State Capacity

Se analiza la capacidad institucional del Ayuntamiento de Guadalajara, México, respecto a la implementación de la política de vivienda a través de su Instituto Municipal de la Vivienda (IMUVIG). En primer lugar, para poder definir las capacidades institucionales se revisó la literatura, encontrando que su análisis es complejo porque quienes las han definido o medido, no han llegado a un consenso y, en general, se enfocan a aspectos ajenos a las instituciones. Es por ello que se propone un análisis centrado en el neo institucionalismo, a través del enfoque de la lógica institucional. Para su medición se compararon documentos orgánicos y programáticos desde dicho enfoque, encontrándose que la lógica institucional que persigue la organización es de corte estado centrista, mientras que en lo programático es mercantilista. Esta contradicción nos llevó a concluir que la contradicción en la lógica institucional del IMUVIG, provoca que este carezca de capacidad institucional para implementar la política de vivienda, aun poseyendo capacidades técnicas, políticas y administrativas suficientes.

Why are some Southeast Asian states strong and others weak? This article addresses this question by mapping state capacity across the region on two dimensions—fiscal and legal-administrative—and then exploring alternative explanations. It argues that variation in state capacities relates to differences in regime type and industrial structure. The region's democracies have greater fiscal state capacity than authoritarian regimes, and economies dependent on capital inflows associated with complex exports have greater legal-administrative state capacity than those dependent on other types of capital inflows.

The broader subject of this study relates to the reasons why states emulate the military technologies and organizational structures one another. It focuses on large-scale emulation, those that encompasses the entire military system, instead of the mere adoption of weapons systems or punctual adjusts in the existing practices. In this sense, its main goal is to analyze and to explain the absence and the presence of a large-scale military reform in Russia after the post-Cold War period, with a special emphasis on what regards its level of external threat, state capacity, proven ineffectiveness and the large-scale emulation process that began after the Russo-Georgian War. In order to do so, this master thesis makes use of Neoclassical Realism as well as Historical Comparative Method and use of process tracing tool. It aims to answer the following question: why Russia set in motion its military reform in 2008? The hypothesis is that Russia has initiated it military reform in 2008 due to concomitant existence of: i) a high level of external threat (absence of strategic stability or in risk); ii) high level of state capacity (state capable of extracting and mobilizing resources) and; iii) presence of proven ineffectiveness (Russo-Georgian War). Finally, it argues that to equate the absence of a balanced distribution of material capacities in the international system, during the post-Cold War, to the lack of balancing by other states and, consequently, decreeing the end of the dynamics of the balance of power in unipolarity is only possible if one ignores the main dynamics of the balance of power, namely internal balancing. In sum, the dynamics of the balance of power did not cease in the post-Cold War period, especially if Russia's military reform is understood as an internal balancing strategy of large-scale military emulation aimed at balancing the United States in order to maintaining strategic stability.

Political accounts for the contemporary rise of populism in Western democracies generally agree that elite unresponsiveness and a wider crisis of political representation are to blame for the current political predicament. Mainstream political elites are caught between increasingly irreconcilable responsibilities bound by external constraints and institutions and growing popular demands for responsiveness. These accounts, however, fail to explain what underlying processes and structures are constraining elite responsiveness. In this paper, I give a political economy explanation, which links elite unresponsiveness with the weakening problem-solving capacity of Western democracies to deliver to their citizens in the face of increasing global economic integration, the power of financial markets and neoliberal hegemony. Moreover, I argue that the success of populist actors lies precisely in attempting to overcome these structural constraints by employing state power to address the challenges posed by global economic processes and the imbalances they create to democracy and national sovereignty.

