Rebuilding Fiscal Democracy

  The purpose of this book is to reaffirm the significance of the link between taxation and public spending as essential to the very existence of the social contract and to the system of rights and duties on which social cooperation in a democracy is based. Drawing on ideas from economics, political science, and philosophy, the book advances the fundamental principle of fiscal democracy within a society governed by norms of reciprocity and cooperation. By examining the current economic and political order, where the public sector is deployed to preserve property values and sustain the capitalist economy, the narrative of neoliberalism is challenged through the reinstatement of fiscal democracy as a means of fulfilling the social contract. Using a novel argument in support of Rawls’s property-owning democracy, this book presents a framework for a democratic welfare state that is both just and universal. It will be of interest to students and researchers in political economy, fiscal policy, and welfare economics.   Paolo Liberati is Professor of Public Finance at the the University Roma Tre. Massimo Paradiso is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Bari.