Democracies in Action: A Foucaultian Perspective on British and French Tax Enforcement

Far from being a universal, abstract and ideological model, Democracy has to be understood as a multi-layered and complex set of relations, practices, networks and knowledge. Indeed, Michel Foucault’s concept of “gouvernementalité” provides a useful tool to understand the depth, pervasiveness and mundane nature of the contemporary exercise of power. On the basis of Foucault’s interpretation of modern power and politics, Democracy has to be seen as a network of rules, practices and bodies of knowledge. These rules and practices, which constitute the living everyday reality of Democracy are culturally determined, variable, evolving. The specificities as well as relative elasticity of democratic cultures are sharply visible in the relations between the tax administration and large corporations. Democracy can be seen in action in this field where rules are stretched to the best possible advantage and the deceptive tightly-knit texture of prescriptions reveals a loose net of imprecision, indeterminacy and subjectivity which can be used as the basis of negotiations between powerful economic actors and the State. French and British Democracies in action have developed contrasted frameworks and approaches to deal with these negotiations. Empirical research reveals that British tax enforcement has come to rely on a combination of detailed legal provisions with a cooperative and trust-based model. In contrast, the French Fisc administers a tax code where principles are preferred to specific rules, which in theory should provide the regulatory space for interpretive conversations to take place. However the hierarchical and authoritarian culture of the French enforcement model emphasises command and coercion rather than dialogue. Our theoretical framework, presented in Part I of this article, is based on the work of Michel Foucault on discipline, sovereignty and governmentality. Accordingly, we propose a contrastive study of one particular aspect of British and French democracies through the lens of a genealogy of modern power. In our view, an effective understanding of the specific features of Democracy is better achieved not through a theory of the state, but through an analysis of how regimes of governmental practices emerge, operate and are transformed. The particular regime of rules and practices we focus on is that of the regulation of corporate fiscal compliance, described and analyzed in Part II. It is a highly significant point of interaction between states and citizens but is too often viewed through the lens of purely juridical law and/or economics, implying that taxation is merely a technical task that can be successfully governed by sets of axiomatic principles with unquestionable objectivity and neutrality without much regard for its context. Our approach highlights a different reality. Securing revenue for the sovereign or the state has been at the heart of the historical transformation of political regimes. The relationship between the sovereign or the state and the taxpayer is a key issue in explaining the contemporary organization of the state for it is at the intersection between the three spheres of power identified by Foucault: Juridical Sovereignty, Discipline and Government. The analytics of government chosen here provide interesting results in terms of the mundane operation of Democracy and tax enforcement examined within their particular historical, societal and cultural context. It highlights their inter-dependence and the dynamic nature of their emergence, transformation and present operation.