and necessary factors to the alliance-formation process, using a grounded approach. Thus, this article offers a rounded insight into the strategies of SMOs and the responses of their institutional targets. This article concludes with a discussion on the interplay of both conditions and contextual factors to account for the emergence of cooperative ties between activists and legislators, as well as potential extensions to other polities.

The Partisan Affinity Between Activists And Legislators

Two interrelated reasons explain the widespread use of partisanship to describe the basis of an alliance. First, the support of a party is key to garnering the votes necessary to pass legislation that secures a movement goal, turning the party into an ally to external observers (Almeida 2010; Soule and King 2006; Johnson et al. 2010). Second, regardless of nuances within multiparty systems, the affinity between a movement’s goal and a party’s ideology builds the expectation that, for instance, leftist parties should support progressive movements (Hutter et al. 2018). However, focusing on voting reduces an alliance to a discrete action taking place at the end of long social movement campaigns involving close interactions with legislators (Amenta 2006). Also, activists usually struggle to gain the attention of even ideologically sympathetic decisionmakers, motivating calls to systematically analyze the emergence of alliances (Skrentny 2006; Steil and Vasi 2014).

In Latin America, although partisanship explains the connections between “social movement parties” (e.g., Frente Amplio in Uruguay or MAS in Bolivia) and some progressive movements, these connections are not evident or available to everyone, as neither parties (Morgenstern 2003) nor movements are homogenous groups (Fernández 2020; Rousseau and Morales Hudon 2016). Moreover, parties can programmatically depart from their movement allies, as the Argentine Peronists (Murillo 2005) or the Chilean Socialist Party (Roberts 1998) did after embracing neoliberal policies (Levitsky 2003). These cases show that the alliance between activists and parties is not automatic, nor should it be assumed from nominal party labels, although their ideological views may appear to external observers to overlap (Borland 2014; Mische 2015).

The characteristics of the Chilean case further challenge the use of partisanship. Amid a deep crisis of political representation (Luna 2016), research consistently identifies a rift between Chilean movements and parties. This rift is manifested in the distance activists maintain from political authorities regardless of their ideological similarities, due to suspicions of disingenuous behavior (Rozas and Maillet 2019). For instance, the feminist movement gradually severed ties with leftist parties (Franceschet 2004), while the student movement has prioritized promoting its own leaders to congressional positions instead of coalescing with a party (Donoso 2013).

Yet despite the reluctance to create ties with entire political parties, Chilean movements still cooperate nonetheless closely with legislators, but on a personal level. For example, the LGBT+ (Díez 2015;), student (Donoso 2017; von Bülow and Bidegain 2015), and environmental (Somma and Medel 2017) movements articulate ad hoc caucuses of select sympathizers to promote their congressional agendas. Moreover, the LGBT+ and environmental movements defy partisan expectations when building these connections, as they reach across the ideological spectrum to include right-wing legislators, raising the question of how activists build their legislative networks if partisanship is not a primary factor.

Thus, partisanship offers a compelling but incomplete explanation for the emergence of an alliance between parties and legislators, especially in countries like Chile, where activists build networks of congressional supporters through alternative means. Therefore, this article argues in favor of a nuanced analysis that unpacks the interplay of activists and legislators by comparing the strategic decisions of the Chilean environmental, labor, and LGBT+ movements.

The Processual Formation of an Alliance: Tactical and Interpersonal Dimensions

Research identifies two factors that facilitate the cooperation of activists and legislators. One is the tactics SMOs deploy to enhance their political influence. These can include bolstering the congressional careers of their allies (e.g., electioneering, fundraising, lobbying) in exchange for support (Schlozman 2015), having SMO leaders participate in parties to create partisan networks (Franceschet 2004; Mische 2009), or conducting public demonstrations that convey the popularity of their demands (McAdam and Su 2002). The other is the role of SMO leadership in creating the bond of interpersonal trust necessary to instill cooperation (Edwards and McCarthy 2004) and to maintain an alliance with a legislator (Ganz and McKenna 2018). Although both dimensions are relevant, we know less about how they jointly matter, since tactical repertoires and leadership are usually examined separately (cf. Amenta 2006), and particularly for the case of Chile, the analysis of tactical repertoires and leadership is still nascent (Somma and Medel 2017; Rozas and Maillet 2019).

Studying the emergence of alliances requires situating both conditions as part of the interplay of legislators and activists. Legislators’ interactions with other actors are constrained by three different considerations. They are cautious about embracing causes and groups that may affect their public image and careers (Hall and Deardorff 2006; Burden 2007). Their decision to ally with actors like activists may respond to instrumental reasons (e.g., activists’ bolstering their congressional work or their reelection chances) or altruistic motives (e.g., personal values) (Burden 2007; Kingdon and Stano 1984; 2). Legislators’ perceptions about a group (e.g., threat or deserving recipient) mediate their response to the tactics activists deploy (Skrentny 2006), making them selective about the SMOs they work with (Nicholls et al. 2021).

As social movements, in turn, seek elite allies to shape congressional outcomes, their tactical choices and the leadership styles are bounded by organizational and cultural factors (Rossi 2015; Tilly 1995), making some SMOs better equipped than others to draw legislators’ attention (Andrews 2001). Alternatively, some SMOs may emphasize one tactic to overcome weaknesses in the other, leading to different pathways conducive to an alliance by organization or movement. Regardless of these differences, however, SMOs that successfully build alliances are expected to tailor their strategic choices to decisionmakers’ needs and expectations (Amenta 2006).

