Taxing Democracy : Local Taxation and the Social Contract in America

Carrie Manning’s illuminating book examines how policies to limit taxation at state and local levels in the U.S. have direct and lasting consequences for equity, accountability, and ultimately for democracy. Tax structures embed, and reproduce, an implicit social contract between government and citizens, creating path-dependent outcomes that produce unintended consequences that are rarely traced back to state and local revenue models. This book combines historical American political development with the study of state formation. It provides a clear-eyed investigation into the past, present, and future of the social contract between America’s local governments and citizens. Front Cover Taxing Democracy: Local Taxation and the Social Contract in America Copyright information Table of contents Acknowledgments 1 Taxes and the Social Contract Introduction Continuity in change: the roots and reach of tax bargains How taxes reproduce a social contract Plan of the book 2 States, Taxes, and the Polities They Create Introduction State and social contract State formation as a tax contract Expanding the contract: taxation and accountability The racial contract and America’s tax state Mechanisms of change: how tax policy reflects the social contract Conclusion 3 The US Tax State and the Limited Social Contract Introduction The multilevel American tax state: a brief sketch The tax state in the American South Antebellum tax structure Radical Reconstruction (1865–77) Redeemer governments From tax limitation to tax elimination: the convict lease system New century, old patterns: the racialized social contract and the federal welfare state Conclusion 4 Tax and Expenditure Limitations vs. an Expanding Social Contract Introduction Segregation as government policy The tax bargain as conservative force Tax and expenditure limitations in defense of an exclusionary social contract Varieties of tax and expenditure limitations Conclusion 5 Implications of the Reliance on Fines and Fees Introduction Revenue-driven policing The scale of taxation by citation Impacts of revenue-driven policing How we got here Conclusion 6 Taxing Democracy: Conclusions References Index Carrie Manning's illuminating book examines how policies to limit taxation at state and local levels in the US have direct and lasting consequences for equity, accountability, and ultimately for democracy. Tax structures embed and reproduce an implicit social contract between government and citizens, creating path-dependent outcomes that produce unintended consequences which are rarely traced back to state and local revenue models. This book combines historical American political development with the study of state formation. It provides a clear-eyed investigation into the past, present, and future of the social contract between America's local governments and citizens.