| Abstract: | Taxation varies widely among democracies. Yet scholars disagree whether differences in political institutions help produce
the variation. This article identifies topdown and bottom-up mechanisms by which political institutions are thought to influence
taxation. It then combines political and economic data on more than 50 democracies to evaluate the impact of political institutions
on government revenues. Cross-sectional and pooled time series analyses that include controls for economic conditions and
partisan ideologies of governments confirm an indirect impact of these institutions: there is a curvilinear relationship between
the size of political parties in a democracy and the tax revenues collected. Yet the effect of party size on policy outcomes
is limited to a subset of democracies. The article opens new paths for research on the roles of electoral, constitutional,
legislative, and party institutions in democratic policy making around the world.
Andrew C. Gould is associate professor of government at the University of Notre Dame, where he is a Fellow of the Kellogg
Institute for International Studies and of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. He recently publishedOrigins of Liberal Dominance: State, Church, and Party in Nineteenth Century Europe and the article “Conflicting Imperatives and Concept Formation,” which appeared inThe Review of Politics.
For their suggestions and/or data, I thank José Antonio Cheibub, Sven Steinmo, Duane Swank, Daniel Verdier, and Michael Wallerstein.
For their comments, I am grateful to Carles Boix, Delia Boylan, Lloyd Gruber, Fran Hagopian, Peter Hall, Mark Hallerberg,
Gretchen Helmke, Scott Mainwaring, Paul Mueller, Dennis Quinn, Ashutosh Varshney, and two anonymous reviewers. Peter Baker
and Tom Lundberg provided insights and skilled research assistance. This work was supported in part by a grant from the Faculty
Research Program, University of Notre Dame. A prior version of this article was presented at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association. The errors that remain are my own. |