Institutions matter! Douglass North argued in 1991. But specifically what institutions mattered the most, and towards what outcomes has been source of contention till date.  This essay argues that Political Capacity and Adaptive Capacity is interdependent and mutually reinforcing with public trust and governance. This essay contributes to the burgeoning literature on ‘Capacity’ in New Institutional Economics with interdisciplinary learning from Political Science, Sociology and Economics, amongst others.  First, this essay will adopt the Research Synthesis methodology to synthesise (with an eye for similarities, differences and interesting aspects) literature on ‘Capacity’, which hitherto includes sub-categories of state, administrative, policy and political capacity. Next, using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework as reference, it will focus on Political Capacity (political effectiveness) and its related concepts of legitimacy and capability, discuss it as a feature of the Government (actor) and its function as a ‘relational’ glue with the citizens/electorate (actor) in the action situation (interaction).  This strong ‘relational’ glue posits Political Capacity and Trust (outcome) in interdependence (i.e. Trust between Government and citizens enables Political Capacity [effectiveness] and more Political Capacity increases Trust in mutual reinforcement) leading to better Governance (outcome), assuming ceteris paribus.  While there might be little empirical data on Political Capacity’s direct impact on Public Trust (less a paper on Political Institutions and Generalised Trust) and Governance (less the Worldwide Governance Indicators); proxies will be used from existing discourses on Power without Force, Quality of Government Indicators, Relative Political Capacity Index and its impact on economy for discussion. Lastly, it will explore the concept of ‘Adaptive Capacity’, (could be interpreted as Political Capacity put to the test of time with an exogenous shock) using the Singapore case study with reference to its adoption of a new Public Administration and Management (PAM) paradigm of Complexity Thinking/New Synthesis, which focuses on emergence and resilience (manifestation of adaptive capacity), amongst others.

The concept of infrastructural power is arguably one of the most useful in the social sciences. It has helped both to illuminate the extraordinary capacity, reach, and impact of the modern state vis-a-vis its pre-industrial predecessor, and to cast light on why some modern states appear more able than others to execute their decisions and pursue their ambitions. Although sometimes mischaracterized as a ‘weak’ state, the capacity of the state centered on Washington to penetrate social space and implement its decisions, both at home and abroad, has long been recognized. But under what conditions might its infrastructural power diminish? Arguably, US economic power is now stronger than ever, ostensibly bolstered by being home to the world’s most globalized and most profitable companies. However, while globalized production has strengthened US corporations – especially those rich in intel- lectual property – its contradictory consequences for the state’s infrastructural power deserve close examination. This paper takes a first step in that direc- tion by appraising the extent to which the state’s domestic capacities have been weakened by Washington’s internationalization of intellectual property rights. It also offers a reconceptualization of US power.

Este capítulo visa analisar as principais condições que permitiram o desenvolvimento
de programas nacionais de transferência de renda no âmbito dos sistemas de proteção
social de Brasil, Argentina e África do Sul. Os dois eixos centrais de análise são as
condições político-institucionais para o surgimento e o desenvolvimento desses
programas na agenda de políticas, bem como suas articulações com outras políticas
sociais – tais como as de assistência social, educação, saúde e geração de emprego e
renda. As principais questões orientadoras do estudo foram: quais são as principais
dimensões institucionais que organizam os programas de transferência de renda em
cada um desses três países; e como distintas capacidades estatais e escolhas políticas
e de políticas públicas organizaram esses arranjos?

The present article investigates the association between bureaucracy and democracy in an ideological state. Theoretically, this article underlines the views of Francis Fukuyama in his book Political Order and Political Decay. However, rather than dwelling on the details of Fukuyama’s theory, what matters is the interpretation of his books in the Iranian intellectual community. This interpretation is embodied in the paper Reformism based on modifying the efficiency of the state by Mohammad Fazeli. Therefore, I begin by delving into the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy from Fukuyama’s perspective. By doing so, I will make brief references to the ideas that Iranian academics have borrowed from Fukuyama’s development theory. In the following, I briefly compare Fukuyama’s End of History in tandem with his development theory. I then concentrate on what an ideological state means and expound on the flaws in Fukuyama’s Iranian interpretations. In this way, rather than seeking to critique the views of Iranian thinkers, I would highlight points that have been overlooked in the practical interpretation and application of Fukuyama’s views. For this reason, rather than focusing on the positive aspects of Iranian descriptions of Fukuyama’s perspective, this discussion relies on the peripheral details specific to Iran (and countries with ideological states). These are details that revolve around ideology in which their consideration is of utmost importance for any form of policy-making.
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This article appeared in the following journal:
Khalilian, Mohammad. 2021. “Democracy and Bureaucracy in an Ideological State: The Problem of State Capacity in Iran.” The 3rd National Symposium of Social Sciences Students’ Studies. Tehran. 351- 363.

