World Tax Policy in the World Tax Polity? An Event History Analysis of OECD/G20 BEPS Inclusive Framework Membership

The last decade has seen the emergence of a new global tax order characterized by increased multilateral consensus and cooperation. World polity theory appears to be an obvious theoretical fit for conceptualizing this new order, which has been spearheaded by the OECD and G20. But what are the pathways by which this new “world tax polity” has emerged? Using event history regression methods, this Article investigates this question by studying the case of the OECD/G20 BEPS Inclusive Framework, a multilateral framework that currently includes 140 member countries, including 96 non-OECD, non-G20 countries. How did these countries come to join the BEPS Inclusive Framework? World polity theory posits that the new multilateral Inclusive Framework could have been driven by normative, coercive, or mimetic processes. Of these possibilities, my Article finds that Inclusive Framework membership seems to have proliferated through a combination of normative and coercion-based pathways. Specifically, acculturation through prior involvement in certain OECD tax initiatives and inclusion in contemporaneous European Union tax haven “listing” (naming and shaming) processes was associated with a significantly higher hazard of Framework membership. By contrast, imitation of other countries did not appear to be a significant pathway. These findings highlight how international organizations and blocs have worked in concert to shape international tax policy and global consensus on tax matters. More broadly, they show how world polity proliferation as a result of international organization leadership can be amplified by parallel pressures and processes initiated by other powerful blocs