Taxation and the Coercive Origins of Consent and Representation

Does taxation lead to representation?  Does bargaining over taxation force governments to grant rights to citizens?  A positive answer is assumed by a distinguished body of scholarship that addresses key questions in comparative politics and political economy, whether on democratization and regime variation or the “resource curse.”  The logic is typically traced to two precedents, the American Revolution and premodern Europe.  But is it true?  In fact, Americans did not gain representation by making taxation conditional on its granting.  They obtained it by overthrowing the existing British government and then drew on a pre-existing institutional structure and rights language that long predated the Revolution.  In any account explaining how citizens force a pre-existing government to concede rights, the American case is not applicable.  The purpose of this paper is to similarly show that the other historical precedent, Europe, lends no support to such a “fiscal logic.”  The key reason is that representation originally functioned legally as an obligation, not a right, and to be successfully implemented it presupposed a state with strong institutional capacity.  I start by showing how the logic has shaped one of most vibrant current debates, on the “resource curse,” and I run the foundational hypotheses in these debates again by the historical record that is assumed to have generated them.  I conclude that studies questioning the association between taxation and representation are on a better track and promise more reliable results.