Political Parties at War: A Study of American War Finance, 1789–2010

Abstract

four anonymous reviewers and the editors of the APSR, and the participants in the Research Program in International Security seminar at Princeton University and in the International Relations seminars at both UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State for useful feedback. All mistakes or omissions remain our own. 1 Schumpeter said states would be required to go "begging to the estates," taxing citizens to generate war revenues.

Economic Inequality, War Finance and the Pursuit of Tax Fairness

“…Focusing on domestic preferences, Gustavo Flores-Macias and Sarah Kreps (2013) argue that partisanship is a crucial factor in the US' choice of war taxation. Kreps (2018) further points out that political leaders will favour the war finance strategy that best mirrors anticipated public attitudes.…”

“…Taxation used to be one of the United States' main war finance strategies in World War I, World War II and the Korean War (Kriner, Lechase & Cappella, 2015, p. 2;Zielinski, 2016). The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, have been funded entirely by domestic and foreign debt (Bank, Stark & Thorndike, 2008;Flores-Macias and Kreps, 2013;Zielinski, 2016). Also, since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has engineered the 'largest tax cuts' since the end of the Cold War while seeking a 'historic' increase in military spending.…”

Self-interest, partisanship, and the conditional influence of taxation on support for war in the USA

“…More importantly, these works argue that wartime borrowing is politically advantageous relative to war taxation. 6 Repayment of war debt takes place after the leader who initiated the war has stepped down and the war has ended, reducing the political costs for the current leader and the war (Flores-Macías and Kreps, 2013: 836). However, this simplification obscures the various forms that taxation instruments can take.…”

“… 2. It should also be noted that, through the Vietnam War, war taxes were raised to wage every war fought by the USA except the Northwest Indian Wars, the War of Texas Independence, and the Mexican–American War (Flores-Macías and Kreps, 2013: 835). …”

“…Past research has also documented a significant difference in partisan elites’ willingness to support war taxes. Flores-Macías and Kreps (2013) have shown that, while Republicans championed the use of war taxes in the nineteenth century, for most of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Democrats have been much more willing to consider war taxes than Republicans.…”