Enacting Accountability Under Populist Pressures: Theorizing the Relationship Between Anti-Elite Rhetoric and Public Accountability

• Author: Sjors Overman,Felicity Matthews,Matthew Wood,Thomas Schillemans
• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Date: 01 February 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211019387
• Subject Matter: Perspectives

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211019387

Administration & Society

2022, Vol. 54(2) 311 –334

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997211019387

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Perspectives

Enacting Accountability

Under Populist

Pressures: Theorizing

the Relationship Between

Anti-Elite Rhetoric and

Public Accountability

Matthew Wood1, Felicity Matthews1,

Sjors Overman2, and Thomas Schillemans2

Abstract

While populism challenges the pluralism and technocratic expertise on which

public bureaucracies are based, extant scholarship has overlooked its effects

on accountability processes. In particular, it neglects the impact of anti-elite

rhetoric, characterized by what can be regarded as “emotionalized blame

attribution,” on the thinking and behavior of accountability actors. Responding

to this gap, this article examines the impact of this distinctive form of populist

rhetoric on accountability relationships within the bureaucratic state. It identifies

three “stages” whereby these populist pressures challenge accountability

relationships, threaten the reputation of accountability actors, and result in

alternative accountability practices. In doing so, the article provides a roadmap

for assessing the impact of anti-elite rhetoric on accountability actions.

Keywords

populism, populist pressures, anti-elite rhetoric, public accountability,

reputation, public bureaucracy, public service bargain

1The University of Sheffield, UK

2Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Corresponding Author:

Matthew Wood, Department of Politics, The University of Sheffield, Elmfield,

Northumberland Road, Sheffield S10 2TU, UK.

Email: m.wood@sheffield.ac.uk

1019387AAS0010.1177/00953997211019387Administration & SocietyWood et al.

research-article2021

312 Administration & Society 54(2)

In countries worldwide, populist leaders have launched scathing attacks the

institutions of liberal democracy by publicly challenging the pluralism and

technical expertise on which public agencies, central banks, and supreme

courts are based. In the United States, President Trump frequently attacked

experts at the Environmental Protection Agency, disbanding several of its

independent advisory boards (Executive Order No. 13875, 2019), and during

the COVID-19 crisis, denounced advice on social distancing offered by his

own advisory taskforce. In Brazil too, President Bolsonaro “has coupled defi-

ant rhetoric with active sabotage of public health” (Reid, 2020) by encourag-

ing his citizens to defy lockdown measures set by the country’s health ministry,

and implemented by state governors. Recent years have also witnessed public

attacks by populist politicians on central banks in countries such as the United

States and Turkey; and in the United States, President Trump mooted packing

the Federal Reserve with “unqualified cronies” (“The Independence of Central

Banks Is Under Threat From Politics,” 2019). Populists frame their rhetorical

attacks as increasing the “accountability” of expert bureaucrats, who they

often frame as a morally suspect “elite” (Mudde, 2010, p. 1175); and it is clear

that populism challenges the expertise offered by those public institutions that

are essential to the functioning of any liberal democracy. Yet, in contrast to the

wealth of research that has examined the electoral success of populist parties

(e.g., Albertazzi & Mueller, 2013; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012) and the

impact of populism on specific policy areas (e.g., Albertazzi & McDonnell,

2015), extant scholarship has largely overlooked the effects of populist pres-

sures on public bureaucracies, and in particular on those public servants

whose expert authority is publicly attacked in a climate of populist hostility.

Indeed, despite the profound implications of populist attacks on public bureau-

cracies, and the resultant challenge for established accountability relation-

ships, there has been limited cross-fertilization between research on populism

and research on public accountability. This gap matters because the way that

populism creates an “antagonistic relationship between the corrupt elite and

the virtuous people” (Rooduijn, 2018, p. 363) is likely to challenge the unwrit-

ten rules and informal practices that structure crucial accountability relation-

ships between elected politicians and their bureaucratic agents in democratic

states; and in doing so destabilize the “public service bargain” upon which

effective public governance depends (Hood & Lodge, 2006; Perry, 1996).

In response, this article shifts the focus from what makes populism suc-

cessful to the impact of populism on public bureaucracies and the reactions

of bureaucrats to its effects. Specifically, it examines the impact of the anti-

elite rhetoric associated with populism on the thinking and behavior of

accountability actors. Drawing on state-of-the-art research that has demon-

strated the significance of informal or internal dimensions of “felt account-

ability” (e.g.; Hall et al., 2017; Overman et al., 2021; Romzek et al., 2012),