Recognizing an alliance as a social tie requiring trust among its participants to cooperate in the pursuit of a shared goal (Pullum 2020; Van Dyke and McCammon 2010), this article proposes a strategic approach to explain the alliance of activists and legislators, using strategic interaction perspective (SIP) as a theoretical framework (Jasper 2004; Nicholls et al. 2021). SIP focuses on the strategic decisionmaking and adaptative behavior of goal-oriented activists, contending that their effectiveness depends on the reactions and interests of their targets (e.g., legislators) embedded in arenas (e.g., Congress) that formally and informally validate certain actions. This article’s strategic approach jointly considers the purposive and selective use of tactical capacities and leadership skills (Mische 2015), as tactical capacity signals the ability of an SMO to participate in legislative discussions as a consolidated group (Andrews and Edwards 2004), while a skilled leadership cultivates a relationship with a legislator that secures their mutual support (Ganz 2000; Mische 2015).

Tactical Capacity

This dimension refers to the ability of SMOs to deploy tactics that signal their strength and adaptability to participate in institutional spaces. Contrary to conceptualizations of tactical repertoires as disruptive actions activists use to engage in contentious interactions with state officials (Tilly 1995), tactical capacity draws from Rossi (2015) to assert that repertoires can also instill cooperative ties in public or private settings. That is, activists can show their suitability as informal congressional partners by lobbying (Andrews and Edwards 2004), electioneering (Schlozman 2015), or publicly rallying to show their public support and worthiness (McAdam and Su 2002). This conceptualization of repertoires is relevant for the Chilean case, since activists deploy diverse tactics aimed at multiple audiences, such as followers, counterparts, and bystanders (Rozas and Maillet 2019), and achieve varying degrees of access to legislative spaces (Donoso 2017; Díez 2015; Pérez 2021, von Bülow and Bidegain 2015). However, we know less about the effectiveness of these actions to induce cooperation with legislators.

Socially Skilled Leadership

The effectiveness of SMO leaders at creating ties and bringing about cooperation with external actors is the outcome of an activist’s social skill (Anderson 2018), which can be defined as the individual’s “highly developed cognitive capacity for reading people and environments, framing lines of action, and mobilizing people in the service of these action ‘frames’” (Fligstein and McAdam 2011, 7). Thus, socially skilled leaders induce cooperation and closeness with others by creating shared meanings and identities using two relational strategies: framing and goal-directedness (Anderson 2018).

Framing entails recognizing dominant discourses in the field and the identities and interests of the counterpart (Benford and Snow 2000) while appealing to rational and emotional bases to achieve common understandings. Framing enhances activists’ lobbying efforts (Skrentny 2006; Nicholls et al. 2021) and cements an alliance by defining courses of action through shared interpretations (Ganz 2000; Mische 2009). Goal-directedness involves a pragmatic stance when interacting with legislators by transforming demands into gradual, long-term efforts, since a socially skilled leader understands that congressional dynamics and rules constrain their effectiveness and the action of their allied members of Congress (hereafter MCs). Thanks to this stance, SMO leaders can cope with setbacks and continue interacting with their allies over time.

Although a focus on tactics brings the role of leadership to the fore (Ganz and McKenna 2018), a socially skilled leadership is different from tactical capacity. The latter may signal the worthiness or potential of an SMO to cooperate with a legislator, but the former is what allows an activist to navigate and consolidate a tie with them. A skilled leadership favors the emergence of shared meanings and mutual trust through personal interactions, which are crucial to sustain a cooperative action over time.

Focusing on a socially skilled leadership also contributes to the understanding of social movements in Chile. Analyses of the LGBT+ (Díez 2015), labor (Pérez 2021), or student (Von Bülow and Bidegain 2015) movements allude to the relevance of leadership at directing political strategies, but they omit deepening on its decisions. Another extensively studied case, like the environmental movement, is usually examined regarding its mobilization patterns and their effects (Delamaza et al. 2017; Madariaga et al. 2021), but the definition of strategic choices is usually seen as a collective decision, avoiding examining the role of leadership at establishing cooperative or contentious ties externally.

The Chilean LGBT+, Environmental, and Labor Movements

Each of the three social movements has its distinct organization. Based on their characteristics, it is possible to expect two distinctive patterns in the alliance-formation process between movements and legislators. Compared to the environmental and LGBT+ movements and despite recent strains, the labor movement has a historical connection with Chilean leftist parties. Therefore, ideological or partisan affinities may weigh more in the linkages it establishes with legislators, compared to the tactical and leadership strategies of the other two movements. In addition, each movement comprises a mixture of groups, encompassing established and new SMOs with different levels of resources and leadership expertise. Since the availability of resources favors tactical diversity (McCarthy and Zald 1977), organizations with more resources may display a broader tactical repertoire and be more effective at building alliances than less well-off ones.

The Labor Movement

The Unitary Workers’ Center (henceforth CUT) dominates the Chilean labor movement as the country’s oldest and most important SMO, encompassing unions from different economic sectors. However, many of its affiliated unions, such as the National Association of State Workers (ANEF) or the national teachers’ union (Colegio de Profesores de Chile, CPC), are socially and politically relevant on their own. Resource-wise, these unions cover 90 percent of all unionized Chilean workers, who pay regular dues to support a full-time staff, fund their own policy research centers, and sometimes outsource policy reports to external experts.

The unions use these reports to regularly lobby legislators with policy information to shape congressional discussions and achieve political influence (Pérez 2021). These large unions also organize sporadic, ad hoc demonstrations and strikes during the discussion of a bill of their interest and publicly commemorate International Workers’ Day. Their leaders are experienced activists who have held positions of leadership in different roles over several years. Keeping a centennial legacy, these leaders usually militate in political parties, with the Communist, Socialist, and Christian Democrats as the most common choices (Palacios-Valladares 2010). Therefore, building broad partisan networks is a key component of their interaction with the state.

