Attempts to register and control the populations of the east left a documentary record that was often extremely local. Provincial subjects proved astute readers and compilers of local documentation, which they rearranged in order to make claims of right. These claims can be mined for their underlying legal ideologies. Provincial subjects imagined law not as an abstract system, but as a running list of privileges and disabilities. Rights emerged from having the most correct or most persuasive hermeneutic for making sense of collections of documents in dialogue with officials, through the process of generating legal paperwork. Archives were not merely repositories of external facts about the world: they were collections of arguments that could be made. Law emerged from the collaborative process of claiming such rights.

This chapter shows how the Legislative Advisory Commission, a reviser type of legislature established by factions with high levels of unity and embeddedness during Argentina’s last dictatorship, amended and rejected a high share of government bills, and forced the executive to reverse, temper, or withdraw important initiatives on taxation, budgetary policy, and defense policy, which complicated the implementation of economic adjustment programs and facilitated the takeover of government by the hardliners, which ultimately led to the defeat in the Falklands War and the collapse of the authoritarian regime.

This chapter shows how the Brazilian Congress, operating in a dictatorship in which factions had unstable and uneven levels of unity and embeddedness, oscillated betwen working as a reviser and as a notary legislature. Quantitative analyses and case studies of tax policy, budgetary policy, and constitutional reforms show that while Congress was institutionally empowered to amend and reject government initiatives, it was more likely to exercise its lawmaking powers against initiatives sponsored by nondominant factions that were less able to retaliate, and less likely to be able to sustain its decisions against the executive when the presidency was controlled by a military faction with high levels of unity and embeddedness. Still, repeatedly probing the boundaries of representation, Brazilian legislators managed to frustrate important economic policies and to force the military into initiating the transition to democracy.

This chapter shows how the Spanish Cortes, a notary type of legislature established by factions with lower levels of unity and embeddedness during Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, amended a share of government bills, thus informing the dictator of the extent of dissent about his initiatives, but rarely rejected any, and was therefore unable to impose significant policy changes, thus helping instead to secure Franco’s rule over the regime’s economic and institutional policies until his dying day.

A survey of the evidence for textile production and trade shows extensive market activities, supported by state enforcement of agreements. The most intrusive form of state intervention was the imposition of a monthly quota to be delivered by weavers, accounting for up to half of their production volume. This may have represented the transformation of an existing quota arrangement attested in New Kingdom Egypt. However, the cash-based Ptolemaic system, in which weavers were compensated and could substitute cash payments for their deliveries, had a different dynamic. The stable demand offered by the quotas offset some of the risk of production for the market by the weavers. This arrangement made the state into an oversized market player, but the textiles it collected were not sold through retail concessions but put to practical use or exported. In addition, weavers and other occupations were subject to taxation in cash, the state levied customs and sales taxes, and it derived revenues from flax cultivation and sheep husbandry, likewise without exercising exclusive control and using private contractors. Attempts at local monopolies were rather undertaken by professional associations.

Governments command tax revenue to provide services. The US government’s revenue is lower than that in Western European nations. The latter provide services such as universal healthcare, paid parental leave, and free education. A large portion of the US government’s revenue supports the military, which comprises almost half of the world’s total military expenditures. The richest 400 American families pay the lowest tax rate today, in sharp contrast to their paying the highest share in the 1950s. The federal government borrows to pay for services rather than resort to taxing the rich. Americans seem more accepting of not redistributing wealth than Western Europeans. Policies not supported by the elite are unlikely to become law. Poorer people are less likely to vote in the US. Since the 1950s, US states with the most liberal policies have had better mortality trends than conservative states. Americans prefer medical care spending over public health and social spending. Neoliberalism has increased economic inequality and produced a rightward political shift. Reparations can improve racial inequalities

descibes the setting up and deliberations of the Meade Committee on Tax Reform and its report, also Meade’s Intelligent Radical’s Guide to Economic Policy and the award of his Nobel Prize

According to Dazai Shundai, the provision of food and goods to all the people is an essential element of good government. Wealth as measured in food and goods will then lead to a strong military. Some have considered the ideal of “enriching the country and strengthening the military” to be contrary to Confucian teachings, but this is mistaken. Currency should be seen as secondary to food and goods and does not in itself represent true wealth, a fact that many have lost sight of in Edo and other urban centers of Tokugawa Japan. In farming, it is crucial to extract the full productive potential of the land, which requires an understanding of the different types of land and the uses that each of these serves; an ignorance of these different uses has led to harmful policies that try to convert all land into paddies. The stabilization of prices is another important role for government and helps prevent merchants from exploiting price fluctuations for private gain. A system of government-managed granaries can be used to stabilize rice prices, provide relief in times of famine, and provide low-interest loans to samurai in times of need.