Raphaël Girard publishes article in Public Law on accountability, populism and expertise.

In this article, Raphaël Girard questions the perceived or assumed dichotomy between populism and expertise. Using the UK Government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 as a case study, he 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, he 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.

The article appeared in the October issue (issue 4) of Public Law and can be accessed online via Westlaw.