Taxation: A Regulatory Multilevel Governance Perspective

Abstract

This article makes four claims: First, tax systems at the national, regional and global level are regulatory systems. They can and should be studied as that. Second, taxation is an important extension to regulatory scholars’ empirical field of inquiry. It is a hard case to test prominent theories of new, softer modes of governance. Third, in the era of liberalization and globalization tax governance exhibits similar institutional changes as regulatory governance. It has changed (1) from national to multi-level governance, (2) from public and direct to indirect with increased involvement of private actors, and (3) from hierarchical and coercive to cooperative and responsive. Fourth, since the global financial crisis, the new sites of tax governance have increasingly been involved in the fight against tax evasion and avoidance and have become more politicized. These claims are substantiated by reference to the contributions to the special issue that this article introduces.