Devolution, counter-conduct and territoriality: The case of Tax Business Rates in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Business Rates (BR) are key to the interaction between national, devolved, regional and local institutions of government in the UK. A liability to the tax can make the difference between the life and death of a business, and the design and implementation of business rates interacts with areas of policy concern as disparate as devolution, planning, charity regulation and digitalisation. We examine how BR affect political struggles between the devolved governments and the UK government using a governmentality approach focused on counter conduct, extending the scant literature on this type of taxation. Our theoretical contribution is to analyse how resistance, represented by the Foucauldian concept of counter conduct, manifests within the complex and understudied context of BR. In particular, we show that counter conduct has spatial and territorial elements which have the potential to destabilise the entire business rates programme and ought to be taken much more seriously.