Beyond death and taxes: Fiscal studies and the fiscal state

Abstract

The past decade has seen a resurgence of interdisciplinary interest in fiscal studies, from the new fiscal sociology to fiscal geographies and beyond, with roots in the 20th century theories of Schumpeter (liberal) and O’Connor (Marxian). The notion of a ‘tax state’ remains particularly germane, and indeed fiscal studies have all but narrowed to assessments of the relations and implications of taxation. This paper calls for a meaningful engagement with the ‘fiscal’ in fiscal studies where taxation is better understood as being but one component of public sector revenue and expenditure (alongside other important features like asset ownership, debt/credit, and intergovernmental transfers). More than an academic quibble over terminology or unit of analysis, narrowing ‘fiscal’ to ‘tax’ obscures many budget items and misses out on important temporal trends in the political economy of state revenue and expenditure. These issues are explored in two parts: the roots of fiscal studies (politicizing theoretical underpinnings), and the various conjunctural features of the fiscal state (tracing the temporal through Canadian examples).