Why do communities with larger shares of ethnic and racial minorities have worse public outcomes such as service provision? Many studies emphasize the role of diversity and other demographic variables, but the question of causality remains underexplored. We contribute to this debate by tracing the roots of contemporary racial demography and public goods provision to the uneven historical expansion of the state in Brazil. We show more remote municipalities with lower levels of state capacity in the past were more frequently selected by escaped slaves to serve as permanent settlements. Consequently, such municipalities have worse public services and larger shares of Afro-descendants today. These results indicate pervasive endogeneity of ethnic demography and public outcomes, which are both influenced by state development. Failure to account for this and other context-dependent historical confounders raises concerns over the validity of previous findings regarding the social costs and ...

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have spread rapidly around the world since the 1990s. In the Americas, the proliferation of trade agreements with countries from within and beyond the region have resulted in a ‘spaghetti bowl’ of overlapping rules and regulations, some of which address behind-the-border issues such as investment, competition, labor and environmental standards. Has the increasing number of overlapping agreements helped attract foreign direct investment (FDI) into the region, thus facilitating integration in the global economy?  Earlier research has linked trade agreements to increased foreign investment inflows. We argue, instead, that the effects of PTAs on FDI depend on the domestic institutional capacities of member countries. Domestic institutions condition the benefits and effectiveness of PTAs by influencing governments’ external credibility as well as their ability to implement the agreements they sign. Our empirical findings show that weak state capacity exacerbates the ‘spaghetti bowl’ effects of multiple, overlapping agreements. Moreover, it is not the quantity but the quality, and more specifically, the depth of trade agreements that matters for attracting FDI.

No século XXI se observa que a administração de toda infraestrutura social depende, em graus
variados, de tecnologia. Contudo, em que pese o ciberespaço tenha criado uma rede informacional prática e
benéfica para a sociedade mundial não houve uma superação da lógica westfaliana deste novo domínio, afinal as
estruturas físicas do mesmo perpassam territórios soberanos e consequentemente se sujeitam a relações de
competição interestatal que regem o mundo. Assim, o ciberespaço se torna uma possibilidade a mais para a luta
em torno de poder e a busca pela mobilidade de status quo internacional. Nesse sentido a questão do poder
cibernético emerge, de forma a se perguntar como um país pode obter e acumular tal tipo de poder. Fato que nos
leva a presente pesquisa, a qual reconhecendo a invisibilidade social que muitas vezes atingem o âmbito da
dinâmica das questões cibernéticas busca trazer percepções conceituais sobre o poder cibernético, pautadas
principalmente em Klimburg (2011) e Rowland, Rice e Shenoi (2014), a fim de apontar uma percepção mais
profunda acerca desse tipo de poder para que o Brasil possa prosseguir no desenvolvimento de suas doutrinas
tornando-se um ator com relevante poder cibernético no cenário internacional.

This paper will attempt to show that in order for Rwanda to build its state capacity and democratic rule, efforts should be made to improve and strengthen its security apparatus. Rwanda represents a ‘hegemonic electoral authoritarian’ system characterized by violence, insecurity, discrimination and extremism till this day. Since 2008, the institutions put in place have created a stronger state; ensuring to a certain degree the provision of democracy. Reaching a consensus in terms of unifying and reconciling its people is of essential priority to resolve, but corruption is still strong. With ethnicity being the remaining concern and threatening its people-strengthening its security measures seems to be the only route towards enabling a bottom up state capacity and democratic rule.

In institutionalist perspective, state capacity is increasingly recognized as a necessary, but insufficient requirement for development. Development agencies, such as multilateral development banks, also aim at promoting development. However, there are virtually no studies on the relation between multilateral development banks and state capacity. The analysis concerns the relations between the Inter-
American Development Bank’s
programs of State Modernization and the constituent basic elements of state capacity (tax collection capacity and qualified bureaucratic-administrative staff) of Brazil and Argentina in a time when everyone believed it was necessary to reform the state - the rise of neoliberal ideas in Latin America - specifically between the years 1990 and 2002. Methodologically, this dissertation is structured by a comparative strategy around the IDB-Brazil and IDB-Argentina relations. Path dependency, concern for national autonomy and convergence (self-conviction) around the principles underlying the programs are factors that affect the quantity and quality of the partnerships between banks and borrowers and hence the potential for transformation of state capacity. In this sense, the studied cases suggest that the role of multilateral development banks is limited and, even when the borrower is extremely committed to the reforms, it does not necessarily mean increased state capacity. These programs have the potential to magnify the results, but this may be positively or negatively.

