Non-Taxation and Representation: Distribution, Redistribution, and Political Stability in the Modern World

Might foreign aid and oil revenues have similar effects on political regimes? Drawing upon formal modeling, cross-national statistical analysis, and in-depth case studies, my dissertation explores the relationship between patterns of government revenue generation and political regime stability. Existing research has devoted surprisingly limited attention to variations in the sources of government revenue, emphasizing instead the political impact of expenditures and/or focusing exclusively on taxes. Considering both tax and non-tax resources (the latter of which includes foreign aid and revenue from state-owned natural resource enterprises), and building on recent redistributive theories of regime change, I use formal modeling to generate testable hypotheses about the impact of revenue generation on regime dynamics in both democratic and authoritarian regimes. The central prediction is that rises (falls) in nontax resources increase (decrease) the stability of authoritarian and democratic regimes, by reducing (increasing) redistributional conflicts in society. I test (and find evidence supporting) the implications of the theory for both redistribution and regime stability, drawing upon cross-national time-series statistical analysis as well as field research and in-depth examination of three theoretically important cases: Bolivia, Mexico, and Kenya.