Description:
This article studies the role of tax on the Vietnamese political instability during the French colonial period. Guided by the literature and its implied theories, tax hypothetically exerts countervailing effects on the political situation. This article proceeds with the instrumental variable technique that separates and investigates the role of tax itself which is otherwise entangled in the complex structure of tax, wars, and state capacity. Finally, this article draws some implications on and revisits the theory of tax, wars, and the state. It denounces any monolithic and reductionist approaches to such complex structure