State-building and tax regimes in Central America
By: Aaron Schneider
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 243
ISBN-13: 9781107019096
Subjects: Politics and government; POLITICAL SCIENCE / General; Nation-building; Tax administration and procedure
Description: "In Central America, dynamic economic actors have inserted themselves into global markets. Elites atop these sectors attempt to advance a state-building project that will allow them to expand their activities and access political power, but they differ in their internal cohesion and their dominance with respect to other groups, especially previously constituted elites and popular sectors. Differences in resulting state-building patterns are expressed in the capacity to mobilize revenues from the most dynamic sectors in quantities sufficient to undertake public endeavors and in a relatively universal fashion across sectors. Historical, quantitative and qualitative detail on the five countries of Central America are followed by a focus on El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The greatest changes have occurred in El Salvador, and Honduras has made some advances, although they are almost as quickly reversed by incentives, exemptions and special arrangements for particular producers. Guatemala has raised revenues only marginally and failed to address problems of inequity across sectors and between rich and poor"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 1. Revenues, states, and Central America; 2. State-building in a globalized political economy; 3. Historical junctures in Central American state-building and tax; 4. 1990s transnational integration: quantitative evaluation of socioeconomic actors, democratic institutions, and tax regimes; 5. Inside-out state-building in El Salvador: dominant and cohesive transnational elites; 6. Outside-in state-building in Honduras: dominant but divided transnational elites; 7. Crisis in Guatemalan state-building: divided, subordinate transnational elites; 8. Conclusion: state-building and tax in developing countries.