Many developing countries around the world and in Latin America have made a costly trade-off: rapid economic development in exchange for environmental decline. Now as these countries begin to approach higher levels of development, social movements are calling out for better environmental policies and sustainable development. How can these organizations be most effective in their political context? This dissertation examines the case of the Chilean environmental movement and specifically addresses how social movement organizations can be most effective in developing countries following a democratic transition. I argue that neither tactics nor political opportunity alone is a sufficient explanation of social movement outcomes. Instead, we need to examine how political opportunities condition the effectiveness of different tactics. To empirically examine this theory, I analyze both quantitative time series data on the activities of two environmental organizations and corresponding government responses and a qualitative case study of one particular environmental conflict between 1994 and 2000. I find strong empirical support for the proposed theory and conclude that as the Chilean public becomes less confident with democracy, the effectiveness of contentious tactics increases.
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