This session explores the political support coalitions for national tax systems and welfare states beyond traditional class-based analyses of labor versus capital, in historical development of the extractive capacities of the state and in contemporary welfare politics.  Martin and Hertel-Fernandez address (historical) support patterns of national variations of tax systems, and suggest that support of employers and right parties in revenue development contributed significantly to distributive variations.  Robust encompassing employers’ organizations encourage employers to consent to large revenue systems (in part, to protect large productivity-oriented welfare states), and enable business to shift the tax burden away from capital and onto labor.  Lindvall and Brambor combine new datasets on political regimes, taxes, tariffs, and government ideology from the 1870s to the 1990s to examine the political underpinnings of the shift from tariffs to taxes, with an emphasis on the comparison between the European and the Latin American historical experiences.  They argue that the successful expansion of fiscal capacity was contingent on the state's ability to generate sufficient custom revenues early on as well as its ability to suppress the political influence of groups with protectionist interests in later stages. Häusermann adresses the impact of socio-structural change on the support coalitions for distributive politics in current times, and specifically, looks empirically at changes in socio-structural electorates and the extent to which Social Democratic parties have consequently adapted their programmatic position.