Abstract

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2009, by means of a major Western state-led initiative in tax cooperation designed to eliminate tax evasion in the world, offshore financial centers were required to exchange information on bank accounts, first on request, then automatically. Even though all major offshore financial centers have agreed to the new tax standards, the emerging literature on global tax politics disagrees on their effectiveness. To make sense of these contrasting findings, I argue that we need to shift our focus to the diverse ways that targeted actors have responded to the new standards. I develop a typology of resistance strategies and show why state actors engage in one or the other strategy despite pressure from great powers. New tax treaty data, as well as archival and interview material in the matched cases of the Bahamas and Barbados demonstrate variance in the relationships between governments and the financial industry, and governments and international organizations, which in turn leads to the pursuit of different resistance strategies. Ultimately, by highlighting the heterogeneity of targeted actors’ responses to global standards, the study has important implications for the literature on institutional emergence and design writ large.

摘要

在 2007-2009 年金融危机之后，通过一项由西方国家主导的旨在消除世界逃税行为的重大税收合作倡议，离岸金融中心必须首先应要求交换银行账户信息，然后自动。尽管所有主要的离岸金融中心都同意新的税收标准，但关于全球税收政治的新兴文献对其有效性持不同意见。为了理解这些不同的发现，我认为我们需要将注意力转移到目标参与者对新标准做出反应的不同方式上。我开发了一种抵抗策略类型学，并展示了为什么国家行为者不顾来自大国的压力而采取一种或另一种策略。新的税收协定数据，以及巴哈马和巴巴多斯匹配案例中的档案和采访材料表明，政府与金融业以及政府与国际组织之间的关系存在差异，这反过来又导致采取不同的抵抗策略。最终，通过强调目标参与者对全球标准的反应的异质性，该研究对有关制度出现和设计的文献具有重要意义。