Firms should be considered as actors that potentially mediate between social movement pressures and policy outcomes. This article shows that at the mining project level, social mobilization can generate important changes in corporate practices toward nearby communities, and that these practices can undermine the cohesion of social movement coalitions advocating for regulatory intervention or reform, thus limiting their ability to make compelling claims on the state. In this way, company interpretations of and responses to protest are an important mediating process that conditions civil society efforts to activate state institutions in their favor. This argument extends recent work on the social foundations of regulation in Latin America by including corporate actors. The article is based on a comparative case study of the Pascua Lama/Veladero mining projects in both Argentina and Chile, using both secondary sources and primary field research.

企业应被视为可能在社会运动压力和政策结果之间进行调解的参与者。本文表明，在采矿项目层面，社会动员可以使企业对附近社区的做法产生重要变化，而这些做法可能会破坏倡导监管干预或改革的社会运动联盟的凝聚力，从而限制他们向国家提出令人信服的要求的能力。这样，公司对抗议的解释和回应是一个重要的调解过程，它为民间社会努力激活有利于他们的国家机构提供了条件。这一论点通过将企业行为者纳入其中，扩展了最近关于拉丁美洲监管社会基础的研究。