Experience of Discrimination and Democratic Engagement MAURICIO MORALES QUIROGA School of Political Science and Public Administration, Faculty of Social and Juridical Sciences, Universidad de Talca, Campus Santiago, Chile ABSTRACT What effect does discrimination have on democratic engagement? Based on a survey of 3,099 people in Chile, 1,493 of whom identified themselves as ‘Mapuche’—the main ethnic group in the country—the author distinguishes between everyday discrimination (ED), and experiences of discrimination in formal or institutional contexts (FD). The author concludes, first, that ED—more so than FD—has a negative impact on both Mapuche’ and non-Mapuche’ trust in institutions, but that this effect is more pronounced in Mapuche, especially in the case of law enforcement institutions. Second, that increases in ED are associated with higher levels of political identification—especially in the Mapuche group—but that increases in FD have the reverse effect. Third, that increases in ED—more so than increases in FD—are associated with a greater justification of the use of force as a mechanism for resolving conflicts, especially in the Mapuche group. These findings concur only partially with theories on discrimination and political behaviour applied to European countries and the United States. Introduction The analysis of ethnic politics in political science has prioritised two main areas of research. First, how indigenous movements transform themselves into political parties (Madrid, 2005, 2011; Van Cott, 2005; Yashar, 2005; Rice & Van Cott, 2006; Vogt, 2016), by identifying the conditions that favour this development (Chandra, 2004, 2005), and the effect that ethnic heterogeneity produces on party fragmentation (Huber, 2012; Lublin, 2017; Ordeshook & Shvetsova, 1994; Posner, 2004). Second, it has studied the electoral behaviour of indigenous people and minorities (Kamin, 1958; Parenti, 1967; Peele & Morse, 1974; Wolfinger, 1965), by discussing their levels of party identification (Martin & Mellon, 2020); their electoral participation (Pilati & Morales, 2016); their involvement in mainstream political activities (Förster, 2018); their leaning towards left-wing political options (Martin, 2016; Sobolewska, 2013), or towards independent and populist candidates (Madrid, 2011); their vulnerability to parties’ clientelist strategies (Kramon, 2019), and the patronage dynamics that come into play when an ethnicity-based coalition comes to power by politicising ethnic identities Ethnopolitics, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2021.1984031 Correspondence Address: School of Political Science and Public Administration, Faculty of Social and Juridical Sciences, Universidad de Talca, Campus Santiago, Santiago 8940583, Chile. Email: mmoralesq@utalca.cl Ethnopolitics, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2021.1984031 © 2021 The Editor of Ethnopolitics