Informal Revenue Generation and the State: Evidence from Sierra Leone

Informal revenue generation and the state: Evidence from Sierra Leone

Vanessa van den Boogaard

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Political Science University of Toronto

Vanessa van den Boogaard

Doctor of Philosophy

Political Science University of Toronto

2020

Word count: 109,158

How states raise revenue is critical to understanding how they govern. Orthodox analyses of the state, however, have tended to focus only on formal taxation, formal budgets, and formal revenues. I correct his bias by extending the analysis of taxation and the state beyond formal tax systems, capturing the informal dynamics of public finance that affect the majority of citizens in low-income countries. By examining informal revenue generation in the context of formal taxation, I shed light on the how and why of the state and institutional development. This study presents a new approach to understanding formal–informal institutional interactions and offers insight into a set of tangible issues of critical importance to the citizens of modern states.

Classic theories of statehood anticipate that the state should always seek to control informal revenue generation. In practice, states often coexist with this informality. Informal taxing actors can reinforce state authority in unexpected ways and the relationship between the state and informal taxing actors is not necessarily zero-sum. State engagement with informal revenue generation is not always driven by a desire to gain a monopoly on taxation and authority. Instead, informal revenue generation may align with or even underpin the state’s governing strategy.

Informal revenue generation can also have counterintuitive effects on statebuilding. Though informality is usually seen as detrimental to statebuilding, I show that informal revenue generation can strengthen state institutional capacity. The politics of statebuilding are, at least in part, played out at the local level in conjunction with informal institutions. It is in these local processes where informal revenue generation and informal taxing actors can reinforce modern statehood and statebuilding processes. The state that emerges may not look like a rational, Weberian institutional model. Nevertheless, it may prove more resilient and dynamic than expected.

ii Acknowledgments

This project would not be possible without the support of an innumerable list of teachers, mentors, colleagues, friends and family. While I thank a few specific supporters here, it is impossible to fully express my gratitude and to fully acknowledge all those who have inspired and supported me along the way. In helping me to understand the context in Sierra Leone, my deepest gratitude goes to everyone that gave their time and participated in my research, including survey respondents, interviewees, focus group participants, and everyone across the country that let me to talk to them about the dynamics of tax and informality. Thank you for your time and graciousness and for welcoming me into your communities and homes. You showed me great warmth and patience and forged in me a deep love of the country. I hope I have done justice, however imperfect, in sharing your experiences and perspectives and look forward to returning to share with you my findings, which I’m sure will spark many more hours of conversation.

My greatest intellectual debt is to my supervisor, Wilson Prichard. I am enormously privileged to have had his guidance and mentorship for nearly a decade, during which he expanded my intellectual horizons and understanding of my own potential. He is a model of an engaged academic and citizen, deeply committed to making his research accessible and meaningful to those for whom it matters most. For his unconditional support and invaluable guidance prior to and throughout my doctoral studies, thank you is not enough. While he has been an unparalleled mentor and example of engaged scholarship, he is also a dear friend. He has been endlessly supportive, open, and honest and I have never doubted that he cares more about me as a person than as a scholar. For helping to foster that warmth and unconditional support, I must also thank his partner, Paola Salardi, who has been a welcome part of my supervisory family.

My research has been greatly improved by the guidance of my supervisory committee and readers, who pushed me in many valuable ways to deepen the contributions of my work. It was a joy to have Kanta Murali as a mentor. She provided invaluable guidance that made my

iii work much richer. She is the epitome of a well-rounded scholar, balancing her academic brilliance with humility and grace. Lucan Way helped me to see the path forward at important stages of my research, allowing me to clarify the key messages and see the broader implications of my work. I am deeply grateful for the valuable insights of my internal and external readers. Antoinette Handley provided helpful suggestions for exploring the issues and themes raised in my research, while reading an undeniably long dissertation with a much-appreciated attention to detail. I couldn’t have asked for a more thoughtful external reader than Pierre Englebert. He provided valuable advice about how to improve both my dissertation and my future research.

My research would not have been possible without the intellectual community at the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD). I owe major debts of gratitude to the whole team—especially Mick Moore, Giulia Mascagni, Rhiannon McCluskey, and Jalia Kangave—for supporting my research over the years and recognizing the value of an unusual topic in the field of tax research. My gratitude to the entire programme team is also immense. In particular, Simon Rees, Oliver Roy, Adam Randon, and Camilla Walsh, whose beautiful light left us far too soon—provided immense support during my field research. I have been so lucky to be immersed in the wider ICTD community of fellows and researchers across sub- Saharan Africa and for the opportunity to learn from so many teachers in so many settings. I truly cannot express how grateful I am to you all and how lucky I am to continue working with such an impressive and supportive team.

An enormous community in Sierra Leone has made my research possible and has guided me in innumerable ways. My mentor, Dr Samuel Jibao, supported my work and provided me with an intellectual home and a welcoming space at the Centre for Economic Research and Capacity Building (CERCB) in Freetown. I benefitted immensely from the intellectual stimulation and friendships of those associated with the CERCB over the years, including Mbatilo Kamara, the Hon. Festus Lansana, Dr James Sandy, Mustapha, Baindu Ngaujah, Samuka Konuwa, Sahr Musa, Rogers Amara, Moses Sellu, and Thomas Johnny. In helping me to navigate and understand the richness and beauty of the country and culture, I will always be grateful to my research assistants. They obliged my endless questions; showed great

iv patience in my desire to push one day, mile, interview further; made me laugh, sing, and dance when I thought I had no energy left; and demonstrated a deep humility in listening to the stories of people across the country. You all taught me so much, in so many ways—a nɔ no aw fɔ tɛl una tenki. Joseph Moore, my elder brother, you always had my back, showed an immense commitment to the broader goals of the work, and welcomed me with open arms into your family. Alie Hassan Kargbo, I will always be grateful for your thoughtfulness and quiet intelligence. Your work ethic is unparalleled, as is the kindness that you share with the world. Sieh Kargbo, I am grateful for your sharp wit and intelligence and your willingness to have real conversations, even when the topics are challenging. Abdulaziz Kamara, thank you for your commitment, insights, and kindness. Hassan Sahid Sesay, thank you for your guidance and blessings. Ibrahim Bah, I am grateful for your skill in navigating difficult terrain, ingeniously fixing breakdowns with no supplies or parts, and keeping up the good humour of the team. Soko Kai-Samba, you guided me in my early research trips and will always be a true friend and mentor. Ibrahim Jalloh, you helped immensely with the transcriptions of many long interviews, doing so with a patience and perseverance that is almost unimaginable.

While my dissertation is based on research from Sierra Leone, I would be remiss not to thank all of the colleagues and research assistants that have helped me to understand informal revenue generation in other contexts. The knowledge that you shared with me shaped this work in many ways. In particular, my colleagues and dear friends at the Association Congolaise pour la Recherche Académique deserve recognition. Yannick Bokasola, Eddy Ngwakoyo, Marie-France Kitoga, Jean-Claude Ipungu—many thanks for your friendship, your generosity, and for helping me to understand informality and statehood in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Likewise, I’m deeply appreciative of my friends at Marakuja in Goma, as well as my colleagues, friends, and research assistants in Somalia who have deepened my understanding of informal revenue generation, while making research journeys immensely pleasurable and rewarding.

I am grateful to a wide community of teachers, mentors, and supportive peers at the University of Toronto and beyond. This includes numerous colleagues and lifelong

v friendships forged in the Department of Political Science. I have gained a great deal from the supportive communities at Massey College, the Institute for Municipal Finance and Governance, and the Centre for Critical Development Studies, while my research was shaped in part by the 2016 faculty and cohort of the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research and engagement with the Working Group in African Political Economy. My deepest thanks to those who provided feedback on early versions of my research and who stimulated new ideas and areas of exploration.

The privilege of pursuing my academic and intellectual interests and conducting field research was only possible with the financial support of numerous funding bodies, institutions, and individuals over the years. For enabling my research and academic career, I am enormously grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the International Development Research Centre, the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies, the International Centre for Tax and Development, the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance, the Government of Ontario, Noah Blackstein, and Massey College.

I am indebted to these intellectual mentors, communities, institutions, and funders, though this dissertation would not be possible without the friendship, love, and emotional support of a long list of friends and family—too long to enumerate here. I am immensely lucky to have had the support of a wide group of friends both close to home and around the world. I am also blessed with a loving and supportive extended family who have supported me unconditionally. My two older siblings have shown me unconditional support and mentorship in so many ways. Scott and Laura—I have always looked up to you both and can’t tell you what your support means to me. My debt to my parents is immeasurable. From an early age, they instilled in me a love of reading and education, a belief in the fundamental goodness of people, and a desire to learn more about the world around me. They have always pushed me to be my best self, though made clear that being better isn’t a desirable end unless you are also being good—to others and to yourself. Mom and Dad, for your inspiration and your love, thank you is not enough. Finally, my partner, Graham Smith, deserves much more thanks and recognition than an acknowledgement here could ever provide. Every step of the

vi way, he has shown me unwavering support, quelled my self-doubts, and made me both a better scholar and a better person. Your unwavering commitment to my ambitions, success, and happiness is a testament to the incredible person that you are. Throughout everything, you have always reminded me of what is truly important. I am so lucky to navigate this life with you, on a journey that means we never stop exploring and learning together.

vii Table of contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... III

LIST OF TABLES ...... XIV

LIST OF FIGURES ...... XVI

ACRONYMS ...... XXI

CLARIFYING NOTES ...... XXII

LANGUAGE ...... XXII EXCHANGE RATES ...... XXII VALUE OF LABOUR ...... XXII INTERVIEW CITATIONS ...... XXII

IMPORTANT DATES IN SIERRA LEONEAN POLITICAL HISTORY ...... XXIII

CHAPTER 1: SEEING THE STATE THROUGH TAXATION AND INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION ...... 25

1 UNDERSTANDING THE STATE THROUGH TAXATION AND INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION ...... 29 1.1 TAX AND THE STATE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ...... 30 1.2 TAX AND THE STATE IN CONTEMPORARY LOW-INCOME COUNTRIES ...... 34 2 CENTRAL ARGUMENT ...... 40 3 THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS ...... 43 4 THESIS STRUCTURE ...... 45

PART I: INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION AND THE STATE ...... 49

CHAPTER 2: DEFINING AND RESEARCHING INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION ...... 50

1 DEFINING INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION ...... 52 1.1 RELATIONSHIP TO STATE LAW ...... 54 1.2 RELATIONSHIP TO PUBLIC GOODS ...... 59 2 RESEARCHING IRG ...... 65 2.1 CASE STUDY METHOD AND INDUCTIVE THEORY-BUILDING ...... 66 2.2 MIXED METHODS AND COMPLEMENTARY DATA ...... 68 3 CONCLUSION ...... 71

CHAPTER 3: INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 72

viii 1 FORMAL TAXATION IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 73 2 PREVALENCE AND DISTRIBUTION OF IRG IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 76 3 NATURE OF IRG IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 79 3.1 DIVERGENT IRG IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 81 3.2 CONVERGENT IRG IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 87 4 CONCLUSION ...... 95

CHAPTER 4: A THEORY OF INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION AND THE STATE ...... 96

1 FORMAL–INFORMAL RELATIONSHIPS ...... 98 2 EXPLAINING VARIATION BETWEEN STATE COEXISTENCE AND CONTROL ...... 103 2.1 STATE DEPENDENCE ON INFORMAL TAXING ACTORS ...... 106 2.2 NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE STATE’S OTHER GOVERNING CONSTRAINTS ...... 107 2.3 THE LIMITS OF STATE CONTROL ...... 109 3 EXPLAINING WITHIN-CASE VARIATION ...... 110 3.1 VARIATION IN DIVERGENT OUTCOMES: THE AUTONOMY OF INFORMAL TAXING ACTORS ...... 111 3.2 VARIATION IN CONVERGENT OUTCOMES: THE ACCEPTABILITY OF IRG ...... 114 4 IDEAL TYPICAL CASE STUDIES ...... 118 4.1 CONCESSIONARY FORMAL–INFORMAL RELATIONSHIPS ...... 119 4.2 COMPETITIVE FORMAL–INFORMAL RELATIONSHIPS ...... 120 4.3 SUPPLEMENTARY FORMAL–INFORMAL RELATIONSHIPS ...... 121 4.4 ASSERTIVE FORMAL–INFORMAL RELATIONSHIPS ...... 122 5 CONCLUSION ...... 123

PART II: VARIATION IN FORMAL–INFORMAL OUTCOMES: CASE STUDIES OF DIVERGENT IRG ...... 125

CHAPTER 5: CONCESSIONARY FORMAL–INFORMAL OUTCOMES: INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION AS PATRIMONIAL RESOURCE DISTRIBUTION ...... 126

