To be effective in a national setting, international standards require the force of law or other regulatory backing. If not, compliance becomes a matter of non-transparent discretion on the part of preparers and auditors of financial statements, outside the constraints of any regulatory framework. In such cases, the standards should more properly be considered “offshore” rather than “international.” There is currently no international consensus on what mechanisms should be used to provide regulatory backing, and different countries have adopted different approaches, many of which fail to achieve their stated objective. Countries are also bound by their constitutional and administrative law,.
