Unaccountable or Modernization Cultural Change and Democracy

Unaccountable: How the Accounting Profession Forfeited a Public Trust

Author: Mike Brewster

For thousands of years, those who controlled and monitored society’s finances–accountants–were often the most powerful, respected, and influential members of the community. From the collectors at communal granaries in the ancient Middle East to the scribes who monitored Queen Victoria’s Exchequer, the accountant’s role has been to preserve the integrity of financial systems.

In the United States, twentieth-century accountants played a vital role in shaping the transparency of U.S. capital markets, counseling the Allies on financial matters in both world wars, advising Congress on the creation of the federal income tax, and inventing the concept of the gross national product.

Yet by 2003, the reputation of the public accountant was in tatters. How did the accounting profession in America squander its legacy of public service? What happened to the accountants that presidents, senators, and captains of industry turned to for advice? Why did auditors stop looking for fraud? How did this once revered profession find itself in this unlikely and humiliating state?

New interesting book: Decolonizing Methodologies or Leaving America

Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence

Author: Ronald Inglehart

This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behavior. These changes are roughly predictable because they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernization theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85% of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernization is a process of human development, in which economic development triggers cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
1	A revised theory of modernization	15
2	Value change and the persistence of cultural traditions	48
3	Exploring the unknown : predicting mass responses	77
4	Intergenerational value change	94
5	Value changes over time	115
6	Individualism, self-expression values, and civic virtues	135
7	The causal link between democratic values and democratic institutions : theoretical discussion	149
8	The causal link between democratic values and democratic institutions : empirical analyses	173
9	Social forces, collective action, and international events	210
10	Individual-level values and system-level democracy : the problem of cross-level analysis	231
11	Components of a prodemocratic civic culture	245
12	Gender equality, emancipative values, and democracy	272
13	The implications of human development	285
	Conclusion : an emancipative theory of democracy	299