1 STATE CONCESSIONS TO THE INFORMAL TAXING AUTHORITY OF CHIEFS ...... 131 1.1 EARLY COLONIAL STATEBUILDING ...... 132 1.2 CONSOLIDATION OF FORMAL STATE INSTITUTIONS ...... 133 1.3 CONSOLIDATION OF THE INDEPENDENT STATE ...... 136 1.4 POST-WAR LIBERAL STATEBUILDING ...... 139 2 WHAT LEADS TO A CONCESSIONARY RELATIONSHIP? ...... 146 2.1 RELATIVE STATE DEPENDENCE ON CHIEFS ...... 148

2.1.1 Chiefs as brokers of state control ...... 148

2.1.2 Chiefs as electoral brokers ...... 151 2.2 RELATIVE AUTONOMY OF CHIEFS ...... 158 3 CONCLUSION ...... 163

CHAPTER 6: COMPETITIVE FORMAL–INFORMAL OUTCOMES: MEDIATED STATE CONTROL THROUGH HYBRID TAX COLLECTION ...... 164

ix 1 LOCAL GOVERNMENT ASSERTION OF CONTROL IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 170 2 DESIRE FOR CONTROL ...... 174 2.1 REVENUE PRESSURES ...... 175 2.2 THREAT TO LOCAL GOVERNING LEGITIMACY ...... 176 2.3 THREAT TO LOCAL SOVEREIGNTY ...... 177 3 FEASIBILITY OF CONTROL ...... 178 3.1 PRESSURE FROM CENTRAL GOVERNMENT AND INTERNATIONAL DONORS ...... 178 3.2 CIVIL SOCIETY FACILITATION ...... 179 3.3 UNCONSTRAINED LEADERSHIP ...... 181 4 VARIATION IN THE EFFECTIVENESS OF STATE CONTROL ...... 183 4.1 WILLINGNESS TO MAKE CONCESSIONS TO CHIEFS ...... 185

4.1.1 Local government administrative dependence on chiefs ...... 186

4.1.2 Working with the grain of local political realities ...... 192 4.2 BALANCE OF POWER IN FAVOUR OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS ...... 198 5 CONCLUSION ...... 201

PART III: VARIATION IN FORMAL–INFORMAL RELATIONSHIPS: CASE STUDIES OF CONVERGENT IRG ...... 203

CHAPTER 7: SUPPLEMENTARY FORMAL-INFORMAL OUTCOMES: STATE DEPENDENCE AND THE CO-PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS ...... 204

1 INFORMAL FINANCING OF PUBLIC PRIMARY EDUCATION IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 209 2 TACIT STATE COEXISTENCE WITH IRG TO SUPPORT THE PROVISION OF EDUCATION ...... 213 3 WHY DOES THE STATE COEXIST WITH IRG? ...... 216 3.1 STATE DEPENDENCE ON IRG FOR PUBLIC GOODS PROVISION ...... 216 3.2 RELATIVE LACK OF AUTONOMY OF INFORMAL TAXING ACTORS ...... 223

3.2.1 Coexistence of traditional and modern systems of education ...... 224

3.2.2 Decolonisation and institutionalisation of the modern system ...... 225

3.2.3 Unsustainability of community financing ...... 227 3.3 STATE DEPENDENCE ON DONORS AND THE NORMATIVE UNACCEPTABILITY OF IRG FOR EDUCATION ...... 229 4 CONCLUSION ...... 235

CHAPTER 8: ASSERTIVE FORMAL–INFORMAL OUTCOMES: STATE POWER AND SHIFTING NORMS AROUND INFORMAL LABOUR TAXES ...... 239

1 COLONIAL STATE CONTROL OVER INFORMAL LABOUR TAXES: FROM FORMALISATION TO PROHIBITION AND BACK AGAIN ...... 246 1.1 FORMALISATION OF INFORMAL LABOUR TAXES ...... 248 1.2 PROHIBITION OF INFORMAL LABOUR TAXES ...... 249 1.3 FORMALISATION OF “COMMUNAL” LABOUR ...... 250 1.4 PROHIBITION OF INFORMAL LABOUR TAXES TO CHIEFS ...... 252

x 2 INDEPENDENT STATE COEXISTENCE WITH INFORMAL LABOUR TAXES: NARRATIVES OF SELF-RELIANCE AND SELF-HELP ...... 253 2.1 INFORMAL LABOUR TAXES AND POST-COLONIAL NARRATIVES OF SELF-RELIANCE ...... 255 2.2 INFORMAL LABOUR TAXES AND DEVELOPMENTALIST NARRATIVES OF “SELF-HELP” ...... 259 3 INDEPENDENT STATE CONTROL OVER INFORMAL LABOUR TAXES: HYBRIDISATION AND FORMALISATION 262 3.1 HYBRIDISATION OF INFORMAL LABOUR TAXES FOR SECURITY PROVISION ...... 263 3.2 FORMALISATION OF TOWN-CLEANING EXERCISES ...... 266 4 CONCLUSION ...... 273

PART IV: IRG AND STATEBUILDING ...... 275

CHAPTER 9: INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION AND STATE LEGITIMACY ...... 279

1 IRG AND STATE LEGITIMACY ...... 284 2 RESULTS ...... 290 3 THE STATE, PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY, AND PUBLIC AUTHORITY ...... 296 3.1 WEAK VERSUS ABSENT STATE AUTHORITY ...... 296 3.2 PARALLEL TRADITIONAL AUTHORITY ...... 299 4 POSSIBILITIES AND RISKS OF STATE ENGAGEMENT WITH IRG ...... 303 4.1 RISK OF REINFORCING UNACCOUNTABLE INFORMAL INSTITUTIONS ...... 305 4.2 RISK OF DISTORTING THE EFFICIENCIES OF LOCAL ORGANISATION ...... 308 4.3 RISK OF INSTITUTIONALISING INEQUALITY ...... 309 5 CONCLUSION ...... 311

CHAPTER 10: INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION, STATE REVENUES, AND STATE STRUCTURES ...... 313

1 IRG AND STATE REVENUES ...... 315 1.1 LIMITED REVENUE POTENTIAL ...... 318 1.2 LIMITED STATE CAPACITY AND WILL TO TAX ...... 319 2 IRG AND STATE STRUCTURES ...... 323 2.1 IRG DOES NOT ALWAYS UNDERMINE STATE STRUCTURES ...... 324 2.2 IRG AS FACILITATING ALTERNATIVE MODELS OF STATEBUILDING ...... 328 2.3 RISK OF INSTITUTIONALISING A “LEAN” MODEL OF STATEHOOD ...... 329 3 CONCLUSION ...... 332

PART V: CONCLUSIONS ...... 333

CHAPTER 11: INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION AND THE STATE: THEORETICAL AND POLICY SIGNIFICANCE ...... 334

1 INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION ...... 336 2 IRG AND THE STATE: SIERRA LEONE AND BEYOND ...... 338 2.1 DIVERGENT IRG AND THE STATE ...... 340

xi 2.2 CONVERGENT IRG AND THE STATE ...... 342 3 IRG AND STATEBUILDING ...... 344 4 POLICY IMPLICATIONS ...... 347 4.1 FOCUSING ON INCENTIVES AND STRUCTURAL POWER DYNAMICS ...... 350 4.2 WORKING WITH THE GRAIN OF INFORMAL INSTITUTIONS ...... 353 4.3 STRENGTHENING GOVERNMENT’S LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY ...... 355 5 FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS ...... 358

APPENDICES ...... 360

APPENDIX 2A: TYPOLOGY OF FORMAL AND INFORMAL REVENUE GENERATION ...... 360 APPENDIX 2B: TAXES VERSUS USER FEES ...... 361 APPENDIX 2C: DATA, POSITIONALITY, AND RESEARCH OUTCOMES ...... 363 APPENDIX 2D: POSITIONALITY AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS ...... 366 APPENDIX 2E: NATIONAL CASE SELECTION ...... 368 i. State capacity ...... 368 ii. State service delivery ...... 376 iii. Experience of conflict ...... 382 iv. Alternative taxing actors ...... 383 APPENDIX 2F: SUB-NATIONAL CASE SELECTION ...... 385 APPENDIX 2G: DATA COLLECTION PROCESSES ...... 386 i. Taxpayer surveys ...... 386 ii. Qualitative data ...... 388 APPENDIX 2H: LIST OF INTERVIEWS ...... 391 APPENDIX 2I: LIST OF FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSIONS ...... 400 APPENDIX 3A: DIVERGENT IRG IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 402 APPENDIX 3B: CONVERGENT IRG IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 402 APPENDIX 7: INFORMAL FINANCING OF PUBLIC PRIMARY EDUCATION IN SIERRA LEONE ...... 405 i. Informal fees for the running costs of government-funded schools ...... 405 ii. Contributions for improvements to government-funded schools ...... 406 iii. Contributions for community schools ...... 409 iv. Contributions for community teachers’ salaries ...... 412 v. Informal payments for government teachers ...... 417 APPENDIX 8: PERCEPTIONS OF CHIEFLY CONTRIBUTIONS TO ENDING THE EBOLA CRISIS ...... 419 APPENDIX 9A: MULTIFACETED CONCEPTS OF TAX MORALE ...... 420 APPENDIX 9B: DISAGGREGATED IRG MEASURES ...... 421 APPENDIX 9C: CONTROL VARIABLES AND TAX MORALE ...... 422

xii i. Trust ...... 422 ii. Fiscal reciprocity ...... 424 iii. Accountability ...... 426 iv. Fairness ...... 426 APPENDIX 9D: DEMOGRAPHIC CONTROL VARIABLES AND TAX MORALE ...... 426 i. Gender ...... 426 ii. Education ...... 427 iii. Age ...... 428 iv. Religion ...... 428 v. Income ...... 429 vi. Experience of conflict ...... 430 APPENDIX 9E: REGIONAL FIXED EFFECTS ...... 431 APPENDIX 9F: SUMMARY STATISTICS ...... 433 APPENDIX 9G: ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF IRG ...... 434

WORKS CITED ...... 437

xiii List of Tables

Table 1: Typology of formal and informal hybrid outcomes ...... 41

Table 2: Typology of formal and informal hybrid outcomes ...... 101

Table 3: Explaining variation in state strategies towards IRG ...... 104

Table 4: Concessionary formal–informal relationship ...... 127

Table 5: Chiefdom administration annual salaries ...... 162

Table 6: Competitive formal–informal relationship ...... 166

Table 7: Necessary but insufficient conditions for successful outcomes ...... 184

Table 8: Truth table: Reinforcement of local authority and autonomy of chiefs ...... 185

Table 9: Supplementary informal–informal relationship ...... 206

Table 10: Necessary condition for an assertive outcome ...... 241

Table 11: IRG categories ...... 287

Table 12: Ordered logistic regressions ...... 290

Table 13: Regressions: pathways ...... 294

Table 14: Typology of formal and informal revenue generation ...... 360

Table 15: Exemplar cases for theory-building ...... 385

Table 16: IRG for chiefdom administrations ...... 402

Table 17: IRG for state-provisioned goods ...... 402

Table 18: IRG for education, provisioned through the state and communities ...... 403

Table 19: IRG for community-provisioned goods ...... 403

Table 20: IRG through communal labour and community development projects ...... 404

Table 21: Tax morale survey questions ...... 420

Table 22: Correlation coefficients ...... 421

Table 23: Convergent IRG for state-provisioned goods ...... 421

Table 24: Convergent IRG for community-provisioned goods ...... 421

xiv Table 25: Divergent IRG (chiefdom goods) ...... 422

Table 26: Correlations between variables making up the composite variable “Trust in central government” ...... 423

Table 27: Correlations between variables making up the composite variable “Trust in local government” ...... 424

Table 28: Ordered logistic regressions for districts (column 1) and chiefdoms (column 2) ...... 431

Table 29: Summary statistics ...... 433

Table 30: Ordered logistic regressions: Measure of IRG as the number of public goods accessed that required IRG ...... 434

Table 31: Ordered logistic regressions: Measure of IRG as the total number of payments made ...... 435

xv List of Figures

Figure 1: Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP, 1980–2015 ...... 34

Figure 2: Self-reinforcing links between tax and statebuilding ...... 37

Figure 3: Personal income tax revenues as a percentage of GDP, 1980–2015 ...... 38

Figure 4: IRG includes a range of quasi-voluntary payments ...... 58

Figure 5: Number of formal tax payments ...... 75

Figure 6: Geographic distribution of property tax payments ...... 75

Figure 7: Per capita local government revenue data, 2015 to 2017 ...... 76

Figure 8: Distribution of number of IRG payments ...... 77

Figure 9: Spectrum of convergence and divergence ...... 81

Figure 10: Frequency of informal tax payment to access public goods ...... 87

Figure 11: Frequency: Town-cleaning ...... 91

Figure 12: Sanctions for non-participation in town-cleaning ...... 92

Figure 13: Prevalence of road-brushing and communal labour for road/bridge construction ...... 93

