Democratic institutions may constrain raw state coercion against opposition

Evidence

How generally, to what extent, and how, does the installation of formally democratic institutions inhibit raw forms of governmental coercion such as simply assassinating members of the opposition? — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 72

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is precisely the asymmetry question the reader wants to test: institutional form inhibiting coercion is a regime-capacity question Tilly is setting up for the rest of the book.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 72
• XREF: connects to: In mature democracies contention turns nonviolent unless state agents block it — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 428; Democratic states govern through a permanent state of exception rather than true crisis — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race…, 363; Coercive government power depends on voluntary cooperation from many (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Democracy enables bargaining over contention boundaries that autocrats suppress #expands (0.85)
• Democratic institutions channel contention into electoral forms while autocracies push it underground #expands (0.85)
• Authoritarian measures can persist within nominally democratic structures via normalized crisis #complicates (0.82) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 7
• Coercive government power depends on voluntary cooperation from many #expands (0.80)
• Democratic politics transforms antagonism between enemies into agonism between adversaries #expands (0.80) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 461
• Formal democratic liberties rest on an unseen foundation of physical coercion #complicates (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 346
• In mature democracies contention turns nonviolent unless state agents block it #expands (0.78) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 428
• Democratic states govern through a permanent state of exception rather than true crisis #complicates (0.78) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 363
• The State is an equilibrium between coercive political society and hegemonic civil society #expands (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1869