ABSTRACT
‘Political modernity’ is a social formation that is distinguished by a high degree of fiscal rule. In it, states have established durable fiscal relations with and among their citizens and thereby have become increasingly pervasive, structuring the lives and interactions of their populations to a degree that is unprecedented in history. But if ‘the sociologist's society’ has converted from the ‘nation-state’ into the tax state, one needs to analyze the development of its public finances to grasp the dynamics and patterns of social change at political modernity's crossroads: In 2020, the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic coincided with this situation, followed by the rapid increase in prices in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine. States now had to mobilize enormous financial resources to bolster the economy, while soon also increasing their military capacities. These two events disrupted the established patterns of ‘political modernity’ and challenged its fiscal-sociological foundations. To assess the consequences of this, the article examines the emergence of new patterns of taxation, government spending, and public debt in Western Europe since then. These patterns not only point to transformations of statehood but also indicate the emergence of new lines of conflict in the political regimes they underpin.