Figure 14: Frequency: Road brushing and communal labour ...... 94

Figure 15: Sanctions for non-participation ...... 94

Figure 16: Spectrum of state control/coexistence ...... 100

Figure 17: Spectrum of IRG convergence and divergence ...... 101

Figure 18: Spectrum of state strategies towards IRG ...... 109

Figure 19: Variation of state strategies (divergent IRG): Independent state governing capacity and the autonomy of the informal taxing actor ...... 111

Figure 20: Variation of state strategies (convergent IRG): Independent state governing capacity and the acceptability of IRG ...... 115

Figure 21: Ratio of actual versus expected local tax remittances (precepts) ...... 143

Figure 22: Local tax revenues missing from local governments ...... 144

xvi Figure 23: Average ratio of actual versus expected local tax remittances and voting years ...... 155

Figure 24: Average ratio of actual versus expected local tax remittances, by district political affiliation ...... 156

Figure 25: Average ratio of actual versus expected local tax remittances and voting years, by political leaning of district ...... 157

Figure 26: Variation of state strategies: Independent state governing capacity and the autonomy of the informal taxing actor ...... 168

Figure 27: Average local council budget composition ...... 176

Figure 28: Right to tax: The state versus the chieftaincy ...... 192

Figure 29: Proportion of citizens that engaged with public authorities in the past year ... 192

Figure 30: Types of school funding (N 7002) ...... 211

Figure 31: Estimated informal versus government annual expenditure per student for primary public education ...... 212

Figure 32: Percent of households making informal payments for public primary school in the past year, by type of contribution ...... 213

Figure 33: Co-provision of public education ...... 216

Figure 34: Government expenditure on education, 2000- 2017 ...... 218

Figure 35: Gross enrolment (left) and gross enrolment ratio (right), 1970 - 2017 ...... 219

Figure 36: Sierra Leonean GDP, 1970-2017 ...... 221

Figure 37: Actors responsible for providing education ...... 223

Figure 38: Net official development assistance as proportion of gross national income .. 231

Figure 39: Grants as a proportion of government revenue, 2002–2015 ...... 232

Figure 40: Variation of state strategies (convergent IRG): Independent state governing capacity and the acceptability of IRG ...... 244

Figure 41: Colonial state strategies of control of IRG ...... 247

Figure 42: Postcolonial state strategies of coexistence with IRG ...... 255

Figure 43: State strategies of control over IRG ...... 262

xvii Figure 44: Perceptions of responsibility of security provision ...... 265

Figure 45: Pathways between formal–informal relationships and state institutional capacity ...... 278

Figure 46: State legitimacy and state institutional capacity ...... 281

Figure 47: Predicted probabilities of strong acceptance of the state’s right to tax ...... 292

Figure 48: IRG and state legitimacy: Causal mechanisms ...... 293

Figure 49: Salience of nested identities ...... 299

Figure 50: Mean tax morale for the state and non-state actors ...... 300

Figure 51: Regression lines, tax morale for the state and the chieftaincy ...... 301

Figure 52: Top five citizen expectations from the chieftaincy (left) and the state (right) .. 302

Figure 53: IRG as stimulating the reinforcing links between state capacity and state legitimacy ...... 305

Figure 54: Accountability: How easy or difficult is it to voice discontent about policies or actions that you are unhappy with when they are taken by the following actors? ...... 306

Figure 55: Trust: “If [x actor] was given SLL 500 million to complete a project in this area, do you believe they would spend all the money doing a good job on the project or would they cut some of the money?” ...... 307

Figure 56: Representation: “How much trust or mistrust do you have that the following groups/individuals act in the interest of ordinary people like you?” ...... 308

Figure 57: State revenue and state institutional capacity ...... 316

Figure 58: State structures and state institutional capacity ...... 324

Figure 59: Citizen expectations of the state ...... 327

Figure 60: Tax revenues versus user fees, OECD countries, 1995-2016 ...... 361

Figure 61: Sub-national tax revenues versus user fees and charges, select low income countries ...... 362

Figure 62: Tax to GDP ratios, 1980 to 2015 ...... 371

Figure 63: Sub-national tax revenues as a proportion of total sub-national revenues, centre versus periphery, 2005 to 2017 ...... 372

Figure 64: Direct tax to GDP ratios, 1980 to 2015 ...... 373

xviii Figure 65: Sub-national property tax revenues as a proportion of total sub-national revenues, centre versus periphery, 2005 to 2017 ...... 373

Figure 66: Statistical capacity scores, 2004 to 2018 ...... 374

Figure 67: Proportion of public employees with a tertiary education, 2000 to 2015 ...... 375

Figure 68: Access to electricity, cross-country comparison (left) and comparison between rural and urban areas in Sierra Leone (right) ...... 377

Figure 69: Number of physicians (1960 to 2016) and number of hospital beds (1960 to 2015) per mille ...... 378

Figure 70: Type of facility visited when household is in need (left) and mean distance to clinic by province (right) ...... 378

Figure 71: Access to government hospitals (left) and clinics (right), by district ...... 379

Figure 72: Trained teachers as a proportion of total teachers, primary education ...... 379

Figure 73: Mean distance to school, by province and district ...... 380

Figure 74: Proportion of schools receiving government assistance, by district ...... 380

Figure 75: Access to basic drinking water services, 2000 to 2015 ...... 381

Figure 76: Access to clean drinking water, centre versus periphery ...... 381

Figure 77: Access to clean drinking water by district: piped water (left) and surface water (right) as primary source of drinking water ...... 382

Figure 78: Distribution of violent events, by province (left) and by districts in Eastern province (right) ...... 383

Figure 79: Quality of school infrastructure, public primary schools, 2017 ...... 406

Figure 80: Regional distribution of schools with government assistance (left) and community schools (right) ...... 410

Figure 81: District distribution of schools with government assistance (left) and community schools (right) ...... 411

Figure 82: Number of community teachers per school for every government teacher ...... 413

Figure 83: Annual per pupil cash payments to community teachers, survey respondents N 552 (left) and qualitative verification based on data from 37 primary schools (right) ...... 415

Figure 84: Taxpayer perceptions of chiefdom performance during the Ebola crisis ...... 419

xix Figure 85: “During the civil war, did any of the following happen to you or any member of your household?” ...... 430

xx Acronyms

AFRC Armed Forces Ruling Council APC All People’s Congress CA Chief Administrator CC City Council CCAC Central Chiefdom Administrative Clerk CLoGPAS Comprehensive Local Government Performance Assessment System CTA Community Teachers’ Association DC District Council DCC District Council Chairman Dec-Sec Decentralisation Secretariat DO District Officer DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo FHCI Free Health Care Initiative GoRSL Government of the Republic of Sierra Leone (Sierra Leonean state after 1971) GoSL Government of Sierra Leone (Sierra Leonean state from 1961 to 1971) ILO International Labour Organisation IMF International Monetary Fund IRG Informal revenue generation KoCEPO Knowledge for Community Empowerment Organisation (NGO) LGA Local Government Act LGFD Local Government Finance Department MEST Ministry of Education, Science and Technology MBSSE Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education MoHS Ministry of Health and Sanitation MoFED Ministry of Finance and Economic Development MoU Memorandum of Understanding MP Member of parliament NEC National Electoral Commission NGO Non-governmental organisation NPRC National Provisional Ruling Council OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development PC Paramount chief PFM Public financial management PSRU Public Sector Reform Unit PTA Parent teacher association RUF Revolutionary United Front SLL Sierra Leonean Leone SLPP Sierra Leone People’s Party SMC School management committee TA Tribal authority (also known as chiefdom councillor) TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission UN United Nations USD United States Dollar WAR Western Area Rural WAU Western Area Urban WDC Ward Development Committee

xxi Clarifying notes

Language

Krio spellings and definitions are taken from Fyle and Jones (1980), supplemented by Thompson and Koroma (2014) where the former is insufficient. All translations from Krio and French are those of the author unless otherwise noted. Exchange rates

Unless otherwise indicated, currency exchange rates are based on the average annual market exchange rate for 2017. Amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar, except for values under USD 20. Value of labour

When estimating the currency-equivalent of labour contributions, I use an estimated daily wage rate of SLL 10,000 (USD 1.34) in rural areas and SLL 30,000 (USD 4.01) in Freetown. Interview citations

When citing interviews and focus group discussions, I refer to anonymised codes in-text, which are linked to interview details in Appendix 2h and 2i.

xxii Important dates in Sierra Leonean political history

1787 Freed slaves and English abolitionists first land in Sierra Leone peninsula to settle a “Province of Freedom”

1791 Sierra Leone Company founds Freetown as a British colony

1819 British governor of the colony expands colonial control along the Sierra Leone peninsula

1895 Construction of Sierra Leone Railway begins

1896 Britain declares a “protectorate” over the interior of the Sierra Leone colony

1898 Resistance to British Protectorate, including the Hut Tax War

1930 British-owned Sierra Leone Development Company begins mining iron ore for the first time

1931 Diamonds first identified in Kono district

1937 “Native Administration” system introduced in the Protectorate

1957 Universal adult suffrage is introduced; Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) led by Milton Margai wins general election

1961 Independence

1962 SLPP led by Margai wins general election

1967 All People’s Congress (APC), led by Siaka Stevens, wins general election; coup and provisional rule by the National Reformation Council

1968 Authority returned to APC led by Stevens

1971 Sierra Leone becomes a republic with Stevens as executive president

1977 Widespread anti-government protests

1978 New constitution introduced, making Sierra Leone a one-party state with the APC as the sole party

1985 Major-General Joseph Saidu Momoh becomes president upon Stevens’ retirement from that office

1991 Start of civil war; new constitution provides for a return to multiparty politics

1992 National Provisional Ruling Council coup under Captain Valentine Strasser

xxiii 1996 Strasser is deposed by Julius Maada Bio, who becomes the new head of state; general elections won by SLPP led by Tejan Kabbah; ceasefire between Sierra Leone government and Revolutionary United Front (RUF)

1997 Coup led by Johnny Paul Koroma; RUF invited to join Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) government; rebels move into Freetown

1998 Economic Community Cease-Fire Monitoring Group expels rebels and AFRC from Freetown and restore Kabbah’s government

1999 Heavy fighting in Freetown; ceasefire agreement signed in Lomé between Sierra Leone government, RUF, and AFRC

2002 End of civil war; SLPP led by Kabbah wins general election

2003 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) starts sitting in Freetown

2004 Decentralisation and statebuilding begin in earnest

2007 APC led by Ernest Bai Koroma wins general election

2012 APC led by Koroma wins general election

2014 Ebola virus disease epidemic declared

2016 World Health Organisation declares Sierra Leone Ebola-free

2017 General elections postponed, justified as a result of Ebola epidemic

2018 SLPP led by Bio wins general election

xxiv

Chapter 1: Seeing the state through taxation and informal revenue generation

The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare— all this and more is written in its fiscal history, stripped of all phrases. He who knows how to listen to its message here discerns the thunder of world history more clearly than anywhere else.

Schumpeter (1918/1991, p. 101)

How should the state respond to illegal taxation? When I asked a government official in Sierra Leone, I was initially surprised when he said that “payment may be illegal… but it is necessary”, indicating that the state will coexist with informal revenue generation outside of state frameworks.1 Digging more deeply, I discovered that “free” state-run education and health care services in the country is funded in large part by illegal community-based taxes and fees, while the central government ministry responsible for fiscal decentralisation declared that traditional authorities should collect and keep formal tax revenues that are, by law, under the authority of local governments. These dynamics are not unique to Sierra Leone. In Tegucigalpa, Honduras, the government is accused of ceding power and authority to gangs, which levy an estimated USD 23 million annually on businesses in “war taxes” (Nazario, 2019). In southern Somalia, clans levy illegal taxes to raise revenues for projects managed and overseen by the state government (van den Boogaard & Santoro, forthcoming). Clearly, “taxation” is not solely the domain of the state. Moreover, the state often engages with these types of informal “taxation” in unexpected ways.

These examples illustrate the central puzzle motivating this thesis: under what conditions does the state concede taxing authority and formal revenues to illegal and informal taxing actors? Classic theories of statehood suggest that the state has—or should have—a monopoly on sovereignty and public authority. Weber defined the ideal type of a modern state based on legal rational authority as “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (Weber, 1949a, p. 78, italics in original). According to this ideal of modern statehood, no other actor outside the state should have the authority to coercively collect revenues from individuals. From this perspective, the scenarios described above make no sense—no one but the state should tax and the state should certainly not knowingly coexist with and actively cede authority to informal taxing actors.

