Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:25:05.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Neo-liberalism at a Time of Crisis: the Case of Taxation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Dries Lesage*
Affiliation:
Ghent Institute for International Studies, Universiteit Gent, Belgium. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
Mattias Vermeiren*
Affiliation:
Ghent Institute for International Studies, Universiteit Gent, Belgium. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

Abstract

This essay explores how the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 has affected the stability of what Stephen Gill has termed the ‘new constitutionalism of disciplinary neo-liberalism’,1 more precisely, in the realm of international tax policy. Rather than providing an in-depth and complete empirical study of the matter, this essay will highlight certain interesting developments and touch upon a series of possibly relevant questions that could form the basis for a future research agenda. In the first section, we will examine the remarkable strength and resilience of the new constitutionalism as the institutional component of neo-liberal hegemony. Then we will proceed to an exploration of the impact of the crisis on this hegemony, also paying attention to deepening geopolitical multipolarity as an additional variable. The final, more empirical section will investigate the case of international taxation in this context, and demonstrate that new constitutionalism remains a crucial supporting pillar of neo-liberal globalisation.

Type
Focus: Globalization
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2011

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.Gill, S. (2008) Power and Resistance in the New World Order. 2nd Edition, Fully Revised and Updated (Houndmills Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).Google Scholar
2.Cerny, P. G. (1997) The paradoxes of the competition state: the dynamics of political globalization. Government & Opposition, 32, pp. 251274.Google Scholar
3.Keohane, R. O. (1984) After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
4.Keohane, R. O. and Nye, J. S. (2000) Globalization: what’s new? What’s not? (And so what?) Foreign Policy, 104119.Google Scholar
5.Swyngedouw, E. (2004) Globalisation or ‘glocalisation’? Networks territories and rescaling. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 17, pp. 2548.Google Scholar
6.Gill, S. and Law, D. (1989) Global hegemony and the structural power of capital. International Studies Quarterly, 33, pp. 475499.Google Scholar
7.Devos, C. (1999) The myth of globalisation and its strategic consequences, Demokritos. Mededelingen van de Vakgroep Politieke Wetenschappen. Universiteit Gent.Google Scholar
8.Fougner, T. (2006) The state, international competitiveness and neoliberal globalization: is there a future beyond the competition state? Review of International Studies, 32, pp. 165185.Google Scholar
9.Schmidt, R. (2001) Efficient capital controls. Journal of Economic Studies, 28, pp. 199212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10.Helleiner, E. and Pagliari, S. (2009) Towards a new Bretton Woods? The first G20 leaders summit and the regulation of global finance. New Political Economy, 14, pp. 275287.Google Scholar
12. Nevertheless, the crisis could never have occurred without free capital mobility. As noted by Dieter, H., Seabrooke, L.and Tsingou, E. (2009) The Global Credit Crisis and the Politics of Financial Reform. GARNET Policy Brief No. 8. ‘A key aspect of the current crisis is that the US was able to draw on the savings of Asia and continental Europe, drowning itself in a sea of foreign liquidity. Restrictions on capital flows would have prevented the US crisis and subsequent global contagion as the US would have had to finance its spending exuberance from domestic savings – since that would not have been possible, the bubble would not have inflated as much as it has. In their various formats (restrictions, taxes, reserve requirements) capital controls might therefore have been a legitimate tool of economic policy.’Google Scholar
13.Thirkell-White, B. (2009) Dealing with the banks: populism and the public interest in the global financial crisis. International Affairs, 85, pp. 689711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14.Baker, A. (2009) Deliberative equality and the transgovernmental politics of the global financial architecture. Global Governance, 15, pp. 195218.Google Scholar
15.Porter, T. (2009) Why international institutions matter in the global credit crisis. Global Governance, 15, pp. 39.Google Scholar
16.Tsingou, E. (2010) Regulatory reactions to the credit crisis: analysing a policy community under stress. In: E. Helleiner, S. Pagliari and H. Zimmermann (eds) Global Finance in Crisis: The Politics of International Regulatory Change (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
17.Lardy, N. R. (2002) Integrating China into the Global Economy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press).Google Scholar
18.Alden, C. and Vieira, M. A. (2005) The new diplomacy of the South: South Africa, Brazil, India and trilateralism. Third World Quarterly, 26, pp. 10771095.Google Scholar
19. Although China (eventually supported by the other BRICs) has criticised the inefficiencies associated with the global dollar standard and is increasingly trying to promote the international use of its currency, financial liberalisation will be a necessary condition for its currency to acquire global currency status (Eichengreen, B. (2009) The dollar dilemma. Foreign Affairs, 88). In this way, China’s contestation of one of the main pillars of US hegemony may lead it to embrace one of the main pillars of neoliberal hegemony – free capital mobility.Google Scholar
20.Mah-Hui Lim, M. (2008) Old Wine in a New Bottle: The Subprime Mortgage Crisis - Causes and Consequences. Working Paper No. 532 (New York: Levy Economics Institute).Google Scholar
21.Cori, N. (2008) L’Europe sonne la réouverture de la chasse au paradis fiscal, Libération, 22 October. http://www.liberation.fr/economie/0101163945-l-europe-sonne-la-reouverture-de-la-chasse-au-paradis-fiscal.Google Scholar
22.Lesage, D. (2008) Global taxation governance after the 2002 UN Monterrey conference. Oxford Development Studies, 36, pp. 281294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23.Elliott, L. (2009) IMF chief backs down on Tobin tax. The Guardian, 23 November. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/23/cbi-global-economy.Google Scholar
24.Treanor, J. (2009) Tobin tax gains supporters in the City as lord mayor criticises bonus culture. The Guardian 16 November. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/16/tobin-tax-gains-city-support.Google Scholar
25.Mathiason, N. and Treanor, J. (2009) Gordon Brown in secret push to sell ‘Tobin tax’ to City. The Guardian, 9 November. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/09/tobin-tax-gordon-brown-city.Google Scholar
26.Traynor, I. and Clark, A. (2009) France and Germany back UK bonus tax. The Guardian, 10 December 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/dec/10/france-germany-back-uk-bonus-tax.Google Scholar
27.Pratley, N. (2009) Banks face insurance levy and a tax on financial transactions. The Guardian, 8 December 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/dec/08/tobin-tax-banking.Google Scholar
28.Lesage, D., McNair, D. and Vermeiren, M. (2010) From Monterrey to Doha: taxation and Financing for Development. Development Policy Review, 28, pp. 155172.Google Scholar
29.Gurría, A. (2008) The global tax dodgers. The Guardian, 27 November.Google Scholar
30.Mathiason, N. (2009) New threat for UK’s offshore havens: tax. The Guardian, 28 October. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/28/tax-more-tax-havens-told.Google Scholar
31.Foot, M. (2009) Final Report of the independent Review of British offshore financial centres (London: Crown).Google Scholar
32.(Anon.) (2009) Les banques françaises vont quitter les paradis fiscaux, c’est promis, Libération. 1 October. http://www.liberation.fr/economie/0101594500-les-banques-francaises-vont-quitter-les-paradis-fiscaux.Google Scholar
34.Mathiason, N. (2009) US tax investigators win fight to force UBS to disclose accounts worth $18bn. The Guardian, 19 August. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/19/tax-avoidance-ubs-us-economy.Google Scholar
35.OECD (2009) Countering Offshore Tax Evasion. Some Questions and Answers on the Project (Paris: OECD).Google Scholar
37.Faiola, A. and Jordan, M. (2009) Tax-Haven blacklist stirs nations. The Washington Post, 4 April. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/03/AR2009040303394.html.Google Scholar