Democratization always results from and generates extensive contention

Evidence

Thus, according to the Annual Register, the Chinese regime avoided the popular excesses that, as Burke had warned two centuries earlier and Aristotle had feared two millennia earlier, would bring first demagoguery and then new tyranny. When the Chinese people as a whole were ready, the yearbook’s editor implied, they would earn and acquire democratic institutions. … Now there’s an argument worth disagreeing with! As later chapters make the point in detail, I think that democratization always occurs in part as a result of contention and always generates extensive contention; a peaceful maturing into orderly democracy is a crippling myth. This chapter will do its work, however, if it simply maps out systematic connections between regimes and repertoires, for example by showing how the characteristic claim-making performances of a China-like regime differ from those of a Soviet-style regime. Systematic differences will clarify what we have to explain and provide a first grasp of possible explanations. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 376

Now there’s an argument worth disagreeing with! As later chapters make the point in detail, I think that democratization always occurs in part as a result of contention and always generates extensive contention; a peaceful maturing into orderly democracy is a crippling myth. This chapter will do its work, however, if it simply maps out systematic connections between regimes and repertoires, for example by showing how the characteristic claim-making performances of a China-like regime differ from those of a Soviet-style regime. Systematic differences will clarify what we have to explain and provide a first grasp of possible explanations. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 376

Categorization

• QUESTION: Tilly asserts democratization always happens through contention — is this claim as central to regime-capacity analysis as it seems, and does it set up the matrix?
• XREF: Challenges the teleological transition-to-democracy literature (e.g., Huntington’s third wave) and the ‘civil society matures into democracy’ school — useful foil for the reader’s constitutional-rights test. — connects to: Mass national citizenship was bargained out in Britain after 1750. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 363; Democracy enables bargaining over contention boundaries that autocrats suppress; Semi-democratic medium-capacity regimes occupy an intermediate contention position — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 503 (+3 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 376

Broader Connections

• Democracy enables bargaining over contention boundaries that autocrats suppress #corroborates (0.85)
• Multi-party democratization can proceed peacefully when ruling elites accept defeat and step aside #qualifies (0.82) — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 66
• Democratic institutions channel contention into electoral forms while autocracies push it underground #expands (0.80)
• Semi-democratic medium-capacity regimes occupy an intermediate contention position #expands (0.75) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 503
• Democratic negotiation is agonistic struggle without final resolution #expands (0.75)