To compare is to “assimilate” and to discover deeper or fundamental similarities below the surface of secondary diversities (Sartori 1970). This chapter will discuss the underlying conceptual attributes of populism and how they have been constructed as they provide the background for indexing the cases in Chapter 4. The intention behind parsing populism into its underlying conceptual attributes is to be able to identify how they configure with each other to constitute the various populisms in India. And since set theoretic analysis is the approach adopted here to understand these configurations, this chapter will also translate these attributes and their constructs as necessary and sufficient conditions.

At this point, it may be helpful to step back from populism and understand the construction and the kind of concept structure being used and why that justifies the need for sufficient and necessary conditions and the downstream analysis that follows. The description provided here is a simple adaptation of the framework outlined by Goertz (2006). The concept structure being used here is multilevel and multidimensional. A multilevel concept has a basic structure, reflected through the secondary level as visible attributes whereby each attribute in turn can be measured through indicators as membership scores (in this project) or as variables in projects with a quantitative design. A multidimensional concept has different dimensions that constitute the basic level of the concept. The nature of the relationship between the attributes and the basic level can be causal, ontological, and substitutable. In this project, the attributes share an ontological relationship with the basic concept, according to which the various attributes are not just the defining features of the basic concept but in fact are the elements that compose the basic level.