administration in a hostile environment has some parallels to current efforts to establish autonomous tax administrations in developing coun- tries. In the final chapter, Mick Moore and Odd-Helge Fjeldstad explore what a state-building perspective implies for tax policy in contemporary developing countries. Tax policy is now globalised. There is a powerful orthodoxy, promoted in particular by the IMF and transnational organ- isations of taxation professionals, that has helped animate an impressive process of tax reform virtually throughout the world. That orthodoxy is, however, driven by economic and fiscal considerations and by the perceived problems and needs of the richer parts of the world. A reform agenda focused on issues of state-building in the poorer countries would look substantially different.