Rallying Fiscal Patriotism: War Taxes in the Contemporary World

• Published date: 01 July 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231194061
• Author: Jakob Frizell
• Date: 01 July 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2024, Vol. 57(8) 1375–1405

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231194061

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Rallying Fiscal

Patriotism: War Taxes in

the Contemporary

World

Jakob Frizell

1



Abstract

Constituting a central historical link between war and long-term f‌iscal ca-

pacity, war taxes are generally perceived to be a thing of the past. This article

corrects the picture by presenting new, global data on war taxes, 68 in total,

introduced between 1960 and 2020. Far from having been abandoned, war

taxes have remained a crucial war-time f‌iscal instrument, leaving long-term

imprints on tax systems across the contemporary world. Serving the twin

imperatives of revenue maximisation and generation of taxpayer consent, I

argue that the use of war taxes is conditioned by the relative intensity and the

perceived legitimacy of a war, be it civil or inter-state. The proposed logic

aligns with case evidence, further supported by macro-quantitative analysis.

The results speak to the large literature on war and state-building, challenge

the standard disintegrative view of civil wars, and provide new empirical

insights into the political economy of conf‌lict-affected countries.

Keywords

state-building, political economy, civil war, taxation, armed conf‌lict

1

University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Jakob Frizell, University of Bremen, SOCIUM, Mary-Sommerville-Straße 7, Unicom Building,

Bremen 28359, Germany.

Email: jfrizell@uni-bremen.de

Data Availability Statement included at the end of the article

Exceptional taxes to pay for war were the seeds from which modern f‌iscal

states emerged. In the immediate, the choice to f‌inance wars and their as-

sociated costs with taxes has been lauded for placing popular checks on

belligerent governments (Smith, 1976 [1776], p. 926) and providing for a fair

sharing of war-time burdens (Keynes, 1940;Piketty, 2019, p. 518). Its dis-

appearance in the West is therefore deplored (Kreps, 2018); its apparent

absence in the rest of the world, merely aligning with the disintegrative nature

of contemporary conf‌licts (Herbst, 1990). Yet, as shown in this paper, war

taxes have in no way disappeared.

Indeed, newly collected data covering the totality of war-affected countries

between 1960 and 2020 indicate that war taxes –understood as distinct tax

instruments explicitly motivated by thecost of war or its direct consequences –

have continued to be a central mechanism for war-time revenue mobilisation

(Figure 1). But why and under what conditions do governments impose war

taxes?

Drawing on studies of Western war f‌inances and the political economy of

taxation, I will argue that war taxes have continued to answer to the twin war-

time imperatives of revenue generation and taxpayer consent. Accordingly,

they are introduced when (1) the stakes are so serious, and the resulting war

costs so high, that it necessitates a substantial increase in government re-

sources, and (2) when the war is deemed both necessary and legitimate by the

taxpayers. These basic conditions go a long way in explaining the prevalence

of war taxes in the contemporary world as a whole –as well as their relative

absence in the West.

Their pervasiveness, substantive revenue generation, and their often long-

term imprint on national tax systems –elaborated below –make war taxes

important to study in their own right. By adopting a comprehensive geo-

graphical perspective, the paper will further provide insights into the pro-

cesses that shape their emergence, and inversely the conditions that may

Figure 1. War taxes across the contemporary world.

1376 Comparative Political Studies 57(8)