High capacity and democracy suppress revolutionary situations while medium-capacity regimes favor outcomes

Evidence

The crucial causal regularities connect revolutionary situations and outcomes to regimes and repertoires. The greater a regime’s capacity and democracy, the more difficult it is for revolutionary contenders to form, for substantial segments of the citizenry to commit themselves on behalf of those contenders, and for those who do organize and commit themselves to escape suppression. Hence revolutionary situations occur much more frequently in low-capacity, nondemocratic regimes than in other types, especially high-capacity, democratic regimes. As for revolutionary outcomes, the regularities are subtler. Defections of regime members, acquisition of armed force by revolutionary coalitions, and neutralization of a regime’s armed force all happen more easily in low-capacity, nondemocratic regimes than others. Control of the state apparatus by members of revolutionary coalitions, however, faces severe obstacles in low-capacity, nondemocratic regimes, since the apparatus itself tends to fragment during such seizures of power. Hence mediumcapacity, nondemocratic regimes foster more revolutionary outcomes than other types of regime. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 979

Categorization

• XREF: Directly advances the reader’s regime-capacity/democracy matrix goal; the claim that high-capacity democratic regimes make revolutionary situations rare is the institutional-absorption anchor, structurally parallel to how institutions might absorb subordinate-group politicization. — connects to: Class-based revolutions from below distort the wider record of forcible power shifts; A regime’s past path in capacity-democracy space shapes its contention practices. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 145; Military seizure of power signals low regime capacity — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 385 (+18 more)
• QUESTION: If high-capacity democratic regimes suppress revolutionary situations for ALL challengers, then dominant-group politicization as ‘rights defense’ must proceed through channels the framework needs added premises to explain — Tilly gives no asymmetry here.

Broader Connections

• Regime structure determines revolutionary situation frequency and character #expands (0.90) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1045
• Revolutions happen when governmental weakness unblocks pressures, not when they are blocked #corroborates (0.78)
• Regime coercion weakly deters protest while dissident coercive capacity strongly enables rebellion #expands (0.75)