Representation Through Taxation

Revenue, Politics, and Development in Postcommunist States
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-521-16880-9
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 214 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 358 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics

Social scientists teach that politicians favor groups that are organized over those that are not. Representation Through Taxation challenges this conventional wisdom. Emphasizing that there are limits to what organized interests can credibly promise in return for favorable treatment, Gehlbach shows that politicians may instead give preference to groups - organized or not. 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 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
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Öffentliche Finanzwirtschaft, Besteuerung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik

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 is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also a research associate of the Centre for Economic and Financial Research in Moscow, where he spent the 2007-2008 academic year as a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellow, and is a recent recipient of a Social Science Research Council Eurasia Program Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. 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. His dissertation on the political economy of taxation in postcommunist states won the Mancur Olson Award for the best dissertation in the field of political economy. Professor Gehlbach received his Ph.D. in political science and economics from the University of California-Berkeley.