Governmental accounting reforms: going back where we belong?

Based on governmental accounting experiences and on the rising criticism considering accrual accounting, this paper aims at proposing that accrual accounting in governments will only succeed in the coming years in businesslike (parts of) governments. This proposition mainly leans on the inappropriately transferred framework from the profit sector, the underestimated difficulties considering accrual budgeting and the poor attention on the political dimension. This paper intends to shed a light on important technical and political issues that seem to be forgotten in the mind of the protagonists of transferring accrual accounting as a successful tool in modernising governments.