Abstract

The criteria making it possible to distinguish the various typologies of control are numerous. Among them, the one suitable for identifying the controls that interest us here is the functional criterion, which regards the values that the exercise of the control is intended to guarantee. On this basis, accounting control or audit appears directed toward guaranteeing the transparency of the administration, ensured both by the keeping of the books in accordance with the rules of accountancy and the suitability of these rules. Vice-versa, financial control serves to ensure the observance of the ceilings imposed on the financial management of the public administrations. In both cases, the parameter of control is in any case prevalently constituted by rules: for this reason, what is involved is controls that are in any case ascribable to the category of controls of legitimacy. The particularity of these two types of controls is that in recent years they have been becoming increasingly important, despite an opposite trend tending to make controls of legitimacy recessive.