The movement also includes smaller unions that are not related to CUT but claim national-level representation, such as the National Workers’ Union (UNT) and the Autonomous Workers’ Center (CAT). Although their leaders are experienced unionists who militate in parties, these groups have fewer resources, since they compete to represent the remaining 10 percent of unionized workers. This means a more limited access to funding, presence in the country, and capacity to organize demonstrations.

The Environmental Movement

Starting in the 1980s, this movement has come to encompass a mixture of international (e.g., Greenpeace) and local environmental movement organization (EMOs). While international EMOs receive steady resources through fundraisers and membership fees, local EMOs live under constant financial stress, due to their ineligibility for most sources of international funding after Chile joined the OECD. Despite this hardship, the most relevant EMOs (e.g., Chile Sustentable, Terram, or OLCA) have bureaucratized structures, including three to six full-time staff with degrees in relevant fields (e.g., biology, geography).

This expertise, along with a network of volunteer researchers from local universities, equips Chilean EMOs with the ability to elaborate policy proposals and lobby legislators as their most regular tactic of political influence (Somma and Medel 2017). Chilean EMOs also use social media (primarily Twitter) extensively to diffuse their goals, and their leaders have gained social recognition after several years (if not decades) of activism. Unlike the big labor unions, these groups lack an extensive presence beyond the capital or a large membership to engage in protests, and their leaders avoid formal memberships in any major political party.

Another group of Chilean EMOs includes smaller collectives like “No a Alto Maipo,” which lack a bureaucratized structure and rely on volunteers to organize their activities. Although they have links to the more professional EMOs, they lack the resources to lobby legislators consistently.

The LGBT+ Movement

LGBT+ SMOs slowly emerged after the democratic restoration of 1990 (Díez 2015). MOVILH (Movement of Homosexual Integration and Liberation), AcciónGay, and Fundación Iguales were some of the most professionalized ones. Like EMOs, LGBT+ groups are financially stressed and have a similar staff size, but also engage in coalition work through the Sexual Diversity Front, in which senior organizations support newer groups. Additionally, these groups have cultivated a network of professional volunteers from local universities to strengthen their legislative lobbying. For instance, Iguales and MOVILH and less professionalized groups (e.g., RS, OTD, Mums) have drafted bills with the University of Chile’s law school, which they share with their legislative allies (Díez 2015).

Like EMOs, these organizations rely on online activism to attract public attention. For instance, MOVILH and Iguales are the SMOs with the highest number of followers on Twitter in the country, with more than 150,000 followers each. Also, the leaders of this movement are not active militants in any political party but do actively seek to interact with legislators and national authorities. Unlike EMOs, however, LGBT+ groups engage in annual demonstrations, such as the celebration of LGBT+ pride, but the lack of an extended membership precludes them from organizing ad hoc demonstrations to exert political pressure on state institutions.

Data and Analytical Strategy

The data for this study come from semistructured interviews conducted with activists, legislators, and government officials. The sampling criteria for the SMOs considered a wide reading of primary sources in Chile (research and media) and comments from key informants (e.g., local faculty), identifying groups that declared they were seeking to shape congressional or policy debates. This initial sample was extended to other groups that were mentioned as relevant by SMO respondents. The final sample comprises an exhaustive list of 11 environmental, 10 LGBT+, and 8 labor organizations (Table 1). All these organizations had policy interests but differed in their resource and bureaucratization levels. Sixty-six respondents were interviewed from this sample: 35 from the labor movement (the oldest and largest in Chile), and 16 and 15 from the LGBT+ and environmental movements, respectively.

Table 1. Distribution of Alliances Among Chilean SMOs

The sample of legislators comprises 12 allies identified as such by activists, who explained the conditions and motives drawing them to work with some SMOs. Complementarily, 8 high-level government officials from the ministries of labor, interior, environment, energy, and government-Congress relations were interviewed. They were not movement allies but were directly involved in the legislative discussion of environmental, LGBT+, and labor issues at the time of the fieldwork. This additional source corroborated the salience of SMOs (e.g., participation in congressional debates and linkages with legislators) and confirmed that other SMOs partook in legislative discussions but were not included in the initial sample.

The length of the interviews ranged from 25 minutes to 2 hours, and unless allowed by the respondents during the interviews, the actual names of activists, organizations, and legislators were replaced with pseudonyms.

Analytical Strategy

An alliance in this article refers to the building of a social tie that favors sharing tactics and resources to achieve a common goal (Pullum 2020; Van Dyke and McCammon 2010). Thus, aligned with the respondents, it involves cooperation and coordination in key congressional activities, such as drafting bills, holding press conferences, or participating in committee meetings. This requirement goes beyond legislators’ merely voting in favor of the movement goals, which is a common standard in the field (see Soule and King 2006; Johnson et al. 2010). Also, since social movements can be active over multiple issues, these tasks are deployed over time and not necessarily at the height of a particular campaign (Amenta 2006; Nicholls et al. 2021).

This conceptualization guided the coding of tactical capacity and leadership skills and the presentation of evidence. The coding of tactical capacity focused on the actions activists declared using with legislators to signal their worthiness and fitness to participate in congressional discussions. Since forging a social tie requires long-term interactions, activists deploy these tactics as needed to maintain their relationship with legislators. The coding of skilled leadership centered on how SMO leaders used framing and goal-directedness with legislators to favor cooperation in the lawmaking process, securing their alliance.

The Alliance-Formation Process

Congruent with a strategic viewpoint, activists and legislators agree that their alliance is the product of repeated interactions in which the tactical abilities of an SMO and the individual skills of its leaders are the key components. Building a reputation in Congress as a reliable and competent organization and establishing a personal connection with a legislator are central concerns for activists during the alliance-formation process, as they both favor a means-oriented cooperation and coordination. For instance, according to LGBT+ leaders like Mauro, their alliance with a legislator was the outcome of an intended and long-term tactical and leadership effort that let them build the mutual trust necessary to work together in Congress.

