“The State is something that disappoints”. CIDS Directors publish article on citizen perceptions.

The directors of the Center, Mayra Feddersen and Javier Wilenmann, together with the former CIDS researcher, Maite Gambardella, recently published an article in the Law and Society journal, as part of the research line on citizen perceptions.

The study analyzes whether the institutional dissatisfaction expressed by Chileans on October 18, 2019 translated into a profound sense of legal alienation towards formal institutions. Between October 2021 and January 2022, the study convened 12 focus groups with participants from Santiago, strategically grouped by age, gender and location.

The professors highlight that “we found that participants expressed strong antipathy and rejection of state authority. However, we discerned recurring yet ambivalent frameworks that evoked the practice of legality. In other words, while many frameworks reflected cynical outlooks toward state authority (the participants frequently depicted state regulations and their enforcement (“the law”) as instruments manipulated by politicians to exploit ordinary citizens), the language of the law often served to delineate their unmet expectations as entitlements to rights, prospects for stringent enforcement against elites and a rationale for rejecting or expecting the delivery of state services.”

Based on the research findings, the study argues that the concept of legal alienation inadequately captures the relationship that contemporary citizens maintain with the law in their expression of institutional dissatisfaction. Even in contexts where individuals openly reject state authority, they often engage with notions of legality and hold firm beliefs in formal legal entitlements, accompanied by substantial expectations of rigorous enforcement.

The article can be read at the following link.