Paying for the Liberal State: The Rise of Public Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 2/8/2010
EAN 9780521518529, ISBN10: 0521518520

Hardcover, 324 pages, 22.9 x 15.5 x 2.8 cm
Language: English

Public finance is a major feature of the development of modern European societies, and it is at the heart of the definition of the nature of political regimes. Public finance is also a most relevant issue in the understanding of the constraints and possibilities of economic development. This book is about the rise and development of taxation systems, expenditure programs, and debt regimes in Europe from the early nineteenth century to the beginning of World War I. Its main purpose is to describe and explain the process by which financial resources were raised and managed. The volume presents studies of nine countries or empires that are considered highly representative of the widest European experience on the matter and discusses whether there are any common patterns in the way the different European states responded to the need for raising additional resources to pay for the new tasks they were performing.

Introduction José Luís Cardoso and Pedro Lains
1. Creating legitimacy
administering taxation in Britain, 1815–1914 Martin Daunton
2. The development of public finance in the Netherlands, 1815–1914 Jan Luiten Van Zanden and Arthur Van Riel
3. The apogee and fall of the French Rentier Regime, 1801–1914 Richard Bonney
4. The evolution of public finances in nineteenth-century Germany Mark Spoerer
5. Public finance in Austria-Hungary, 1820–1913 Michael Pammer
6. The rise of the fiscal state in Sweden 1800–1914 Lennart Schön
7. Always on the brink
Piedmont and Italy Giovanni Federico
8. Public finance and the rise of the liberal state in Spain, 1808–1914 Francisco Comin
9. Public finance in Portugal, 1796–1910 José Luís Cardoso and Pedro Lains
10. The monetary, fiscal, and political architecture of Europe, 1815–1914 Larry Neal.

'Historians have long puzzled over the fact that taxes, government spending, and government debt rose as a share of the economy at the same time that institutions became more liberal in the sense of allowing, and lightly taxing, freer markets. This well-structured team study reconciles global patterns with the diversity of eight countries' individual trajectories across the long nineteenth century. Yes, successful development did follow a general evolution in fiscal structure, yet the national departures from the global path prove as instructive as the average tendency itself.' Peter H. Lindert, University of California, Davis