Absolutism and Fiscal Transparency in Eighteenth-Century Spain

Abstract

Studies of the public management of taxation and finance matters have tended to focus on legislation and the political structure. There would nonetheless seem to be a glaring difference between state intentions and actual practice. Our objective here is to assess the gap between political rhetoric and actual policy enforcement. Looking at a specific tax hike in the second half of the eighteenth century in Spain, we examine the arguments used and facts hushed up to justify the change, investigate how the political regime might constrain these arguments and, finally, how the information given on the whole process was manipulated to woo over the taxpayers. We argue that legislation was by no means synonymous with actual enforcement of policies precisely because it had to be communicated to society.