Learning From the Past to Read the Present: Political Crisis, Democratization, and Double Movement in Early Twentieth‐Century Chile

ABSTRACT This article analyses the cycle of social and political conflict that unfolded in Chile in the early twentieth century. It focuses on the uncertainty‐rich phase of 1918–1925 as a critical juncture that opened competing institutional pathways. Leaning on democratization studies and on Polanyi's double movement approach, the article conceptualizes capitalist dislocation as a main trigger of the crisis and of the emerging protective demands from that period. This perspective is introduced an analytical framework for examining Chilean specific democratic pathway. Empirically, the study draws on case study method. In that line, and in order to gain deeper understanding of political conflict debates of the period a systematic qualitative analysis of press debates across ideologically diverse outlets (1918–1925), complemented by secondary scholarship extending from the late nineteenth century to the late 1930s.