RESUMO Introdução: Este artigo trata da construção de capacidades estatais enquanto condição necessária (mas não suficiente) ao processo de produção de políticas públicas. O interesse maior recai sobre o fracasso das políticas industriais conduzidas durante os governos do Partido dos Trabalhadores. A questão que norteia o trabalho é: por que esses programas de política industrial falharam? Materiais e Métodos: Mobilizamos uma abordagem comparativa (entre arranjos institucionais de política pública) que envolveu políticas industriais e políticas sociais do período 2004-2014. A técnica escolhida, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), permite verificar padrões associativos entre condições e resultados, em desenhos de pesquisa envolvendo poucos casos, através da comparação sistemática entre eles. Resultados: Verificamos que níveis distintos de capacidades gerados pelos arranjos das políticas industriais e sociais estão associados aos resultados e às práticas inovadoras nas respectivas políticas. Os níveis de capacidades (entendidos como condições causais) estão de fato associados às variáveis de resultado (entendidas como entrega de produto e inovação). Discussão: A análise empreendida corrobora a interpretação bastante difundida de que o êxito na produção de políticas públicas em contextos democráticos depende, em boa medida, do processo de construção de capacidades.

This paper seeks to synthesize theories from the comparative politics and international relations literature about what leads to state building and the growth of state capacity. It draws upon these theories to develop a range of empirical propositions and test them using the State Capacity Dataset (Hanson and Sigman 2013). The objective is for these findings to help determine the relative importance of different explanatory factors and facilitate the process of bringing them together into a holistic framework.

When it comes to social welfare, we do not have clear understanding of whether it is more important to have democracy or a capable state. Specifically, most studies do not consider the possibility that effects of democracy are conditioned or obscured by differences in the capabilities of states to deliver services effectively.  This article contends that better developmental outcomes can result from either democracy or state capacity, but the combination of high levels of both democracy and state capacity is not synergistic.  Empirical evidence from a time-series-cross-sectional dataset covering up to 153 countries during the 1965-2010 time period supports the conclusion that these factors partially substitute for each other with respect to improving outcomes in school enrollment and infant mortality.  These findings provide a more optimistic answer to the query of Ross (2006) as to whether democracy is good for the poor.  Once accounting for state capacity, we find that democracy leads to better development outcomes.

Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro may best be classified as a failing state. This has myriad negative implications for both the country and the region. This chapter begins by defining and differentiating levels of stateness. It then evaluates Venezuelan security capacity across four different dimensions – external threats, internal threats, human security, and the rule of law and courts – to provide evidence of the state’s increasing inability to control its borders, guarantee its citizens’ safety, or even exercise a monopoly on the use of force within its territory. The third section argues that the decline in Venezuelan state security capabilities owes to the government's voluntarily abdication of security functions to non-state actors. Following this, it describes the primary threats to public security and national defense that extreme state weakness creates, focusing on the implications for domestic and regional security and the challenges this poses to re-democratization.

Although disasters are apolitical, they occur in a political space. The response by different actors in post disaster situation looks overwhelmingly humanitarian but these actors never leave a chance to turn disaster into a political capital. When non-state actors are also actively involved in the humanitarian response in post disaster situation the situation becomes more complex. This research was based on Khokana village of Lalitpur in Central Nepal after the devastating earthquake of April 2015. The aims of this research were to analyze the roles of state and non-state actors. Interview method of qualitative inquiry was used as a data collection tool along with observations. The findings were both state and non state actors were unable to fulfill their ideal roles and were somehow criticized by the locals. The negative attributes towards the government and state were oversupplied by the media resulting in erosion of post-disaster legitimacy of the state at local level.

It tends to be a temptation for the intellect, either guided by a search for argument economy or the result of Structuralism's influence vestiges, to reduce social phenomena complexity to binary options. The globalization process, its consequences and implications, did not escape this temptation. In fact, under the liberalization / protectionism pair, the density involved in the transnationalization process was made invisible. And so were its variants and resistances. In this sense, the present research seeks to account for as well as to depict the complexity of this relationship, based on the Precios Cuidados policy analysis in Argentina and its (voluntary) acceptance by local retailers. Our main argument is that it implied a window of opportunity -within a framework of more fluid negotiations with government officials- for global commerce flow interests' management. We will attempt to show that by breaking with certain vestiges of "binary reasoning," it begins to...

