The Power of Economists Within the State

Reviews / Votes

"Christensen has written an eminently readable and important addition to the literature on neoliberal reform. This book is at once a contribution to the discourse on comparative tax regimes and a corrective to other arguments about the political sway of economists."-John L. Campbell, Dartmouth College, co-author of The National Origins of Policy Ideas "Sometimes, economists seem almost irrelevant to policymaking. Other times, it is clear that they have enormous influence. In this outstanding book, Johan Christensen shows us how an unlikely factor-bureaucratic autonomy-accounts for the difference. All kinds of social scientists will want to read Christensen's deeply researched, rigorously argued explanation of what gives economics its power."-Elizabeth Popp Berman, University at Albany, SUNY, author of Creating the Market University "A finely tuned and deeply knowledgeable account of the influence of economists over public policy in four countries. Full of surprises, the work shows how history and path dependence challenge what we thought we knew about each of these countries. A page-turner on tax policy is surely an event to celebrate."-Mark Granovetter, Stanford University "One of the book's main strengths is to identify concrete channels for economists' policy influence. Christensen notably urges us to pay attention to economists' precise locations within the state and, specifically, to recruitment patterns and generational change in ministries of finance....By emphasizing the varying roles economists play in policy-making, and stressing the professional mechanisms which give them policy leverage, Christensen makes a valuable contribution to the fields of economic sociology and public policy."-Sarah Kolopp, Public Administration "Christensen provides what I hope is the start of a promising new line of inquiry into the study of contemporary tax policy. Amid the growing interest in taxation and fiscal sociology, he offers a way out of theoretical traps that grant too much explanatory power to one set of state actors over another while, planned or not, creating space for cultural variables (ideas, forms of knowledge) to understand taxation."-Randolph Hohle, American Journal of Sociology