Accountability, Populism and Expertise: The United Kingdom Government's Response to COVID-19

Abstract

This article questions the perceived or assumed dichotomy between populism and expertise. Using the United Kingdom’s executive response to the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 as a case study, it argues that there is in fact an alignment or synergy between populism and expertise, one that has important implications for public law, particularly for the principle of accountability. More specifically, it argues that technocratic means – and reliance on scientific expertise in particular – can indeed be useful to populists to the extent that they can be utilised as a way to depoliticise issues and at least partially shield them from direct political accountability. This, in turn, allows populists to escape responsibility for their policy choices in a way that, perhaps ironically, resembles the populist critique of the “undemocratic” nature or “technocratic” tendencies of present-day liberal democracy.

Keywords: Accountability, political accountability, populism, expertise, scientific expertise, science, COVID-19, United Kingdom, democracy, technocracy, technopopulism, executive, government, Boris Johnson

JEL Classification: K00, K1, K10, K19, K3, K30, K39