The audit of public debt: Auditing as a device for political resistance in a neoliberal era

Abstract

Most neoliberalism accounting studies present accounting and auditing as tools to reaffirm and rationalize the neoliberal order, but this is not, in fact, universally true: they may also be mobilized within strategies of resistance to neoliberalism (Andrew & Cahill, 2017). However, the ways in which auditing can be used as a tool of resistance to the neoliberal order remains underexplored. The present paper contributes to the auditing literature by studying the case of the public debt renegotiation of Ecuador (2007–2009), in which the government specifically resorted to an audit of its public debt when it tried to renegotiate, at its advantage, an important cutback of said debt; a debt to which neoliberal measures have been tied. By examining the ways auditing was mobilized by the Ecuadorian government and the reactions of financial market actors to the debt audit, this paper provides insights into the role that auditing can play in society as a device of political resistance.