Stabilization processes of the Twenties have been described as distributional struggles. How did it play in the legislative arena ? In France, the leftist coalition elected in 1924 defended a platform of budget deficit reduction through capital levies and progressive income taxes. Two years later, part of its representatives voted center-right PM Poincaré's fiscal stabilization program, which led to cutting by half general income tax rates and to doubling turnover tax rates. Using a spatial model of legislative roll call votes to analyze a sample of key votes in the Chamber of Representatives on tax legislation, I try to disentangle the effects of economic interests and political affiliation in the shift of legislators from a left to a center-right coalition. Representatives that switched from the first coalition to the second represented interests that were bound to be less burdened by the tax increases: big industry and agriculture.
