Our editorial draws from the contributions of the Special Issue in Public Money & Management with the theme "Researching Politicians' Use of Accounting Information - obstacles and opportunities", and presents a conceptualization of the groups of variables affecting politicians' use of accounting information, including their inter-relationships. Our conceptualization groups the explanatory variables into two types: one group relating to the context in which accounting information is used; the other group of variables is located at the individual level of politicians, pointing to characteristics that may either hinder accounting information use or somehow make this use selective. This conceptualization may suggest ways in which the use of accounting information can be enhanced. It also helped us suggest promising routes for future research.