Accounting and the management of power: Napoleon’s occupation of the commune of Ferrara (1796–1799)

Napoleon’s rise to power in Europe in the late 18th century signalled the move from the Ancien Régime to the modern State, a time when public administration rose to an unprecedented prominence in government discourses (Peters, 2008). The role of the Napoleonic government and its structures centred around a modified relationship between the State and its citizens, where the State, legitimized through a social contract with its citizens, becomes the overarching source of power (Foucault, 1991; Lyons, 1994; Riall, 2008). The result was invasive hierarchical systems of accounting and control by the State (Poddighe and Coronella 2009, Torres 2004, Guyomarch 1999, Rutgers 1997). These basic principles of the Napoleonic vision for governmental administrative practices and structures are recognised as still the basis of contemporary public administration (Ongaro 2008, Ongaro and Vallotti 2008, Rouban 2008 and Spanou 2008). This study engages with a range of calls to expand understandings of the historical importance of the State in shaping Western societies (Barkey and Parikh, 1991) and to give a greater presence in the literature to municipal, that is local, government in non-Anglophone countries (see Wanna, 2005).