Bio

Dr. Webb teaches courses on the international political economy and political research.

Publications

"The Role of the OECD in the Orchestration of Global Knowledge Networks", with Tony Porter as Co-author.  In Rianne Mahon and Stephen McBride, eds., The OECD and Transnational Governance (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008).

"Transnational Actors and Global Social Welfare Policy: The Limits of Private Authority", with the assistance of Emily Sinclair.  In Louis W. Pauly and William D. Coleman, eds., Global Ordering: Institutions and Autonomy in a Changing World (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008).

"Transnational Women’s Groups and Social Policy Activists around the UN and the EU", in Diana Brydon and William D. Coleman, eds., Renegotiating Community: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Global Contexts(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008).

"International Competition in Corporate Taxation", Economic Policy, No. 45 (January 2006), pp. 53-201, with Kenneth Stewart as co-author.

"Multinational Corporations in Global Governance: Shaping International Corporate Taxation", in Christopher May, ed., Global Corporate Power: (Re)integrating Companies into IPE, International Political Economy Yearbook Volume 15, (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2006).

"The Group of Seven and Global Macroeconomic Governance", in Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R.D. Underhill, eds., Political Economy and the Changing Global Order, 3rd edition, (Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press, 2005).

"Defining the boundaries of legitimate state practice: norms, transnational actors and the OECD's project on harmful tax competition", Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 11, No. 4 (October 2004), pp. 787-827.

The Political Economy of Policy Coordination: International Adjustment Since 1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995).

Abstracts:

"The Role of the OECD in the Orchestration of Global Knowledge Networks", with Tony Porter as Co-author.  In Rianne Mahon and Stephen McBride, eds., The OECD and Transnational Governance (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008).

• Abstract:  The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has not received nearly the scholarly attention one might expect given its size and budget. It presents a puzzle since states give it considerable support and yet many of the problems it addresses, like education policy, do not involve the interdependence that characterizes most issues involving collaboration among states, and its relative lack of measurable knowledge outputs make it unlikely that state support is due to rational cost-benefit calculations. The paper provides a constructivist analysis of the OECD, arguing that the organization’s identity-enhancing role and the way that it produces social facts that are taken for granted and, due to their links to identity, self-evidently of value, are more important than rational calculation in explaining the OECD’s existence and effects. These arguments are assessed through an examination of two areas in which it has been active: peer review and corporate governance.

"Transnational Actors and Global Social Welfare Policy: The Limits of Private Authority", with the assistance of Emily Sinclair.  In Louis W. Pauly and William D. Coleman, eds., Global Ordering: Institutions and Autonomy in a Changing World (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008).

• Abstract: currently unavailable

"Transnational Women’s Groups and Social Policy Activists around the UN and the EU", in Diana Brydon and William D. Coleman, eds., Renegotiating Community: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Global Contexts(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008).

• Abstract: currently unavailable

"International Competition in Corporate Taxation", Economic Policy, No. 45 (January 2006), pp. 53-201, with Kenneth Stewart as co-author.

• Abstract: Despite numerous studies, controversy remains about the impact of economic globalization on corporate taxation. Theoretical models of tax competition generate different predictions about trends in the level of tax burdens and the degree of convergence in tax burdens across countries. In this paper we present a purely empirical analysis of the evolution of tax burdens across OECD countries since the 1950s. Issues of measurement and methodology have contributed to the inconclusive character of studies to date, so we begin with an assessment of alternative measures of the burden. Problems with some commonly used measures of the tax burden are considered and the most plausible measures identified. Descriptive analysis of these time series reveals no evidence of a competitive "race to the bottom" in corporate taxation and little evidence of even a harmonization of the tax burden. Many inferential studies of corporate taxation base their conclusions on cross-sectional analysis; in contrast, we adopt an explicitly time-series method to what are essentially time-series questions. Cointegration methodology originally developed to study issues of convergence of living standards is applied, and fails to reveal evidence of convergence of tax burdens for the OECD and Europe as a whole. It does however indicate that there has been some harmonization within smaller groups of countries, mainly in northern Europe. Important questions remain about the effectiveness and impact of corporate taxation in an increasingly open and integrated global economy, but we find little evidence to support fears that the overall burden of taxation is being lifted from corporations.

"Multinational Corporations in Global Governance: Shaping International Corporate Taxation", in Christopher May, ed., Global Corporate Power: (Re)integrating Companies into IPE, International Political Economy Yearbook Volume 15, (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2006).

