| Summary/Abstract |
Prior research on Latin American and European populism has used the inclusionary and exclusionary distinction to differentiate between Left- and Right-wing populism. As Right-wing populists demand exclusion of immigrants and foreigners and Left-wing populists demand inclusion of the lower social class in the political landscape, the former is described as exclusionary and the latter as inclusionary. In this paper, I test this typology, comparing the populism of two political leaders in Pakistan across two different eras: Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto during 1967–77 and Imran Khan during 1996–2022. I argue that in the absence of an overarching liberal discourse, the inclusionary-exclusionary distinction has no meaning because populists of illiberal democracies can rely upon a greater ideological malleability, swinging between inclusionary to exclusionary politics in accordance with the demands of the moment.
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