Intergroup power struggles are tripolar, not bipolar, with each antagonist courting the general public

Evidence

We have argued that social groups are often involved in power struggles in that they try to establish, change, or defend a power structure. We now need to make explicit an important, but often neglected, aspect of power struggles between social groups. That aspect is the societal embeddedness of intergroup power struggles and of their immediate protagonists. As a consequence, such power struggles also have repercussions for the overall power structure of the more inclusive societal context. By the same token, they are not merely bipolar conflicts between two opposing groups, but additional groups or segments of the wider society are involved as well. This calls for (at least) a triangulated or tripolar approach to power struggles. Typically, the following three parties are likely be involved: two antagonistic parties or groups, one of which may be an elite or authority, and the general public (or representatives thereof) as the third party, which each of the two antagonistic groups tries to control or otherwise enlist for its own particularistic interests. These three social entities need not be conceived of as mutually exclusive. On the contrary, each of the two antagonistic groups (e.g., a particular social movement and its countermovement) should be anxious to stress that it is an important part of the more inclusive general public or population so that its own interests appear to be compatible with, if not identical to, the “common” interest. By the same token, each group can be expected to strive for hegemony, claiming that their own position is or should be prototypical or normative for that more inclusive “in-group,” whereas the position of the other group is discredited as beyond the latitude of general acceptance (Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4411

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘tripolar’ model of intergroup conflict as an explicit conceptual framework.
• XREF: Connects to social identity theory’s self-categorization work and to the reader’s prior chapter selections on power struggles and minority influence. — connects to: Intergroup power struggles always involve a third-party audience beyond two antagonists — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4411
• SEED: The claim that each antagonist must present itself as the true ‘general public’ while discrediting the rival as beyond acceptable range is a lens for analyzing real-world protest/counterprotest dynamics.
• STORYSTEM: A story where two rival factions each try to claim they ARE ‘the people’ while painting the other as outsiders — classic worldbuilding for factional politics.