The Legitimacy of the IASB

This paper takes issue with Burlaud and Colasse (Accounting in Europe, 8, pp. 23–47, 2011a) who suggest that the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) lacks legitimacy and that this has led to a return of politics to standard-setting. We show that the IASB is supported by the leaders of the world's major economies (G20), and by the European Commission and European Parliament. The European Commission's policy is to pursue wider adoption of the IASB's standards. We go on to suggest that politics has never been absent from standard-setting and to note that a number of the positions taken by Burlaud and Colasse are not supported by the mainstream literature.