Empirically, however, states vary across time and space in the extent to which they conform to the Weberian ideal type of statehood. In large parts of the world, informal authority

1 KOI242

coexists with characteristics of the modern state and is deeply intertwined in the creation and maintenance of state authority and processes of state institutionalization. Recognising this, the state formation literature has evolved over time to treat the monopoly of the state not as a definitional attribute (as with the Weberian ideal type) but as an empirical variable (Vu, 2010b, p. 165; see e.g. Levi, 2002; Tilly, 1990). Analysts of macro-state formation do not assume that the state has a monopoly over violence or taxation, but instead focus on the degree to which the state conforms to the definitional ideal type in practice. For example, theories of mediated statehood understand public authority to be multifaceted, involving interaction between formal and informal actors that “are (partly) dependent on each other and therefore (partly) shape each other’s governance projects” (Stel, 2017a, p. 368; see also Menkhaus, 2006a, 2007). States, like other organisations, “must contend with other, very different types of sanctioned behaviour, often with utterly unexpected results for the societies that states purport to govern—and for the states themselves” (Migdal, 2001a, p. 12). States in practice do not exist in isolation from informal processes and actors and are neither autonomous nor unitary; rather, they are “institutional configurations in which political actors operate” (Vu, 2010b, p. 150; see e.g. Adams, 2005; Gorski, 2003; Ikegami, 1995; Krasner, 1984, p. 222; Levi, 2002, pp. 33–34).

Nevertheless, conventional ideas of informality, including those held by policymakers, are often based in a simplistic understanding of modern statehood and idealized conceptions of Weberian institutions that do not conform with reality. This is problematic, as, by assuming that a monopoly of taxing authority is an attribute of modern statehood, any deviation from the Weberian ideal type implies some degree of state failure (Migdal, 2001a, p. 15). From this perspective, informality is a product of state failure or backwardness, where the relationship between informal actors and the state is framed as a zero-sum game based of inherent conflict and competition. Informality is seen as something to be controlled by the state—as with policymakers’ impulse to “formalise” the informal sector or reign in “illegal” extraction. At its most basic, informality is seen as a threat to the state, with informal institutions detracting from state authority and legitimacy. This perspective, which sees the formal and informal inherently in conflict, makes it impossible to “theorise about arenas of competing multiple sets of rules, other than to term these as negative, as failures, weak states

or even non-states” (Migdal & Schlichte, 2005, p. 12; see also Hagmann & Hoehne, 2009; K. Hoffman & Kirk, 2013).

Instead of relying solely on the Weberian definitional ideal type of modern statehood, which places a premium on the state’s monopoly on authority and sovereignty (e.g. van Overbeek 2014), it is necessary to consider informality and statehood in terms of how institutions, governance, and authority actually work. In line with the state formation literature, I treat the monopoly over violence or taxation as an empirical variable rather than an attribute of statehood. Studying real governing authority on the ground requires a close understanding of how state and informal authority interact.2 I thus adopt a “real governance” approach, exploring formal–informal relationships and considering their implications for models of mediated statehood and non-autonomous, non-unitary states, rather than for the Weberian ideal-type.

The ways in which formal and informal authority interact is both theoretically and empirically neglected in the literature; for example (Helmke & Levitsky, 2004, p. 734) note that “the issue of how informal institutions sustain or reinforce—as opposed to undermine or distort—formal ones has not been well researched”. Through the case study of Sierra Leone, I aim to narrow the gap in our knowledge of the role informality plays in reinforcing state authority and underpinning the processes of statebuilding, in particular by exploring when a state concedes taxing authority to informal actors.

In this chapter I first outline my novel approach to exploring mediated statehood through the lens of taxation and informal revenue generation (IRG)—that is, the collection of non- market payments that are not required or defined by state law and are enforced outside of the state legal system. I show the importance of studying IRG on account of its prevalence in areas of weak state institutions and its ability to shed light on key aspects of state power and authority. In section 2, I then summarise the key argument of this thesis: contrary to

2 There is a risk of conflating informal and non-state authority. As described in further detail in Chapter 2, I define informality in relation to formal state laws. Accordingly, my definition of “informal actors” encompasses both state and non-state actors insofar as both may act outside of statutorily defined roles and boundaries.

conventional expectations about statehood, the state does not always try to control IRG, but can coexist with it, with informal taxing actors reinforcing the state’s governing capacity and authority in unexpected ways. I show that state engagement with IRG is deeply intertwined with its governing strategy and determined by the nature and balance of its governing constraints. While informal taxing actors do not always pose a threat to the state, they likewise do not always undermine statebuilding processes. Instead, they can be central to statebuilding, with the possibility of complementing and strengthening state institutional capacity. Throughout this thesis, I show that, rather than being antithetical to modern statehood and statebuilding process, informality is deeply intertwined in the creation and maintenance of state authority, as well as broader processes of state institutionalisation. These findings have significant implications for theoretical understanding of formal– informal institutional relationships, conceptions of modern statehood, and processes of statebuilding. I consider these implications in section 3, before outlining the structure of the thesis in section 4.

1 Understanding the state through taxation and informal revenue generation

Fiscal sociologists—that is, those who study “the social processes behind taxation and public finances” (J. Campbell, 1993, p. 163)—have long argued that how governments raise revenue is critical to understanding the ways in which they govern (see e.g. Bell, 1976; Goldscheid, 1962; Jacobs, 1988; F. K. Mann, 1943; I. Martin et al., 2009; O’Connor, 1973; Padgett, 1981). Perhaps most famously, Schumpeter argued that “public finances are one of the best starting points for an investigation of society, and particularly its political life” (Schumpeter, 1918/1991, p. 101). These analysts, however, have tended to focus on formal taxation, formal budgets, and formal revenues—inherently leading them to analyse state institutions alone. This reflects the general state bias of both history and political analysis, which stems in part from the legibility and measurability of the artefacts of statehood. The “state is a recording, registering, and measuring machine” (Scott, 2017, p. 139), leaving in its wake reams of papers and statistics that are often thought to tell us everything there is to know about political institutions and life. These entrails of statehood, however, tell us only one

story of social life—a “formal” one—and we often pay less attention to the elements of statehood and state making “that are either absent [from formal records] or leave only faint traces” (Scott, 2017, p. 16).

I seek to correct this bias by extending the analysis of taxation and the state beyond formal tax systems. Instead, I capture both the formal and informal dynamics of public finance that affect the majority of citizens in low-income countries. Edmond Burke (1790) argues that “[t]he revenue of the state is the state”, with tax revenues giving us a clear picture of what the state prioritises. By examining informal revenue generation in the context of formal taxation, I shed light on the state, as well as broader processes of governance, the construction and contestation of authority, and institutional development. Through the lens of informality, I see what the state prioritises, criminalises, grudgingly accepts, and actively supports, as well as the underlying institutions that reinforce and undermine its governing capacity, legitimacy, and authority. Through this perspective, I describe the how and why of the state and institutional development, shedding light on formal–informal institutional interaction and offering insight into a set of tangible issues of critical importance to the citizens of modern states.

In this section, I first show how a fiscal sociological approach is a useful entry point to analysing the state, building on the foundational literature of tax and statehood in early and early-modern states. I then consider the value of this approach for exploring modern statehood, making the case that we must extend the lens of analysis to include IRG as well as formal public finances in order to better understand political and governance institutions and the state.

1.1 Tax and the state in historical perspective

Taxation is a basic function and indicator of statehood and a key source and symbol of state power (Hansen & Stepputat, 2001). It is unsurprising that in the early states of China and Rome, the limits of state power “began precisely where taxes… stopped” (Scott, 2017, p. 222). Early statebuilding in Mesopotamia, China, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the New World was characterised by the common drive “to create a legible, measured, and fairly uniform

landscape of taxable grain crops” as a foundation of the revenue and control necessary for statehood (Scott, 2017, p. 23). Similarly, the history of statebuilding and institutional development in early-modern Europe revolves around taxation. As described by Levi (1988, p. 1), “[t]he history of state revenue production is the history of the evolution of the state”. In early-modern Europe, taxation, which was made necessary by the financial demands of war, served to entrench state institutions and state authority. As Tilly (1990/1993, p. 15) describes,

War and preparation for war involved rulers in extracting the means of war from others who held the essential resources… and who were reluctant to surrender them without strong pressure or compensation. Within limits… extraction and struggle over the means of war created the central organisational structures of the state.3

Prompted by the revenue exigencies of war, the state’s role in extracting taxes enabled state borrowing in a way that further strengthened state capacity and the possibilities of institutional development.4 Essentially, credit “link[ed] the military monopoly to the monopoly of taxation” (Tilly, 1990/1993, p. 85). As described by Brewer (1989, p. 93), “the effectiveness of its tax system provided the British state with a regular and secure income which made borrowing both comparatively cheap and relatively simple.” In this way, “States’ future revenues began to serve as security for long-term debt” (Tilly, 1990/1993, p. 74). The relationship between coercion and capital defined state structures and organisations; indeed, it was the creation of the “fiscal-military state”—a state dominated by the task of waging war—that most decisively set in motion the political and administrative reforms that

3 Downing (1992) extends Tilly’s thesis by suggesting that peasant rebellions, religious clashes, and conflicts over international trade could also affect the survival of the state in a way that spurred processes of bureaucratic centralization and state consolidation.

4 Critically, war was not the only route to bureaucratic centralization, while hindering it in different contexts and time periods. Later scholars have clarified that it is not merely war that enables statebuilding, but the type and frequency of war and the manner in which it is waged, while a range of factors—including the nature of political and social coalitions, elite ideology and politics, administrative models, religion, and colonial legacies—may shape state formation (see e.g. Adams, 2005; M. A. Centeno, 2002; Ertman, 1997; Gorski, 2003; Hui, 2005; Spruyt, 1994; Vu, 2010a). Moreover, “bureaucratic centralization is only one of many viable strategies for state building” (Vu, 2010b, p. 170), being unnecessary to ensure the state’s greater extractive capacity (see e.g. Adams, 2005; Gorski, 2003). Nevertheless, where bureaucracies centralized, taxation was a defining feature of the state and its capacity.

would transform English government in the nineteenth century (J. Brewer, 1989, pp. 14, 22). Hui (2005, pp. 51, 139–142) likewise finds that during periods of state formation in Europe and China, more commercialized and monetized national economies were associated with more efficient state taxation.

Taxation strengthened state institutions and administrative capacity in three ways: the development of the state’s common interest in the welfare of citizens, the centralisation and bureaucratisation of the state, and the incentivisation of more accountable relationships between citizens and the state. First, the state, dependent on taxpayers for revenue, developed a common interest in the prosperity of the ruled (Mick Moore, 2008; Prichard, 2015), redefining the role of the state in economic development and capital accumulation to ensure a sufficient resource base for extraction (Bates, 2008, 2010; Levi, 1988; Porter, 1994; Tilly, 1985, 1990/1993). As explained by Moore et al. (2018, p. 183), “The wealthier the taxpayers become, the larger the potential tax revenue”.

Second, the need to collect taxes required states to centralise and develop complex bureaucracies, which led to far-reaching positive externalities for public administration and institutional development outside of the narrow capacity to collect taxes. While state revenue-raising existed for centuries through patrimonial and brokerage forms of collection, the fiscal pressures of war in the nineteenth century created the need for a centralised taxing authority that eventually overhauled the previous fragmentation of sovereignty across Europe (Tilly, 1990/1993, pp. 40, 53). Centralisation of control over revenue collection minimised corruption and losses associated with antecedent decentralised methods of extraction (Bräutigam, 2008; J. Brewer, 1989; Tilly, 1990/1993), and altered the very idea of the responsibilities of rulers. Indeed, it was “only with the growth of centralized states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the ruler’s domain came to be seen less as personal property and more as a kind of public trust that the ruler managed on behalf of the larger society” (Fukuyama, 2014, p. 83).

At the same time, a specialised and professional fiscal capacity enabled the broader expansion of a Weberian administrative bureaucracy through demonstration, information- sharing, and spillover effects. Demonstration effects led to new standards in public

administration, including meritocratisation and professionalisation. Meanwhile, as taxation required taxpayers to be legible to the state, the state’s capacity to “see” those under its dominion strengthened considerably (Scott, 1998b), with data collected for tax collection purposes used to support other state functions (e.g. Gavin et al., 2013; D. Pieterse et al., 2016). Spillover effects strengthened the agencies that support tax collection, while significantly expanding the role and responsibilities of the state. Tilly (1990/1993, p. 75) describes that “as a byproduct of preparations for war, rulers willy-nilly started activities and organisations that eventually took on lives of their own: courts, treasuries, systems of taxation, regional administrations, public assemblies, and much more”. In England, “[a]lmost every branch of government expanded in response to the exigencies of war and the administrative demands of empire”, though with the greatest increases occurring in the departments of revenue (J. Brewer, 1989, p. 55). This expansion of state activity and bureaucracy was necessarily underpinned by a sustained need for finance, consolidating the central role of tax administrations to a state’s capacity and reach (e.g. Bräutigam et al., 2008; Mick Moore, 2004; Prichard, 2010). In explaining this cycle, Fukuyama (2014, p. 265) describes how

resource requirements of long-term warfare… led states to tax their citizens, create finance ministries and bureaucracies to administer the tax extraction, build administrative hierarchies to manage extensive logistical systems… [leading] to a dramatic expansion of the revenue needs of early modern European states in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the growth of civilian bureaucracies.

