*** Apologies for cross-posting***

Dear colleagues,

We invite abstracts for a panel on Taxation and the current moment in
International Political Economy for BISA 2026 (Brighton, 03-05 June 2026).

Taxation sits at the core of political relations of the state. Taxation
concerns not only the relationship between the state and the market, but
also between capital and labour, and between the global North and the
global South. Over the years, taxation has been studied with varying
patterns of attention in IPE. The way in which taxation was studied in
IPE reveals something both about the state of IPE as a discipline and
about broader political questions of the time: while the ‘corporate
escape’ studies of the 1960s and 70s were informed by the co-evolution
of IPE with studies of international business, the 1990s focus on tax
competition mirrored academic and policy debates about the impacts and
potential downsides of economic liberalisation. The recent surge of
interest in international tax policy in IPE, in turn, emerged in
parallel to the (re)politicization of tax policy after the 2007-2009
Global Financial Crisis amid “gridlocked” global governance and
polycentric forms of governing the global economy. In this panel, we
take up the idea of taxation as being reflective of relationships
between political and economic subjects and transfer it to the realm of
international economic relations. What can we learn about current
developments in international political economy (both as an area of
study and as a discipline) by taking taxation as a starting point? What
can the study of taxation tell us about broader economic developments?

We invite contributions that study current developments in the global
economy from the perspective of taxation. We want to push authors to
move from understanding (international) taxation as ‘a case’ to using
taxation as a heuristic for understanding current developments in IPE.

Questions could be (but are not limited to):

• What can a study of taxation, both at the national and the
  international level, tell us about ‘the state of the state’ after
  almost 50 years of economic globalisation?
• How do the state-market relationships instituted by digital services
  taxes compare with those created by longer-standing forms of taxation?
• What role does taxation play in enabling or constraining business
  power in today’s playformized and datafied capitalism, also in
  relation to longer-standing regulatory and state-building functions
  of taxation?
• How can a focus on taxation help us overcome omissions and ‘blind
  spots’ that current debates in IPE have neglected?

Please send your abstract to katharina.kuhn@tu-darmstadt.de
mailto:katharina.kuhn@tu-darmstadt.deor matti.v.ylonen@helsinki.fi
mailto:matti.v.ylonen@helsinki.fiby Sunday, 26 October 2025.

Best,

Katharina

--
Dr. Katharina Kuhn
Koordination Interdisziplinäre Studienschwerpunkte (ISP) Sustainable Futures
Perspektive Technik und Politik (TuP)

S3 12|517 (Residenzschloss 1)

Postanschrift:
Residenzschloss 1 (S3|13)
64283 Darmstadt

*** Apologies for cross-posting ***

Dear colleagues,

We invite abstracts for a panel on Taxation and the current moment in
International Political Economy for BISA 2026 (Brighton, 03-05 June 2026).

Taxation sits at the core of political relations of the state. Taxation
concerns not only the relationship between the state and the market, but
also between capital and labour, and between the global North and the
global South. Over the years, taxation has been studied with varying
patterns of attention in IPE. The way in which taxation was studied in
IPE reveals something both about the state of IPE as a discipline and
about broader political questions of the time: while the ‘corporate
escape’ studies of the 1960s and 70s were informed by the co-evolution
of IPE with studies of international business, the 1990s focus on tax
competition mirrored academic and policy debates about the impacts and
potential downsides of economic liberalisation. The recent surge of
interest in international tax policy in IPE, in turn, emerged in
parallel to the (re)politicization of tax policy after the 2007-2009
Global Financial Crisis amid “gridlocked” global governance and
polycentric forms of governing the global economy. In this panel, we
take up the idea of taxation as being reflective of relationships
between political and economic subjects and transfer it to the realm of
international economic relations. What can we learn about current
developments in international political economy (both as an area of
study and as a discipline) by taking taxation as a starting point? What
can the study of taxation tell us about broader economic developments?

We invite contributions that study current developments in the global
economy from the perspective of taxation. We want to push authors to
move from understanding (international) taxation as ‘a case’ to using
taxation as a heuristic for understanding current developments in IPE.

Questions could be (but are not limited to):

• What can a study of taxation, both at the national and the
  international level, tell us about ‘the state of the state’ after
  almost 50 years of economic globalisation?
• How do the state-market relationships instituted by digital services
  taxes compare with those created by longer-standing forms of taxation?
• What role does taxation play in enabling or constraining business
  power in today’s playformized and datafied capitalism, also in
  relation to longer-standing regulatory and state-building functions
  of taxation?
• How can a focus on taxation help us overcome omissions and ‘blind
  spots’ that current debates in IPE have neglected?

Please send your abstract of up to 250 words to
katharina.kuhn@tu-darmstadt.de mailto:katharina.kuhn@tu-darmstadt.deor
matti.v.ylonen@helsinki.fi mailto:matti.v.ylonen@helsinki.fiby
Sunday, 26 October 2025.

Best wishes,

Katharina

--
Dr. Katharina Kuhn
Koordination Interdisziplinäre Studienschwerpunkte (ISP) Sustainable Futures
Perspektive Technik und Politik (TuP)

S3 12|517 (Residenzschloss 1)

Postanschrift:
Residenzschloss 1 (S3|13)
64283 Darmstadt