We found that most households step in to fund public services through community-based informal taxes. Our evidence also suggests that external actors can build on this informal financing to improve public goods provision, without necessarily undermining the state’s authority. Nevertheless, it is important to recognise the uneven burden that informal taxes can have on citizens. They can also reinforce an inequitable distribution of power and encourage a non-universal conception of citizenship and rights.
AuthorVanessa van den Boogaard
Vanessa van den Boogaard is a Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies.
She is a political scientist specialising in the politics of taxation and informal institutions, the political economy of development, and conflict and state-building.
She is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development at the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex) and a Senior Research Associate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (University of Toronto).
She completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Toronto and has mixed methods and experimental research experience in Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Ghana.
She is also the recipient of the Vincent Lemieux prize, recognizing the best PhD thesis in political science in Canada (2019-2020) and was named one of the TaxCOOP's 35 leaders of the future.