van den Boogaard, V. , W. Prichard, R. Beach, and F. Mohiuddin (Forthcoming 2022) Enabling tax bargaining: Supporting more meaningful tax transparency and taxpayer engagement in Ghana and Sierra Leone, Development Policy Review.
Working paper version (open access)
Research summaries:
van den Boogaard, V., W. Prichard, and S. Jibao (2021) Norms, networks, power and control: The multiple facets of informal cross-border trade practices in Sierra Leone, Journal of Borderlands Studies 36, 1: 77-97.
Working paper version (open access)
Research summaries:
van den Boogaard, V., W. Prichard, and S. Jibao (2019) Informal taxation in Sierra Leone: Magnitudes, perceptions and implications, African Affairs 118, 471: 259-284.
Working paper version (open access)
Research summaries:
van den Boogaard, V. (2018) Gender and the formal and informal systems of local public finance in Sierra Leone / Genre et systèmes formels et informels de finances publiques locales en Sierra Leone, Politique Africaine 3, 151: 61-86.
Working paper version (open access)
Research summaries:
van den Boogaard, V. (2018) Gender and positionality: Opportunities, challenges, and ethical dilemmas in Ghana and Sierra Leone, in Max Kelly and Ruth Jackson (Eds) Women Researching in Africa: The Impact of Gender (Palgrave MacMillan).
van den Boogaard, V. (2020) Equity implications of the co-provision of public education in Sierra Leone, NORRAG Special Issue No. 5 on Domestic Financing: Tax and Education, Network for International Policies and Cooperation in Education and Training.
van den Boogaard, V. (2021) Jalloh, Alusine. 2018. Muslim Fula business elites and politics in Sierra Leone, Canadian Journal of African Studies 55,1: 232-233.
Tax and governance in the context of scarce revenues: Implications of inefficient tax collection in rural West Africa (with Rachel Beach – abstract)
Informal revenue generation and the state: Evidence from Sierra Leone (book manuscript)
In this project, I explore the relationship between informal tax institutions and the state. My research asks whether informal taxation contributes to or crowds out the development of more effective formal structures, and considers the conditions under which informal taxation plays a complementary or competitive role with the state. I inductively develop a theoretical framework to explore variation in the nature of relationships between informal taxing actors and the state. I show that informal tax institutions can bolster state authority and state building in unexpected ways. Informal tax institutions can act as brokers of state building, while states may use these institutions to bolster their own authority. The result is that states may seek to sustain informal processes and outcomes, even where we may expect that they would challenge the state’s legitimacy. Critically, I show that the politics of state building are in part played out in conjunction with informal institutions, forcing us to reconsider the notion and structures of statehood in practice.
My analysis draws on a mixed methods research design, combining a largescale survey of taxpayers; over 300 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, including community and government leaders; over 50 focus group discussions with community leaders, chiefdom authorities, and taxpayers; the compilation of public revenue sources and handwritten informal tax records; the consultation of historical records; and ethnographic immersion over more than a year of fieldwork.
My dissertation, which forms the basis for this book project, was awarded the 2019-2020 Canadian Political Science Association Vincent Lemieux Prize, recognizing “the best PhD thesis submitted at a Canadian institution, in English or in French, in any sub-field of political science, judged eminently worth of publication in the form of a book or articles”. The prize jury notes that, the work “is an example of innovative research in political economy…The theoretical framework is sound, and the author manages to integrate the current literature but also brings her own contributions. It is also an excellent empirical project that includes an original survey and hundreds of interviews. It is well written but does not sacrifice sophistication to parsimony. It is also argued with rigour and clarity, and presented in a way that makes it interesting and accessible to diverse audiences in political science.”
Tracking the tax impacts and implications of Covid-19 in Rwanda and Sierra Leone (with Wilson Prichard, Giulia Mascagni, Fabrizio Santoro, and Nicolas Orgeira)
While much knowledge is being generated on the impact of the pandemic, we still know very little on its implications on taxation in low-income countries. Yet, tax is crucial to fund crisis response and recovery, in addition to broader development plans and expanded government expenditure. This project starts addressing this gap using unique datasets of survey and administrative data from Rwanda and Sierra Leone. We document significant shifts in formal and informal tax burdens and in taxpayers’ views on the fairness of the tax system and the most desirable means of funding the crisis responses and recovery.
