Regime security and taxation in autocracies: Who is taxed and how?

Marina Dodlova and Viola Lucas

European Journal of Political Economy, 2021, vol. 67, issue C

Abstract: We study taxation by autocratic rulers. Using a detailed dataset on government finances in 105 autocracies from 1950 to 2004, we find that despotic autocrats, who are defined as personally concentrating all decision-making power and as not relying on elites for regime support, tend, with a middle class absent, to use lower personal income taxes in face of a threat of rebellion from the population-at-large and to use higher land and property taxes to financially repress elites. When the threat to the regime is from elites, taxation is the converse, with the tax burden on elites is relaxed. Our empirical results show how autocratic rulers choose forms of taxation with awareness of elites and the population-at-large as groups that can threaten regime security.

Keywords: Autocratic rulers; Regime security; Differential taxation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H20 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268020301464
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:67:y:2021:i:c:s0176268020301464

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101998

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by J. De Haan, A. L. Hillman and H. W. Ursprung

More articles in European Journal of Political Economy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().