Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nr4z6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-11T20:50:39.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tributes, Tariffs, Taxes and Trade: The Changing Sources of Government Revenue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Daniel Tarschys
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Government action presupposes extraction. Historically, four different sources of public revenue may be distinguished. Tributes, which are common in peimitive and belligerent states, are variable levies exacted at irregular intervals. Tariffs raised on the basis of the physical control of strategic passageways are important sources of income for mercantile states in the early stage of their development. Taxes play some role in semi modern economies but evolve more fully as the financial mainstay of government in advanced industrial societies. In addition, many states draw large receipts from the profits of trade. The planned economies in the socialist bloc are trading states rather than tax states. The different logistic properties of these revenue sources affect the prospects for government growth at various stages of economic development. The expansion of the tax state is strongly linked to the proliferation of monetary flows in modern society. At the same time, some non tax receipts such as user charges and other incomes from trade retain their importance, and the present ‘crisis of the tax state’ might possibly lead to a more composite structure of government revenue.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 1988 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Pipes, Richard, Russia under the Old Regime (Harmondsworth, Midx.: Penguin, 1974), Chap. 2.Google Scholar

2 Häuser, Karl, ‘Abriss der geschichtlichen Entwicklung der öffentlichen Finanzwirtschaft’, Handbuch der Finanzwissenschaft, 3rd edn (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1977), Vol. 1, pp. 4–52.Google Scholar

3 Gerloff, Wilhelm, ‘Ursprung und Anfänge öffentlicher Finanzwissenschaft’, Handbuch der Finanzwissenschaft, 2nd edn (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1952), Vol. 1, p. 202.Google Scholar

4 Gerloff, , ‘Ursprung’, p. 207.Google Scholar

5 Herskovits, Melville J., Economic Anthropology: A Study in Comparative Economics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952).Google Scholar

6 Boas, Franz, Ethnology of the Kwiakutl (Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1921, Annual Report 35).Google Scholar

7 Gerloff, , ‘Ursprung’.Google Scholar

8 Grönbech, Wilhelm, Kultur und Religion der Germanen (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanslalt, 1939), Vol. 2, p. 62.Google Scholar

9 Strayer, Joseph R., Feudalism (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1965), pp. 51–6.Google Scholar

10 Quoted in Strayer, , Feudalism, p. 179.Google Scholar

11 Pohl, Hans, ‘Zölle: Geschichte’, Handwörterbuch der Wirtschaftswissenschaft (Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer, 1982)Google Scholar; Pirenne, Henri, Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Europas im Mittelalter, 2nd edn (Munich: Francke Verlag, 1971), pp. 89–96.Google Scholar

12 Wilensky, Harold L., The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), esp. Chap. 3Google Scholar; Lewis, Alan, The Psychology of Taxation (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1982), Chap. 4.Google Scholar

13 Tarschys, Daniel, ‘Government Growth: The Case of Sweden, 1523–1983, (Strathclyde: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, Studies in Public Policy, no. 121, 1984), pp. 7–13.Google Scholar

14 Hinrichs, H. H., A General Theory of Tax Structure During Economic Development (Cambridge, Mass.: International Tax Program, Harvard Law School, 1966), p. 101.Google Scholar

15 Schumpeter, J. A., ‘The Crisis of the Tax State’, translated from ‘Die Krise des Steuerstaats’ (1918), in International Economic Papers, No. 4 (1954), pp. 5–38.Google Scholar

16 The various stages in the monopolization of the Ghanaian cocoa trade have been analysed by Beckman, Björn, Organizing the Farmers: Cocoa Politics and National Developmenl in Ghana (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. 1976).Google Scholar

17 Zlobin, I. D., ed., Soviet Finance: Principles, Operation (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Chap. 7Google Scholar. For Romania, see UN Statistical Yearbook 1981 (New York: United Nations, 1981), p. 217.Google Scholar

18 Government Finance Statistics Yearbook (Washington: International Monetary Fund, 1984), Vol. 8, p. 26.Google Scholar

19 Strayer, , Feudalism, p. 22.Google Scholar

20 Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983), pp. 97–103 and passim.Google Scholar

21 Hafström, Gerhard, ‘Leidang’, Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid (Malmö: Allhem, 1965), Vol. 10, pp. 450–8.Google Scholar

22 Ardant, Gabriel, ‘Financial Policy and Economic Infrastructure of Modern States and Nations’, in Tilly, Charles, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 175fGoogle Scholar. See also Vignes, Joseph B. M., Histoire des doctrines sur Timpôt en France (Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 1961).Google Scholar

23 Rose, Richard, ‘The Influence of Laws upon the Growth of Government’ (Strathclyde: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, Studies in Public Policy, no. 124, 1984)Google Scholar; Mechelen, Van, ‘Has There Been a Growth of Legislation in Britain?’ (Strathclyde: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, Studies in Public Policy, no. 123, 1984).Google Scholar

24 Tarschys, Daniel, ‘The Scissors Crisis in Public Finance’, Policy Sciences, 15 (1983), 205–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saunders, Peter and Klau, Friedrich, ‘The Role of the Public Sector: Causes and Consequences of the Growth of Government’, OECD Economic Studies, no. 4 (1985), 189–202.Google Scholar

25 Larkey, P. D., Stolp, C. and Winer, M., ‘Theorizing about the Growth of Government: A Research Assessment’, Journal of Public Policy, 1 (1981), Part 2, 157–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Niskanen, William A., Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago: Aldine, 1971)Google Scholar; Borcherding, T. E., ‘The Sources of Growth of Public Expenditures in the United States’, in Borcherding, T. E., ed., Budgets and Bureaucrats as Sources of Government Growth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

27 For a survey of such theories, see Nordlinger, Eric A., On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

28 Cf. Tarschys, Daniel, ‘The Growth of Government Expenditures: Nine Modes of Explanation’, Scandinavian Political Studies, 10 (1975), 14–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 IMF, Government Statistics Yearbook (Washington, DC: IMF, 1984), pp. 26f.Google Scholar

30 O'Connor, James, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St Martin's Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grauhan, R. R. and Hickel, R., eds., Krise des Steuerstaals? Widersprüche, Perspektiven, Ausweichstrategien (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1978)Google Scholar; Groth, K-M., Die Krise der Staatsfinanzen: Systematische Überlegungen zur Krise des Steuerstaats (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981)Google Scholar; further bibliography in Tarschys, Daniel, ‘Curbing Public Expenditure: Current Trends’, Journal of Public Policy, 5 (1985), 23–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Burtless, Gary and Havemann, Robert, ‘Taxes, Transfers, and Labour Supply: The Evolving Views of US Economists’ (paper presented at the 41st Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance, Madrid, 08 1985).Google Scholar