The UK's exit charge from the EU: insights from modes of accounting

Whatever the final charge on the UK for leaving the EU, the money itself is relatively marginal to the former's public finances. However, this charge is politically sensitive and financially aggravating during one of the longest periods of fiscal austerity in the UK's history. The ways in which leaving is conceptualized have implications for any continuing financial obligations that must be managed within the context of fiscal austerity and political uncertainty. Yet, leaving the EU is a unique transaction: it is not analogous, for example, to a divorce settlement, the leaving of a club, the termination of a commercial contract, the leaving of a treaty‐based international organization, or secession from a state. Analysing the formulation of the charge in terms of the four modes of government accounting—financial reporting, statistical accounting, budgeting, and fiscal sustainability projections—enhances its fiscal transparency. It evidences not only the weakness and inconsistency of the UK's negotiating position but also the dominance in EU thinking of the short‐term budgetary calculations of the 2014–20 Multiannual Financial Framework over its long‐term sustainability without a large net contributor. The final amount paid by the UK will depend on the resolution of competing perspectives as well as on liabilities and contingent liabilities associated with the increasingly complex EU financial architecture

The sedimentation of an institution: changing governance in UK financial services

Post-print version. Final version published by Sage; available online at http://jmi.sagepub.com/The Financial Services Act (FSA) 1986 was the first comprehensive attempt to create a unified statutorily based system of regulation within the UK financial sector. It generated a framework of regulation that is in a continuous state of development and modification. In this paper we study the development of UK financial regulation between 1986 and 2011. We trace how competing theorizations and logics of regulation have led to the institutionalization of a meta-form of financial regulation. In doing so, we address the conundrum of conscious, strategic theorizations leading to cognitive taken-for-granted institutions by identifying four catalysts that contribute to institutionalization when concurring with theorization. These are: the evocation of political ideologies, the appropriation of scandals, the growing number of actors and the increasing organization of actors. Finally, we argue that sedimentation is the appropriate metaphor for the version of institutionalization occurring in this setting