Nontaxation and Representation: The Fiscal Foundations of Political Stability

ISBN-13: 9781107076778 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 170 str.

Kevin Morrison

Opis

Does oil make countries autocratic? Can foreign aid make countries democratic? Does taxation lead to representation? In this book, Kevin M. Morrison develops a novel argument about how government revenues of all kinds affect political regimes and their leaders. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Morrison illustrates that taxation leads to instability, not representation. With this insight, he extends his award-winning work on nontax revenues to encompass foreign aid, oil revenue, and intergovernmental grants and shows that they lead to decreased taxation, increased government spending, and increased political stability. Looking at the stability of democracies and dictatorships as well as leadership transitions within those regimes, Morrison incorporates cross-national statistical methods, formal modeling, a quasi-experiment, and case studies of Brazil, Kenya, and Mexico to build his case. This book upends many common hypotheses and policy recommendations, providing the most comprehensive treatment of revenue and political stability to date.

Recenzje

'The link between the fiscal foundations of the state and representative government lies at the heart of booming research frontiers bearing on everything from regime type to redistribution to state capacity. Nontaxation and Representation addresses this fundamental aspect of governance and does so in a way that challenges important elements of the 'taxation-leads-to-representation' conventional wisdom. Professor Morrison gets quite a lot of richness out of a relatively simple theoretical set-up, and he turns some important stories on their heads. He draws evidence from diverse types of data and a plethora of empirical approaches, the sum of which is quite persuasive. It is not easy to make an original contribution on such a fundamental issue of governance, but Morrison has done just that.' Erik Wibbels, Duke University

Spis treści

1. Introduction; 2. Taxation leads to instability, not representation; 3. Nontax revenue lowers taxation and increases spending; 4. Nontax revenue (therefore) leads to stability; 5. This happens at subnational levels of governments too; 6. Conclusions and implications.