Most public politics involves routine transactions without open contention

Evidence

Public politics within a regime consists of claim-making interactions among agents, polity members, challengers, and outside political actors as well. Most public politics does not involve contention in the strong sense of the word used here. It includes elections, voter registration, legislative activity, patenting, tax collection, military conscription, group application for pensions, and many other transactions to which governments are parties. Most public political transactions within most regimes—even the turbulent Peru of 1989–2003—pass without open contention. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 134

Categorization

• DEFINE: Separates routine institutionalized public politics from contention; suggests absorption into routine politics defuses contention.
• XREF: Central to reader’s hypothesis: institutional absorption operates precisely by converting potential contention into routine public politics. The category of ‘agreed electoral competition as non-contention’ is a direct mechanism. — connects to: Contention is political only when claims are public and governmental — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 131
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 134

Broader Connections

• Contention is political only when claims are public and governmental #qualifies (0.78) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 131