Leading the social movement: dilemmas, internal competition, and strategy in the 2011 Chilean student movement

This article addresses the subject of social movements' decision-making processes during cycles of contention through a study of the 2011 Chilean student movement. It identifies and lays out some crucial dilemmas that are key in order to properly understand how this movement defined its strategy. The article engages with the recent literature on social movements' dilemmas, providing a fine-grained case study on how competing movement factions dealt with these dilemmas and how their resolution affected the definition of the movement's strategy. The empirical analysis is based on press review, documentary analysis and 29 interviews to student leaders and political actors.