Representation through Taxation

Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-0-521-88733-5
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 508 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics

Social scientists teach that politicians favor groups that are organized over those that are not. Yet even organized groups may be unable to credibly promise that their members will take certain actions in return for favorable policy treatment. In such environments, politicians have an incentive to favor those groups - organized or not - whose members find it advantageous to take these actions in any event. Gehlbach develops this argument in the context of the postcommunist experience, focusing on the incentive of politicians to promote sectors that are naturally more tax compliant, regardless of their organization. In the former Soviet Union, tax systems were structured around familiar revenue sources, magnifying this incentive and helping to prejudice public policy against new private enterprise. In Eastern Europe, in contrast, tax systems were created to cast the revenue net more widely, encouraging politicians to provide the collective goods necessary for new firms to flourish.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gehlbach, Scott

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Taxes, representation, and economic development in the Russian heartland; 2. The creation of tax systems; 3. The logic of representation through taxation; 4. Patterns of collective-goods provision; 5. Revenue traps; 6. Conclusions.

Über Autor(innen)

Gehlbach, Scott
Scott Gehlbach (Ph.D. in political science and economics, UC Berkeley, 2003) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation on the political economy of taxation in postcommunist states, upon which this book is ultimately based, won the Mancur Olson Award for the best dissertation in the field of political economy. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Economics and Politics, and Rationality and Society. He is a research associate of CEFIR in Moscow, where he is spending the 2007-2008 academic year as a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellow, and is a recent recipient of an SSRC Eurasia Program Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.