Governing Accounting Beyond the State (?): The WTO and the Construction of a 'World without Walls' for Accounting Services

Abstract

Abstract In contemporary society a brave new world is envisaged, where the convergence of accounting and auditing standards and suitable enforcement of them will be an important factor in maintaining a global financial infrastructure, a regulatory infrastructure that will ensure the maintenance of financial stability and efficient markets. However, during the 1990s another, and very different initiative concerning accounting at the global level was developing, also connected with the desire to ensure efficient markets, namely that of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to liberalise trade in accounting services. It is part of the move towards making what the former Director-General, Michael Moore, called a ‘world without walls’ for services as well as goods [Moore, M. (2003). A World Without Walls: Freedom, Development, Free Trade and Global Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.]. Thus professional accountants, who through their preparation and audit of financial reports are supposed to enable global markets to work, are themselves to be subjected to the discipline of the market.A concept of ‘transnational governmentality’ is developed from the work of and used to investigate the ways the WTO is attempting to expand and consolidate its power over trade in ‘accounting services’ with its ‘trade perspective’ intersects with efforts from a ‘regulatory perspective’ of organisations like the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) to create a global financial infrastructure. The paper explores how global rationalities and technologies of free trade in accounting services become intertwined with local regulatory settings through a case study of Malaysia.