Accessibility, populism and democracy: unearthing the value of spontaneous face-to-face interactions

Recent ethnographic work (Roelofs 2023) has highlighted the democratic value of accessibility, that is, the maintenance of spaces for direct interactions between rulers and the ruled. This article takes as its jumping off point Roelofs observation that populists seem to have an affinity with accessibility. Drawing on secondary literature from Zambia (Fraser 2017), Uganda (Melchiorre 2025), Burkina Faso (Resnick 2017), Nigeria and Ghana, it shows how studying the ‘socio-cultural’ aspects of populism (Ostiguy 2017) through the lens of accessibility helps disaggregate three sets populist practices which are commonly bundled together. Firstly, where populists are described as ‘being at one with the common man’ accessibility helps distinguish appeals which consist of physical presence in popular locales and openness to serendipitous interactions with ordinary people, from leaders’ more static ‘common man’ presentations through styles of speech, dress and consumption. Secondly, where populism is characterised as political theatre, accessibility distinguishes between improvised interactions between rulers and the ruled versus scripted moments of more uni-directional political theatre. Thirdly, where populists are seen as charismatic, accessibility highlights the affective activation of unpredictable encounters with power, compared to charisma understood merely as the vicarious enjoyment of gregarious, grandiose or shameless leaders (Mazzarella 2024b). Conversely, in elaborating the overlap between populist practice and accessibility this article helps further refine Roelofs’ (2023) original articulation of accessibility as a democratic value, highlighting its spatial dimension and the requirement that interactions are un-scripted and somewhat open to taking unpredictable directions. However, the onerousness and unpredictability of accessibility also offers a plausible account of why populists revert to more straightforwardly authoritarian playbooks once in power. As such the article affirms the fruitfulness of African political practice and ideas as a source of innovation in political thought.