This paper contributes to the diverse and growing stream of accounting research on Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct, which is broadly concerned with the uses of accounting in the development of alternative ways of governing. Its key problematic lies in the roles that accounting can play in the intertwining of particular practices of governing, for instance, by underpinning practices that facilitate political campaigning, making specific policy choices, and creating new administrative arrangements. We illustrate our argument with some of the ways in which Newcastle City Council (NCC) used accounting to manoeuvre between the programmes of localism, centralism, devolution, austerity, and marketisation to develop novel forms of counter-conduct in response to austerity funding cuts. We show how accounting was used to underpin a multi-facetted counter-conduct that sought to profile itself locally and nationally against austerity as a highly visible and controversial programme of government. However, accounting also served to undermine NCC’s own counter-conduct, for example, through its engagement with longer established programmes, such as marketisation, and by rationalising the council’s administrative responses of austerity cuts.

本文为福柯的反行为概念的会计研究提供了多样化且不断增长的方法，该概念广泛涉及会计在替代治理方式的开发中的使用。其主要问题在于会计在特定执政实践交织中所起的作用，例如，通过支持促进政治运动，做出特定政策选择并制定新的行政安排的实践。我们用纽卡斯尔市议会（NCC）使用会计方法在局部主义，集中主义，权力下放，紧缩和市场化计划之间进行回旋来开发新形式的反行为以应对紧缩资金削减的方式来说明我们的论点。我们将展示如何使用会计来支持多方面的反举报，该举报试图在本地和全国范围内将紧缩政策作为一种引人注目的且引起争议的政府计划。但是，会计也可以破坏NCC自身的反行为，例如，通过参与长期建立的计划（例如市场化），以及使理事会对削减紧缩的行政措施合理化，来破坏NCC自身的反行为。