6 - El Salvador’s Failed and Diffuse Security Taxes

Summary

The case of El Salvador illustrates how temporal variation in the strength of government–elite linkages played a role in explaining the difference between a failed attempt in Mauricio Funes’ administration and a successful one in Salvador Sánchez Cerén’s administration. Even in the context of one of the highest levels of violent crime in the world, the country’s first left-of-center administration failed to adopt elite taxes in order to increase public-safety expenditures. It wasn’t until the government formed a coalition with right-of-center parties and linkages with the business sectors improved, that an increased tax burden on the wealthy became possible.