The paradox of weak chiefs in Sierra Leone
In this project, I exploit variation in the nature of accountability relations between local chiefs and their subjects, demonstrating the extent to which informal taxpaying relations in this context exist on a spectrum of coercion and consent. In this paper project I highlight what I call the “paradox of weak chiefs”. Rather than weak chiefs being less capable of taxing, I find that they tax more coercively as they are both in need of revenues and have less control over sub-chiefs in their jurisdictions, who in turn are more likely to extract revenue coercively. By contrast, where chiefs have access to non-tax revenues (e.g. resource rents), they have less incentive to tax subjects and have greater control over sub-chiefs, limiting informal extraction at lower levels. Though they are more powerful and more capable of taxing subjects, they are thus less inclined to do so. This project contributes to the literatures on the resource curse and the relationship between tax and accountability, extending these theoretical literatures to an empirical case study involving non-state taxing actors.
The role of chiefs in supplementing or undermining the state: Evidence from local governments in Sierra Leone
In this project, I explore the role of chiefs in supporting or undermining formal local government tax collection in Sierra Leone and the ways in which non-state actors may serve as accountability brokers between taxpayers and the state. I identify the conditions under which traditional authorities are more likely to support or supplement state taxing efforts and assess the effects that these actors can have on accountability and state-society relations. This work contributes to our understanding of the potential complementarity between traditional authorities and the state in contemporary Africa.
Informal taxation and the provision of public education in Sierra Leone
Using original data, I track the extent of informal taxes and payments made to access “free” primary public education and assess the equity implications of informal education taxes where they serve as an effective barrier to access education.
States concessions to chiefs: Informal revenue generation as patrimonial resources distribution in Sierra Leone
In a classic model of statehood, the state has a monopoly of taxation. However, evidence increasingly shows that in contexts of weak state institutions, non-state actors frequently engage in informal revenue generation—that is, systems of local public goods finance that are codified and enforced outside of the formal legal system. While we may expect these informal taxing actors to be a threat to the state and its authority, in practice there is considerable variation in the relationship between the state and informal taxing actors, with different outcomes of hybridity emerging. This paper considers one such unexpected outcome, wherein the state coexists with informal taxing actors. Through the case study of traditional authorities and the state in Sierra Leone, I show how and why the state may tacitly accept the presence of informal taxing actors, and even explicitly support them through the granting of informal revenue concessions. I argue that this apparently puzzling state behaviour can be understood through the dependence of the state on informal taxing actors for political outcomes and the reality that such formal–informal hybrid outcomes serve to counterintuitively reinforce state authority.
Labour, tax, and development: Shifting norms around labour taxes from the colonial era to today
Informal labour taxes have a long history in former African colonies, though they have not been included in analyses of individual tax burdens and the effective revenue of labour taxes has not been recorded by formal public finance institutions. They have taken a number of forms—from conscripted labour for public works projects in the colonial era to mandated communal labour in the post-independence era—and have been integral to the expansion of state authority. I explore informal labour taxes in Sierra Leone from the colonial period to the present day. I rely on historical records, a unique dataset capturing contemporary informal labour contributions, and over a year of qualitative data collection and ethnographic immersion in nine chiefdom case studies. I trace the perceived legitimacy of informal labour taxes over time, showing how they went from being perceived as “forced labour” to being openly embraced by states and development partners. Once normalized by colonial authorities, a growing international labour movement caused them to be seen as illegitimate. Over time, however, they were reframed by the colonial state as part of “traditional” obligations, with the colonial state legitimizing and institutionalizing them in colonial law. In the post-independence period, there was continuity in the state’s engagement with informal labour taxes, which were seen as central to the “self-reliance” movement. Later shifts in development theory and praxis saw informal labour taxes as indicators of “ownership”, “participation”, and “sustainability”. Accordingly, informal labour taxes have been revived and re-legitimized by the epistemic development community. Though the relative legitimacy of informal labour taxes has shifted over time, states and development partners insufficiently appreciate the burden of mandatory unpaid labour on individuals, as well as how informal labour taxes have contributed to the expansion of state power over time.
Block management system and formalisation: An ethnography and evaluation of a taxpayer registration process in Freetown (with Max Gallien and Giovanni Occhiali)
Popular support for taxation in times of crisis: Tracking taxpayer perceptions in Sierra Leone (with Wilson Prichard and Nicolas Orgeira)
Informal taxes fill gaps in state crisis responses: Evidence from Sierra Leone during Covid-19 (with Wilson Prichard and Nicolas Orgeira)
The inequity of informal financing of public education in Sierra Leone, ICTD, 27 November 2020.
Fill the gaps, feel the pain: Insights from Sierra Leone on an epidemic's impact on local taxation, public services, and the poor, African Arguments, 25 March 2020.