Even if I ask her [an allied deputy] to legislate on, I don’t know, albino bats, she will agree with me even if she doesn’t know the subject. That’s because she knows we are not crazy; it’s been many years of work, our organization has earned its respect, and I also have a personal trajectory [with her].

Legislators concur on the salience of an SMO’s tactical capacities and a skilled leadership. For instance, according to Mariana, a senator allied with LGBT+ and labor organizations, her proximity to an LGBT+ SMO like MOVILH emerged due to its leadership and organizational reputation, even if its tactics and resources differ from those of the largest labor organizations, to which she was connected for decades.

[MOVILH] may not have the numbers but has a steadfast leader and an organizational strength that is compelling to parties, ministers, etc. When they see a leader like Rolando Jiménez it doesn’t even matter that he’s not in a party [like labor leaders], because we all recognize him, his organization, and that he has social support … he has earned his legitimacy as a leader.

Mariana’s response highlights the relevance of group- and individual-level characteristics as the base to build an alliance with activists on congressional issues, and her comparison of LGBT+ and labor groups suggests differences by movement in the tactical repertoires signaling the reputation of an organization and its leaders. That is, SMOs can deploy different tactics, and legislators will still consider them as competent groups they can work with on legislative issues.

Displaying Tactical Capacity, According to Activists

According to respondents, their SMOs carefully plan their strategies to interact with legislators and target Congress at large. In the words of an environmental leader, legislators evaluate what SMOs do, since “they won’t blindly trust any group without knowing what it does [to work together]. Depending on the actions and profile your organization builds, you start working on alliances with some legislators and differences with others.” Therefore, SMOs’ repertoires aim to build an image of a competent and consolidated group, which gives them the access to Congress necessary to create working relations with legislators.

Across movements, all SMOs with allies engage in lobbying to build a favorable image before legislators. In line with general definitions, this tactic entails the delivery of actionable information on policy issues or movement-level concerns to legislators (Baumgartner and Leech 1998; Hall and Deardorff 2006). SMOs actively share data or policy recommendations as a long-term effort and as often as they can, regardless of whether their movement goals make it onto the congressional agenda. This continuous transmission of information allows SMOs to be constantly visible, shows their expertise on a subject, and conveys their willingness to seriously engage in legislative debates, which legislators trust and incorporate as an input to draft bills or bolster their congressional work. As an environmental leader recounts,

The recipe to build it [our reputation] is our thoroughness. You can question our proposal with different data, but not because our work is lousy. That’s what makes us prestigious to politicians … it’s super important to remain present over time, and that is what distinguishes us from other [SMOs]. If we don’t have a good work ethic, then how can we ask legislators to work together?

Either by creating their own bureaucratized structures (e.g., large unions like CUT, ANEF or CDP) or through the creation of networks of volunteer experts (e.g., LGBT+ groups like MOVILH or Iguales or EMOs like Terram), lobbying legislators is a continuous work of SMOs with allies across social movements. Complemented by skilled leadership, regularly providing information is key to get on legislators’ radar, develop shared understandings of social problems through personal conversations, and keep their ties active.

Beyond lobbying, there are movement-level differences in the tactical repertoires SMOs use to demonstrate their strength and worthiness to lawmakers. For the LGBT+ and environmental SMOs, lobbying is the fundamental tactic to gain political standing, and only the largest SMOs in each movement use social media to diffuse their claims. This complementary tactic raises awareness of the social support of their legislative demands despite their lack of formal members. As one LGBT+ respondent explains, “the most influential organizations lobby, you don’t need a lot of people. The critical mass is not taking lots of people to the streets … [but] something else, such as having an ideological impact, and social media have a strong role in that.”

Like other Chilean movements (Donoso 2013; Rozas and Maillet 2019), environmental and LGBT+ SMOs avoid building partisan networks to enhance their influence, as it would limit their access to legislators within and across coalitions and may reduce their autonomy. They also argue that lacking partisan networks is not a liability, since building a reputation through lobbying has been an effective tactic.

By contrast, unions with allies add partisan networks and public mobilizations to their lobbying. As one CUT leader calls them, these tactics are “a historical tradition of the labor movement” and a must when interacting with Congress at large and building alliances over time. On public mobilization, this official contends that lobbying is not enough, even to engage with sympathetic MCs, since “we need to back our discourse, so that everyone [in power] knows what we are demanding and that the people are supporting us. Numbers matter.” Like lobbying, the regularity of these demonstrations is contingent, as they may happen sporadically over the course of a legislative discussion, depending on external factors. What is crucial here is demonstrating to MCs that labor SMOs can show numbers if required. Additionally, participating in political parties is a must to gain congressional allies. As one leader from ANEF explains, when activists reach leadership positions and need to interact with political authorities, they

realize they need support, contacts, etc…. when we are discussing a law, we organize within the union, and I go to talk to the legislators from my party, the other goes to talk to the legislators from their party, and he who is an independent, whom does he talk to? … Therefore, you realize you may need to affiliate to one. (Jaime, national union leader)

Contrary to the relevance of partisanship (understood as ideological affinities) for other movements and contexts (Soule and King 2006; Schlozman 2015; Hutter et al. 2018), partisan ties are insufficient to gain legislators’ cooperation. As expected, partisan ties are more relevant among labor SMOs than in the other cases, but Chilean labor leaders assess them as a performative networking tactic, since their militancy is only formal. They use them to request meetings with legislators, but they avoid attending party summits or electioneering. Thus, although such ties are not directly related to legislative work, labor SMOs use partisan networks and mobilization potential to demonstrate their political seriousness and strength to potential allies and Congress at large, tactics that LGBT+ and environmental groups with allies do not deem necessary.

