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Accounting and political parties: explaining the “why” of an Italian light touch regulation (1974)

Marco Gatti (Department of Management, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy)
Simone Poli (Department of Management, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy)

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

ISSN: 0951-3574

Article publication date: 20 August 2018

Issue publication date: 11 September 2018

460

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explain the reasons why Law no. 195 of 2 May 1974, which established a system of public funding for the Italian political parties, introduced a system of controls that was light touch in nature.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper integrates the theoretical framework on regulatory space, proposed by Hancher and Moran (1989), with that of legitimacy (Suchman, 1995) to explain the peculiar nature of the system of controls introduced by the Law. Moreover, a set of primary and secondary sources is used to provide a full comprehension of the context, of the relationships among the actors involved in the regulatory process, and of the nature of the regulated issues.

Findings

Besides showing that the nature of the output of a regulatory process can be understood as the effect of the peculiar configuration of the regulatory space in which it takes place, the study also sheds light on the role that legitimation can play with regard to the other features of the regulatory space, namely on its ability to strengthen or to limit their effects on the output of the regulatory process.

Originality/value

The paper deals with accounting and political parties which is a much underexplored topic in the field of accounting history. In addition, from a theoretical standpoint it contributes to extending the theoretical framework by Hancher and Moran (1989).

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank the participants in the 14th World Congress of Accounting Historians for their useful suggestions. A special thank goes to both the reviewers and the editor: their constructive comments have been fundamental to support the interpretation of the empirical material and to strengthen the contributions of the paper.

Citation

Gatti, M. and Poli, S. (2018), "Accounting and political parties: explaining the “why” of an Italian light touch regulation (1974)", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 1618-1643. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-09-2016-2725

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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