The politics of taxing Big Tech in France and the United Kingdom

This paper analyses when, and how, has salience been activated and successful in inducing corporation tax reforms in France and the United Kingdom. Precisely, the paper uses qualitative process tracing to assess the power of three sets of actor in steering public attention towards a specific policy outcome since 2012. Recent policy reforms in the taxation of multinationals have been passed at the national and international levels. However, faced with the same scandals of tax evasion by tech multinationals, countries have reacted differently according to their own priorities, notably on the timing of their reforms. The paper draws theoretical implications on the way political and policy entrepreneurs, and legacy medias, can steer public opinion and in doing so exert influence in policymaking. Actors from the media and policy spheres play a critical role as gatekeepers and intermediaries for connecting raw public preferences and policy proposals. Political entrepreneurs are public figures with a powerful platform, such as parliamentary chairs or senior bureaucrats, who can increase the credibility and reach of a story, and sustain or not attention to these issues. Legacy medias are equally important not only through their role in channelling public information but also as they can shape the dominant narrative adopted around a policy issue, and the coverage of a civil society movement. In leaks too, the whistle-blowers are successful in getting their stories out only with the help of journalists. Finally, policy entrepreneurs are important in framing the central narrative around a policy reform of their choice in a way that is consistent with the public mood. The data comes from analysis of media coverage, official documents and elite interviewing. The paper offers valuable contributions to studies of elite communication strategies and media-politics relations, in particular the way political elites interact with voters’ preferences through the medias. It is part of a doctorate research that sits at the intersection of media studies and the comparative political economy in analysing the role of salience – whether voters’ preferences matter in a market-driven economy – relative to other intervening factors in driving tax reforms aimed at tech multinationals in advanced capitalist liberal democracies