Event

NUPI and the ʻSkattJaktʼ-nettwork have the pleasure of inviting to a seminar with Dr Giulia Piccolino from Institute of African Affairs, German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg.

Fiscal sociology has alleged the existence of a mutually reinforcing effect between the emergence of representative government and effective taxation. This presentation is based on an artice from Dr. Piccolino that was published in the December 2015 issue of The Journal of Modern African Studies. The article looks at Benin, a low-income country that successfully democratised in the early 1990s. It finds that Benin appears to have reinforced its extractive capacities since democratisation. However, the effect of democratisation has been indirect, while the influence of the International Financial Institutions (IFI) and the size of the country’s informal sector have played a more direct role. Nevertheless, the hypothesis that effective taxation is based on a quasi-consensual relationship between the state and the taxpayers finds some confirmation.

Dr Giulia Piccolino is a Alexander Von Humboldt Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Institute of African Affairs, German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA).

See her last publication: Winning wars, building (illiberal) peace? The rise (and possible fall) of a victor’s peace in Rwanda and Sri Lanka

You can follow the seminar directly on YouTube