Israel PM vows 'harsh action' against soldier vandalising Jesus statue in Lebanon Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed "harsh action" on Monday against a soldier caught on camera vandalising a statue of Jesus Christ in southern Lebanon.

"He might have mistook it for an Arab civilian, which y'all care less about," they would have added.

www.france24.com/en/live-news...

European Citizens' Initiative Give your support !

I have signed this initiative eci.ec.europa.eu/055/public . Sign it and share it! eci.ec.europa.eu/055/public/

12/ The broader implication is methodological as well as substantive.

If we want to understand public opinion on decentralization, we need to look below the national level. Regionally disaggregated analysis is not just a refinement; in cases like Chile, it is essential to understanding the reality.

11/ Figure 3 gives a good illustration of this for administrative decentralization.

In Coquimbo and Biobío, respondents without regional identity initially see decentralization as very important at low conflict levels, but those with regional identity surpass them as conflict perception increases.

10/ This means that the Chilean decentralization debate cannot be read only from national averages.

The same identity and grievance mechanisms do not operate in exactly the same way across regions. Local history, political dynamics, and institutional context matter.

9/ We also find evidence that identity and conflict interact, but in a regionally uneven way.

In some cases, people with regional identity become especially supportive of decentralization as conflict perceptions rise. In others, the interaction is weaker, absent, or even reversed.

8/ This is one of the article’s main takeaways: support for decentralization often appears to be driven less by attachment to territory by itself than by perceptions of neglect, mismatch, or conflict within centralized governance arrangements.

7/ One main finding is that subnational identity alone doesn't reliably predict support for decentralization in Chilean regions.

By contrast, perceived regional conflict, is more consistently linked to supporting decentralization, particularly fiscal decentralization.

6/ To evaluate this, we use data from the 2019 Regional Barometer, with representative subsamples from 9 Chilean regions.

We examine attitudes toward three outcomes: regional administrative decentralization, regional fiscal decentralization, and municipal autonomy.

ceder.ulagos.cl/barometro-re...

5/ We advance 3 expectations:
1. Those with stronger subnational identity should support decentralization more.
2. Perceiving more regional conflict should lead to support decentralization.
3. More percieved conflict should strengthen the identity- decentralization link.

4/ Drawing on Social Identity Theory, we examine 2 factors:
- Subnational identity: whether individuals primarily identify with their locality.
- Perceptions of regional conflict: how salient conflicts over economic, environmental, or cultural issues are in their region.

3/ So what explains support for decentralization in context like Chile's?

Our argument is that public opinion on decentralization is shaped not only by political actores or structural conditions, but also by how citizens relate to territory and how they perceive regional conflict.

2/ This is an interesting issue because decentralization has become a cross-cutting or valence issue in Chile.

And yet Chile’s actual decentralization trajectory has long been limited, top-down, and shaped by the central government.

sl1nk.com/si4zg5q

Subnational Identity, Regional Conflicts, and Public Opinion on Decentralization in Chile - Tomás Huanquil Vega, Rodolfo Disi Pavlic, 2026 What factors shape preferences for subnational autonomy in contexts of limited, top-down decentralization? Drawing on Social Identity Theory, we argue that subn...

1/ New article out in @jplaeditor.bsky.social with Tomás Huanquil:

“Subnational Identity, Regional Conflicts, and Public Opinion on Decentralization in Chile”

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

What factors shape preferences for subnational autonomy in contexts of limited, top-down decentralization? Check out our 🆕
and #openaccess article on attitudes towards decentralisation in #Chile by @rdisip.bsky.social & T. Huanquil Vega 👇👇

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Garzones y cocineros que participaron de comida que reunió al Presidente Kast con sus excompañeros de la UC son funcionarios de La Moneda | The Clinic El Presidente Kast recurrió a garzones y cocineros de La Moneda para liderar un almuerzo con excompañeros de universidad.

Parece que la emergencia era llegar a la Moneda www.theclinic.cl/2026/04/13/g...

Yes, the Vatican should “stick to matters of morality” since this administration has the immoral stuff handled.

13/ Thus, protest waves can shape political generations, which continue to evolve as political contexts change.

The effects of mobilization endure, but they can also fragment, weaken, or be reoriented over time.

That matters for how we understand the long-term consequences of social movements.

12/ At the same time, we find a decline in identification with the student movement itself.

So even when protest waves leave enduring marks, the symbolic centrality of a specific movement may fade, as new claims and political actors emerge.

11/ Also, the Penguin and Frontlines generations tend to express more progressive positions on issues such as same-sex adoption and abortion, with particularly strong patterns among women.

This suggests that protest cycles may reshape not only behavior, but also broader social orientations.

10/ After 2019, the story becomes more complicated.

Younger generations continue to stand out in some dimensions, but we also observe signs of demobilization and political fatigue, especially in protest participation.

So the legacy of protest is consequential, but it is not static.

9/ We also find that these generations were especially activated during key moments such as the 2019 social outburst and, in electoral terms, the 2020 constitutional plebiscite.

But that pattern is not simply linear or permanent.

8/ One of the central findings is that the Penguin and Frontlines generations show higher levels of protest participation and stronger digital political engagement than older cohorts.

In other words, growing up amid repeated cycles of mobilization seems to leave a durable political imprint.

7/ We examine a variety of indicators of political engagement and social values: electoral participation, protest, online participation, support for same-sex adoption, support for abortion decriminalization, and support for the student movement.

6/ To study this, we use longitudinal data from ELSOC (2016–2023), a nationally representative panel survey from Chile.

That allows us to track attitudes and behaviors over time for the same individuals, rather than relying on a single snapshot or different samples.

5/ The article identifies four political generations in contemporary Chile, shaped by varying levels of student and social mobilization:

• Dictatorship generation
• Democracy generation
• Penguin generation
• Frontlines generation

4/ We draw on Mannheim’s idea that generations are not defined just by age but by formative historical experiences.

From that perspective, a political generation is a group marked by shared political events during their impressionable years, and by how those events shape later political engagement.

3/ Our argument is that protest waves do not just shape institutions, policies, or political elites. They also help shape political generations.

That is, people who come of age in different moments of conflict and mobilization may develop distinct and lasting ways of engaging with politics.

2/ In this piece with Sofía Donoso and Daniel Miranda (U of Chile), we ask a simple question with a long-term horizon: what are the historical consequences for social and political engagement of the ebb and flow of student protests in Chile?

What is Left After the Protest Wave? Tracing Generational Patterns of Political Engagement in the Wake of Chile’s Student Movement Drawing on Mannheim, we examine how the ebbs and flows of student mobilization have shaped distinct political generations in Chile. We identify four generations forged through key moments of studen...

1/ New article out in @socquarterly.bsky.social: “What is Left After the Protest Wave? Tracing Generational Patterns of Political Engagement in the Wake of Chile’s Student Movement” www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....