Accounting and the state – an introduction

What is it about?

This special double issue of Accounting History presents 10 articles that were presented as conference papers at the sixth Accounting History International Conference (6AHIC) held in Wellington, New Zealand during 18–20 August 2010. The choice of a conference theme is often based on a connection with the location of the conference and/or acknowledged gaps in the literature. For the 6AHIC, both were the case. The conference venue was only a few minutes away from the heart of New Zealand government, and as noted in Nola Buhr’s plenary presentation and the article included in this special issue, the New Zealand government was the first government to adopt accrual accounting for whole of government reporting. Yet more importantly the relationship between the state and accounting is under-represented in the accounting history literature (Funnell, 2007). The 10 articles in this issue of Accounting History reflect aspects of the diversity of the interaction between accounting and the state, as well as the diversity of approaches to accounting history (see Gaffikin, 2011). The articles cover topics from both the technical and the contextual perspectives. They introduce research from nine jurisdictions: Australia, Canada, Fiji, France, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the USA, and span seven centuries.

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