The rest of the SMOs in the sample also aim to build close connections with legislators through tactical efforts. However, their tactical repertoires are deployed differently from those of the previous SMOs, and have no allies, giving way to two different categories. One includes the smallest and least bureaucratized environmental and LGBT+ SMOs, which practice lobbying infrequently (usually at the height of a campaign), due to their lack of resources. Moreover, respondents mention that their lobbying focuses mostly on conveying grievances (e.g., providing personal testimonies about the urgency to solve an issue), rather than drafting detailed policy proposals alone or with local experts.

The other group includes small national-level unions like UNT and CAT, which lobby legislators and cultivate partisan ties but lack the capacity to mobilize their members. Leaders from these groups recognize that their inability to organize strikes and rallies is detrimental to their political standing, leaving them in a weak position to interact with legislators. As one board member explains, “unionization in the private sector is weak … which plays against us. [Legislators] would hold us in higher esteem if we could call for larger mobilizations because they tell us to do so … it would give us strength to have numbers, but we can’t make a fool of ourselves.” These respondents are aware that not calling for strikes damages their standing with legislators and the effectiveness of their lobbying and partisan networks but contend that showing small numbers can be even worse than not calling for demonstrations at all.

Three main points arise from comparing the tactical repertoires of SMOs. First, the repertoires signaling tactical capacity are vary by social movement. Lobbying is the key tactic all activists use to demonstrate their congressional competence, but while it is almost the only tactic LGBT+ and environmental SMOs use to gain recognition, unions mobilize and cultivate partisan connections to further demonstrate their strength. Second, as expected, building partisan ties is a more salient tactic for labor SMOs, but it is not sufficient to motivate the attention of legislators. Third, resources play a role in the effectiveness of SMO tactics, since those with fewer resources fail to deploy them (e.g., a comparatively less frequent and robust lobbying) as those with allies do, seemingly compromising their reputation before legislators.

Pathways to Tactical Capacity According to Legislators

Legislators’ perceptions play a key role in explaining movement-level differences in the effectiveness of tactical repertoires. Regardless of the fluctuations in congressional discussions, legislators expect environmental and LGBT+ groups to lobby consistently to be seen as reliable working partners. For these groups, using social media as an outreach tool is seen as optional. However, labor SMOs are also expected to display their mobilization potential and have partisan networks. Jorge, a center-left deputy and ally of a major union and two environmental organizations, explains this as follows:

Basically, because they have the capacity to make policy proposals, and that is crucial to enter the legislative process … that reflects their seriousness to face policy issues. It is not just one opinion, a slogan, but there is a cogent reasoning and proof behind it, and that sets a difference between organizations.

This statement reflects some of the characteristics SMO lobbying should have, such as focusing primarily on actionable information during the entire legislative process. However, when asked why EMOs need to lobby but are not expected to build partisan ties like the major union he is allied to, Jorge argued,

[The national union’s] ideological stance is related to the historical platform of the leftist parties, so it is natural to expect that connection. The environmental movement is different … the problem is that all Chilean parties support the exploitation of natural resources instead of embracing sustainable growth. That’s why environmental organizations have more space to interact with [specific] legislators [beyond partisan lines], because they provide information to make an informed assessment of reality.

This absence of a historical cleavage benefits environmental (and LGBT+) SMOs, since Chilean MCs assess their worthiness and competence primarily as purveyors of information. On the contrary, the key role of the Chilean labor movement in the emergence of the class cleavage acts as a historical legacy that sets the standard to appraise labor groups. Legislators still hold to the stereotype of the twentieth-century unions, which cultivated vast political networks with left-wing parties (or even founded them) and mobilized their ranks in their regular interaction with the political system. This expectation benefits the main unions (e.g., CUT) but harms small groups (CAT or UNT) that lack a mobilization potential. However, it does not affect LGBT+ and environmental SMOs, which emerged after the consolidation of the cleavages structuring Chilean politics, and that could have fixed legislators’ expectations to a certain paradigm. Informants from the Ministries of Labor and the Environment share these tactical expectations by social movement, showing how diffused these stereotypes are among state actors.

Contrasting SMO actions with legislators’ perceptions indicates the relative effectiveness of tactical repertoires. All SMOs must consistently and rigorously lobby legislators to be seen as serious organizations (Baumgartner and Leech 1998; Andrews and Edwards 2004), compared to groups that may focus on grievances. As expected, the availability of resources (e.g., their own funds or through networks of experts) is crucial to adequately deploy a tactic. However, the shared and implicit expectations among legislators about a social movement mediate an SMO’s tactical effectiveness at gaining congressional standing. For example, tactics suited to make institutional inroads, like lobbying, are insufficient for labor organizations, which also need to deploy tactics unrelated to legislative work (e.g., mobilization potential) to be seen as strong and competent.

The Social Skill of Social Movement Leaders

Skilled leaders are crucial to forge an interpersonal connection with a legislator that can grow into an alliance (Mische 2015; Jasper 2015). SMO leaders display their social skill using two observable relational strategies: framing and goal-directedness (Fligstein and McAdam 2011; Anderson 2018). The strategic use of framing allows SMO leaders to increase the resonance of their messages by situationally reading legislators’ interests. Flavia, a longtime activist and head of a local EMO, illustrates how Chilean SMO leaders use this strategy. She recalls cultivating a personal relation with legislators and building a trust bond leading to an alliance as follows:

Everything is intuitive … such as identifying if staff is relevant to the legislator or not, whether people in their district care about the same topic as you do. But there isn’t a universal recipe because it depends on the conversations you can foresee, the issue, the personalities of the legislators. Based on that we engage in what we call the “preferential treatment.” For instance, Senator Allende is like, “you are with me, or you are against me,” and she stops talking to you, while other senators like Allamand can be extremely mean or extremely nice. You address them differently … and that’s over many years of work, of knowing each other.