Finally, tax dramatically shaped the relationship between the state and society, creating incentives for the state to be more accountable and responsive to its subjects. Where states were forced to rely on taxation to finance their activities, taxpayers had increased interest in how their money was spent and thus greater incentive to demand accountability from their governments (Prichard, 2015, p. 4; see also Mick Moore et al., 2018, pp. 184–185). At the same time, governments had increased incentives to respond to these demands in order to encourage “quasi-voluntary” tax compliance (Levi, 1988). In other words, states exchanged representation and services for increased taxation.

1.2 Tax and the state in contemporary low-income countries5

In contemporary low-income countries, revenue-raising remains central to understanding the state and its power—or lack thereof. Indeed, state weakness in low-income countries can be seen as both a cause and consequence of weak state revenue collection, with tax-to-GDP ratios often used to indicate state capacity and the strength of centralized bureaucracy (see Figure 1). Several theories explain this lack of state development. First, colonial legacies of external state formation are not determinative, but “cast a long shadow over postcolonial societies” (Vu, 2010b, p. 163; see e.g. Hutchcroft, 2000; Jalal, 1995; Kohli, 2004; Sidel, 1999). Colonial states in Africa set up systems of political order that prioritized extraction rather than development, preventing the construction of a rational centralized bureaucracy and leaving a legacy of neopatrimonial logic and order (e.g. Kohli, 2004; Young, 1994). Second, some argue that the difficult geography of some regions of the world, including Africa (Herbst, 2000) and Latin America (M. A. Centeno, 2002), make bureaucratic centralization more costly and less beneficial than in more compact areas like Western Europe. In these contexts, “Rational bureaucracy is in fact irrational” (Vu, 2010b, p. 158).

Figure 1: Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP, 1980–20156

10 Percent of Percent GDP

0 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Low income countries Lower-middle income (average) countries (average) Upper-middle income High income countries countries (average) (average)

5 This sub-section draws on ideas published as van den Boogaard et al. (2018).

6 Tax excludes social contributions; country income groups follow World Bank (2017) classification as of June 2017.

Data source: (ICTD/UNU-WIDER, 2018)

A further explanation for persistent weak state development is that contemporary low- income states face a less pressing need to raise revenue through taxation relative to states in early-modern Europe. Indeed, several key differences in the contemporary context and the nature of state’s governing constraints disrupt the causal processes that forced early- modern European rulers to constrain their authority in exchange for tax revenue. Today, states are to some degree insulated from external existential threats—that is, the “spur of the risk of survival” that sparked cycles of taxation and state entrenchment in early-modern Europe (Bates, 2010, p. 104; J. Brewer, 1989, p. 13; see also M. A. Centeno, 2002; Herbst, 2000; Sørensen, 2001). Following the destruction of the World Wars, the norm of territorial sovereignty became an accepted and constitutive fact of the international system. The accepted norms of territorial sovereignty in international relations changed the strategies that states employed to accumulate wealth, with territorial aggrandisement no longer a prerequisite or even a viable strategy (Bates, 2010; R. Jackson, 1995; R. Jackson & Rosberg, 1982; Sørensen, 2001; Spruyt, 2009).7 As a result, competition for controlling the means of coercion in modern states is primarily internal. While interstate wars could rally the nation in favour of expanded taxation without disrupting domestic tax capacity, intrastate conflicts are more likely to destroy domestic tax capacity, while also signalling sharp internal divisions that may undermine support for taxation.8 This disconnection from local processes of taxation can help to explain how war can “decisively help to make states in one part of the system and more or less systematically help to destroy states in another” (Sørensen, 2001, p. 342; see also Fukuyama, 2014, p. 79).

7 These states were granted the same external rights and responsibilities as all other sovereign states, but many had not been empowered domestically and lacked the institutional features of sovereign states defined by classical international law. Former colonial states, many of them the creations of colonial powers, were “internationally enfranchised” (R. Jackson, 1991, p. 21), with borders “superimposed on heterogeneous populations”, with “rulers inevitably lack[ing] legitimacy” (Spruyt, 2009, p. 223).

8 In the contemporary context, where state survival is guaranteed, systemic threat is more likely to lead to institutional dismantling, decentralisation, privatisation and criminalisation than to state–society bargaining or institution building (Leander, 2002; M Moore, 2008).

Today’s low-income states may be further insulated to some degree from the need for domestic taxation as a result of alternative sources of revenue. This idea has been explored most extensively in the context of the “resource curse” (Chaudhry, 1997; Gervasoni, 2010; B. Hoffman & Gibson, 2005; Luong & Wenthal, 2006; M Moore, 2008; M. Ross, 2001, 2004, 2009, 2012), but applies more broadly in contexts where states have access to external non-tax sources of revenue, including foreign loans (M. A. Centeno, 2002, pp. 275–276; Lopez-Alves, 2001, pp. 158–162) and aid (Bräutigam, 2000; Eubank, 2012; Knack, 2000, 2004; Mick Moore, 1998; Nkusu, 2004). Where states are reliant, if not dependent, on foreign aid, they may face reduced incentives to invest in domestic tax collection and will not benefit from the statebuilding externalities described above (see e.g. Bornhorst et al., 2008; Boyce & Forman, 2010; Bräutigam & Knack, 2004; Carnahan, 2007; Remmer, 2004). While research suggests that the negative connection between aid and tax collection is highly context-specific (Prichard et al., 2018), it remains intuitive that a lack of connection with domestic taxpayers can correspond with an “externalisation of political accountability” (Clapham, 1996, p. 187), particularly where state institutional foundations are weak.

This is reinforced by the legacies of colonial state formation, which neglected the legitimatization processes that are central to state power alongside physical and material forces (see e.g. Adams, 2005; Corrigan & Sayer, 1985; T. Day, 2002; Gorski, 2003; T. Mitchell, 1999; Vu, 2010b, pp. 164–166; B. Wong, 1997). State formation and expansion under colonial rule did not involve the creation of state-society bargains as it did in Western Europe. As Callahan (2003) explains, “In the process [of being subjugated], most of the population met the modern state in the form of an unintelligible, gun-wielding soldier, not in an encounter with a tax collector who might negotiate in a comprehensible dialect.” Absent pressure on rulers to bargain with social groups that could counterbalance rulers’ power, the processes of state formation and accountability outlined by Tilly in Europe did not apply (Vu, 2010b). The overall effect is that rulers have not faced the same pressures to centralise the means of coercion and capital or to enter into bargains with their citizens to tax domestically. Arguably, the self-reinforcing links between taxation and statebuilding (Figure 2) were not established.

Figure 2: Self-reinforcing links between tax and statebuilding

Stronger state Improved institutional service delivery capacity

Increased tax Stronger state revenue legitimacy

Increased quasi-voluntary tax compliance

Despite these reasons to be sceptical of an inherent relationship between taxation and statebuilding in contemporary low-income countries, in recent years the interrelated ideas of taxation, accountability, and statebuilding have gained widespread acceptance and driven a powerful narrative amongst the epistemic community of development practitioners and international policymakers, particularly within the international financial institutions. Development practitioners and policymakers increasingly see taxation as an essential spur to statebuilding (Boyce & Forman, 2010; S. Gupta et al., 2005, 2007; Therkildsen, 2008),9 accountable state-society relations, (e.g. Fritz & Menocal, 2007; Gaspar et al., 2016; IMF, 2017; OECD, 2008a, 2009, 2010, 2014), and the building of state capacity to deliver services and reach (the) sustainable development goals (Bhushan et al., 2013; International Chamber of Commerce, 2018; United Nations, 2015a, 2015b, 2003).10

This focus on the links between taxation and modern statebuilding, however, has a major blind spot because it focuses only on processes and outcomes of formal taxation. In practice, only a small share of people in most low-income countries pay formal direct taxes to the central government (Figure 3). Most taxpayers in low-income countries earn too little

9 In post-conflict countries, taxation is often seen as an entry point for rebuilding state capacity, legitimacy, and relations within aggrieved societies.

10 The agenda stemming from this narrative has, for instance, focused on revenue-related aid conditionality (e.g. Bolnick & Hadler, 2011; Carnahan, 2007).

income to pay formal income taxes at the national level—or are otherwise able to avoid paying (Mick Moore et al., 2018, p. 149).

Figure 3: Personal income tax revenues as a percentage of GDP, 1980–2015 11

4 Percent of Percent GDP

0 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Low income countries Lower-middle income (average) countries (average) Upper-middle income High income countries countries (average) (average)

Data source: (ICTD/UNU-WIDER, 2018)

While there is a bias in state analyses to focus on national statistics (Mick Moore et al., 2018, p. 150), available sub-national data confirms the reality of minimal or absent taxation of individuals. Indeed, while there has been a “broad, financially backed, international movement” towards decentralisation (Bahl, 1999; Crook & Manor, 1998; Smoke, 2013) and while some local governments have jurisdiction over a large number of taxes and fees, the total burden of formal taxes and levies at the local level remains limited. Official data from sub-national governments across sub-Saharan Africa show that per capita revenue collection outside of capital cities is frequently in the range of USD 1–3 per year, and often only modestly higher even in larger secondary cities.12

11 Personal income tax revenues include total tax revenues on individuals’ income, capital gains and profits exclusive of resource revenues. Average is based on observations for which data is available.

12 See, for example, data reported from Sierra Leone in Jibao and Prichard (2015, 2016), from Ghana in Prichard and van den Boogaard (2017), or from Côte d’Ivoire in Sanogo and Brun (2016).

This does not mean that individuals and businesses in low-income countries “do not pay taxes”, as is often assumed (e.g. Morisset & Cunningham, 2015; The Economist, 2015). While formal direct taxation often affects only a narrow segment of the population in low-income countries, “local residents in many communities throughout the developing world do contribute substantially—outside the formal tax system—to the construction and maintenance of local public goods” (Olken & Singhal, 2011, p. 1). As noted by Keen (2005a, p. 4), “In Sierra Leone, as in much of Africa and beyond, the state has never been ‘the only game in town’”. The prevalence of IRG in contexts of weak state institutions suggests the need to apply a fiscal sociological lens in a way that captures more than formal revenue- raising. If “[t]he fiscal history of a people is above all an essential part of its general history” (Schumpeter, 1918/1991, p. 7), then we need to properly understand the entire fiscal landscape to understand a people, the state, and the locus of authority. In low-income countries, the fiscal landscape is much more expansive and informal than that which can be discerned through national tax systems and statistics.13

In this thesis, I explore the real dynamics of public finance as experienced by the majority of citizens in low-income countries. I aim to see the state through IRG. This lens allows me to understand the power dynamics within a state’s territory, including the importance of non- state centres of power and authority, the extent of a state’s independent governing authority, and the nature and extent of the social, political, and economic forces upon which the state’s governing authority and legitimacy ultimately depend. While there is a growing recognition that informal taxes and levies are a critical aspect of local governance (e.g. van den Boogaard & Prichard, 2016), relatively little remains known about IRG. Particularly little is understood about how the state interacts with it and how it affects formal institutional development. This research fills that gap by showing IRG is important not only to citizens but to the functioning of political life and the structures of modern statehood in contemporary low- income states.

13 To be sure, this is likely equally true of earlier periods of statebuilding. While impossible to study for lack of data, it is indicative of the reality that the existing narratives of tax and statebuilding—and the lessons derived from them with respect to our understanding of the state—are incomplete.

2 Central argument

In order to understand the modern state, I explore the informal empirical realities of taxation and the ways in which the state responds to them. In exploring the relationship between the state and informal taxing actors, I recognise that, as described by Mann (1984, p. 187), “[t]he state is undeniably a messy concept”. I define it as the “institutional configurations in which political actors operate” (Vu, 2010b, p. 150; see also Krasner, 1984), though I am principally interested in “those centralised institutions generally called ‘states’, and in the powers of the personnel who staff them, at the higher levels generally termed the ‘state elite’” (M. Mann, 1984, p. 188; see also Fukuyama, 2013; Weber, 1968). I assume that state rulers are principally interested in staying in power, though recognise that they operate “within intricate webs of relationships among themselves and with their families and staffs” (Vu, 2010b, p. 154; see e.g. Adams, 2005). While I focus on the state as the centralised institutions of the government in power, I also recognise that the state is not a monolithic actor and consider how state policy and action is affected by competing interests and objectives between state institutions, levels of government, and locations.14 These competing interests and objectives shape the state’s governing strategy, which in turn partly shapes the nature of how it relates to informal taxing actors.

