Democracy channels contention into bargaining over claim-making boundaries

Evidence

As for democracy, it operates simultaneously as a facilitator and a constraint. Given consent of citizens, it facilitates the carrying out of large collective programs such as health care and education. But it limits the ability of rulers and their agents to intervene arbitrarily and without fear of retaliation. Much more direct bargaining over the boundaries among prescribed, tolerated, and forbidden forms of claim-making therefore occurs in democracies than in nondemocracies. A significant share of that bargaining occurs within the campaigns, performances, and WUNC displays of social movements. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1311

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claimed asymmetry being tested: does institutional absorption (this ‘direct bargaining’ over boundaries) defuse subordinate-group politicization while legitimating dominant-group politicization as rights defense? The passage frames bargaining as symmetric but doesn’t address power asymmetry within it.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1311
• XREF: connects to: Democratic regimes channel contentious claims into prescribed institutional forms. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 447; Regimes shape claim-making repertoires through control, constitution of claimants, and issue streams — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1168; Democracy enables bargaining over contention boundaries that autocrats suppress (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Democracy enables bargaining over contention boundaries that autocrats suppress #expands (0.95)
• Democracy is defined by legitimizing rather than suppressing political conflict #corroborates (0.88) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 502
• Conflict legitimation, not consensus, is modern democracy’s condition of existence #corroborates (0.82) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 463
• Democratic negotiation is agonistic struggle without final resolution #qualifies (0.78)
• Democratic high-capacity regimes exhibit distinctive patterned contention. #expands (0.77) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 378
• Democracy deepens as agents accept their claims’ particularity and power’s ineradicability. #qualifies (0.76) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 100
• Democratic institutions settle disputes but do not forge national cohesion #complicates (0.75) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 270
• Rank-and-file democratic organizing can constitute a third space outside official bargaining #complicates (0.74)