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This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. ACCOUNTING AND THE STATE: TRANSPARENCY AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT Jonathan Andrew Tweedie Doctor of Philosophy The University of Edinburgh 2020 Abstract In this thesis, I explore how accounting is used by the British state in order to govern its citizens. Specifically, I investigate the emergence of ‘the transparent state’, the state that claims to make its inner workings visible to its citizens through the publication of vast arrays of online, financial and non-financial information, audit and performance measures, ranking, ratings and statistics. The state claims that the visibility produced by ‘transparency’ is democratising and empowering for its citizens. I consider how this form of visibility compares to the ways in which the state has appeared to and/or concealed itself from its citizens throughout history. Focusing on suicides in prisons in England and Wales as the empirical context for this study, I theorise the relations that are established between the state and the citizen through transparency by drawing on the interrelated notions of ideology and spectacle. In doing so, I make three key contributions. First, I contribute to the literature on transparency in accounting by demonstrating that part of the power and allure of transparency does not derive from its numerical content, but its particular aesthetic form as a pristine and glossy digital representation of complex and messy realities. Second, I develop the literature on transparency by focusing not on the internal organisational effects of demands to be transparent to external others, but on the external users of transparency, proposing that transparency addresses these users as individualised, isolated and passive spectators. Third, I contribute to the literature on accounting and governing in democracy, proposing that in transparency we find not an empowering and democratising practice, but a ‘spectacle’ in which the state produces a democratic appearance, an idealised ‘self-portrait’ of a social order that cannot be touched, changed or argued with. Thought of as such, transparency is an object of ideology par excellence as it deepens the subservience of citizens to the state whilst promising to do precisely the opposite. i ii Lay Summary Today, states across the world provide their citizens with more information than ever before about their inner workings. In so doing, states claim to be ‘transparent’. This ‘transparency’ consists of vast online networks of data on government functions and public services, presented in the form of reports, databases, ‘dashboards’ and ‘data-hubs’. It is argued that citizens are informed and empowered by transparency, which is in turn said to deepen and enrich the workings of democracy. But is this true? In this thesis, I investigate how the British state makes itself transparent to its citizens, conducting a study of transparency on suicides in prisons in England and Wales. Contrary to the idea of transparency as revealing the inner workings of the state and deepening and enriching democracy, I argue that transparency makes citizens more passive and subservient to the rule and authority of the state. I argue that transparency produces a glossy, sanitised and idealised appearance of the state: I call this ‘the spectacle of transparency’. I propose that this spectacle – a collection of glossy and visually appealing reports, data-hubs and dashboards – reduces citizens to passive, isolated and hypnotised spectators of domination, not active, informed and empowered participants in democracy. iii iv Acknowledgments I would like to express my sincere thanks to the University of Edinburgh Business School’s Accounting and Finance Group for funding my research. Over the course of my PhD, I have benefited immeasurably from words of advice, support, friendship and encouragement from many wonderful people. To my supervisor, Professor Christine Cooper, thank you for your truly extraordinary kindness, patience, wisdom and unceasing support throughout the PhD process. To Professor Stephen Walker, thank you for your thoughtful advice, attention to detail, and for pushing me forward with my studies. To my friends in Edinburgh, Mohammad Alahmed, İdil Galip, Marian Gatzweiler, Dora and Jakov Jandrić, Daniela Machado, Matteo Ronzani, Ben Sila, and Luca Zazzi, thank you for always being there for me and for making my studies both thoroughly enjoyable and intellectually stimulating. To Jane Andrew, Max Baker, and James Bonner, thank you for keeping me energised and critical. To my dad and my brother, Andrew and Chris, thank you for all your help and support in getting me to where I am today. Finally, to Laura, thank you for your love and patience. I could not have done this without you. v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION____________________________________________________ 1 1.1. Introduction ___________________________________________________ 1 1.2. Research questions _______________________________________________ 8 1.3. Thesis structure _________________________________________________ 9 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ______________________________________________ 11 2.1. Studying accounting _____________________________________________ 11 2.1.1. Accounting as an evolving, social, subjective and political craft _________ 11 2.1.2. The craft of accounting in the age of digital reproduction _____________ 14 2.2. Accounting and neoliberalism _____________________________________ 18 2.2.1. Neoliberalism as hegemonic market rule __________________________ 20 2.2.2. Neoliberalism as governmentality _______________________________ 22 2.3. Accounting and the state _________________________________________ 24 2.3.1. Studying the state in relation to capital, class and interests _____________ 25 2.3.2. Going ‘beyond’ the study of the state ____________________________ 27 2.4. Accounting and transparency ______________________________________ 31 2.4.1. The mainstream approach _____________________________________ 32 2.4.2. Critical and interdisciplinary approaches __________________________ 33 2.4.3. Accountability and transparency ________________________________ 39 2.5. Contributing to the study of accounting ______________________________ 40 2.5.1. Aesthetics, subjects, and democracy _____________________________ 40 2.5.2. Concluding summary ________________________________________ 45 3. THEORISING NEOLIBERALISM, THE STATE, AND STATE TRANSPARENCY _____ 47 3.1. Theorising neoliberalism _________________________________________ 47 3.1.1. Two poles: Neoliberalism as ‘market rule’ and ‘governmentality’ ________ 47 3.1.2. Charting a via media __________________________________________ 58 3.1.3. Harnessing the state to stamp the market onto the citizen and seep the market into the citizen ___________________________________________________ 60 3.2. Theorising the state _____________________________________________ 65 vii 3.2.1. A Bourdieusian theory of the state ______________________________ 66 3.2.2. The symbolic authority of the state ______________________________ 68 3.2.3. The historical emergence of the welfare state ______________________ 71 3.3. Theorising state transparency ______________________________________ 76 3.3.1. Interest and the appearance of the state___________________________ 76 3.3.2. Directly lived, or visceral, corporeal transparency ___________________ 79 3.3.3. Opacity and secrecy, an antithesis to transparency ___________________ 82 3.3.4. Represented, or visual, digital transparency ________________________ 85 4. THEORISING TRANSPARENCY AS IDEOLOGY AND SPECTACLE _______________ 97 4.1. Theorising ideology _____________________________________________ 98 4.1.1. Misrepresentation, mystification and a world upside-down ____________ 98 4.1.2. In the realms of fantasy: ideology as structuring (social) reality _________ 99 4.1.3. Ideology and (post)representationalism in accounting research ________ 115 4.2. Theorising spectacle ____________________________________________ 118 4.2.1. Žižek and Debord __________________________________________ 118 4.2.2. Debord and The Society of the Spectacle ____________________________ 119 5. METHODOLOGY _________________________________________________ 135 5.1 Ontological, epistemological and practical reflections: Existing, knowing and doing __________________________________________________________ 135 5.1.1. Ontology: Existing _________________________________________ 137 5.1.2. Epistemology: Knowing _____________________________________ 140 5.1.3. Practice: Doing ____________________________________________ 143 5.2. Empirical context ______________________________________________ 147 5.2.1. Why prisons? Why suicide? ___________________________________