What is the value of global histories like this one? Most other academic disciplines, including the disciplines closest to sociology such as political science and history, have long abandoned the attempt to write encompassing histories of the world in favor of precise renderings of narrow events. Even most of sociology follows the advice to specialize. Given the explosion of data in our contemporary world, it seems hard enough to get even one small thing right – can anyone really get the history of the world right? Comparative historical sociology is perhaps the last holdout against academic specialization, the last space within academia where one can attempt projects of this nature, and it is good to ask ourselves periodically if the attempt is producing anything of value.

Michael Mann is one of the most talented practitioners of this kind of big think comparative historical sociology, so a close reading of his efforts should tell us something important about whether comparative historical sociology is itself worthwhile. I propose that for comparative historical sociology of this sort to be worthwhile, it should tell us more than we can learn from reading a series of separate in-depth examinations of particular episodes. It should allow us to reach new insight into historical events or identify important patterns that could not be seen by looking at a single event. As an example, Theda Skocpol's comparative analysis of revolutions demonstrated among many other things that close examination of single episodes is a method biased toward explanations that highlight agency, whereas comparative examination of multiple episodes can show that what seems like agency is in fact highly structured. Similarly, any good comparative analysis should be able to provide a different perspective than can be gleaned from reading a series of isolated in-depth studies of particular cases or events; if it does not, one would be well-advised to read a series of books by specialists instead, who will surely provide narratives with more nuance and attention to context.

This chapter therefore subjects parts of Mann's Volume 4 – specifically, his examination of neoliberalism and financialization – to this high bar: does his meta-analysis tell us something about these episodes that we could not have gleaned from the specialist literature? Does it cast the specialist literature in a new light, as Skocpol did?

Introduction

Governments have always used taxation to regulate their citizens' behavior, from the Babylonian divorce tax of 2350 B.C. (Burg, 2004) to the latest child tax credits. The regulatory tax receiving the most attention from scholars, activists, and policymakers these days is a tax on pollution. Ever since A.C. Pigou argued that some market exchanges produce externalities that are not captured in the exchange itself, pollution has been the classic example of a market externality, and recently a carbon tax has been proposed as an alternative to the more popular cap-and-trade method of controlling pollution. Cap and trade, critics argue, causes excessive price volatility, cannot adjust for swings in the business cycle, and too easily captured by special interests. Taxation, on the other hand, is more flexible and less bureaucratic. Environmental taxes seem to be a benefit for all: They would reduce the negative outcome of bad pollution; they would generate revenue that could be used to reduce other taxes (a “double dividend”), or to offset the regressivity of the tax; and they would contribute to energy independence. Although at the national level American policymakers seem more interested in cap-and-trade, interest in green taxes is intense in many countries, and several American states have adopted them.

But do green taxes work? Environmental taxes have been in place in several countries since the early 1990s, but the experience is mixed.

Everyone knows that taxation is important. Political scientists know that tax cuts are a major partisan battleground in the United States today, and that the rise of neoliberal ideology has propelled taxation onto the international policy agenda. Legal scholars know that the tax code has become the preferred vehicle for promoting an enormous variety of domestic policies – from social provisions to industrial policies to educational subsidies. Historians know that taxation has been a pivotal source of conflict and change from the American Revolution to the Reagan revolution, and that taxes have been central to the formation of civic identity across place and time. Sociologists know that nearly every issue with which they are concerned – the obligations of the individual to society; the powers and legitimacy of the state; the allocation of public and private resources; the rise of bureaucratic administration; the reproduction of class, race, and gender inequalities – runs through the issue of taxation.

There are good reasons why many scholars have recognized the importance of taxation. Taxes formalize our obligations to each other. They define the inequalities we accept and those that we collectively seek to redress.