Assembling compelling and unprecedented evidence, Political Standards: Accounting for Legitimacy documents how in subtle ways the rules of corporate accounting—a critical institution
in modern market capitalism—have been “captured” to benefit industrial corporations, financial firms, and audit firms. In what is perhaps the only independent overview of the accounting
industry, Karthik Ramanna begins with a history of corporate accounting and an accessible explanation of how it works today, including the essential roles it plays in defining the fundamental
notion of profitability, facilitating asset allocation, and ensuring the accountability of corporations and their managers. From the evidence, Ramanna shows how accounting rule-makers
selectively co-opt conceptual arguments from academia and elsewhere to advance the views of the special-interest groups. From this, Ramanna moves on to develop more broadly a new type
of regulatory challenge—that of producing public policy in a “thin political market.” His argument is that accounting rules cannot be determined without the substantial expertise and
experience of groups that by definition also have strong commercial interests in the outcome. Political Standards concludes with an exploration of possible solutions to the problem in
accounting and that of thin political markets in general, charting avenues for scholarship and practice. Certain to be an eye-opening account of a massive industry central to the modern
business world, Political Standards will be an essential resource in understanding how the rules of the game business are set, whom they inevitably favor, and how they can be changed
for the better of society.
