populism and accountabilty

ENRIQUE PERUZZOTTI

populism and key concepts in social and political theory

Brill

Año: 2023; p. 137 - 155

Is populism hostile to any notion of accountability, as its liberal critics contend? Or is there a specific populist understanding of the concept? The links between populism and accountability have not been sufficiently explored, partly because of the significant challenge that populism as a governmental exercise poses to liberal mechanisms of governmental accountability. At the same time, those institutional reform processes are made in the name of democratic accountability. What is the meaning that populism assigns to the concept of accountability? The chapter addresses that question by contrasting liberal and populist approaches to accountability. The first section reconstructs the liberal accountability model by focusing on the widely popular conceptual framework of horizontal/vertical mechanisms proposed by Guillermo O´Donnell. The second section resorts to O´Donnell´s categories to present the central tenets of the populist notion of accountability. The third section concludes with some reflections on the limitations of both approaches.