State control confers unmatched coercive and informational advantages worth contention over

Evidence

Controlling a government gives people major advantages over those who lack that control. It gives them access to information, resources, and coercive means that in most regimes greatly surpass those available to any other organization within the same regime. Holders of governmental power can use the information, resources, and coercive means to their own personal profit, to favor their own segment of the population, to promote causes they espouse, or to advance their visions of the public good. These features help explain why people kill, bribe, lie, conquer, form coalitions, or compete strenuously in elections on their way to securing governmental power. Inevitably, struggles to acquire or retain governmental power involve contentious politics. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 73

Categorization

• DEFINE: Tilly’s foundational premise: why political contention is endogenous to government — the stakes that make the regime-contention connection inevitable.
• XREF: Connects to Tilly’s coercion/capital theory of state formation and to why groups fight over control; anchors the reader’s regime-capacity matrix question. — connects to: Governmental coercion increases rather than suppresses political conflict — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4330; Modern state power diffuses control through continuous measured mechanisms rather than personal command; State coherence is an artifice masking competing institutional interests — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1720 (+6 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 73

Broader Connections

• Modern state power diffuses control through continuous measured mechanisms rather than personal command #complicates (0.82)
• Expanding state authority paradoxically erodes its de facto control and efficiency #complicates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1726
• Intrinsic conformity outweighs state surveillance as a threat #complicates (0.79) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 35
• Governmental coercion increases rather than suppresses political conflict #complicates (0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4330
• Regime capacity shapes how contention is channeled between prescribed, tolerated, and forbidden performances #expands (0.76) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 484
• State coherence is an artifice masking competing institutional interests #complicates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1720
• Organizationally-aligned incentives make state agents untrustworthy to their clients #complicates (0.73) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 767
• Personalized control and institutional measures equally produce rather than replace trust #qualifies (0.72)
• States pursue conflicting policies by ignoring cross-policy implications #complicates (0.71) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2589