Political economists often place the state at the centre of explanations of change in capitalism. The emergence of a ‘welfare’ or ‘nation building’ state during the twentieth century reflects the advance of democratic movements and Keynesian inspired macroeconomic management. More recently neoliberalism is associated with fiscal austerity enforced through the rise of corporate and financial power. Shifts in state finances, and how states finances are accounted for, were central to these broader political-economic shifts.
In a recent open access article published in the journal Critical Perspectives on Accounting, as part of a forthcoming special issue on ‘the future of the state’, we bring state theory into conversation with critical accounting literature to explore the relationship between fiscal accounting and capitalist change. Drawing on Joseph Schumpeter’s fiscal sociology and his concept of the ‘tax state’, we connect changes in fiscal practice to turning points in the reorganisation of the state’s role within capitalism [...]
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