Public Finance and Society: The New Historical Fiscal Sociology

Open only to doctoral students based at universities within the U.S.

Workshop dates:

Spring - May 29-June 2, 2013 in Chaska, Minnesota

Fall - September 18-22, 2013 in Cambridge, Massachusetts

The history of public finance is a story about change over time, a tale punctuated by wars, social movements, and revolutions. Yet much of the existing scholarly literature neglects the broader context that has given meaning to fiscal policies. The new historical fiscal sociology is an emerging interdisciplinary field that investigates the relationship between public finance and society. In doing so, it restores the importance of historical and social context to the study of taxation, public debt, and state spending. Scholars in this field pose broad historical and comparative questions about the origins and development of fiscal policies. They also ask about the consequences of these policies for political, social, and cultural life. Taxation is a central institution in modern society. Instead of asking how a particular tax law or policy affects prices and quantities in a particular market, we can also ask such consequential questions as these: How did a particular tax policy develop in the first place? How does the choice of fiscal policy affect notions of citizenship and social solidarity, and vice versa? What is the relationship between tax policy and cultural understandings of gender? How does sovereign debt affect the likelihood of regime stability? What are the cultural conditions that promote greater tax compliance and hence increased public trust in the state? What does taxation have to do with the development of democracy in particular times and places?

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Field Directors

Ajay K. Mehrotra

Professor, Indiana University Bloomington, Law and History [ bio ]

Ajay K. Mehrotra is Professor of Law and History at Indiana University Bloomington. As a historian and legal scholar, Mehrotra has concentrated his research on the history of American tax law and policy. He recently co-edited and contributed to a collection of essays titled The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective. His scholarly articles have appeared in peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journals, as well as student-edited law reviews. Mehrotra's research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, the American Historical Association, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is currently at work on a book manuscript about the rise of progressive taxation and American state formation at the turn of the twentieth century. Mehrotra received his J.D. from Georgetown University and his PhD in American History from the University of Chicago.

Isaac William Martin

Associate Professor, University of California, San Diego, Sociology [ bio ]

Isaac Martin is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His research concerns the relationship between social movements and public policy. His first book, The Permanent Tax Revolt, won the President's Book Award from the Social Science History Association, and received an honorable mention for the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Pacific Sociological Association. He has also co-edited two books about the history and politics of taxation, and has published articles about social movements and public policy in the American Journal of Sociology, Law and Society Review, and Urban Affairs Review. Martin received his PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Research Fields