Classic theories of rational-legal statehood anticipate that the state should seek to control IRG, while common conceptions of formal–informal relationships are often framed as zero- sum. By contrast, Helmke and Levitsky (2004) show that the relationship between formal and informal institutions need not be competitive, but may also be complementary, substitutive, and accommodating under different conditions. While they add considerable nuance to our understanding of informality, in the context of ineffective formal institutions they only see hybrid outcomes as either substitutive or competing. By contrast, I show that

14 In particular, I consider how official state policy may differ from and/or be contradicted by the actions of street-level bureaucrats. Moreover, I explore how different levels of government may interact differently with informal taxing actors in view of different, and sometimes competing, objectives to project and reinforce national and local sovereignties. In part, this reflects a Migdalian state-in-society view, viewing the state as an institutional configuration involving interaction with other actors.

even in contexts of weak and ineffective formal institutions, the state may coexist or cooperate with informal institutions, while informal institutions may supplement, rather than substitute for, ineffective formal ones. My typology of formal–informal relationships, explored in greater detail in Chapter 4, characterizes relationships along two spectrums: the degree to which the state attempts to control or coexist with IRG and the extent to which informal revenue generation converges or diverges with state institutions. Four ideal type relationships result, as described in Table 1, making clear that formal–informal relationships are not zero-sum.

Table 1: Typology of formal and informal hybrid outcomes

Divergent Convergent IRG IRG

State Competitive Assertive controls

State Concessionary Supplementary coexists

My explanation of variation in formal–informal relationships comes with two caveats. First, I only explore factors driving variation between state coexistence and state control, not attempting to explain the differences between divergent and convergent IRG. Second, I focus on proximate explanatory factors, with an exploration of more distant explanatory factors— including the origins of these factors—beyond the scope of this thesis. Within these parameters, I thus explore under what conditions the state coexists with, rather than controls, informal taxing actors.

Primarily, I argue that where the state depends on informal taxing actors for its governing capacity and authority, it will be more willing to concede revenues to these actors.15 By

15 Considering more distant explanatory factors—outside of the scope of this thesis—we may consider, for example, what drives dependence on informal actors in the first place. In this line of explanation, the role of prior state capacity will be particularly influential. For example, a state’s dependence on informal taxing actors

governing capacity, I mean the capacity of the state to rule and for rulers to stay in power. Processes of state expansion and consolidation are underpinned by governing capacity and authority, which are distinct from processes of state institution building, which is underpinned by the state’s capacity to function effectively. Informal taxing actors can reinforce governing capacity and authority in unexpected ways, with informality thus central to state governing strategies (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 1997b; Kingston, 2004; Raeymaekers et al., 2008; Risse, 2011; Wickham-Crowley, 1987; Wiuff Moe, 2011). This occurs, for instance, where informal taxing actors supplement essential public goods and services that are key to the state’s governing legitimacy or where they deliver political outcomes—including stability, control, or votes—that matter to the state. Accordingly, we can understand why state engagement with IRG is not always driven by a desire to gain a monopoly on taxation and authority. Instead, IRG may align with or underpin the state’s governing strategy.

However, the degree of state dependence on informal taxing actors is critical. Even where a state depends on informal taxing actors, it still derives authority from a multiplicity of other actors, both domestic and international. The balance between these multiple dependencies constitute the state’s governing constraints. These constraints, in turn, shape how states engage with IRG and are key to understanding the dynamics of state coexistence and control. For example, where a state is more dependent on international donors—who typically view informality as inherently destructive and detrimental—than on informal taxing actors, the state will be more likely to take control of informal revenue generation.

In some cases, therefore, informal taxing actors may reinforce state authority and strengthen the state’s capacity to govern. These processes of bolstering the power of governing regimes, however, are distinct from the longer-term processes of state institution building. Nevertheless, IRG can also have unanticipated effects on statebuilding, which I define as the strengthening of state institutional capacity. State institutional capacity is reflected in the effectiveness of how governments function (Fukuyama, 2013), which is central to any state’s

is implicitly linked to their capacity to act autonomously, with weak states more likely to accept ideas of shared sovereignty and pluralized authority than states with greater capacity.

capacity “to get things done” (M. Centeno et al., 2017, p. 13). Though informality is usually seen as detrimental to long-term statebuilding processes, I show that IRG can strengthen state institutional capacity under certain conditions. Where informal taxing actors converge with the state and where the state is weak, but present, in providing public goods, I find that IRG can boost state legitimacy, bolster and extend state capacity, and contribute to “partnership” models of statehood and statebuilding. While it is often assumed that the state need be autonomous from societal factors in order to strengthen its ability to “get things done” (e.g. Fukuyama, 2013; Skocpol, 1985), the politics of statebuilding are, at least in part, played out at the local level in conjunction with informal institutions. Contrasting conventional models of “top-down” statebuilding, I show that it is in these local processes where IRG and informal taxing actors can reinforce modern statehood and statebuilding processes. The state that emerges may not look like a rational, Weberian institutional model. Nevertheless, it may prove more resilient and dynamic than expected.

3 Theoretical implications

By explaining variation in formal–informal interaction and considering how informal processes affect statebuilding, I contribute to an understudied area of comparative political development and provide a necessary corrective to simplified conceptions of informality and statehood. These oversimplifications partly stem from a disciplinary blind spot, with insufficient attention paid to informal politics and institutions. As described by Radnitz (2011, p. 354), the discipline of political science “originated in western democracies and was traditionally devoted to understanding how formal institutions in those systems functioned.”

Looking at the role of informal actors in state and statebuilding processes does not diminish or negate the role of the state in these processes; while there is a need to “relativize the role of the state in regulation and public service delivery”, the state remains a “strong, although not exclusive” actor in these fields (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014, p. 16). Although informal institutions are insufficiently appreciated within most analyses of institutional, political, and economic development, the state remains important for the development and outcomes of informal institutions, with strategic interaction between the formal and the

informal often symbiotic and self-reinforcing. I consider “how power is legitimated and practiced” (K. Hoffman & Kirk, 2013, p. 2), regardless of the formality of institutional structures. Accordingly, I emphasise the need to look beyond the state in order to more completely understand the state itself. In this way, I align with scholars that recognise both the importance of the state and social forces (see e.g. Migdal, 1988, 2001b; Migdal et al., 1994). With this more contextualized view, “studies of the state will remain ‘back in’ for years to come” (M. Centeno et al., 2017, p. 31; see also Vu, 2010b).

My evidence casts new light on how we see the state and informal institutions. It contributes to our understanding of the relationship between formal and informal institutions, models of statehood, and the foundations of state power and authority, with implications for institutional development, statebuilding, decentralisation, and public goods provision. As opposed to the state “as singular, supreme rule-maker” (Migdal & Schlichte, 2005, p. 16), it makes clear that modern statehood and authority is spread across a plurality of power centres, mediated and shaped by the state’s interaction with informal institutions and power brokers (see e.g. Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014; Lund, 2007; Menkhaus, 2006a; Migdal, 2001b). Above all, this thesis shows that the relationship between formal and informal institutions is not always zero-sum. Instead, the relationship is more nuanced, with the state sometimes coexisting with informal institutions and IRG possibly reinforcing state authority.

Just as formal and informal institutions do not always compete with each other, the impacts of informal taxing actors on statebuilding need not be negative. Indeed, informality is deeply entrenched in modern statebuilding within weak institutional contexts. In exploring the relations between IRG and statebuilding, my research contributes to theories of tax and the state, extending the analytic scope beyond formal systems of public finance. As such, it provides a useful corrective to existing narratives of statebuilding, moving beyond formal, national-level processes and focusing on the local and informal processes, institutions, and actors that are at the heart of statebuilding. This correction helps us to better understand the relationship between tax and the state in contexts where formal direct taxation affects a small percentage of taxpayers. Using the lens of IRG, my research thus offers novel empirical

insight into the state and the construction, institutionalisation, and contestation of statehood at the local level.

These models of formal–informal interaction also have significant implications for service delivery, equity, and redistribution in weak institutional contexts. Since the 1980s, much of the responsibility of service delivery in low-income countries has been decentralised, based on the idea that bringing government service delivery closer to the people provides the key to better governance and development outcomes (Bahl, 1999; Bahl & Bird, 2008; Booth, 2011b; Burki et al., 1999; Devarajan et al., 2009; Grindle, 2004; Jibao & Prichard, 2013). The ways in which state and non-state institutions interact and levy taxes may shape the effectiveness of service delivery, the accessibility and reach of services, and the fairness and distribution of access (Cammett & MacLean, 2014a; van den Boogaard et al., 2019; van den Boogaard & Prichard, 2016). My analysis thus contributes to literature exploring the relationship between non-state actors and the state in service delivery and economic development, which has often been considered in the context of privatisation, the retreat of the state, and vacuums left by state “failure” or weakness. By deepening our understanding of public finance and service delivery in practice, this research has implications for broader understanding of decentralisation, public goods provision, equity, and redistribution.

4 Thesis structure

This thesis is divided into five parts. Part I sets out my theory of IRG and the state. Chapter 2 starts by defining IRG and creating a typology of informal payments, situating my conceptual framework within disparate literatures that focus on informal taxation, corruption, rebel taxation, and non-state service provision. I show that approaches to informal public finance to date insufficiently capture the contextual richness of IRG in a manner that allows for cross- context comparison and generalizable knowledge. I suggest a more productive way forward that balances contextual analysis and generalizable theory: inductive theory-building through in-depth case studies. This approach combines the advantages of deep contextual knowledge with the analytic value of a generalizable theory that can be deductively tested in other contexts. I engage in inductive theory building in Sierra Leone, which represents an

ideal initial case for theory-building as early evidence indicated that IRG is a particularly prevalent phenomenon in this context. First, I analyse prototypical case studies of formal– informal relationships, capturing the spectrum of variation outlined in my typology of formal–informal relationships. Second, I rely on small-N sub-national comparison across districts and chiefdoms in Sierra Leone to parse the relevant causal dynamics and mechanisms when developing the theory of IRG and the state. I developed, tested, and revised hypotheses and propositions through these two methods based on public revenue data, secondary datasets, and historical records, and original data collected through a mix of ethnographic immersion; surveys with over 800 taxpayers; in-depth interviews with over 300 community and government leaders; over 50 focus group discussions with community leaders, chiefdom authorities, and taxpayers.

Chapter 3 then gives context to IRG, mapping the formal and informal fiscal landscape in Sierra Leone. I show that IRG is a prevalent and often institutionalised reality for the majority of individuals to access basic public goods and governance institutions, with significant implications for equity and redistribution. With this foundation, Chapter 4 establishes my theory of IRG and the state, building a typology of formal–informal interactions. These ideal- type relationships—which I refer to as concessionary, competitive, supplementary, and assertive formal–informal outcomes—vary according to whether IRG converges or diverges with modern state institutions and whether the state coexists with IRG or assets control over it. I explain variation in whether the state coexists with or tries to take control over IRG through an examination of the state’s governing constraints and the extent to which its governing capacity and authority depend on IRG and/or informal taxing actors.

The second and third parts of this thesis build out the theoretical model using exemplar case studies of the four ideal-type relationships in Sierra Leone, explaining variation across and within these outcomes and tracing the explanatory mechanisms. Part II considers state relationships with divergent IRG —that is, IRG that supports systems of governance and tax that are outside of and pose a threat to state institutions. Chapter 5 considers an example of a concessionary formal–informal relationship, where the state coexists with divergent IRG. According to orthodox models of statehood and state authority, this is the most

surprising outcome. Though we expect that the state will always try to control IRG—and especially that which threatens its institutions—the state gives up control and revenue to informal taxing actors. Considering the Sierra Leonean state’s relationship with traditional authorities over time, I explain this apparent paradox through state’s political dependence on chiefs, which leads the state to trade its monopoly on taxation for the short-term stability of its authority.

Chapter 6 then considers a competitive formal–informal relationship, where the state attempts to assert control over divergent IRG. Continuing to consider the relationship between the Sierra Leonean state and chiefs, I home in on a particular historical period where the state attempted to assert its authority over chiefs’ informal taxing power at the local level. I explore the conditions that enabled the state to do so—namely, a shift in the balance of power between chiefs and the state, and pressure from external actors to assert state authority—while making clear that continued, if diminished dependence on chiefs leads to a mediated form of control, reflecting hybrid formal–informal tax relationships. I consider sub-national variation in these hybrid outcomes, showing that the effectiveness of state control is shaped by the relative autonomy of informal taxing actors.

