ABSTRACT
Recent research has suggested that populist movements belong to one of two types: exclusionary and inclusionary. The former is almost universally viewed as threatening to immigrants and minorities, and hence to democracy itself. Inclusionary or left-wing populism poses much greater analytical problems, with scholarship divided on whether it poses a similar danger to democracy. Drawing on a comparative analysis of the Indian experience with Indira Gandhi’s inclusionary populism in the 1970s and the exclusionary populism of the Hindu nationalist movement today, this chapter argues that part of the explanation for this ambiguity is the problematic characterization of populist movements according to a single master cleavage. Comparative evidence indicates that variation in populist movement institutionalization is a better guide to how populists are likely to behave in power than is variation in populist discourse.
