In this chapter, I will present the results of the qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and then interpret them to describe the configurations that constitute populism in India. I will then provide the results of the tests for necessary and sufficient conditions and discuss the parameters of fit in terms of consistency and coverage. Finally, I will cover the various solution terms that indicate the pathways to populism.

The Sets of Data

Table 5.1 presents the data, that is, the sets of data, comprising 37 cases along five conditions and a populist outcome. Describing the worksheet as comprising sets of data instead of a dataset seems more accurate because each of the columns in the sheet is a set and its members are points of data (as fuzzy scores or as percentage scores) along the rows as constituent parts of the unit of analysis. The unit of analysis is an instance of a party candidate contesting elections at the state or at the national level. The cases have been purposively selected by reviewing the scholarship that explicitly indicates that the cases can be identified as instances of populism. And the conditions described earlier—electoral invocation to their people (P), antagonistic boundary setting (B), populist political leadership (L), populist attitude (A), and anxiety about the future (F)—are some of the commonly accepted attributes in the comparative scholarship on populism. In set theoretic terms, we will explore if P, B, L, A, and F are the conditions that constitute the membership of the populist outcome Y.