This “preferential treatment” means tailoring her arguments using a legislator’s biographical information, such as their professional trajectory, academic training, or constituent interests. Through years of experience, Flavia identifies even subtler nuances to persuade them and increase the resonance of her proposals, such as their work style and personality traits. An effective framing leads to two advantages: it signals legislators that the SMO and its leaders can contribute to their legislative tasks, leading them to trust in the information activists provide; and SMO leaders and legislators develop a shared understanding of policy issues and a sense of acquaintanceship and reliability that sustains their interaction over time. Thus, framing adapts a tactic like lobbying to legislators’ interests and motivations, enhancing its effectiveness by translating it into actual congressional inputs.

Leaders like Javiera, from an environmental group, also use a goal-oriented approach to sustain long-term interactions with legislators. She understands that passing bills can take years and that the group’s congressional allies may not always be effective but that developing a goal-oriented perspective protects the trust bond she has forged with legislators over the years. She values this approach because it allows her to gain unintended benefits during lengthy and complex congressional processes. For instance, when explaining why she remained allied to a senator despite his apparent inefficacy at passing a shared bill, she points out that “you still create a relation with [this senator] throughout 16 years, and even if the bill [we promoted] was stuck, you can still gain on other fronts.” Those fronts involve promoting other issues or tracking congressional discussions closely, which increases Javiera’s political standing on environmental issues.

Pablo, the leader of a large national union, emphasizes the importance of a pragmatic and long-term approach in legislative politics. Since multiple stakeholders can obstruct their allies’ effectiveness, they need to temporally moderate their demands.

I must understand that I am a union leader, and I know that when I negotiate, I will obtain some of my goals but not all of them. Both parties need to agree and move forward, and we know we don’t have all the votes necessary to change the system, and even if we theoretically have them, there are infiltrated people in our ranks.

Pablo’s comment about infiltrated people refers to the actions undermining their allies’ efforts to promote a shared cause that come even from their own parties. Understanding this institutional dynamic is key to shielding the trust necessary to sustain an alliance in the face of setbacks and not assuming disingenuous behavior from their allied legislators. Moreover, this long-term, gradual approach to achieving legislative demands recognizes the norms and dynamics structuring the Chilean Congress; it correlates with the awareness these SMO leaders have of the tactics they need to deploy to be seen as congressionally competent groups.

Unlike tactical capacity, there are no within- or between-movement differences in how SMO leaders use framing and the pragmatism of goal-directedness to solidify a personal connection with legislators, which sustains their joint, long-term collaborative work. That is, social skill helps translating tactics like lobbying into actual congressional work for all SMOs, turning activists into informal legislative partners. Moreover, the personal connection a socially skilled SMO leader forges with a legislator helps sustain their alliance during lengthy legal reforms, and even through changing political conditions and setbacks. However, it is important to mention that not all SMOs willing to engage in policy changes have socially skilled leaders as defined here. Leaders of six environmental and three LGBT+ SMOs question interacting personally with legislators, as that validates an institutionally rigged and excluding system.

Legislators’ Response to a Socially Skilled Leadership

The emphasis on building a personal connection brings the opportunity to integrate MCs’ backgrounds and motivations into the analysis of an alliance. As we have seen, Chilean SMOs do not deploy (nor do legislators expect) tactics related to electoral performance (see Rozas and Maillet 2019; Somma and Medel 2017) but do provide actionable information through lobbying that supports legislative work, which is associated with instrumental motives to sustain an alliance (Kingdon and Stano 1984; Hall and Deardorff 2006).

Along with this instrumental consideration, all the interviewed MCs have developed a profile on environmental, labor, and LGBT+ issues, respectively, which has turned them into key legislative actors on these subjects, according to government officials. Their motives to specialize their congressional careers come from different kinds of personal reasons (Burden 2007), which also differ by social movement. The allies of the environmental movement cite their academic training (e.g., degrees in geography or biology) as the foundation for their sensitivity. One-half of the labor movement allies mention participating in small unions before engaging in congressional politics, while the other half emphasize deep ideological commitments to advancing labor issues. LGBT+ allies allude to their intimate conviction about protecting marginalized groups or to having LGBT+ friends and family. This value-oriented motivation is clear for two LGBT+ allies (one right-wing, the other left-wing) representing working-class districts. They persisted in their support for the movement even when the social acceptance of sexual minorities was low (early 2000s), and after facing even the public scorn of some of their constituents and colleagues.

This mixture of personal motivations has two important consequences for understanding how legislators interact with activists. They make legislators depart from strictly partisan boundaries to pursue their legislative interests (e.g., legislators from a conservative party supporting LGBT+ issues). They also heighten the personal-level dimension of their legislative work. Due to the personal sensitivity of these issues, legislators are cautious about the SMO they select to work with in Congress, giving salience to the personal trust they build with its leader. Thus, while legislators value an SMO’s ability to provide quality information through lobbying to support their congressional work, their personal motivations also make them prioritize the personal tie with an SMO leader to work together.

MCs concur with activists that their acquaintanceship emerges through ongoing interactions that usually span multiple campaigns (and years), not just one issue. Over time, these repeated interactions lead to the mutual trust necessary to coordinate and sustain their cooperation with certain SMO leaders. The emphasis on building a personal connection through ongoing interactions nuances the extent to which a tactic ultimately forms a social tie. The case of Nelly, a leftist senator and an ally of the LGBT+ and labor movements, illustrates this point by comparing the leaders of the SMOs she works closely with. When explaining the rationale informing the movement-level expectations of legislators, she was asked if a shared partisan network would ease her interactions and with a specific LGBT+ leader. She replied,

I don’t know if it helps or not. We recognize him [the LGBT+ leader] because of the strength of his arguments, his awareness, and his dedication to their cause. That’s what makes me connect with him and establish reliability, trust, and joint work. I don’t know if it [partisanship] helps; parties are so delegitimized now, by the way, that it may even backfire [for him] socially.

