Debt, Neoliberalism, and Accounting

The present doctoral thesis aims to explore the roles and limitations of accounting, in the broadest sense and including auditing, in financialized neoliberalism where indebtedness, through personal and public debt, has become central to governing the population. To achieve this objective, this research explores these two levels of debt, namely personal and public, and addresses the following research question: What are the roles of accounting and its impacts on the phenomenon of debt as a disciplinary and control device? This work begins with Chapter II, which examines one way of constructing indebted subjects and illustrates that, at the individual level, vague and imprecise accounting processes can play a determining role in disciplining them to become financially responsible and financialized subjects, through the generation of emotions such as fear, shame, and anxiety. Subsequently, Chapter III shows the construction of a discourse advocating the absolute priority of debt repayment (over the needs of the population), and demonstrates how organic intellectuals who want to resist this dictate are trying to organize themselves to defuse it. This study reveals that accounting can make their task more difficult given its complexity, especially in regards to debating public debt in the public space. The paper invites organic intellectuals to get out of the accounting complexity trap, either by drawing on the common sense as highlighted by Sikka (2000), or by translating accounting concepts into other fields, such as in the environment, in order to also get in touch with the population on an emotional level rather than just a rational level. This thesis ends on a more positive note in Chapter IV, which examines a case where accounting, and more specifically auditing, helped a small Third World country to reverse the power dynamic with international holders of financial capital. The audit, which was mobilized in the Ecuadorian governments strategy to renegotiate its public debt at its advantage, offered an alternative narrative to create an accountability relationship that did not previously exist, contributed to creating a sense of fear among investors, and provided legitimacy in the eyes of some stakeholders regarding the renegotiation of the countrys debt.