Dysfunctional policy transfer in national tax blacklists
By: SHARMAN, J. C
.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: Malden : Wiley-Blackwell, oct. 2010Subject(s): Tributo | Política Fiscal | Meio AmbienteGovernance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions 23, 4, p. 623-639Abstract: Common sense and much of the policy transfer literature suggests that learning from abroad delivers better policy at lower cost. In contrast, this article argues that policy transfer in tax blacklists has been a dysfunctional process tending to replicate errors. Rather than reflecting learning, normative mimicry, or market pressures, over-committed policymakers have responded to complexity and crisis by unreflectively cutting and pasting from foreign models. Facing a short-term political imperative to do something about tax evasion in an environment of fiscal crisis, many policy makers have compiled blacklists of tax havens by copying lists of the usual suspects from abroad. Evidence for both the process of transfer and the dysfunctional nature of resulting policy is provided by tracking recurring errors in these lists that are unlikely to have arisen independently
Common sense and much of the policy transfer literature suggests that learning from abroad delivers better policy at lower cost. In contrast, this article argues that policy transfer in tax blacklists has been a dysfunctional process tending to replicate errors. Rather than reflecting learning, normative mimicry, or market pressures, over-committed policymakers have responded to complexity and crisis by unreflectively cutting and pasting from foreign models. Facing a short-term political imperative to do something about tax evasion in an environment of fiscal crisis, many policy makers have compiled blacklists of tax havens by copying lists of the usual suspects from abroad. Evidence for both the process of transfer and the dysfunctional nature of resulting policy is provided by tracking recurring errors in these lists that are unlikely to have arisen independently
Click on an image to view it in the image viewer
There are no comments for this item.