The essays in this book treat the relationships among politics, taxation, and the rule of law. A central tenet of democratic ideology is that taxation is something that we choose to do to ourselves, rather than being something that is imposed on us by some ruler. The basic ideology of the...

In this chapter I provide an overview of the political economy of taxation in democratic states by considering the three most important issues in the field: (1) the evolution of the power to tax in (what are now) the mature constitutional democracies; (2) the nature and determinants of modern...

The thunder of history: the origins and development of the new fiscal sociology / Isaac William Martin, Ajay K. Mehrotra, Monica Prasad -- "The unfair advantage of the few": the New Deal origins of "soak the rich" taxation / Joseph J. Thorndike -- What Americans think of taxes / Andrea Louise...