Nelly still considers this LGBT+ leader an ally despite having different ideological affinities than hers. In her answer, she prioritizes his ability to participate in legislative politics as the foundation of the trust bond they created over time.

Nelly later extended the same rationale to explain her proximity with union leaders. Beyond expectations of partisan connections and mobilization potential to pass the bar of tactical capacity, she pointedto the experience of labor leaders as what ultimately brought her to work with two specific unions. Ideological affinities may have played a role in starting their interaction, considering how rooted labor issues are in political cleavages. However, none of the union leaders she mentioned, who were also interviewed and identified her as such, participate in her own party.

Antonio, a right-wing senator allied to the environmental movement, confirms this assessment. He mentions that “every SMO and its leaders have their own personality” and says he works only with leaders of two groups he considers reliable. His personal trust in them motivated including them in sensitive congressional activities, such as drafting bills, and even inviting them as informal staff to closed Senate committee meetings. This is an important finding, as it provides evidence that not only activists prefer to build alliances at the personal level but also legislators, as they select the organizations they want to work with.

The Necessity of Tactical Capacity and a Socially Skilled Leadership

Both tactical capacity and a socially skilled leadership are simultaneously necessary to forge and sustain an alliance. One challenge to prove their necessity is the endogeneity associated with the social tie under study. A legislator should view an allied SMO as a competent group with a reliable leadership if they work together on congressional issues, and alternative sources like other legislators may be unaware of the underlying reasons of their cooperation. A comparison of temporal variations within cases (Maxwell 2004) demonstrates the salience of both attributes, using two specific examples. The first example is an LGBT+ SMO that had a skilled leadership but could achieve an alliance only after developing the tactical capacity it lacked. The second example is a tactically capable EMO that lost an alliance after experiencing leadership changes.

The LGBT+ SMO is a relatively new group that quickly became a key player in its field. Its founders were new to social activism but had the cultural and social capital to quickly adopt a goal-oriented approach to politics. Most of them had professional training in public policy and extensive personal connections (e.g., friendship or family ties) with politicians across the political spectrum, which made them aware of the complexities of enacting legal reforms.

After initially focusing on public opinion, this SMO swiftly turned its attention to Congress, where it met Daniela, a right-wing legislator with personal sympathies for the movement. Daniela notes that the SMO leaders’ personal connections and reputation “undoubtedly” raised her awareness of the organization. Still, she saw it as mainly focused on building public support for LGBT+ rights, so their connection remained at the level of personal conversations.

Their relationship deepened during the discussion of a civil unions bill, almost two years after knowing each other. Here, Daniela noticed that this SMO started going regularly to Congress to advocate for specific articles and amendments. This change corresponded with this SMO’s improving its lobbying after partnering with a local university to jointly draft a bill on the subject. What attracted her attention about this group was that “they would come to the committee to present a coherent argument. They were fairly technical … really specific.” Since she already knew the SMO leaders personally and the group’s lobbying had become more rigorous and precise, Daniela trusted it to contribute to her own congressional work in activities related to an alliance.

I would listen to them, receive their information, and then turn it into amendments, or requests to the government. We had meetings, analyzed the bill, they would identify the good points, the bad points, the missing parts, etc. and even how to fight for it.

The SMO leaders recognized that enhancing their lobbying ability improved legislators’ receptivity. One of the group’s founding activists, Javier, recounts his personal experience in building ties with legislators. He acknowledges that personal networks and social recognition gave his group an advantage in approaching legislators, but these interactions primarily focused on discussing the urgency of addressing a specific issue. However, a turning point in their ability to collaborate with legislators like Daniela occurred when they presented the civil unions bill.

I think what made a difference was when we asked her for a meeting not just to discuss it [urgency on a civil unions law], but to hand her a draft we elaborated with the university. That made our meetings more concrete, to deliver something specific.

Other leaders from this SMO declared that their status changed after bolstering their lobbying capacity, as legislators started recognizing the quality of their contributions. As another leader recounts, “[since the bill] they [legislators] know we work seriously, and that opened a lot of doors and the chance to talk to them more closely.” She even mentions Daniela as one of the legislators who started assisting them more decisively after they improved their lobbying.

On the basis of this example, it is important to note that none of the SMOs with allies in the sample could pinpoint an exact moment when their closeness with a legislator turned into a clearly defined alliance. Instead, they realize that after working closely on legislative issues and sharing resources (e.g., information) and strategies (e.g., canvassing other legislators), they eventually saw each other as allies.

The other case relates to an EMO that lost an ally due to changes in its leadership. This SMO is a historical environmental player, due in part to its comparatively well funded status, which has granted it enough resources to conduct research to back its policy proposals. Additionally, it uses its significant social media presence to build public visibility for its demands. Before the change, one of its leaders served as a liaison with legislators, but that role was taken over by Clara, the head of the organization, during a legislative campaign.

Due to its reputation, built over several years, this SMO maintained the same level of access to legislators once Clara became the new liaison. Furthermore, she “inherited” an existing alliance with Juan, a leftist legislator, who invited her to work together on the drafting of a bill. However, strategic differences emerged a few months later about the scope of the bill, creating a rift between them that ultimately led to the breakdown of their relationship. Clara had a maximalist approach, arguing that the bill should be pushed as originally drafted, while Juan realized that only a watered-down version would become a law. These types of differences are common in the interactions between activists and their allied legislators, making a goal-oriented approach crucial for maintaining mutual trust during disagreements. However, as Clara recalls when discussing her differences with Juan.