Part III then considers parallel variation in the state’s relationship with convergent IRG— that is, IRG that works outside of, but does not threaten state institutions. Chapter 7 considers a case where the state coexists with convergent IRG in a supplementary formal– informal relationship. Looking at the case study of the formal–informal co-provision of education in Sierra Leone through formal and informal financing, I show that the state tacitly coexists with informal taxing actors because of its dependence on them—this time, for the delivery of development outcomes that are essential to its governing authority. At the same time, the nature of its governing constraints, including dependence on international donors that condemn informal taxes and fees for the provision of education, mean that the state cannot openly accept IRG in this sector, resulting in a disconnect between official state policy, which bans IRG, and practice, where IRG is central to the provision of an essential public good.

Chapter 8 presents the final exemplar case study of an assertive formal–informal relationship, with the state asserting control over convergent IRG. Through the case study of the state’s engagement with informal labour taxes over time, I show that the shift from supplementary to assertive outcomes coincides with a decrease in dependence on informal taxing actors and increased pressure from development partners to control IRG in order to better align with models of “modern” democratic state institutions. Within-case variation in the nature of strategies of state control over IRG highlight the importance of the relative acceptability of IRG to state decision making, highlighting a broader point that IRG is not always antithetical to “development” and “modernity”, but may be openly embraced by the state through formalisation and state takeovers of IRG.

Building on the insight that the state does not always compete with IRG, but instead can coexist and work with IRG in order to reinforce its governing capacity and authority, Part IV then explores the relationship between IRG and statebuilding. Chapter 9 first explores how different types of IRG affect state legitimacy. While there is a tendency to assume that IRG will always detract from state legitimacy, I find that different types of IRG can have positive and negative effects, while others simply exist in parallel to the state without affecting state legitimacy. Critically, positive effects only emerge where the state is present, if weak, in public goods provision. Where the state is completely absent, these positive outcomes evaporate. Accordingly, it is not just the nature of IRG that affects state legitimacy, but the nature of state engagement with IRG and public goods provision. Chapter 10 then considers the effects of IRG on state revenues and structures, showing that the effects on revenues are often more limited than assumed and that IRG does not always undermine state structures. Instead, state engagement with IRG may actually have positive implications for state institutionalisation. These findings suggest that in weak institutional contexts, strategic and cautious use of hybrid formal–informal taxing and service delivery arrangements may be part of an effective statebuilding strategy. Finally, Part V (Chapter 11) concludes by summarising the key arguments, considering the implications for analyses of informality and statehood and critical debates in the social sciences, and suggesting policy implications for development policymakers and statebuilders.

Part I: Informal revenue generation and the state

Chapter 2: Defining and researching informal revenue generation

Surely we know enough about even quite modern bureaucracies to realize that there is no necessary relation between the records on the one hand and the facts on the ground on the other.

(Scott, 2017, p. 141)

The state does not always have a monopoly on taxation. In low-income countries, revenue generation for public goods provision often happens outside of formal legal systems. While there is growing evidence of the importance of revenue-raising for informal public goods finance, the existing literature remains fragmented, incomplete, and lacking a unified terminology. In particular, there are different views on definitional boundaries and modes of analysing the “informal”. Many of these differences stem from disciplinary divides that have, to date, impeded constructive conversation between different research agendas.

While the phenomenon is of interest to all observers of social and institutional organisation—economists, political scientists, anthropologists—there is a disciplinary divide in how it is defined and studied. Quantitative and comparative disciplines tend to place greater value in defining informal systems of public goods finance narrowly, seeking parsimonious explanations and comparisons. By contrast, disciplines oriented towards in- depth case studies and “thick” contextual analysis are more likely to generate detailed knowledge of institutional dynamics while often eschewing the idea that informal public goods finance can be meaningfully quantified. Partly stemming from this disciplinary divide, there is disagreement over the breadth of the concept. Capturing the full breadth of revenue types within systems of informal public goods finance is complex. As a result, most studies have focused on narrow slices of formal or informal taxation, rather than zooming out and considering the overall fiscal realities facing average taxpayers.

By adopting a broad and inclusive definition of informal revenue generation, I capture a significantly wider array of payments than earlier studies. This allows me to map the realities of local systems for financing public goods and to capture the interactions between formal and informal tax institutions. In this chapter, I first review the key definitional debates around informal revenue generation, present my working definition, and develop a typology of payments under the umbrella concept of IRG. I then show how research approaches to date have been insufficient and suggest a more productive way forward that balances the need for contextual analysis and generalizable theory.

1 Defining informal revenue generation

In low-income countries, public goods are often financed and provided through systems of informal public goods finance—that is, systems of public goods finance that are outside of the state and formal budget processes. This study focuses on the revenue side of informal public goods finance—what I call informal revenue generation (hereafter IRG). Most studies of this concept have used the simplified term “informal taxation”, the most well-cited definition of which comes from Olken and Singhal (2011, p. 2), who conceptualise it “as a system of local public goods finance coordinated by public officials but enforced socially rather than through the formal legal system.” This definition, however, unduly limits the analytic lens by not including payments that look more like user fees than taxes and that would otherwise be defined under the encompassing term of “corruption”.

At the same time, most studies of “informal taxation” have further narrowed their scope by focusing on a small subset of informal tax-like payments, in particular “community development contributions” or “self-help activities”. For example, Olken and Singhal only capture contributions to the collective construction of community works (2011, p. 5), excluding payments that look more like user fees to access rather than construct a public good, are not directly related to community works, and are required by private actors—most notably, non-governmental organisations (NGOs)—to finance local public goods. This approach has the benefit of precision, while common measures of public participation in community development projects are available in cross-country surveys. It does not, however, recognise the diversity of how public goods are financed in practice, capturing only a segment of the broader informal fiscal demands borne by taxpayers. This narrow approach creates artificially neat boundaries around what are blurry distinctions in practice when defining informality, taxes, and public goods, while also vastly understating the scale of IRG.

This commonly used definition is very different from the earliest use of the term “informal taxation”: Prud’homme (1992, p. 6), in a study of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), then Zaïre, defined informal taxation as “nonformal means utilized to finance the provision of public goods and services”. In contrast to Olken and Singhal, he embraced a

broader conceptualisation of what it means to “finance the provision of public goods and services” such that his definition included informal user fees and bribe-like payments to state officials. He argued that all these payments are critical to providing local services and funding the local state. Whereas Olken and Singhal focus on one informal component of the financing of local public goods, Prud’homme was more concerned with capturing the broad fiscal reality of local governance.

I likewise adopt a broad conceptualisation of IRG in order to capture how public goods are actually financed, though I work towards greater definitional precision. My approach aligns with the objective of this study: to provide a broad picture of how local fiscal systems work in practice, including understanding the “real” costs for taxpayers to access public goods and services.16 It takes a non-normative perspective and seeks to understand how things are rather than limiting the lens of analysis based on idealised conceptions of how things “should” be. With this aim, labels of different payments matter less than understanding what actually exists—and, in turn, how that affects taxpayers and the state. By exploring how public goods are actually financed in practice, this study seeks to capture the “real” rather than the “idealised” systems of public finance.

Flowing from this objective, I define IRG as the collection of non-market payments that (a) are not required or defined by state law and/or do not enter the formal government budget and (b) are enforced outside of the state legal system. This includes payments made in cash, in-kind or through labour to non-state or state actors and serves as an umbrella concept with the goal of capturing the entire informal fiscal landscape.17 IRG encompasses different types

16 This is in line with a “real governance” approach to institutional analysis (see e.g. Leeson, 2006, 2007; Meagher, 2012; Menkhaus, 2006b; Murtazashvili, 2016; Raeymaekers et al., 2008; Risse, 2011; Skarbek, 2014).

17 It does not matter what form (i.e. cash, in-kind, labour) these private resources take. Considering formal taxation van Waijenburg (2018: 44) notes that “[w]hen a state is able to impose levies in the form of money, goods, or services, and enforce their collection in the case of non-compliance, we are talking about taxation.” There are evident differences in the nature of cash, in-kind, and labour resources—including their variability, fungibility, and relationship to coercion—though the “differences are largely ones of degree, and not of kind” (van Waijenburg, 2018, p. 44). Indeed, they all represent real resources for the state and real burdens on taxpayers. Extending this logic, some argue that conscripted labour for military purposes constitutes a tax, in the form of the difference between the remuneration of the conscripts and the amount that would be necessary

of payments, including informal taxes, informal user fees to access public goods, contributions for community development projects, and some revenues from formal taxes that do not reach government budgets (see typology in Appendix 2a). This typology attempts to bring clarity to a notoriously imprecise concept, though is not meant to represent a strict categorisation. Instead, the provision of any public good likely involves some combination of these types of payments, while also often involving multiple taxing actors, which themselves may not always be easily categorised as “state” or “non-state”. Accordingly, this typology may serve as a starting point to guide analysis across diverse contexts—a signpost of what types of payments to look for, rather than a map of what payments exist. Given the diversity of payments, I find it preferable to cast a broad definitional net, though disaggregating the concept into sub-categories within contextual analysis. Two issues of definitional complexity arise, which I address in turn: the relationships of IRG to (1) state law and (2) public goods provision.

1.1 Relationship to state law The first challenge in defining IRG is in determining what is meant by “informal” and how informality relates to state law. Informality is often associated with chaos and a lack of structure.18 This perspective disregards the order and logic inherent to many informal institutions. Rather than defining the informal based on its organisational structure, I simply define informality in relation to formal state laws.19 I take an agnostic view of informality and attach no moral judgment to it. Informal activities are not necessarily wrong any more than formal activities are necessarily right.

to attract individuals on a voluntary basis (Heij, 2001, p. 76; Prest, 1972, p. 147). Critically, my analysis considers labour-based taxation but not forced unpaid labour (e.g. slavery). The distinction between the two is further explored in Chapter 8.

18 For a critique of this perspective see e.g. Guha-Khasnobis, Kanbur, and Ostrom (2006a) and Hart (2006).

19 My definition is in line with Roitman’s (2005) terms “official” and “unofficial”, which she uses as she argues that “informal” has become an empty signifier. I nevertheless prefer to use the term “informal”, given the prevalence in academic and policy communities of the term “informal taxation”.

Defining informality in this way is potentially problematic as the boundaries between the formal and the informal are often imprecise and porous (Guha-Khasnobis et al., 2006a; Hart, 2005; Lund, 2006; Meagher, 1990, 2005, 2007; Roitman, 1990, 2005). Formal actors may engage in informal activities, as when bureaucrats circumvent burdensome formal rules to collect otherwise formal taxes from businesses or may levy illegal taxes prohibited—or at least not defined—by state law.20 Likewise, informal actors and activities may support formal ones, as when informal taxes are collected for underfinanced formal public goods or when informal “volunteer” employees—that is, those not on the payroll and that depend on informal taxes for their salaries—work at state institutions. In other cases, the state may effectively sanction informal payments;21 being informal does not inherently render a payment illegal or in conflict with the state.

These blurred definitional lines are important to recognise but do not pose a problem to this research project. For one, my definition of IRG encompasses both state and non-state informal taxing actors—it does not matter so long as the payments they collect are not statutorily required.22 Moreover, because I am primarily interested in the relationship between the informal and the formal, the reality of fuzzy boundaries and complementary relationships between the formal and informal is itself useful to better understand relevant

20 For example, Ferme (1998, p. 564) describes how in the years prior to the outbreak of civil war, Sierra Leonean state employees maintained a stretch of unpaved road in the eastern part of the country—not through the budget of the Public Works Department, for which they worked, but by levying informal taxes on motorists at a checkpoint on the road. Meanwhile, Baaz et al. (2018) show how, on the Congo River, a range of state agents from different institutions levy taxes that have been unequivocally banned by an inter-ministerial decree.

21 For example, in the Indonesian state of Bali, compulsory labour contributions for community services (gotong rojong) are organized by local leaders and enforced by the customary law (adat) of Indonesia yet, until 1997, were accepted by the government as a substitute for paying land and building tax (Heij, 2001, p. 76). Payments are not required by law, even though the state effectively sanctioned them by accepting them as a substitute form of payment. In other contexts, including in Sierra Leone, NGOs levy informal taxes, not defined by law, on communities, with the state overseeing and sanctioning NGO activity.

22 Non-state actors may be formal taxing actors insofar as they levy taxes that have formal (legal) backing. The state can delegate legitimate taxing authority in the same that it can delegate legitimate violence so long as it remains the only source of the right to tax/use violence and that it maintains the capacity to enforce this monopoly (Weber, 1949a). Conversely, state tax collectors may engage in IRG, as when they deceive people into paying taxes that they are not required by law to pay.

institutional and political dynamics. The formal and informal need not form a neat dichotomy. Indeed, it is the complexity of the state’s interaction with the informal that is explored throughout this thesis.

