POPULIST RESURGENCE IN SOUTH ASIA: AN EMPIRICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Envisioning of populism as the charismatic mobilization of mass people in pursuit of political power, this Element examines that populists burgeon where ties between voters and either bureaucratic or clientelistic parties do not exist or have decayed. This is because populists’ ability to mobilize electoral support directly is made much more likely by voters not being deeply embedded in existing party networks. This model is used to explain the pervasiveness of populism across the major states in South Asia: Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Srilanka. It excerpts lessons from these South Asian cases for the study of populism.