The Institutionalization of a New Accrual-based Public Sector Accounting System: The Case of Cape Verde^*

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the process of institutionalization of a new public sector accounting system. Taking the Cape Verdean Central Government as setting, it seeks to understand what have been the main factors interfering in the reform, how such action has led to the institutionalization of the system currently in force, and how it may determine future reforms. From the theoretical perspective of contingency, several stimuli drive the reform of public sector accounting in emerging countries. In Cape Verde, they have been: changes in the political regime, the dominating doctrine of business accounting, financial pressures, and requirement of a wider public sector reform. In the light of institutional perspectives, behaviors of seeking for legitimacy and presence of mimetic and coercive forces in the reforms, have been evident. This study makes other countries with similar contexts and under public sector accounting reforms, aware of how to promote and manage these processes successfully.

KEYWORDS:

• Governmental accounting
• reform process
• contingency Model
• Neo-Institutional Theory
• emerging countries

Notes

1. The RCU coordinates the implementation of the various projects, ensuring the integration, control of the execution, as well as the follow-up and evaluation and consolidation of the reports to be submitted to the Steering Committee. In addition, it provides technical support whenever it proves necessary. It may be comprised of a Coordinator, a Program Manager Consultant for revenues and receipts, a Program Manager Consultant for expenditures and payments, and a Project Assistant, if so required (Ministério das Finanças, 2009).

2. In addition, according to Vilelas (2009), this number of interviews allowed to guarantee a certain degree of reliability of the research, since values between 15 and 20 interviews fit the parameters accepted by the author as acceptable. Finally, there was a certain ‘saturation’ in the responses, which began to be repeated by the last interviewees.

3. All these procedures were performed with the support of the MAXQDA software.

Additional information

Funding

This study was conducted at the Research Centre in Political Science, University of Minho, supported by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia and the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science through national funds [UID/CPO/0758/2019].