High-capacity governments hold near-monopolies of terror but use it sparingly

Evidence

In high-capacity regimes, governments maintain extensive controls over coercive means including violent specialists. High-capacity governments exercise near-monopolies of the means of terror, but generally employ terror sparingly. In such regimes, it takes extensive clandestine preparation, most often with external support, to evade the government’s preventive repression. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 892

Categorization

• QUESTION: Does the government’s ‘sparing’ use of terror in high-capacity regimes legitimate dominant-group violence as rights defense — the asymmetry the reader is testing but Tilly doesn’t directly address?
• XREF: connects to: Terror is a strategy of asymmetric violence deployable by weak or strong actors — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 828; High-capacity regimes’ monopoly on coercion means their own agents dominate the violence that occurs — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 737; Dominant groups use systematic terror most ferociously when subordinates challenge them (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• High-capacity regimes’ monopoly on coercion means their own agents dominate the violence that occurs #expands (0.90) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 737
• Dominant groups use systematic terror most ferociously when subordinates challenge them #qualifies (0.78)
• Totalitarian terrorism served as self-expression rather than calculated policy #qualifies (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 788