[We said] Ok, let’s talk. But the “let’s talk” of an activist is different from that of a politician …. I told him the bill was his. We had a strategy [to push for the bill together] but he betrayed us … our relationship is publicly over. This was always a possibility, but we’re not working with him anymore. We are not giving up.

Juan acknowledged working with this SMO for years before this incident but mentioned that the disagreement with its new leadership went beyond the usual strategic divergence between a legislator and a trusted SMO. Clara’s group publicly denounced him as being against environmental protections, and that was a turning point for him in his willingness to support this group. As he recalls,

The moment my position was not 100 percent like theirs, there was a deep estrangement between us. I have not changed my position. I never questioned the core of the bill, but since I wasn’t radical enough to them, they made their own call [to denounce him] and ended up alone.

Juan added that despite this group’s reputation as an environmental SMO that provides actionable information, Clara’s actions left it isolated in Congress. Furthermore, it irreparably damaged their connection, as Juan is determined never to work with them again.

Discussion and Conclusions

This article has looked at how activists and legislators in Chile form alliances, focusing on the LGBT+, environmental, and labor movements. Using a strategic approach (Jasper 2004), it has argued that alliances require two conditions: the tactical capacity of an SMO to deploy actions signaling its competence and adaptability to Congress and the social skill of its leader(s) to cultivate a relationship with a legislator. Through sustained interactions, these conditions help activists become reliable working partners of legislators and build mutual trust, which allows them to cooperate in congressional activities. However, SMOs lacking these abilities struggle to form alliances despite their willingness to participate in legislative activities and to work with MCs.

Two findings explain how these conditions shape the alliance-formation process. Regarding tactical capacity, legislators’ perceptions of social movements affect the tactics SMOs use to be seen as strong and competent groups (Jasper et al. 2015; Skrentny 2006). All SMOs must lobby to convey their ability to contribute to congressional debates, but based on historical legacies, legislators expect labor SMOs also to have partisan networks and mobilization potential. This expectation favors larger unions (e.g., CUT or ANEF) and makes it harder for smaller ones (UNT and CAT) to be seen as worthy groups. In contrast, the absence of a similar paradigm makes legislators value LGBT+ and environmental groups for the quality of the policy information they provide and not expect additional tactics to see them as reliable partners. Also, resource availability mediates the chances of SMOs across movements to effectively deploy these tactics according to the needs and expectations of legislators (McCarthy and Zald 1977).

With a socially skilled leadership (Anderson 2018), SMO leaders build a trust-based, personal relationship with a legislator to work together by following a goal-oriented approach in their interactions and in framing their messages. Together, these interpersonal strategies signal their reliability to work with a legislator, but also translate an SMO’s tactical capacities into actual legislative work (e.g., increasing lobbying effectiveness) and mitigate tensions that may arise due to policy setbacks (Borland 2014; Nicholls et al. 2021).

These characteristics of the alliance-formation process offer two contributions to current research. One relates to the institutional activism of social movements in Chile. Research shows a persistent distance between movements and parties (Rozas and Maillet 2019) and that activists prioritize allying with legislators on an individual basis (Díez 2015; Donoso 2013; López 2022; Somma and Medel 2017). This article complements that body of research by shedding light on the backstage processes that explain the emergence of these individually based alliances, which are the result of strategic efforts by activists. Moreover, it highlights the joint relevance of leadership and tactical choices to enhancing the political influence of Chilean social movements, which are areas of nascent analysis.

The other contribution pertains to the analysis of the Chilean Congress, identifying the salience of cultural and historical factors that shape the interaction of legislators with civil society. Across left-wing parties, legislators knew their perception of the labor unions was partial and informed by extralegislative considerations, conditioning their attentiveness to the movement and the resonance of its tactics (Skrentny 2006). Recognizing the presence of these biases and examining their consequences and pervasiveness could explain how legislators establish selective notions of who is worthy and deserving, but also the differential promptness of the Chilean Congress at addressing and solving social problems affecting specific social groups.

While the article provides a foundation to study the emergence of an alliance between activists and legislators, future research should consider additional analyses to deepen our understanding of this social tie. This article has focused on alliances that result from long-term interactions spanning issues and years, but other intermediate cooperative ties may emerge between activists and legislators that need further attention. For example, activists may build circumstantial and less intense collaborations with certain legislators occasioned by specific conjunctures or to complement advantages their long-term allies cannot deliver (e.g., ties to media, political connections, etc.). Moreover, as informal participants in congressional discussions, activists may have different kinds of lasting supportive ties with other legislators that do not qualify as an alliance but that give activists a political edge.

Additionally, as a mixture of personal motives predisposes legislators to embrace a cause and aid activists at a more personal level, the weight of instrumental electoral considerations should not be disregarded. Although legislators mention that their specialization does not provide an advantage in their districts, future research should look in detail at whether public profiles are conditions that favor electoral performance. Therefore, more nuanced personal and instrumental motivations could intertwine when a legislator decides whether to cooperate with certain activists.

Considering that this analysis takes place in a country experiencing a deep crisis of political representation (Luna 2016), the distance between Chilean activists and parties is expected. However, not all Latin American countries experience this crisis, and even within party systems, some parties may be suited to channel the interests of social movements. As a result, the salience of tactical repertoires and a socially skilled leadership may vary compared to ideological linkages. For instance, legislators may hold fewer expectations for labor SMOs in countries lacking a strong class cleavage, while they may find additional expectations for specific movements (e.g., feminism) that become salient social and political actors with a postmaterial agenda cutting across class divisions. Thus the range and effectiveness of tactical and leadership strategies may vary among movements in other democracies and cultures (Skrentny 2006), making it crucial to study alliance-formation processes across movements and countries.