Taxing for development : contested ideas, the state, and commodity taxes in Argentina / Matt Barlow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barlow, Matt, author.

Series:

Critical frontiers of theory, research, and policy in international development studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Argentina.

Fiscal policy--Argentina.

Fiscal policy.

Taxation--Argentina.

Taxation.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, [2025]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

The importance of tax collection for sustainable development cannot be overstated: it forms a central pillar of the UN's Agenda 2030 and offers a concrete pathway to finance development in an increasingly politicised and diminishing foreign aid landscape. However, the strengthening of tax systems in the Global South has proved to be both complex and contentious. Scholars that have approached this tax-for-development puzzle have tended to privilege interest- and institutional-based arguments to explain low levels of tax collection and problems with implementing tax reforms. This book takes a different approach and argues that ideas about tax matter as much as interests and institutions for understanding social attitudes and responses to attempts by the state to raise revenues for development.

Contents:

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication page

Acknowledgements

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Abbreviations

1 Taxing for Development: Export Taxes as a Development Strategy

Introduction

Challenges of raising tax in developing countries

Extracting natural resource revenues

Export taxes in national development

Key arguments

Methodological approach

Structure of the book

2 Theorizing Tax Challenges in Resource-Rich Developing Countries

Why tax matters: State-building

Taxing the interests of capitalists

Legitimizing taxes

Theorizing tax for development

Taxing the interests of Latin American wealth

The politics of institutional tax capacity

Deep political cleavages and tax ideologies

Natural resource management: Extracting and redistributing

Post-neoliberalism and the return of the state

Conclusion

3 Fiscal Extractivism: The Historic Politics of Raising Tax in the Global South

Legacies of colonialism: Natural and fiscal resource extraction

Fiscal bargaining

The British Empire, 1583-1997: Extraction and conflict

Bargaining over British imperial trade taxes

The French Empire, 1630-1977

Belgium and the Congo Free State, 1885-1908

Dutch extraction in the Indio Pacific: Negotiated practices, 1595-1975

Commodity wealth in the New World: Portuguese imperialism, 1415-1822

The Spanish Empire, 1492-1898

Raising tax across Spanish America: Fragmented and negotiated

Tax for development after Iberian subjugation

Export-led growth through external economic shocks

Trade liberalization versus protectionism: A conflict of ideas

Conclusion

4 Extracting from Campo: A Twentieth-Century Argentine Fiscal Puzzle

Tensions in the countryside: Estancieros and chacareros

Peronism: The rise of the spending state

Fiscal policies to extract from the landed class

Public spending and indirect taxes

Deepening fiscal tensions

Post-Peronist politics: Low tax, social conflict, and growing debt, 1955-1989

The introduction of export taxes

Exacerbating the rural versus industrial cleavage: Debt dictating development, 1976-1989

The shift to market-led development: Debt rises still further, 1989-2001

Reduced conflict and rural-sector transformations

5 Taxing Exports for What?: Building and Losing Legitimacy

Taxing out of financial crisis

The First Kirchnerismo: A return of the Peronist left

The consolidation of the redistributive `emergency' state

Soybean and beef exports: A different tax logic

Tax for an interventionalist state?

Economic deterioration and commodity headwinds

Export tax reform and contested state visions

The end of the fiscal peace: Export tax conflict

6 Commodity Price Volatility and Fiscal Entrapment

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on October 20, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version :

ISBN:

9780198923220

0198923228

OCLC:

1536079664

Publisher Number:

CIPO000290421

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license