Accounting academics and political engagement. Professors as parliamentarians and ministers in Italy

Recently, scholars have paid increasing attention to accounting academics’ lives and work. The analysis of the relationships between academics and politicians is certainly of interest, if we remove the assumptions of a clear separation between the two that are assumed to underpin research in this field. This study aims to elucidate the role played by Italian accounting academics in national political institutions, considering those elected to Parliament and/or holding a role in the Italian Government, under the Fascist regime and the ‘First Republic’. To this end, it analyses the academic and political fields and the relationships between the two through a Bourdieusian approach, highlighting how these fields are intertwined and how forms of capital can be transferred from one to another. Drawing on primary sources, the study employs a collective biography approach, focusing on five pivotal academics who served as parliamentarians and ministers from 1933 to 1992. Based on this evidence, it argues that accounting academics can play a crucial role by transferring their academic capital to the political field and mobilising the power of theories to serve the objectives of intervention in the economy and society, while political capital can also be an important source of academic capital growth. Thus, this study situates the relationships between the academic and political fields in a subfield–field theoretical perspective, thereby contributing to the literature on the role of accounting academics and their impact on the economy, society, and politics.