The Politics of Resentment

Type: Book

As of November 2026, The Politics of Resentment has been mentioned in one podcast episode on The Ezra Klein Show (Oct 2025). In the episode "How the Democratic Brand Turned Radioactive in Rural America" on The Ezra Klein Show, Ezra Klein recommends Katherine Cramer's book, The Politics of Resentment. He highlights it as a key scholarly work that explains rural consciousness and resentment politics in Wisconsin, which directly informs the framework discussed by Suzanne Metler and others.

The politics of resentment, sometimes called grievance politics, describes strategies that convert perceived injustices into collective claims that can reorder party systems when globalization, demographic change, or state restructuring unsettle expectations, then channels them toward a concrete outgroup or elite. Researchers distinguish multiple channels through which actors translate anger into policy agendas, allowing analysts to compare movements across regions and election cycles. It is not