Public politics is broader than contentious politics, which always involves a government.

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 … Contentious politics occurs, then, when connected clusters of persons make consequential claims on other clusters of persons or on major political actors, just so long as at least one government is a claimant, an object of claims, or a third party to the claims. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 133

Categorization

• DEFINE: Disambiguates public politics from contentious politics and both from mere contention.
• XREF: connects to: Political contention requires public, collective claims implicating a government.; Politics broadly construed spans every institution, not just government.

Broader Connections

• Politics broadly construed spans every institution, not just government. #corroborates (0.85)