قدرت زبان در مشروعیت بخشیدن به اصلاحات بخش دولتی: مداخله سیاستمداران در حسابداری The power of language in legitimating public-sector reforms: When politicians “talk” accounting

1. Introduction Language can play an essential role in shaping how change and reforms are communicated and legitimated. Language represents a means of symbolic power that grants the speaker unlimited possibilities to gain the audience’s support (Bourdieu, 1991). This is not less true in a context, the public sector, where major changes and reforms have been introduced over the past few decades, touching, among others, accounting systems. In the case of public-sector accounting reforms, in particular, the Members of Parliament (MPs) are bestowed by the citizens with the power and responsibility to decide about the introduction of new changes. There have been several calls to look more into how accounting is implicated in politics and how, in turn, politicians and politics are implicated in accounting (Ezzamel, Robson, Stapleton & McLean, 2007; Van Helden, 2015). A number of studies have explored politicians’ use of accounting data, understanding of accounting reforms and their role during their implementation (Ter Bogt, 2004; Ezzamel, Hyndman, Johnsen, Lapsley, & Pallot, 2005; Flury & Schedler, 2006; Liguori, Sicilia & Steccolini, 2009 and 2012; Saliterer & Korac, 2013; Ezzamel, Hyndman, Johnsen & Lapsley, 2014). Some have specifically looked at political accountability itself (Reichborn-Kjennerud, 2013; Ezzamel et al, 2005). While in such studies politicians have been seen as users of accounting, less consideration has been given so far to what happens when politicians discuss and approve accounting reforms. Although the above studies have suggested that the actual understanding and use of accounting information by politicians is limited, MPs are required to discuss and approve public-sector accounting reforms and enter the reform arena to support (or undermine) possible changes to the accounting systems. The aim of this paper is to explore the political use of language and, specifically, investigate how MPs discuss public-sector accounting reforms, and deploy different rhetorical strategies to legitimate or de-legitimate them in front of the Parliament and their peers. The case under analysis refers to Italian central-government accounting reforms and the related parliamentary discussions in the 1990s and 2000s. The study, by looking at political discourses, investigates different ways of legitimating accounting reforms over time. The period covered goes from when Europe was first invested by the managerial wave of reforms (also known as New Public Management -NPM) in the 1990s, to the adoption of the euro, and from this to the hard consequences of the global financial crisis. Italy represents a particularly interesting context, on the one hand because of it being considered a mild adopter of NPM reforms (or a neo-Weberian country, Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011); on the other hand, because it is the largest country (by population, GDP and public debt) in the Eurozone which faced particularly difficult conditions as a consequence of the global financial crisis.