Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T07:29:52.648Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - ASSESSING LONG-TERM IMPACTS: THE EFFECT OF GLOBALIZATION ON TAXATION, INSTITUTIONS, AND CONTROL OF THE MACROECONOMY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2010

Duane Swank
Affiliation:
Marquette University, Wisconsin
Get access

Summary

Despite the evidence against conventional globalization theory generated in the preceding chapters, it may still be the case that increases in international capital mobility and financial integration contribute indirectly to rollbacks in social protection and otherwise constrain democratically elected governments from pursuing their social policy goals. Specifically, international capital mobility may contribute to the retrenchment of the welfare state through its impacts on the funding basis of the welfare state, the strength of political institutions that support the welfare state – most notably social corporatism – and the efficacy of macroeconomic policy to control unemployment and promote economic growth (and hence prevent fiscal stress that can lead to retrenchment). In the pages that follow, I go beyond my treatment of these issues in early sections of the volume and provide more detailed assessments of each argument. In the case of taxation, I provide a relatively developed analysis of the widely debated relationship between globalization and revenue raising by extending arguments I have offered elsewhere about internationalization and tax policy (Swank 1998) and by providing new evidence on international capital mobility's effects on tax burdens on capital, labor, and consumption, as well as on the tax share of GDP. In the case of the linkage between internationalization and social corporatism, I review the arguments, weigh the best recent evidence, and provide some new analysis. Finally, I provide a succinct assessment – relying on the best recent treatments of the topic, as well as analytic summaries of my case-study evidence – of the view that the decline in the efficacy of monetary, exchange rate, and related policies associated with rises in capital mobility forces governments, through a deterioration in economic performance (most notably, escalating unemployment rates), to rollback social protection to restrain rising welfare state costs.

Type
Chapter

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.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×