Contemporary Sri Lanka: Nationalism meets ‘soft populism’

Abstract

<p>This chapter investigates how populist politics interacts with nationalism in contemporary Sri Lanka. It analyzes the populist political strategies of Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa since 2010 and considers how their leadership styles impacted traditional patronage politics and nationalist agendas, producing a distinctive populist nationalist discourse. We show that the emerging populist nationalist political phenomenon in Sri Lanka has created a complex interplay between populist mobilizing structures, leadership, and ideology. </p>