The aim of the special issue is to further our understanding of accounting, accountability and governance practices in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, given apparent commonalities (e.g. religion, language, accounting practices and culture) and differences (e.g. history, colonial influence, political and legal systems, level of economic development, GDP, and transparency) in the institutional background. A particular example of socio-cultural commonality lies in the Islamic religion, which is practised by almost 95% of the MENA population. In contrast, while some of the MENA constituents are considerably resource-rich and boast of very high-income per capita figures, others exhibit far less in terms of major indicators of development (e.g., human development index) and have weak or virtually non-existent capital markets, feeble accounting regulation and local accounting capacity.