In mature democracies contention turns nonviolent unless state agents block it

Evidence

In the upper-right corner (high capacity, extensive democracy) we could expect to find the familiar contentious politics of social movements: associations, meetings, statements, pamphlets, marches, rallies, petitions, lobbying, and (greatly increasing after 1989) electronic communication. On the whole, contention in that quadrant concentrates on nonviolent presentation of identity, standing, and program claims; violence occurs especially when one group (including police and other government agents) seeks to block another group’s initially nonviolent making of claims. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 428

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise content of the standard ‘social movement’ repertoire in the high-cap/high-dem quadrant, as promised.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s asymmetry question: institutional absorption (constitutionalism) is precisely this high-cap/high-dem channeling of subordinate claims into ‘associations, meetings, statements, petitions, lobbying.’ This is the framework’s own language for what the reader wants to test. — connects to: Electoral democracy can persist amid rampant police and gang violence — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 518; Regime narrowing of tolerated nonviolent performances channels claimants toward violence and invites state force — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 744; Democratic institutions may constrain raw state coercion against opposition — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 72 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Key tension for the asymmetry test: Tilly here frames democratic contention as roughly symmetric across groups. Does his framework predict dominant groups defending rights also stick to these nonviolent forms? Later chapter 5 material suggests no — state agents and dominant blocs deploy violence when claims are blocked.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 428

Broader Connections

• Regime coercion weakly deters protest while dissident coercive capacity strongly enables rebellion #qualifies (0.88)
• Governments that crush nonviolent protestors reduce public authoritarianism #qualifies (0.86) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1182
• Authoritarian measures can persist within nominally democratic structures via normalized crisis #qualifies (0.74) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 7
• Conflict legitimation, not consensus, is modern democracy’s condition of existence #expands (0.72) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 463