This paper examines how accounting shapes democratic member control and participation in co-operatives. Drawing on interviews across diverse UK co-operatives, it shows that accounting is not a neutral adjunct to governance but a constitutive democratic infrastructure that organises what becomes visible and actionable in organisations. Adopting a performativity and critical performativity orientation, the study traces how accounting practices enable, or constrain, the democratic modalities of transparency, participation, and purpose-oriented valuation.

The analysis reveals accounting’s ambivalent performativity. By theorising this ambivalence and documenting co-operative innovations that re-appropriate accounting for democratic ends, the paper advances debates on co-operative governance, offering pathways for strengthening democratic practice through accounting design.