What explains partisan taxation strategies in Latin America? Although the dynamics of government spending in Latin America has begun to receive considerable attention, the other side of the redistributive story, variation in tax collection and taxation strategies across the region, remains largely unexplored. We argue that the level of tax collections and the taxation strategies pursued by Latin America governments, can be understood with reference to the ideology of the government in power, and the domestic coalitions they must negotiate with it, in order to maintain electoral support. This dynamic is also affected by economic crises, which place pressure on the taxation strategies pursued by these governments. We exploit both cross-national individual-level level data to explore our argument.
