The Silicon Valley imaginary: US corporate tax reform in the 1980s

Abstract How do policy paradigms change? This article demonstrates that changing social imaginaries about economic growth enabled paradigmatic changes in USA corporate tax the 1980s. Based on archival sources, it reconstructs how makers switched from focused support for capital-intensive smoke-stack industries towards emerging high tech-sectors between two major tax-bills 1981 and 1986. switch was made possible by emergence of what we call Silicon Valley imaginary—the idea sound policies stimulate reallocation society’s resources new fields. The this imaginary resulted political realignments notions justice. search sources future societal coalitions led policy-makers to appropriate ideas promises industries.