State-Building and Tax Regimes in Central America

Aaron Schneider is the Jill H. and Avram A. Glazer Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and Associate Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies at Tulane University, Louisiana. He is especially interested in the sources of and uses for the wealth of states, including taxation and expenditure. By treating public finance as a window into the politics of economic development, his work characterizes the way in which state actors interact with the evolution of global capitalism. He has conducted research in Central America, Brazil, Peru, India, sub-Saharan Africa and closer to home in New Orleans. With a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, Professor Schneider's outputs have included journal articles, book chapters, working papers and policy briefs. Prior to joining Tulane University, he was a Fellow at the University of Sussex in the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and Advisor to the Chief Economist for Central America and the Caribbean at the Interamerican Development Bank.

“Central American countries have increased their tax-to-GDP ratio by an average of more than 33% since they started their transition to democracy two decades ago. In spite of sustained efforts, they still collect an average of 30% to 45% less than South American and OECD countries, respectively. This book provides excellent political economy insights to achieve successful tax reform, in a context where mobilizing additional fiscal revenues pari passu with an efficient provision of public goods is crucial for development.” — Alberto Barreix, Principal Fiscal Economist, Inter-American Development Bank

• 1. Revenues, states, and Central America; 2. State-building in a globalized political economy; 3. Historical junctures in Central American state-building and tax; 4. 1990s transnational integration: quantitative evaluation of socioeconomic actors, democratic institutions, and tax regimes; 5. Inside-out state-building in El Salvador: dominant and cohesive transnational elites; 6. Outside-in state-building in Honduras: dominant but divided transnational elites; 7. Crisis in Guatemalan state-building: divided, subordinate transnational elites; 8. Conclusion: state-building and tax in developing countries.