The late German political theorist Carl Schmitt is infamous for his political writings. He has received vehement disapproval from the right and left of the political spectrum, yet his friend-or-enemy binary explicates the quintessential moral foundation of the post-Machiavellian modern ethos of politics.

Populism also divides people into binaries either you are a plebeian or you are elite or, in simpler terms, either you are a part of `us` or `them`. The Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev has rightly pointed out that, with the ongoing democratisation, politics has entered its populist moment.

Whether defined as a style of politics, a discourse or an ideology of selective exclusion, populism`s ethical and moral imaginary fundamentally adheres to the Schmittian binary. However, like all constructions, the binary of enemy or friend is also not always stable, and the identities of individuals and groups identifying with each of the categories are contingent upon the context: the history of state formation, national imaginaries, ethnic diversity and, more important to postcolonial countries such as Pakistan, the role of religion in the public sphere.

How to understand this fluidity is the question that Ihsan Yilmaz and Fizza Batool`s latest coauthored treatise, Populist Identification in Public Discourse: Pakistanis Constructing Pakistaniat, has tried to answer. They investigate the demand of populism in Pakistan.

The book, comprising six chapters, helps understand the conflicting yet prevalent and fluid forms of identities that create `Pakistaniat`. Theoretically, it attempts to connect the assorted process of people`s identification (both in terms of plebs and demos) with ideals of Ummah, nationhood and democracy, to understand the consolidation of populist political idioms and styles in a postcolonial setting.

Taking political theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe`s discursive tradition in populist theory as a starting point, the authors link theconstruction of populist politics with the poststructural notion of constructed identity, articulated most effectively by political science professor Francisco Panizza.

Panizza has argued for approaching political identity as a fluid category that allows flexibility to individuals to borrow from multiple social and cultural repertoires. This perspective of studying politics and populism helped the authors study the `demand side of populism` and allowed them to understand the popular appeal of Imran Khan in Pakistan.

The first couple of chapters mostly discuss the theoretical and methodological aspects of the book and narrate a history of Pakistaniat and its constituting elements. The data for the book was collected in Lahore and most of the respondents were educated urban citizens who were undoubtedly influenced by the state`s ideational project and educational policies.

The authors have themselves acknowledged the limitation of the sample and the possible lopsidedness of the conclusions offered by the book. The `parrhalikha` [educated] Pakistanis are most attuned to the `Islamic civilisational` Weltanschauung [world view] crafted by Syed Ahmad Khan and associates in the 19th century, which first metamorphosed into aMuslim nationalist project and later into an Islamist `heaven`.

The third chapter of the book sketches the historical genealogy of the Ummah and the nation in north-Indian Muslims and how the Pakistani state inherited this political image. More recently, the philosophers Jurgen Habermas and Charles Taylor have argued for a dialogue on the coexistence of the secular and religious public sphere without essentialising the opposition between them. In the context of the West it was a response to an increasingly multi-religious public sphere.

However, in the case of Pakistan, the antecedent of civic-religious dialogue is old and merged into a singular political project, as described by Najeeb A.

Jan in his book The Meta-Colonial State.

YilmazandBatoolhavesuccessfullydemonstrated how the various articulations of nation-Ummah conflation exist in the Pakistani public sphere.

However, the understanding and identification with the Ummah is fluid and mostly influenced by the sectarian affiliations of individuals. They have recorded instances where some Sunni respondents categorically rejected accepting Shia Muslims as part of the Ummah. However, the disapprovalwas not limited to the sectarian identities but also encompassed the docility of rich Muslim countries vis-à-vis Western countries.

Providing statements of the respondents they have shown that for Pakistaniat to become hegemonic, it requires an `incomplete construct of Ummah, a sort of aspiration to achieve global Muslim leadership.

And such sentiments are shared across the class and gender divide, which points to their prevalence and popular acceptance.

The fourth and fifth chapters deal with the institutional discontents and popular imagination of democracy, respectively, and discuss how both actively ensure public identification with populist political projects. Notwithstanding the praetorian nature of the state, there has never been a decade where some sort of popular participation in the electoral process was not observed. Whether it was a martial law regime or civil authoritarianism, there was also space for disagreement and protest.

The authors have shown in the fourth chapter, therefore, that discontent with misgovernance, political corruption (the narrative popularised by military regimes against the political class), and imperfect delivery of public services, feed into the sentiments of misery, hopelessness and lack of trust in state institutions, including the army. Thus opening the space for identification with populist idioms and legitimising populist political projects.

In the fifth chapter, the discussion mostly circles the ideas of voting and other forms of collective actions that are inspired and admired by the respondents. The inclination to vote has increased among young and educated Pakistanis, who feel troubled and voiceless and, therefore, are using the vote as not only an instrument of representative democracy, but also a sign of protest. The floating signifier of democracy and voting therefore offers an outlet for them to vent their anger by supporting a leader that stands above these divisions, incompetencies and limitations.

The last chapter concludes the argument by identifying three important identity markers that bind together the construct of Pakistaniat. First, Pakistanis feel marginalised not just at the local and national but at the global level. Their voice is stifled at home and `the West` is also perceived as making schemes to weaken the Ummah globally.

Therefore, Pakistanis feel they are unappreciated, underrated and marginalised competitors facing a