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Copestake, Goertz, and Haggard’s (CGH) “Veil of ignorance Process Tracing” (VPT)—which in essence entails placing a firewall between data collection and hypothesis testing1—is an interesting addition to a growing list of proposals made in recent years that aim to address potential sources of bias in qualitative social science. Many of these proposals (e.g., pre-registration, time-logging whether evidence was discovered before or after a hypothesis was devised) import prescriptions from large-N, frequentist, statistical research that, from a Bayesian perspective, are not applicable to qualitative research. Bayesian reasoning provides its own safeguards against the problems of confirmation bias and ad hoc hypothesizing, without imposing procedural constraints that would interfere with the inherently iterative, dynamic, and interactive nature of case-study research—where we go back and forth between hypothesizing, data collection, and analysis (Fairfield and Charman 2019).

Increasing tax revenue is imperative for development and good governance in Latin America. Governments throughout the region experienced continued revenue needs in the aftermath of market-oriented tax reforms implemented in the 1980s and early 1990s, yet tax policy outcomes varied widely, across countries, over time and across tax policy areas. This study explains variation in governments' tax reform agendas and the fate of reform proposals in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia by analyzing the power of business, a key actor in tax politics in highly unequal societies. Many taxes directly or indirectly affect profits, and business associations may defend the interests of upper-income individuals as well as corporations. The classic concepts of structural power and instrumental power elaborate distinct means of business influence. Structural power arises from a perceived threat that a policy will lead to inadequate investment via market signals. Instrumental power entails deliberate political actions. Sources of instrumental power include relationships with decision-makers and resources that help business pressure policymakers more effectively. When either type of power is strong, taxing elites will be difficult, and reforms that policymakers view as desirable may even be eliminated from the agenda. In Chile, strong instrumental power kept significant tax increases off the agenda. Weaker business power in Argentina gave governments more leeway to increase taxation at the cross-sectoral level, although some powerful sectors prevented tax increases with sector-specific impact. Bolivia is a rare case where business's substantial power was challenged by counter-mobilization on tax issues and a radical threat from popular sectors to the existing political and economic system.The analysis is based on 82 tax proposals embedded in 48 reform packages. Cases in which policymakers decided not to propose tax reforms they viewed as important are also examined. Primary data sources include interviews with high-level government and tax agency officials, politicians, and business leaders, as well as congressional records, newspaper articles, tax agency reports, and tax return statistics. This research provides insights on building state extractive capacity, which has received insufficient attention in political science. It also contributes to theory on business politics by specifying mechanisms through which economic elites influence policy in democratic societies, observable sources of their power, and government strategies that can attenuate their influence on taxation.

While the aims of APSA’s Data Access and Research Trans-parency (DA-RT) initiative are incontrovertible, it is not yet clear how to best operationalize the task force’s recommenda-tions in the context of process tracing research. In this essay, I link the question of how to improve analytic transparency to current debates in the methodological literature on how to establish process tracing as a rigorous analytical tool. There are tremendous gaps between recommendations and actual practice when it comes to improving and elucidating causal inferences and facilitating accumulation of knowledge. In or-der to narrow these gaps, we need to carefully consider the challenges inherent in these recommendations alongside the potential benefits. We must also take into account feasibility constraints so that we do not inadvertently create strong dis-incentives for conducting process tracing.

This paper contributes to the burgeoning research on inequality and top incomes around the globe by presenting the first available estimates of top income shares and effective income tax rates in contemporary Chile based on analysis of anonymous income tax return microdata. We pay special attention to business income, which dominates at the top of the distribution. Our analysis includes not only distributed profits, but also the large proportion of accrued profits retained by firms. Our most conservative estimate of the income share received by the top 1 per cent of Chileans, constructed directly from income reported to the tax agency, is 15 per cent for 2005 and 2009 – the fifth highest share reported in the top incomes literature. When distributed profits are adjusted for widespread under-reporting, we estimate that the top 1 per cent share increases to roughly 22 per cent. When distributed profits are replaced by accrued profits in our definition of income, we obtain 19 per cent as our lowest estimate for the top 1 per cent share. Despite this impressive income concentration, the rich in Chile pay modest effective income tax rates. The top 1 per cent pay an average effective rate of 16-17 per cent when distributed profits are not adjusted for under-reporting, and less than 9 per cent when distributed profits are adjusted to national accounts. When we include corporate income tax and accrued profits in our analysis (without adjustments), the effective tax burden for the top 1 per cent is 16 per cent.

This working paper explores public policies that would advance pro-poor development in the livestock sector, with special attention to organized actors, their interests, and the political feasibility of state initiatives. It focuses on two sub-sectors that involve large numbers of small producers: the dairy sector and the alpaca sector. Emphasis is placed on the latter, since there is a greater potential role for Peru's weak, neo-liberal state in promoting pro-poor development in the alpaca sector. The paper's main findings are that: i) key public agencies of importance for the livestock sector suffer from politically motivated turnover of functionaries, the absence of a professionalized, meritocratic bureaucracy, insufficient funding, lack of coordination, and a limited capacity to act as regulatory and coordinating agents, ii) there are few organized actors at the national level capable of advancing the interests of small producers, and iii) decentralization initiated in 2002 has created new institutional spaces for participation by the poor in politics and resource allocation, while, in practice however, numerous obstacles hinder participation and limit the overall effectiveness of these institutions. The author recommends several specific public policies that could promote pro-poor development: i) protection of the dairy sector from subsidized US dairy products in trade agreements, ii) direct marketing of alpaca fiber from producers to the industries, and iii)national standards for quality grading of alpaca fiber. The paper also identifies a number of more general strategic entry points for improving opportunities for small producers to benefit from expansion in the livestock sector: i) support to small producers associations, ii) assistance for small fiber-processing industries, iii) institutionalization and professionalization of state agencies, iv) increased funding of livestock sector agencies, v) coordination among and between donor projects and state agencies and, vi) support for decentralization.

This paper presents a case study of how livestock policies are made and implemented in a national context, and how they can be improved to better serve the interests of the poor. It seems that good opportunities for improving rural livelihoods in Bolivia through livestock policy are to be found in the camelid sector. Markets for camelid meat, fiber, and leather are currently small but hold significant potential to benefit poor herders in the Andean highlands. The study used the key informant method supplemented with official documents, newspaper sources and recently published research on the livestock sector. Interviews helped reveal policymaker's concerns, whereas field trips allowed the researcher to talk to a few peasants and learn their perspectives from the bottom. Newspapers contained many lively stories of how well-intentioned policies went awry at the implementation stage, while published research analyzed various political, institutional and technical aspects of policymaking in the sector. The author concludes that given the weak state capacity the range of feasible public policies that could be implemented to foster pro-poor development is limited. The clearest role for the state lies in the realm of animal health and sanitation, in particular, the establishment and maintenance of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD)-free zones, prevention programs to control the incidence of sarcocistiosis, a camelid parasite, and support for municipal governments in improving sanitary conditions in slaughterhouses. The National Service for Agricultural and Livestock Sanitation (SENASAG) is a relatively new government agency, created in 2000 to handle such animal disease issues. To date, however, it has focused most of its resources on establishing an FMD-free zone for cattle production in the eastern lowlands. Three strategic entry points are recommended that can both improve the performance of the sector and the participation of the poor in productive activities.