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Theorists assert that international capital mobility creates substantial pressure for all democratically elected governments to decrease tax burdens on business. I explicate and critique the general version of this theory and offer an alternative view. Empirically, I explore whether or not the globalization of capital markets has resulted in decreases in business social security, payroll, and profit taxes. I also investigate whether or not capital mobility has intensified government responsiveness to domestic investment and profitability. Evidence suggests that business tax burdens have not been reduced in the face of rises in capital mobility nor is tax responsiveness to profitability and domestic investment intensified by more open capital markets. To the contrary, analyses indicate that business taxation has become subject to new 'market conforming' policy rules that developed in tandem with liberalization of markets. These new policy orientations reduce the economic management roles of business taxation while leaving the revenue-generating roles intact. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of the findings for questions concerning the structural power of internationally mobile capital, redistributive policies, and the autonomy of democratically elected governments in a global economy.

This article evaluates critically the meta‐narrative that a powerful, expansive, hegemonic and totalising market sphere is penetrating deeper into each and every corner of everyday life in the 'advanced market economies'. Drawing theoretical inspiration from an emerging corpus of post structuralist thought that has begun to re‐read the mean ing of work, this dom i nant dis course is here challenged by re‐evaluating the nature and trajectories of work. This will reveal that the organisation of work is grounded in a plurality of economic practices of which market work represents only one segment. Nor is any evidence identified of a uni‐dimensional and linear trajectory towards a hegemonic market. In the final section, therefore, it is shown to be now necessary to engage in a politics of re‐representation of work in these so‐called 'market' societies so as to open them up to re‐signification.