Accountability and Populism: An Anthropological Perspective

This chapter aims to investigate the relationship between accountability and populism from a processual and integrated perspective. Populism is understood here as a culturally defined idiom for political action and debate that postulates, as a fundamental value, the primacy of people over political control. It will be shown how accountability, interpreted not as a mere governance tool but as a form of relationship based on control, can become a comparative category. This approach makes it possible to think of accountability as a process that integrates political and ethical dimensions. The comparativeness will thus make it possible to understand accountability’s specific features in the various contexts, even when these may not be immediately evident, thanks to the comparison between experience-near and experience-distant accountability. The distinction between the two will be thoroughly explained when providing the theoretical and anthropological backdrop to the analysis. Accountability raised in Anglo-Saxon contexts over the years seems to cross the boundaries of its accounting genealogy to become part of global history and will therefore be read as a particular accountability among various forms of the phenomenon.