Politicization and institutional (non-) change in international taxation

Politisierung und institutioneller (Nicht-)Wandel des internationalen Steuerregimes

Thomas Rixen ()

Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: This paper explores the institutional changes of international tax governance in response to growing politicization and contestation of international direct tax issues. I show that politicization – which is a very recent phenomenon in international taxation – results from a governance gap. The traditional setup of international tax cooperation has an unintended consequence in the form of harmful tax competition. In reaction to this problem, civil society groups have begun to question the effectiveness and fairness of the minimal international tax order, lobbying national governments and international organizations for more effective international regulation of tax issues. Thus, in contrast to existing hypotheses, societal politicization does not result from the increasing scope and authority of international institutions, but rather from the lack thereof. However, civil society demands have so far not led to institutional changes in international taxation. Instead, we can only observe indirect and incremental change, which falls short of what would ultimately be needed to address harmful tax competition effectively.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/49735/1/614427517.pdf (application/pdf)

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:zbw:wzbtci:spiv2008306

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance from WZB Berlin Social Science Center Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().