Dysfunctional Policy Transfer in National Tax Blacklists

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sharman, J. C.
• 署名单位: Griffith University; Griffith University
• 刊物名称: GOVERNANCE-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLICY ADMINISTRATION AND INSTITUTIONS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0952-1895
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0491.2010.01501.x
• 发表日期: 2010
• 关键词: convergence; diffusion

摘要

Common sense and much of the policy transfer literature suggests that learning from abroad delivers better policy at lower cost. In contrast, this article argues that policy transfer in tax blacklists has been a dysfunctional process tending to replicate errors. Rather than reflecting learning, normative mimicry, or market pressures, over-committed policymakers have responded to complexity and crisis by unreflectively cutting and pasting from foreign models. Facing a short-term political imperative to do something about tax evasion in an environment of fiscal crisis, many policy makers have compiled blacklists of tax havens by copying lists of the usual suspects from abroad. Evidence for both the process of transfer and the dysfunctional nature of resulting policy is provided by tracking recurring errors in these lists that are unlikely to have arisen independently.