IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/aaajpp/v22y2009i1p13-34.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Legitimacy and parliamentary oversight in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Kerry Jacobs
  • Kate Jones

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to address the question of whether two early Australian public accounts committees were established for the purpose of legitimating governments of the time. Design/methodology/approach - The paper addressed these issues through a study of the establishment, early work and abolition in the 1930s of the Victorian Committee of Public Accounts (VCPA) and the Joint Committee of Public Accounts (JCPA). Findings - Clear evidence is found that the Joint Committee of Public Accounts (JCPA) had been copied from the VCPA and that the VCPA had been copied from the UK House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, which was established in 1861. This would indicate that the primary objective in the establishment of both these committees was legitimation rather than control. It was found that the subsequent work of both the VCPA and the JCPA showed a drift away from an accounting focus towards a policy focus. This is similar to the JCPA experience described by Degelinget al.in relation to the JCPA, which also supports the legitimation argument. It was also found that both committees could be disestablished with relative ease because their legitimating purpose was no longer strong enough to demand their continuation and that, in fact, their abolition became the factor that served a legitimating purpose for governments. Originality/value - The paper suggests that the ideas of legitimation and mimetic isomorphism provide a more convincing explanation for the nature and work of these two public accounts committees than the idea of accounting colonisation.

Suggested Citation

  • Kerry Jacobs & Kate Jones, 2009. "Legitimacy and parliamentary oversight in Australia," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 22(1), pages 13-34, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:eme:aaajpp:v:22:y:2009:i:1:p:13-34
    DOI: 10.1108/09513570910922999
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09513570910922999/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09513570910922999/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/09513570910922999?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fogarty, Timothy J., 1996. "The imagery and reality of peer review in the U.S.: Insights from institutional theory," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 21(2-3), pages 243-267.
    2. Hood, Christopher & Rothstein, Henry & Baldwin, Robert, 2004. "The Government of Risk: Understanding Risk Regulation Regimes," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199270019.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. J.C. Sharman, 2017. "Illicit Global Wealth Chains after the financial crisis: micro-states and an unusual suspect," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(1), pages 30-55, January.
    2. Elaine Stewart & Ciaran Connolly, 2021. "Recent UK Central Government Accounting Reforms: Claimed Benefits and Experienced Outcomes," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 57(3), pages 557-592, September.
    3. Bigoni, Michele & Maran, Laura & Ferramosca, Silvia, 2021. "Time, space and accounting at Nonantola Abbey (1350–1449)," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(2).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gary Kleinman & Dan Palmon, 2000. "A Negotiation-Oriented Model of Auditor-Client Relationships," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 17-45, January.
    2. Julien Etienne, 2015. "Different ways of blowing the whistle: Explaining variations in decentralized enforcement in the UK and France," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(4), pages 309-324, December.
    3. Aven, Terje & Renn, Ortwin, 2018. "Improving government policy on risk: Eight key principles," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 230-241.
    4. Saddam A. Hazaea & Ebrahim Mohammed Al-Matari & Saleh F. A. Khatib & Khaldoon Albitar & Jinyu Zhu, 2023. "Internal Auditing in the Arab World: A Systematic Literature Review and Directions for Future Research," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, October.
    5. Jeroen van der Heijden & Jitske de Jong, 2009. "Towards a Better Understanding of Building Regulation," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 36(6), pages 1038-1052, December.
    6. Lennox, Clive & Pittman, Jeffrey, 2010. "Auditing the auditors: Evidence on the recent reforms to the external monitoring of audit firms," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1-2), pages 84-103, February.
    7. Anaïs Valiquette L’Heureux, 2022. "The Case Study of Los Angeles City & County Fraud, Embezzlement and Corruption Safeguards during times of pandemic," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 593-610, September.
    8. Peter J. May, 2007. "Regulatory regimes and accountability," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(1), pages 8-26, March.
    9. Julia Black & Robert Baldwin, 2012. "When risk‐based regulation aims low: Approaches and challenges," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(1), pages 2-22, March.
    10. Mathias Ericson, 2018. "“Sweden Has Been Naïve”: Nationalism, Protectionism and Securitisation in Response to the Refugee Crisis of 2015," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 6(4), pages 95-102.
    11. Demortain, David, 2008. "Institutional polymorphism: the designing of the European Food Safety Authority with regard to the European Medicines Agency," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 36534, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Govender, Urishanie & van Eck, Gary & Genc, Bekir, 2022. "An integrated 4Cs safety framework for the diamond industry of Southern Africa," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    13. Hilary, Gilles & Lennox, Clive, 2005. "The credibility of self-regulation: Evidence from the accounting profession's peer review program," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-3), pages 211-229, December.
    14. Rudolf URBAN, & Roman URBAN, & Lukáš ŠTĚPà NEK, 2016. "A New Approach To Risk Assessment Based On The Semantic Value Of Expressions," EcoForum, "Stefan cel Mare" University of Suceava, Romania, Faculty of Economics and Public Administration - Economy, Business Administration and Tourism Department., vol. 5(1), pages 1-30, January.
    15. Power, Michael K., 2003. "Auditing and the production of legitimacy," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 379-394, May.
    16. Nicola Glover-Thomas, 2018. "Decision-Making Behaviour under the Mental Health Act 1983 and Its Impact on Mental Health Tribunals: An English Perspective," Laws, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-23, March.
    17. Löfmarck, Erik & Uggla, Ylva & Lidskog, Rolf, 2017. "Freedom with what? Interpretations of “responsibility” in Swedish forestry practice," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 34-40.
    18. François Dedieu, 2022. "Organized denial at work: The difficult search for consistencies in French pesticide regulation," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(3), pages 951-973, July.
    19. Frédérique Six, 2013. "Trust in Regulatory Relations," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 163-185, February.
    20. Peter Taylor-Gooby, 2008. "Sociological approaches to risk: strong in analysis but weak in policy influence in recent UK developments," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(7), pages 863-876, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:aaajpp:v:22:y:2009:i:1:p:13-34. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.