La “cuestión del cuidado” es un tema de extrema relevancia para la
Economía Feminista, ya que permite desentrañar elementos centrales en
los mecanismos de reproducción de la desigualdad socioeconómica y de
género. Sin embargo, las aspiraciones para reducir estas desigualdadesmuchas veces se enfrentan con una brecha significativa entre los
avances en la discusión conceptual y el diseño e implementación de
políticas públicas transformadoras. Consideramos que estas brechas
obedecen a la disputa política que implican las propuestas feministas,
a las asimetrías de poder para llevarlas adelante, pero también a los
propios desafíos que conllevan las estructuras burocráticas públicas.
Este trabajo pone el foco de análisis sobre los desafíos de coordinación
interinstitucional de las agencias del Estado para abordar políticas de
cuidado infantil, puesto que el análisis de la capacidad de las agencias
estatales de trabajar de manera coordinada nos permite comprender la
factibilidad de implementar políticas integrales de cuidado.

Habiendo el Estado Nacional retomado la prestación del servicio de agua potable y saneamiento del Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, este artículo se interroga por: a) la creación y el desempeño de la nueva empresa estatal, Agua y Saneamientos Argentinos S.A -AySA- (resultados económico-financieros, nivel de cobertura alcanzado, inversiones, etc.) y b) las características y funcionamiento del diseño regulatorio dispuesto (marco regulatorio, estructura tarifaria, ente de control, etc.). Desde la perspectiva de la sociología política, el accionar estatal en materia regulatoria es abordado a partir de la noción de capacidades estatales, atendiendo tanto su dimensión administrativa como relacional. Se analizan también continuidades y rupturas que, en términos de gestión y regulación del servicio, se presentan respecto del período concesionado a Aguas Argentinas S.A. -mayo 1993/marzo 2006-. Puntualmente se considera cómo la red de política establecida entorno al servicio desde los años noventa, influyó en la manera en que se efectuó su pasaje a la órbita estatal.

Resumen: el desarrollo de capacidades en el sector público resulta de un equilibrio pendular entre las características que impone el contexto político institucional de cada país y las estrategias que llevan adelante las agencias estatales. mostramos que, dentro del sector público, coexisten ciclos positivos y negativos de desarrollo de capacidad. los primeros privilegian la implementación de políticas a través de las agencias estatales con mayor capacidad organizacional, fiscal y humana, mientras que los segundos lo hacen en agencias sin capacidades. examinamos cuatro agencias en la Argentina que implementan políticas de desarrollo productivo y encontramos que, debido a la volatilidad del contexto político institucional reinante, tienden a predominar ciclos negativos a pesar de la existen-cia de intentos positivos de construcción por parte de agencias específicas. Palabras clave: capacidad estatal, política pública, burocracia, toma de decisiones. Abstract: public sector capabilities result from an equilibrium between the political and institutional context and the strategies of the different public agencies. We have found the existence of both positive and negative cycles of capacity building within the state. positive cycles aim to implement policies through agencies that have certain organizational, fiscal and human capabilities, while negative ones fail to do so. We examine four public agencies that implement productive development policies in Argentina and we find that, mainly because of the political institutional contextual logic, negative cycles tend to prevail despite the existence of some efforts to trigger positive ones.

State capacity is a core concept in political science research, and it is widely recognized that state institutions exert considerable influence on outcomes such as economic development, civil conflict, democratic consolidation, and international security. Yet, researchers across these fields of inquiry face common problems involved in conceptualizing and measuring state capacity. This article examines these conceptual issues, identifies three common dimensions of state capacity, and uses Bayesian latent variable analysis to assess the extent to which these dimensions are discernible in available indicators of state capacity.  We use the resulting State Capacity Dataset to provide new insight into existing theories of the influence of state capacity on development and the success of World Bank projects. It is hoped that this project will provide effective guidance and tools to researchers studying the causes and consequences of state capacity.

In what types of institutional environments are international development projects most likely to succeed? Previous research suggests alternatively that liberal economic policies, democratic political institutions, and institutions characterized by " good governance " are all of primary importance. A serious drawback of this work is that measures of institutional quality tend to have poor coverage and conceptual fuzziness. This paper uses a new measure of state capacity with continuous coverage from 1960-2010 to evaluate the importance of different types of institutions on the success of over 9000 World Bank projects. The results suggest that development projects are most likely to succeed where state capacity is relatively high, regardless of regime type or Freedom House scores. Successful World Bank projects can, in turn, have a positive impact on State Capacity suggesting the possibility of a virtuous circle of development projects and state capacity building. Prepared for presentation at the 2016 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association , Chicago, Illinois.

