As debates over tax, debt, and development intensify in Argentina, Matt Barlow’s new book, Taxing for Development: Contested Ideas, the State, and Commodity Taxes in Argentina (Oxford University Press – DSA book series), offers timely insight into why questions of taxation have become so politically charged – and why they matter far beyond Argentina itself.

In recent weeks, Argentina’s libertarian president Javier Milei has abolished long-standing export taxes on soybeans – only to signal their return after midterm elections – while negotiating new financial support from the U.S. Treasury. Behind these maneuvers lies the same question Barlow examines in depth: how can states raise and sustain domestic revenue in a way that is both politically legitimate and developmentally effective?

Barlow’s book forms part of the DSA–OUP series and speaks directly to those interested in tax for development, domestic resource mobilisation, and the political economy of fiscal reform. Drawing on significant periods of fieldwork, it asks why, in a country as resource-rich and administratively capable as Argentina, efforts to tax exports sparked one of the country’s most polarized political crises in 2008 –  a “tax revolt” that split society along ideological lines.

“I went across to Argentina wanting to research export taxes and why they generated such social conflict in 2008,” Barlow explains. His intention was to look at why Argentina struggles to raise taxation in other areas as well, and examine how states can mobilise domestic resources. 

His finding was that ideas and ideology mattered as much as administrative capacity or economic interest, and this lies at the heart of his book Taxing for Development. The book challenges conventional explanations that focus on institutional weakness or taxpayer self-interest. Instead, Barlow argues that taxation is a deeply political and ideological process: one through which citizens and states negotiate what counts as fairness, legitimate, and development itself.

The book’s central case study, Argentina’s cereal (mainly soybean) export taxes under the Kirchners, provides a lens through which to examine wider debates about how governments in the Global South can mobilise domestic resources when access to international finance is limited and aid is in retreat. As Barlow puts it, “raising taxation domestically has become a focus as part of the SDGs, but it’s been an idea that’s been around for a long time.”

“It became really political and really ideological,” he recalls. “Even people who weren’t being taxed, and were actually benefiting, mobilised against it.”

This long-running challenge has become newly visible. In early October 2025, as France 24 reported, Argentina’s government suspended export taxes to boost dollar reserves through a surge in soybean sales to China, a move enabled by a $20 billion currency swap backed by Washington. For Barlow, these dynamics echo the very tensions he traces in his research.

“They’re still talking about these export taxes,” he notes. “Every right-leaning politician promises to get rid of them, but they can’t – it’s one of the only ways governments can extract revenue from the countryside because the state lacks autonomy through other measures.”

By grounding Argentina’s experience in a broader theoretical framework, Taxing for Development also invites comparison beyond Latin America. Barlow draws parallels to recent tax debates in the UK, where calls for windfall taxes on energy companies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine became another ideological battleground.

“Windfall taxes in the UK became a real ideological fault line,” he observes. On one side, you had people who argue that you’re intervening in markets and that’s not business-friendly, he explained. On the other side, people say that these are unexpected profits and they should be used to help people pay their bills.

In this way, the book bridges the gap between development and comparative political economy, showing how questions of taxation – often treated as technical or fiscal – are in fact deeply tied to ideas about the role of the state, social justice, and national identity. Barlow extends this analysis historically too, tracing colonial tax systems and the emergence of early forms of social contracts based on protection and legitimacy.

The book’s argument, as outlined on the OUP site, is that “contested ideas about the boundaries of the state in relation to tax and development come to shape the fault lines of politics and determine the success or failure of programmes to raise revenue for development.” In Argentina, that fault line has reappeared once again – this time amid global economic instability and renewed competition over commodities.

“How do you raise money from people who have very little, where the money is concentrated in very few hands?” Barlow asks. “It’s a challenge that all governments are facing.”

Taxing for Development offers both a compelling case study and a theoretical lens for understanding one of the central questions of the SDG era: how to finance development in a post-aid world. It also serves as a reminder that taxation is never only about numbers. It is about ideas: about who owes what to whom, and why and those ideas, as Barlow shows, can define the very boundaries of the state.

“It’s about how people interact with the state and what they expect back,” he says. “A question that lies at the heart of development itself.”

Taxing for Development: Contested Ideas, the State, and Commodity Taxes in Argentina is available open access from https://academic.oup.com/book/61387