Regime-internal relational shifts drive contention against both bottom-up and top-down causality

Evidence

If this account of interactions between regime change and contention in South Africa is accurate, what plausible alternatives does it rule out? How widely does its basic logic apply? Note that the account involves significant asymmetry between regime change and contention, with the initial impetus to alterations in repertoires coming from shifts within regimes. Such a causal story contradicts essentially bottom-up accounts in which structural changes and/or transformations of shared consciousness generate action that overthrows an oppressive regime. But it also disagrees with strictly top-down accounts in which a regime’s change of location in the international system and/or alterations in ruling-class orientations determine the direction of regime change, producing popular protest or resistance, but not consequential political action on the part of popular activists. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 659

Categorization

• XREF: This is the chapter’s clearest statement of the middle-path causal asymmetry (regime-internal over bottom-up and top-down). Connects to reader’s project of testing whether institutional absorption asymmetrically affects subordinate vs dominant group politicization. — connects to: Regime change and contention mutually shape each other over long periods — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 549; Regime-internal shifts, not challenger agency or external pressure, initiate repertoire change — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 657; Claim-making reciprocally alters the regime that constrains it in the medium run — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1306 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Tilly frames the asymmetry between regime-change and contention, but never extends it to asymmetric effects on subordinate vs dominant-group politicization — exactly the gap the reader wants to interrogate.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 659

Broader Connections

• Regime-internal shifts, not challenger agency or external pressure, initiate repertoire change #expands (0.86) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 657
• Claim-making reciprocally alters the regime that constrains it in the medium run #qualifies (0.78) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1306
• Relative autonomy reframes state-capital causality as multidirectional, not base-determined #exemplifies (0.74) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1671