Government by Fiat puts the spotlight on the steadily diminishing accountability of Australia's state and federal governments to the electors they allegedly represent. - It looks at the many public-sector changes of the last two decades that have been directed by governments and which at the same time have made the same governments (and their ministers) less accountable for the delivery of government services. - Closely associated subject addressed by Government by Fiat is the ever-increasing determination by governments to keep secret their dealings with the private sector as 'commercial in confidence', and the broader issues of the privatisation and corporatisation of government agencies. - The book considers many contentious case studies including: - the Sydney Water's contamination scare, - the gas failures in Victoria, - electricity supply problems in Auckland, - the problems associated with the privatisation of parts of Victoria's ambulance service - and the changes by the Kennett Government to the office of Auditor-General in Victoria.

This paper examines the claims made in a recent paper in Critical Perspectives on Accounting by Vaughan Radcliffe about the way in which public sector auditors report their findings. Drawing upon the work of Taussig, he argues that while public sector auditors may know the truth, as may others, they choose not always to tell the truth in their reports and instead to treat what may be publicly unpalatable as a public secret. They modify their findings to ensure that these will be more acceptable to governments and, thereby, enhance their opportunity to influence government. These claims are shown in this paper to overstate the public sector auditor's response to difficult issues. Rather than keeping secrets, the contents of the auditor's reports may instead reflect the constitutional and institutional limitations in which they must work. Most importantly in most jurisdictions they are not to comment on matters of policy which are the domain of the government.

The Liberal Governments that took office in the years immediately before World War I pursued a policy which sought the radical transformation of British society by establishing the foundations of the modern welfare state. Liberal beliefs required that the funding for this would have to be obtained by achieving economies in other government spending, most especially spending on the army. However, with mounting international political tensions, the new Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane, knew that Britain's security demanded a significant military capability. Thus, to allow the spending on social reform and to provide an army ready for war, Haldane introduced administrative reforms to ensure that Britain's army was both economic and efficient. These reforms included the beginnings of an 'object-based' system of military accounting which promoted a dominant role for the military in financial decisions.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine sixteenth century Netherlands business organisation and accounting practices, then the most advanced in Western Europe, to test Sombart's theory that scientific double entry bookkeeping was an essential prerequisite for the development of modern capitalism and the emergence of the public corporation during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Rather than being a development of Paciolian bookkeeping, double-entry bookkeeping in sixteenth century Netherlands was grounded in northern German (Hanseatic) business practices. Design/methodology/approach – Sixteenth century Dutch business records and Dutch and German bookkeeping texts are used to establish that north German Hanseatic commercial practices exercised the greatest influence on The Netherlands' bookkeeping practices immediately prior to the development of the capitalistic commercial enterprise in the first years of the seventeenth century. Findings – Contrary to Sombart's thesis, scientific double-entry bookkeeping was rarely used in sixteenth century Netherlands, which became Europe's most sophisticated commercial region during the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century. Instead, extant commercial archives and the numerous sixteenth century accounting texts suggest that Hanseatic business practices and agents' (factors') bookkeeping were the dominant influence on northern Netherlands' business practices at this time. The organisation and administrative practices of Netherlands' businesses prior to the seventeenth century, especially their decentralised structure and lack of a common capital, were founded on Hanseatic practices that were considerably different to the best Italian practice of the time. Research limitations/implications – North German influences on Dutch accounting and business practices have significant implications for social theories of the development of capitalism, notably that of Bryer, that assume the use of a scientific (capitalistic) form of double-entry bookkeeping was essential to the development of capitalism from the seventeenth century. This is tested in a subsequent paper which examines the accounting practices of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC) which was founded in 1602 at the very cusp of modern capitalism. The research presented here was partially constrained by the scarcity of transcriptions of original sixteenth century bookkeeping records. Originality/value – The vigorous debate in the accounting history literature about the dependence of modern capitalism upon a scientific (capitalistic) form of double entry bookkeeping prompted by Sombart has been mainly concerned with England. This paper introduces into the debate material which documents the accounting and business practices of the most commercially advanced region of Europe in the late sixteenth century and the influence of Dutch bookkeeping texts.

