Researcher
Viljar Haavik
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Summary
Viljar Haavik is a Research Fellow at NUPI's Research Group on Peace, Conflict and Development, as part of the research project Strengthening Fragile States through Taxation (FRAGTAX).
Haavik's thesis examines how vulnerable states' political authority to tax is challenged by various non-state actors with a focus on Mali and Liberia. Former research interests include causes of violent extremism, insecurity and conflict in vulnerable states in the Sahel in West Africa. He is attached to the research network TaxCapDev.
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Tax and state-society relations – is there such a thing as a fiscal contract?
Is there truly such a thing as a fiscal contract? Could other factors beyond fiscal exchange play a more important role in shaping social contracts in certain societies? What limitations does the fiscal contract model have, and what implications does this have for development policies in different contexts? This seminar will explore these questions and challenge conventional understandings of the fiscal contract.
Grand Bassa and the 50/50 tax pilot: “A brilliant idea, but…”
This research note examines the implementation of property tax in Liberia. Based on original fieldwork data, the note analyses taxpayers' perceptions of the new tax system in the light of their experiences with public services, development projects and the political system.
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Policy brief summarising the EU and other stakeholder’s prevention strategy towards violent extremism in the region, Middle East
The EU-Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Preventive Violent Extremism (PvE) co-operation is wide-ranging, and has been since a formalized partnership between the EU and MENA countries was outlined in the 1995 Barcelona Declaration. It has nevertheless received added attention following numerous terrorist attacks within the EU during the last decade; and European foreign fighters have been linked to the attacks in Paris in 2015; in Brussels, Berlin, and Nice in 2016; and in Manchester, London, and Barcelona in 2017.
Policy brief summarizing the EU and other stakeholders’ prevention strategy towards violent extremism in the Maghreb and the Sahel
What is the European Union (EU) doing to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE) in north-western Africa, specifically in the Maghreb and Sahel region? Building upon the EU Counter Terrorism Strategy (EU Council 2005), the EU Strategy for combating radicalization and recruitment to terrorism has increasingly emphasized the ‘internal-external security nexus’ and the need to strengthen co-operation with key third countries in the fields of counterterrorism, anti-radicalization, prevention, and countering of violent extremism (EU Parliament 2015; EU Parliament and EU Council 2017). The fight against violent extremism has thus become one of the most prominent objectives in EU external action, especially as far as the (enlarged) neighbourhood is concerned (Durac 2017). Yet scientific inquiry into the EU’s role in this
Working Paper on enabling environments, drivers, and occurrence/nonoccurrence of violent extremism
Why does violent extremism not occur in enabling environments? Based on recent field work in the Sahel and the Maghreb region this is the main question we seek to understand in this working paper. To understand non-occurrence and thereby the foundations of social and individual resilience, we also need to understand the drivers of violent extremism and why they gain traction among some populations while others show much higher degrees of resilience. To achieve this, we will zoom in on cases in Mali, Niger, Tunisia and Morocco, showcasing different trajectories of occurrence and non-occurrence.
Working Paper on ´enabling environments´, drivers and occurrence/nonoccurrence of violent extremism in the region
There are a number of grievances attributed as drivers of violent extremism. Poverty, autocratic governance, human rights violations, precarious masculinities, or the lack of education, mentioning just some, all create what we may term “enabling environments”. Still, the majority living in such enabling environments and who experience such grievances do not engage in any acts of violence or join any violent extremist organizations. This begs the question, why do some communities display far greater resilience to violent extremist ideologies than others? Based on in-depth fieldwork in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, we study and analyze four cases of the non-occurrence of violent extremism in the Middle East to further our understanding of enabling environments, community resilience, and the decisive moments pushing people to, or away from, violence.
The end of stability - how Burkina Faso fell apart
Not so long-ago Burkina Faso was considered an ‘island’ of stability in a conflict-prone part of Africa. This is not the case anymore as armed insurgencies have caused widespread insecurity. While spill-over effects from the conflict in Mali clearly play a role, we argue that the sudden demise of the rule and regime of Blaise Compaoré also is an important contributing factor. To decipher to what extent regime transition shaped the current state of affairs, we show that what kept Burkina Faso stable and out of the conflicts in the region was a ‘big man deep state’ of formal and informal networks of security provisions. When this ‘deep state’ vanished with the ousting of Compaoré and his allies, local security providers have sought new solutions, and this strengthened the role of self-defence militias but also led them to compete against each other, at times also violently. This provided fertile terrain for jihadi insurgents. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to provide a conceptual understanding of how weak rulers actually rule, how some succeed in preserving their rule for a lengthy period of time, and what can happen when they eventually fall.
Self-defence Militias and State Sponsorship in Burkina Faso
Summary: Since 2015-16, Burkina Faso has been engulfed in an ongoing conflict with jihadist insurgent groups active across the Sahel in West Africa. As the conflict escalated, the use of armed militias in Burkina Faso became widespread and was actively sponsored by the State which led to concerns over the militias’ potential to perpetuate conflict. The main reasons are that self-defence militias in Burkina Faso are exacerbating mutual distrust, tension and violence among different communities, while the use and State sponsorship of militias are exposing the civilian population to reprisals from the insurgents who perceive them as a threat. The result is that the previous President, Roch Marc Kaboré, might have done more harm than good by creating self-defence militias under the legal framework of the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDPs) adopted unanimously by Burkina Faso’s Parliament in January 2020.
Strengthening Fragile States through Taxation (FRAGTAX)
How is the political authority to tax established, exercised and maintained over time? State-building requires predictable income. Without a domestic revenue base, even core activities states are expe...