Accounting and political parties: explaining the 'Why' of an Italian light touch regulation (1974)

Purpose – This paper aims to explain the reasons why Law no. 195 of 2nd May 1974, which estab-lished a system of public funding for the Italian political parties, introduced a system of controls that was light touch in nature. Design/methodology/approach – The paper integrates the theoretical framework on regulatory space, proposed by Hancher and Moran (1989), with that of legitimacy (Suchman, 1995) to explain the peculiar nature of the system of controls introduced by the Law. Moreover, a set of primary and secondary sources is used to provide a full comprehension of the context, of the relationships among the actors involved in the regulatory process, and of the nature of the regulated issues. Findings – Besides showing that the nature of the output of a regulatory process can be understood as the effect of the peculiar configuration of the regulatory space in which it takes place, the study also sheds light on the role that legitimation can play with regard to the other features of the regula-tory space, namely on its ability to strengthen or to limit their effects on the output of the regulatory process. Originality/value – The paper deals with accounting and political parties which is a much under-explored topic in the field of accounting history. In addition, from a theoretical standpoint it con-tributes to extending the theoretical framework by Hancher and Moran (1989).