Abstract: Reforms to the civil list in the late 18th century in England sought to deny the Crown opportunities to use its civil-list funds and sinecures to buy influence in Parliament and, thereby, diminish constitutional protections for liberty. Among the most important reforms were tighter accounting requirements for civil-list spending, including that for the secret services. The unique nature and purpose of the home and foreign secret services, which were the responsibility of the Crown and paid from civil-service funds, resulted in accounting controls which depended upon additional measures to provide Parliament with greater control over spending and enhanced accountability. These enhancements to accountability were especially important at a time of almost continual war between England and France in the decades spanning the close of the 18th century, resulting in significant increases in spending on the foreign secret service.

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the Victorian attitude to the poor by focussing on the health care provided at a large provincial hospital, the Newcastle Infirmary. Design/methodology/approach – The archives of the Newcastle Infirmary are reviewed alongside the local trade directories. These primary sources are examined in conjunction with the writings of contemporary social theorists on poverty. Findings – At a time when poverty was seen as a sin, an act against God, it would be easy to assume that the Victorians faced no moral dilemma in dismissing the poor, particularly what were seen as the “undeserving poor”, out of hand. Yet, the paper observes how accounting was used both to persuade the wealthier citizens to contribute funds and to enable the hospital to exercise compassion in treating paupers despite this being prohibited under the hospital's rules. Such a policy conflicted with the dominant utilitarian view of society, which emphasised the twin pillars of economic expediency and self-help. Research limitations/implications – More case studies are needed of other hospitals to ascertain how typical the Newcastle Infirmary was of the voluntary hospital sector as a whole. Originality/value – Although many histories of British hospitals exist and some have examined how accounting was used to manage within these institutions, the concern has not been with accounting as a moral practice.

Prior to the nineteenth century the more lucrative public offices under the direct control of the Crown as part of the civil list were given as sinecures to favoured individuals. The use of these sinecures, pensions and other valuable appointments provided the Crown with the means by which it could buy influence and, thereby, undermine the constitutional authority and independence of parliament. In the main, civilian officers of the Crown were not accountable to parliament. Financial accountability for spending on the civil list was sporadic, without sufficient enforcement mechanisms and, therefore, a threat to the liberty of all “Englishmen". The financial and political strains that the American War of Independence placed upon England, combined with the abuse of patronage privileges by the Crown, provoked a movement for economical reform, most often associated with Edmund Burke, which sought the reform of both the civil list and executive accounts as protections for liberty. Crucial to convincing the government of the urgency of reform were reports from the Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts.

In 1215 Magna Carta determined freedom from executive oppression, or liberty, as the essential principle of the English Constitution and parliament as the bulwark against executive attempts to diminish the liberty of individuals. This constitutional precedence of liberty was confirmed after the Revolution in 1688 by the constitutional settlement which strengthened the financial accountability of the executive to parliament. Regular accounting for military expenditures especially became a critical component of the new accountability measures. Despite the overwhelming significance of liberty for the English Constitution and the contributions of accounting to preserving liberty, public sector accounting continues to attract few accounting historians. As a consequence, the vast historical resources contained in British Parliamentary Papers and the records of parliamentary debates continue to go largely unnoticed by all but a few accounting historians.

The ability of accounting to be used for the purposes of economic, social and political oppression is now well recognised in the critical accounting literature. Accounting is far more than an innocuous technology of rational calculation and accountability upon which management and the efficient operation of markets depend. Its contributions to maintaining the hegemony of the state are primarily through its close association with the protection and promotion of property rights. For the anarchist this relationship is the source of entrenched injustice which alienates individuals from their fundamental, moral nature. Elimination of the state allows justice to be reasserted and society to operate on moral principles. When the very existence of the state is questioned, as does anarchism, understanding of the fundamental nature and contributions of accounting need to be renegotiated.

