Legalizing demonstrations made claim-making less violent but more frequent

Evidence

The emergence of the demonstration as an established claim-making performance has shown us a bargain that no ruler initially wanted to make nonetheless becoming powerful. Where rulers had once tolerated or even prescribed public displays of WUNC by acceptable groups of citizens, regimes moved through struggle to rights of assembly, association, and speech on the part of claimants that were often hostile to current governments. At first broken up, shot down, and prosecuted as riots, demonstrations acquired a quasi-legal standing in all democratic regimes. … As a result, domestic claim-making became simultaneously less violent, more frequent, and larger in scale. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1326

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece’s theme of moral panic absorbing protest — and to the reader’s core test of whether constitutional rights regimes defuse subordinate-group politicization.
• XREF: connects to: Effective forbidding of violence plus toleration of nonviolent performance reduces violence salience — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 759; Social-movement activity depends on regime-backed rights to endure retaliation — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1178; Escalating resistance met with legalized repression entrenches rather than contains mobilization. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 577 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Violence gets overproduced by competition even after it is no longer required #corroborates (0.72) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 107