Global tax justice: Who's involved?

This chapter deals with the question why international institutions of global tax governance will fail to produce legitimate decisions when non-state actors, including NGO’s, are not somehow involved in the decision-making processes of these institutions. It researches this question with the help of an analysis of the prescriptive legitimacy of international institutions in two competing models of global tax governance: the intergovernmental model of democratic states and the model of cosmopolitan pluralism. These models differ with regard to the relationship between the international institutions and the states (i.e. instrumental or no pre-eminence for one of both) and with regard to the role of non-state actors in the decision-making processes (whether or not there is such involvement). The normative right to rule of the institutions in both models is tested against their potential to establish truly democratic national taxing systems in the states that implement these decisions. The analysis in this chapter leads to the conclusion that the current institutional framework of the BEPS project of the OECD, but also the positions defended by Dietsch, Rixen and Dagan, cannot be regarded as a sufficiently legitimate form of global tax governance. The chapter subsequently makes clear why the only way to create a more democratic form of global tax governance is therefore to appreciate the ability of non-state actors to put external pressure on states. In this regard it sets out a roadmap for further research about this topic.