IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ereveh/v20y2016i3p275-298..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does military pressure boost fiscal capacity? Evidence from late-modern military revolutions in Europe and North America

Author

Listed:
  • Oriol Sabaté

Abstract

Warfare and military competition have been defined as important driving forces for the expansion of fiscal capacity during late-modern times. However, the empirical evidence remains inconclusive, and we still lack a historical narrative that explains how warfare has affected the evolution of late-modern fiscal systems. This article aims to fill this gap by analysing the effects of warfare on fiscal development in the light of the so-called Revolutions in Military Affairs that took place in Western countries since the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The results suggest that the interplay between warfare and fiscal expansion has followed an inverted “U-shape” pattern, in which changes in military tactics and technology have pushed public revenues up until the destructive power has passed the nuclear threshold level. Additionally, the results pose that politics is relevant to complete this war-led narrative.

Suggested Citation

  • Oriol Sabaté, 2016. "Does military pressure boost fiscal capacity? Evidence from late-modern military revolutions in Europe and North America," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 20(3), pages 275-298.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:20:y:2016:i:3:p:275-298.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/hew006
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Broadberry,Stephen & Harrison,Mark (ed.), 2005. "The Economics of World War I," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521852128, September.
    2. Obinger, Herbert & Petersen, Klaus, 2014. "Mass warfare and the welfare: State causal mechanisms and effects," Working papers of the ZeS 02/2014, University of Bremen, Centre for Social Policy Research (ZeS).
    3. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Has Globalization Gone Too Far?," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2), pages 81-94, March.
    4. Alan T. Peacock & Jack Wiseman, 1961. "The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number peac61-1.
    5. Peter Lindert, 2004. "Social Spending and Economic Growth," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(4), pages 6-16.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Baten, Jörg & Cappelli, Gabriele, 2016. "The Evolution of Human Capital in Africa, 1730 – 1970: A Colonial Legacy?," CEPR Discussion Papers 11273, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Claus Thustrup Kreiner & Emmanuel Saez, 2016. "Why Can Modern Governments Tax So Much? An Agency Model of Firms as Fiscal Intermediaries," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(330), pages 219-246, April.
    2. Vikas Dixit, 2014. "Relation between Trade Openness, Capital Openness and Government Size in India," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 49(1), pages 1-29, February.
    3. Rota, Mauro, 2011. "Military Burden and the Democracy Puzzle," MPRA Paper 35254, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Durevall, Dick & Henrekson, Magnus, 2011. "The futile quest for a grand explanation of long-run government expenditure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 708-722, August.
    5. Frances Stewart, 2010. "Power and Progress: The Swing of the Pendulum," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 371-395.
    6. Bukowski, Pawel & Novokmet, Filip, 2019. "Between communism and capitalism: long-term inequality in Poland, 1892-2015," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102834, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Sara Torregrosa Hetland & Oriol Sabaté, 2018. "Income tax and war inflation: was the ‘blood tax’ compensated by taxing the rich?," Working Papers 18010, Economic History Society.
    8. Sara Torregrosa-Hetland & Oriol Sabaté, 2022. "Income tax progressivity and inflation during the world wars [War finance and inflation in Britain and Germany, 1914–1918]," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 26(3), pages 311-339.
    9. Kenny, Seán & McLaughlin, Eoin, 2022. "Political Economy Of Secession: Lessons From The Early Years Of The Irish Free State," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 261, pages 48-78, August.
    10. Bukowski, Pawel & Novokmet, Filip, 2019. "Between communism and capitalism: long-term inequality in Poland, 1892-2015," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102814, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Pitruzzello, Salvatore, 2004. "Trade Globalization, Economic Performance, and Social Protection: Nineteenth-Century British Laissez-Faire and Post–World War II U.S.-Embedded Liberalism," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(4), pages 705-744, October.
    12. Eloranta, Jari, 2004. "WARFARE AND WELFARE? Understanding 19th and 20th Century Central Government Spending," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 699, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    13. Torregrosa Hetland, Sara & Sabaté, Oriol, 2021. "Income Taxes and Redistribution in the Early Twentieth Century," Lund Papers in Economic History 224, Lund University, Department of Economic History, revised 05 Sep 2022.
    14. Andrew G. Brown & Robert M. Stern, 2007. "What Are the Issues in Using Trade Agreements for Improving International Labor Standards?," Working Papers 558, Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan.
    15. Duane Swank, 2015. "The Political Foundations of Redistribution in Post-industrial Democracies," LIS Working papers 653, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    16. Pawel Bukowski & Filip Novokmet, 2019. "Between Communism and Capitalism: Long-Term Inequality in Poland, 1892- 2015," World Inequality Lab Working Papers hal-02876995, HAL.
    17. Kammas, Pantelis & Sarantides, Vassilis, 2019. "Do dictatorships redistribute more?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 176-195.
    18. Sergio Espuelas, 2015. "The inequality trap. A comparative analysis of social spending between 1880 and 1930," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(2), pages 683-706, May.
    19. Sandrine Michel, 2018. "Social spending as a driver of economic growth: has the theoretical consensus of the 1980s led to successful economic policies?," Post-Print hal-01944296, HAL.
    20. Fernando Martín-Mayoral & Juan Fernández Sastre, 2017. "Determinants of social spending in Latin America during and after the Washington consensus: a dynamic panel error-correction model analysis," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 26(1), pages 1-32, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:20:y:2016:i:3:p:275-298.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/ereh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.