The beneficial role of government accounting literacy in developing participatory citizens

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to bring under the spotlight the need for a broader public sector accounting education plan that would facilitate the development of participatory citizens. The study develops a conceptual framework that links citizens’ government accounting literacy with various community-related decisions and in particular citizens’ voting decisions during election periods, building on democracy, democratic participation and the image of the ‘participatory citizen’. It is suggested that democratic participation could be enhanced by educating citizens on issues of public sector accounting, making them able to understand, monitor and evaluate the performance of public administrations. Furthermore, the study discusses ways of enhancing citizens’ government accounting literacy through the provision of public sector accounting education in a continuous life-long learning process. In particular, the introduction of school courses that would target citizens’ education on these aspects from an early age is discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Accounting education
• citizens
• democratic participation
• government accounting literacy
• elections
• participatory citizen

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Sandra Cohen, John Slof, Keith Howson and the participants of the 2019 BAFA Accounting Education SIG Conference held in Ghent, Belgium for the fruitful comments on the paper, as well as Accounting Education two anonymous reviewers and the associate editor Bryan Howieson for their valuable suggestions and insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The context of the paper is set on democratic societies everywhere around the world regardless the type of government accounting standards applied (developed by either the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB), the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB), the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA), the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB), etc.), and targets on increasing citizens’ democratic participation. Therefore, by definition, the thoughts and suggestions shared in the paper could not apply in non-democratic societies.

2 Although the importance of citizens’ participation in various decision-making contexts is undeniable, the focus of the present paper is mainly on participation through the voting process.

3 Popular reporting refers to the preparation of financial reports that target specifically citizens, and are therefore characterized by their conciseness, easiness in reading and comprehending as well as by the user-friendly format. In practice, these types of reports are commonly used by local governments in the USA, Canada and the UK, but are scarcely met in Continental European countries. For more information see GASB (1992), Sharp et al. (1998), Cohen (2016).

4 For instance, studies reviewing the accounting education literature in six journals dedicated to accounting education indicate that from 1997 to 2017 nothing relevant to public sector and/or government accounting education has been published but a special issue on 2013 (Apostolou et al., 2015, 2017).

5 The author would like to thank one anonymous reviewer for drawing the attention το this aspect.