The Emergence of Religious Populism? Insights from Israel, India, and Turkey

Although the concept of “populism” remains contested, many studies classify populist parties as left-right, ignoring important variations. Focusing on three populist parties that are often classified as right-wing: Israel’s Likud, India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), we question how these parties and their leaders deploy religious symbols and discourse to draw the boundaries between “us” and “others,” define their stances on refugee, poverty, and water-related issues. The multilayered comparison shows that religion not only facilitates communication of these parties’ positions, but it informs their policies; more important, it allows parties to maintain what appear to be contradictory approaches. Remarkable similarities in the Likud, BJP, and AKP parties’ policies show that these parties can be seen as neither left nor right-wing; instead, they form a new subset of populism, religious-populism that needs to be included in the populism debate to better analyze its impact on democracy.