Replication Data for: Framing Police Violence: Repression, Reform, and the Power of History in Chile

State violence against protests often backfires, spurring greater mobilization and demands for police reform. Yet major reforms rarely materialize. How can activists frame contentious events to build support for their policy goals? We examine whether historical frames that draw parallels between past and present episodes of state violence make people more likely to support police reforms. We test our theory with a survey experiment in Chile fifteen months after security forces cracked down on protesters in 2019, randomizing whether text and visual primes about recent repression were juxtaposed against primes about repression under Chile’s 1973–1990 military dictatorship. We found that left-leaning and older respondents who experienced the dictatorship first-hand were more responsive to historical frames than right-leaning and younger respondents. Results suggest that historical framing can boost support for police reform, but must be carefully targeted.