The ability of governments to raise revenue to finance spending varies greatly across the industrialized democracies. Despite the prediction of the globalization thesis, variation in budget deficits and public debt has actually increased. While a developed literature has attempted to explain fiscal performance, there has been little attention to the role of that the welfare state might have.  Meanwhile, the welfare state literature has focused on welfare spending with less attention to how such spending is financed.  This presentation shows that the two are linked.  Governments can use taxes not only as a source of revenue but also as a means to achieve redistributive goals directly by targeting tax relief to specific groups.  Using quantitative data and a case study of Japan and Sweden, this study shows how governments combine welfare and tax policies, i.e., the “tax-welfare mix,” shapes their long-term extractive capacity.

Gene Park is an assistant professor in the department of political science at Loyola Marymount University (LMU).  Prior to arriving at LMU, he taught at Baruch College, City University of New York. Previously, Dr. Park was Shorenstein Fellow at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and a visiting scholar at the Japanese Ministry of Finance’s Policy Research Institute.  He specializes in comparative political economy and has an area interest in Japan.  His research focuses on the politics of public spending and taxation.  He is the author of Spending without Taxation: FILP and the Politics of Public Finance in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2011). He is currently working on a comparative study of fiscal consolidation and a comparative study of state extractive capacity.

During the past few years, the European Union has experienced one of the most difficult periods in its now sixty-year long process of unification. To fight the current eurocrisis, the EU has taken further steps toward integration that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. In this seminar, we will discuss the challenges and opportunities the crisis offers for more European unification.

Ambassador Veestraeten has been the Belgian Consul General in Los Angeles since September 2012. Prior to his arrival in California he was Belgian Ambassador to Thailand. He has also held positions at the Belgian Embassies in Nigeria, Bulgaria, Kenya and Washington DC. Amb. Veestraeten holds a degree in Romance Literature from KU Leuven.

This event is part of The Europe Center's series on the "European and Global Economic Crisis."