A state-sponsored rival party collapsed once its government patron switched sides

Evidence

By 1990, de Klerk was governing in close consultation with the ANC. Released from house arrest, Mandela became a major participant in national politics. In 1991, COSATU activist Cyril Ramaphosa was elected to serve as the ANC’s general secretary. Meanwhile, KwaZulu homeland chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party, which had previously received clandestine support from the government and the National Party, found itself increasingly isolated. Inkatha stepped up attacks on its ANC rivals, but by the 1994 elections was only receiving about 6 percent of the national black vote, as compared with the 75 percent that went to the ANC. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 585

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s central test: Inkatha is a dominant-group instrument of absorption whose politicized violence became ‘legitimate’ only while backed by the regime — when the regime defected, the subordinate-group rival gained the constitutional channel. — connects to: Co-opting a grievance party into government stripped it of its protest function — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 744
• QUESTION: Inkatha got clandestine government support yet lost legitimacy fast after 1990 — does this fit the reader’s hypothesis that dominant-group politicization runs through the state’s own absorption machinery?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 585

Broader Connections

• Co-opting a grievance party into government stripped it of its protest function #expands (0.78) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 744