This paper provides the first published examination of attempts by the British Government to use business accounting practices to enhance military efficiency and success in the field. It is especially innovative for the connections established between a broader movement for national efficiency, military accounting and military efficiency at the turn of the 20th century.

The auditing profession has been an important feature of industrialized economies for many years. The manner in which the auditing profession is regulated in the insurance industry, therefore, is worthy of investigation in light of the recent collapse of Heath International Holdings (HIH) which is currently recorded as the biggest corporate collapse in Australia's history. Two questions remain: did the HIH auditors carry out the work ethically and responsibly? Did the regulators fulfill their responsible roles? Among all factors that have led to the collapse of HIH, that of the auditor's role and the auditing profession's ethics has assumed particular importance.

Fijian development banking history exposes the paradox between the community based upon orthodox authority and those in which relations are governed by the commercial ideology introduced by the British colonial traditional Fijian village economy, ultimately providing the means by which existing structures of power on land ownership and class were significantly enhanced. This conflict between the Fijian culture and the modern growth of development banking can be filtered through the Weberian theoretical framework.

The significance of this paper is the association established for the first time between financial ignorance required of the military as a constitutional protection and military failures at the time of the South African War (1899-1901). It represents a major assimilation of documentary evidence into accounting history and a new emphasis.

Reformist governments in pursuing their own political interests have been prepared to put aside enduring understandings of constitutional accountability which emphasize the well-being of the entire community as the manifestation of substantive citizenship and replace it with more easily metricated forms of accountability. The assumption has been that the two forms of accountability are easily, rightly and necessarily substitutable for the other. Auditors-general and other independent officers continue to question the constitutional inconsistencies of these changes, sometimes at grave risk to their very existence. The accountability consequences of contracting out services with the private sector are of special concern to auditors-general.

Sombart's belief that double-entry bookkeeping was essential to the development of capitalism has been criticized by both accounting and economic historians. His substantive conclusions concerning double-entry bookkeeping have been rejected mainly because they result from his selective and self-serving rendition of history. Accounting historians have been preoccupied especially with denouncing his exaggerated appreciation of double-entry bookkeeping. They argue that he attributes far too much importance to its potentialities in preference to the more sober reality found in the historical record. This paper shows that in their denunciation of Sombart's conclusions and his faulty history, accounting history researchers have been seemingly oblivious to the way in which Sombart's anti-Semitism shaped his appreciation of double-entry bookkeeping. He accuses Jews, as exceptional exponents of rational profit calculation, of perpetrating the evils of capitalism. His views of double-entry bookkeeping and the history of economic systems betrayed a strong attachment to a romantic conception of German history which supported German anti-Semitism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sombart's denunciation of Jewish influences extended from their business practices to observations of Jews that were consistently anti-Semitic and sympathetic to those of the Nazis.

The evolution of modern accounting consists essentially of a series of pragmatic responses to the needs of capital. Accounting is implicated, therefore, in the maintenance and creation of societies in which relations are primarily defined in terms of property, however it is distributed, and justice is determined by the sanctity of property rights. Accounting historians are encouraged to broaden the compass of their research to include the association between accounting and justice which is already well recognised in the critical accounting literature. Theories of justice, especially those of 19th century political theorists such as Bentham and Senior, and more recently that of Nozick, are used to explore the close association between property, accounting and justice at the time of the Irish potato famine of 1845-7.

In 1215 Magna Carta determined freedom from executive oppression, or liberty, as the essential principle of the English Constitution and parliament as the bulwark against executive attempts to diminish the liberty of individuals. This constitutional precedence of liberty was confirmed after the Revolution in 1688 by the constitutional settlement which strengthened the financial accountability of the executive to parliament. Regular accounting for military expenditures especially became a critical component of the new accountability measures. Despite the overwhelming significance of liberty for the English Constitution and the contributions of accounting to preserving liberty, public sector accounting continues to attract few accounting historians. As a consequence, the vast historical resources contained in British Parliamentary Papers and the records of parliamentary debates continue to go largely unnoticed by all but a few accounting historians.