Politicization requires blaming an external opponent for one’s grievances.

Evidence

Awareness of shared grievances or suffering is not enough to become politicized as a group. As a next step, an external opponent or enemy, such as a specific out-group, an authority, or “the system,” must be blamed for the group’s predicament (Ferree & Miller, 1985; Major, 1994). Internal attributions of blame (i.e., blaming oneself or the in-group) generate feelings of shame or guilt that may spur individual or collective action to redress the adverse situation (Frijda, Kuipers, & Ter Schure, 1989; Landman, 1993; Weiner, 1995), but they do not politicize. On the contrary, they usually depoliticize because individual or collective deficiencies are made responsible for one’s grievances. Adversarial attributions, however, are a further step on the way to politicization because group members then hold an external opponent responsible and become angry at “them” for what they are doing to “us.” — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4429

Categorization

• XREF: Plausibly connects to the Milgrom/trust-institution work and social identity theory citations; also to moral-panic framing literature in earlier reading on collective grievance formation. — connects to: Scapegoating requires large shared frustrations plus a blaming ideology. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 794; A sense of personal grievance can turn a quiet gentleman into a political fighter — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 818; A consensus politics that erases adversaries reproduces the very subordination it claims to fix. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 531
• DEFINE: Distinguishes adversarial from internal attributions and explains why only the former politicize.