• Editor’s Summary: Michael Webb focuses on the problem of taxing MNCs, and examines the seemingly arcane questions of transfer pricing and "fictional residence" to establish how corporations minimize tax exposure. Claiming specialized knowledge, and establishing the norms of tax calculation, private-sector experts (on behalf of the taxable community – MNCs) have undermined the state’s power to control and reshape global taxation of corporate activities. Indeed, as Webb argues, MNCs have repeatedly managed to (re)orient the global governance of taxation to focus on stat practice, not MNCs’ own "tax planning". Global corporate power has facilitated the reduction of tax returns to states, and ensured that through regulatory capture, states seldom serve the public interest in the realm of corporate taxation.

"The Group of Seven and Global Macroeconomic Governance", in Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R.D. Underhill, eds., Political Economy and the Changing Global Order, 3rd edition, (Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press, 2005).

• Abstract: currently unavailable

"Defining the boundaries of legitimate state practice: norms, transnational actors and the OECD's project on harmful tax competition", Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 11, No. 4 (October 2004), pp. 787-827.

• Abstract: International cooperation could help governments regulate mobile transnational corporations (TNCs), but cooperation is itself embedded in transnational political processes in which TNCs and other private actors exercise influence. This study of the OECD's project on "Harmful Tax Competition" argues that international cooperation has done little to enhance governments’ capacities to tax TNCs, and that normative deliberations in which private actors played central roles were crucial to this outcome. State-centric, functionalist models of international cooperation need to be supplemented with insights from social constructivism and with greater attention to non-state actors. In the process of defining a boundary between legitimate and illegitimate forms of tax competition, liberal economic ideology encouraged a narrow focus on tax preferences rather than overall levels of corporate taxation, and materially weak tax havens were able to use normative arguments to persuade the OECD to moderate its demands. The tax havens succeeded in part because they found a sympathetic audience among TNCs and the transnational tax service industry, and these transnational actors also persuaded the OECD to acknowledge the legitimacy of international tax planning and legal tax avoidance. The scope of the HTC project further narrowed after 2001 because of Bush administration’s anti tax ideology, and now focuses only on improving the exchange of information among tax authorities. This resolution of the issue is unstable because of normative inconsistencies and continuing threats to corporate tax revenues.

The Political Economy of Policy Coordination: International Adjustment Since 1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995).

• Abstract: currently unavailable

Courses

• POLI 240: International Politics
  Course Outline Fall 2008
  
  
• POLI 339: The Empirical Analysis of Politics
  Course Outline Spring 2005
  
  
• POLI 341: The United Nations and Global Issues
  Course Outline Spring 2010
  
  
• POLI 344: International Political Economy
  Course Outline Spring 2011
  
  
• POLI 444: Globalization, Autonomy and Cooperation
  Course Outline Spring 2009
  
  
• POLI 540: International Relations
  Course Outline Spring 2008
  
  
• SOSC 300: Working in the Community
  Course Outline Fall 2012

Research projects

• The Politics of International Tax Competition and Cooperation, book manuscript currently in preparation.

Recent Papers

• “A Normative Assessment of the Transnational Governance Network for Corporate Taxation”, Paper prepared for presentation at the International Studies Association Annual Convention 2009, New York, New York, February 15-18, 2009


• “Global Tax Governance and the Potential for Effective International Corporate Taxation”, Paper prepared for presentation at the conference: Tax competition: How to meet the normative and political challenge? Université de Montréal, 28-29 August 2008
  • Abstract: This paper aims to provide a broad description and assessment of global tax governance (GTG) in relation to the normative beliefs and perceived interests of key agents, including states, transnational corporations and their tax advisors, and social groups that view corporate taxation as a mechanism for economic redistribution. International arrangements to manage the interaction of national tax systems and deal with problems resulting from the growth of transnational corporations have proliferated since the 1980s (though their roots are much older), centred in the OECD.  I begin by identifying the key fault lines in global corporate taxation and the normative principles underlying the positions of the different protagonists.  After briefly showing how global tax governance needs to be understood as transnational “soft” regulation rather than traditional inter-governmental cooperation, I assess the processes and normative impact of global tax governance. Key criteria include the impact of GTG on state capacity, the inclusiveness and democratic accountability of processes of GTG, and the impact of these processes on the power of various state and non-state actors.  While GTG does support the use of modest levels of corporate taxation to meet government revenue needs, I show that the close involvement of private taxpayers and their tax advisors, the exclusion of other non-state actors from global tax policy networks, and the dominance of liberal economic norms have helped produce a system that limits the potential for corporate taxation as an instrument of economic redistribution.