Suele ser una tentación del intelecto, ya sea por una búsqueda de economía argumental o fruto de un vestigio de la influencia del Estructuralismo, reducir la complejidad de lo social a opciones binarias. El proceso de globalización, sus consecuencias e implicancias, no escapó esta tentación que, bajo el par liberalización/proteccionismo, invisibilizó la densidad implicada en los procesos de transnacionalización. Sus variantes y resistencias. En esta línea, el presente trabajo busca dar cuenta y reconstruir la complejidad de este entramado de relaciones, a partir del análisis del programa de Precios Cuidados y la aceptación (voluntaria) por parte del empresariado local, a partir de argumentar que el mismo constituyó una ventana de oportunidad para la gestión-en el marco de negociaciones más fluidas con el gobierno-de intereses sectoriales ligados al flujo de comercio global. Intentaremos demostrar que sólo a condición de romper con ciertos vestigios de la "razón binaria", comienza a hacerse inteligible que, en los pliegues mismos de los diseños de ciertas políticas de protección de mercado, puede radicar la condición que alimenta el flujo de comercio global. Sólo entonces puede entenderse en toda su complejidad la relación entre las agencias estatales con su otredad: las estructuras del mercado.

This article aims to discuss the capacities of the Brazilian State, particularly the Federal Executive Branch, to produce efficient infrastructure policies that deliver the expected benefits and also obtain support (or consent) from impacted social groups. We argue that the professionalization and technical knowledge of the federal government's public bureaucracy are constrained by low levels of autonomy and intragovernmental cohesion. Likewise, the relationship between the federal bureaucracy and local civil society, subnational governments and accountability agencies are precarious. This situation represents a barrier to the efficiency and legitimacy of state action in the sector. Capacidades estatais para políticas de infraestrutura no Brasil contemporâneo O texto tem como objetivo discutir as capacidades do Estado brasileiro, notadamente do Poder Executivo Federal, para produzir políticas de infraestrutura eficientes que entreguem os benefícios esperados e obtenham o apoio (ou o consentimento) dos grupos sociais impactados. Argumenta-se que a profissionalização e a qualificação técnica existentes na burocracia pública do governo federal são constrangidas pela baixa autonomia e coesão intragover-namental. Igualmente, as relações da burocracia com a sociedade local, os representantes dos entes federativos e as agências de controle são precárias. Tal situação constitui-se em barreira para a eficiência e legitimidade da ação estatal no setor. Palavras-chave: capacidades estatais; burocracia; infraestrutura; políticas públicas. Capacidades estatales para políticas de infraestructura en Brasil contemporáneo El objetivo del artículo es discutir las capacidades del Estado brasileño, en particular el Poder Ejecutivo Federal, para producir políticas de infraestructura eficientes que suministren los beneficios esperados y obtengan soporte (o consentimiento) de grupos sociales impactados. Se argumenta que el profesionalismo y la cualificación técnica en la burocracia pública del gobierno federal están limitados por la baja autonomía y la cohesión gubernamental. De la misma forma, las relaciones de la burocracia y la sociedad local, los representantes de las entidades federativas y las agencias de control son precarias. Esta situación constituye una barrera a la eficiencia y legitimidad de la acción estatal en el sector.

In this article is revealed how the Belgian inheritance tax system was used as a functional political instrument, throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. It was a tool, offering a broad range of unifying and disintegrating processes, which shaped a state identity. The emphasis lays on the many changes of the political power. This of course marked deeply the formation of the death duty legislation. Time after time, different political elites and majorities voted for changes in the existing system, using both continuous and discontinuous argumentations (the article mainly focuses on the parlementary motivations). The policy making was limited by the state itself, and by the ruling political elite (hence the use of the concept ‘state capacity’). The state merged technicity and prestige and employed the inheritance taxes to cling the local dignitaries and the local level to the administration. The Belgian tax culture – only examined in restricted sense, proceeding from the state’s and tax administration’s view – definitely was a manifestation of state identity. The Belgian tax morale – a concept comprehending fraud and anti-fiscality or the friction between the tax-paying citizen and the fiscal administration – was being modelled as well by the state and the fiscal administration, through the conscious and implicit decisions it made.