Nevertheless, there are two further elements of complexity within my definition of IRG as it relates to state law. First, IRG is not required or defined by state law, though it also includes revenues that are legally required but do not enter the government budget. Defining what payments are required or defined by state law is mostly straightforward: Formal taxes are generally defined in legislative acts or parallel sub-national statutes, while formal user fees are likewise mandated to access certain public goods. Any non-market payments that are not defined by such laws and legal instruments are thus considered informal. In other cases, however, taxes may be formal insofar as they are statutorily required, though the revenues never make it from the tax collector’s hand to state coffers. In such cases, though the tax itself is formal, the revenues from the tax become informal when they do not pass through formal channels. An extreme example of this is where the state unofficially cedes revenues from a formal tax to a non-state actor in contradiction to the laws defining its administration (Chapter 5). Rather than the revenues going through a formal budget process, they are ceded to a non-state actor with no formal oversight.

Second, IRG is enforced outside of the state legal system, though this does not imply that, unlike taxes, they are voluntary. Outside the formal legal system, payments exist on a spectrum of compulsion and voluntarism.23 Informal payments may be motivated both by a desire to contribute to a communal good and a fear of the repercussions of not doing so.24 While in some contexts informal payments may be more akin to voluntary contributions than

23 Notably, formal taxes may also exist on such a spectrum if the enforcement capacity or will of the state is especially weak. In such situations—such as post-2008 Greece (e.g. Kaplanoglou & Rapanos, 2013; Pappadà & Zylberberg, 2015; Vasardani, 2011)—formal tax payments may be flagrantly evaded without likely consequence, while any individual paying taxes is effectively doing so on a voluntary basis.

24 The fact that in Tanzania msaragambo is variously translated as “compulsory community work” or “volunteer work” is indicative of this dualism, while reflecting Tocqueville’s (1835, p. Chapter VIII) conception of “enlightened self interest”, which “constantly prompts [citizens] to assist each other, and inclines them willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property to the welfare of the state”.

to taxes, this does not necessarily mean that payments are “voluntarily” given; indeed, informal payments are often subject to meaningful forms of enforcement and sanction, including through systems of fines, detainment, exclusion from essential services, social pressures, and ostracism from socioeconomic networks.25 It is both the nature and relative severity of these forms of enforcement that make payments in weak institutional contexts more akin to taxes than to voluntary contributions and distinguishes them from charity.26 Moreover, assigning “voluntarism” to any payment is complicated by the fine line between charitable and obligatory giving,27 while ex ante designations of voluntarism risks romanticising activities such as community development projects and communal labour (see e.g. Brown & Prince, 2015; Dodworth, 2018; Mercer & Green, 2013; Prince, 2015).

Beyond the spectrum of voluntarism and obligation, IRG, like all taxes, exists on a spectrum of coercion and consent (Figure 4).28 In most cases informal payments may be thought of as “quasi-voluntary”—that is, they are “voluntary because taxpayers choose to pay” but they are “quasi-voluntary because the noncompliant are subject to coercion—if they are caught”

25 These enforcement measures are particularly effective forms of punishment/deterrence in contexts where systems of local social reciprocity make up for the absence of a state social safety net. The impact of different enforcement mechanisms varies across contexts. Despite the fact that enforcement mechanisms can be significant, they may nevertheless be weaker for IRG than for formal taxes. Though contributions may be strongly encouraged by leaders, they will not be universally paid, while some individuals, households, or businesses may voluntarily contribute more than expected.

26 For example, in high-income countries there is often considerable social pressure for parents to contribute time or money to publicly funded schools. While this social pressure is a real form of enforcement, the impact of that coercion is less severe than in contexts of weaker state institutions. Parents in high-income states may face pressure to contribute, but their children can still attend the school if they ignore this pressure. The incentive to free ride and shirk such voluntary payments is high, with abundant evidence that the majority of potential contributors do not pay (Brunner & Sonstelie, 2003, 2006). The same is not true in weak institutional contexts, where “driving students from school” is a common form of punishment for not making informal payments to government-run, ostensibly “fee-free” schools, while other forms of punishment prevail (e.g. fines levied by chiefs, barring from other forms of social welfare and reciprocity).

27 As Marcel Mauss (1990, p. 3) explains, “exchanges and contracts take place in the forms of presents; in theory these are voluntary, in reality they are given and reciprocated obligatorily”. Indeed, the “universal custom of compulsory gifts” implies that “the whole idea of a free gift is based on a misunderstanding”.

28 Coercive taxation is when “the use of force to compel unwilling citizens to pay taxes” (Levi, 1988).

(Levi, 1988, p. 32). This recognises that no taxes are truly voluntary, but also that taxpayers do not simply pay as a result of being forced to, whether through armed force, economic punishment, or social sanction. Some informal payments may be closer to “pure” voluntary, consensual contributions, while others are more clearly a result of the threat of sanction. As described by van den Boogaard et al. (2019, p. 5), informal revenue “[c]ollection may be more or less coercive, yield variable levels of reciprocity, and benefit broad or narrow segments of the population.”

Figure 4: IRG includes a range of quasi-voluntary payments

Voluntary payment

Donations Gifts Charity

Coercive Tips to service Consensual enforcement providers enforcement

Communal Contributions to community labour development projects

Tributes to chiefs Taxation

Protection payments Extortion Compulsory payment It is nearly impossible to distinguish ex ante whether a payment is made on a voluntary basis. In part as a result of the complexities of defining voluntarism, I define the voluntary nature of informal payments according to how taxpayers themselves refer to them, recognising the important connection between language and meaning-making (Weeden, 2010). In certain cases, people clearly indicate that payments are voluntary or based in charity (e.g. payments by non-parents to support schools), though often with social pressures to contribute; in other cases, people make clear that the payments serve as a de facto compulsory way of pooling resources (e.g. contributions by parents to support schools). Most explicitly, in some instances research participants in Sierra Leone explained that “wi taks wisɛf” (we tax ourselves) in order to fund local public goods outside of the state, implying the existence of compulsory and tax-like payments. Further, extra payments to service providers (colloquially known in different contexts as bribes, acceleration fees, tips, dash, cold water,

kola, etc.) may not be formally required to access public goods but may be so institutionalised and backed by mechanisms of social enforcement so that taxpayers consider them as a compulsory part of the system of local goods finance.29 1.2 Relationship to public goods

IRG falls under the umbrella of informal public goods finance. However, there are several complexities in considering the relationship between IRG and public goods.30 We need to first consider whether tax-like payments and user fee-like payments equally contribute to public goods provision. As with formal revenue generation, informal payments for public goods provision may be more or less requited—that is, some payments may be fees to access a public good (e.g. monthly water well maintenance fees), may be hypothecated or clearly “earmarked” for a specific purpose (e.g. contributions for the building of a school or informal taxes levied to entertain chiefdom guests), or may contribute to a general pool of funds (e.g. payments that go to the general budget of a chiefdom administration).

On the one hand, taxes and user fees, whether formal or informal, are distinct and should not be conflated. In general, the former provides general funds for government while the latter is paid in return for a specific service or benefit. On the other hand, however, we may ask how important this distinction is in practice. Conceptually, taxes and user fees are simply alternative means of financing public goods. Some countries raise more tax revenue and provide essential services free of charge, while others raise less tax revenue but rely more heavily on user fees (see e.g. N. Martin, 1995).31 A focus exclusively on taxes would suggest

29 For example, in some communities in Sierra Leone there are common agreements about how much should be given to nurses at public clinics in order to supplement their salaries, which are relatively low and often late (van den Boogaard et al., 2019).

30 As is common in political science, I define public goods as goods that confer benefits on multiple individuals. This definition of public goods is looser than the classic one, which requires a public good to be consumable by more than one person simultaneously and to be non-exclusionary even for those who do not contribute to its production (see e.g. Tiebout, 1956).

31 Empirically, governments at all levels are increasingly turning to user charges to finance their activities (Bird & Tsiopoulous, 1997, p. 27), though this shift is much less pronounced in OECD countries (see Appendix 2b). In at least some contexts, formal and informal user fees for essential services are much larger than formal taxes

that the burden of taxation is far higher in the former case, while the real cost of those services is overlooked in the latter. The distinction is important to governments, as it shapes the level of fiscal flexibility they enjoy and space available for potential redistribution; tax revenues are more fungible than user fees. For taxpayers, the distinction is far less meaningful as taxes and user fees often appear as relatively interchangeable costs of financing local public goods. Only focusing on the burden of formal and informal taxes is likely to miss much of how local public goods are actually financed, particularly outside of state institutions, and the real burden that this imposes on taxpayers. I thus include both informal taxes and informal user fees in my definition of IRG, though I disaggregate them for clarity within my analysis.

Additionally, we need to consider whether informal payments contribute to public goods provision or simply reflect forms of exploitation. In practice, many informal payments do not contribute to public goods at all, including formal and informal payments collected for private gain and payments to powerful, and possibly armed, state or non-state actors that are levied coercively as a form of extortion, rather than a contribution to public goods provision. My definition excludes forms of extraction that contribute solely to private gain— e.g. grand corruption or graft by state actors, looting by non-state armed groups—as these cannot be reasonably considered part of a system of informal public goods finance. There may, however, be a fuzzy distinction between taxation and extortion by armed groups.32 I follow scholars of rebel governance in distinguishing IRG from “corruption” or extortion by its foundation in “publicly known rules and procedures”, with the important distinction that tax-like payments are “justified on public interest grounds (financing public goods, paying for the costs of war, redistributing assets from rich to poor) whereas theft is justified only by a self-serving desire for private gain” (M. R. Revkin, 2020).33 Moreover, payments may be

paid to local governments and are the largest component of formal and informal payments for most taxpayers in low-income countries (Paler et al., 2017; van den Boogaard et al., 2019).

32 There may likewise be a fine line between extortion and a stable protection racket that imitates statehood (Olson, 1993; Tilly, 1985).

33 Such public information is common, even amongst armed groups. For example Richani (2013, p. 68) describes how the FARC has applied written codes of taxation since 1996, while the tax bureaucracies of the

common but not necessary to deliver or access public goods; for example, in many weak institutional contexts, students may make informal payments to teachers to buy exam keys or grades. These types of payments are excluded from my definition. By contrast, my definition includes payments that at least notionally contribute to the provision of public goods and services—even if it is often unclear in practice whether the money is in fact used for public purposes—included for two key reasons.

First, there is often a fine line between public and private gain in low-income contexts (see e.g. Ekeh, 1975). For example, where government employees are not paid, are paid low salaries, and/or are not paid on time—the norm in many low-income countries—informal payments contribute, at least in part, to financing government salaries and activities (De Herdt & Titeca, 2019; Prud’homme, 1992).34 This is, of course, the traditional role of taxes.35 Informal payments that serve as salary payments or “top-ups” to state salaries thus contribute to the broader public service infrastructure (De Herdt & Titeca, 2019).36 As Prud’homme (1992, p. 6) describes,

Islamic State and Al-Shabaab are well-documented (see e.g. Hiraal Institute, 2018; M. Revkin, 2020). Likewise, in explaining how the tax policies of the Maoist insurgency in eastern India differed from organized crime, a Maoist rebel official clarified that, “This is not corruption. This is taxation…We have rules and norms around how we tax people…We also have rules and norms around how we use the fund[s] collected. So we are not simply collecting money for private gain—that would be corruption” (cited in Chakravarti, 2014, p. 34). A counterexample—what I define as pure extortion—is the monthly vacuna, or vaccination, that has to be paid to some armed groups in rural Colombia to “immunize” oneself against murder or kidnapping (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012, p. 378).

34 In low-income countries it is common for civil servants to not be on official state payrolls; de Herdt, Marivoet, and Muhigirwa (2015) estimate that one-third of Congolese civil servants are not paid by the state, while van den Boogaard, Prichard, and Jibao (2018) note the prevalence of non-state employees working at customs posts in the borderlands of Sierra Leone.

35 Paler et al. (2017) illustrate how informal taxes and payments make up for insufficient formal taxation in the DRC. They describe that where subnational governments are “chronically underfunded”, “[l]ocal governments and local state officials have filled this [revenue] gap by collecting a range of informal taxes and fees to pay for local services and local salaries directly, rather than being captured in the government budget”.

36 In the case of the Sierra Leonean Public Works Department collecting informal revenues from motorists, public servants justified their role in IRG by making “the compelling point that it was only fair for them to be compensated for privately repairing a public highway, given that its maintenance and their salaries were no

It would be unfair to consider pinch and extortions as not contributing to the provision of public services. Inasmuch as they make it possible for civil servants and semilocal government employees to live and work, they are akin to the wages paid to civil servants and semilocal government employees. Semilocal governments… provide law and order. Pinch and extortions contribute to the production of this basic service.

Interviewees explained to me that it was normal to “supplement” low or delayed incomes, with jobs that allowed more “supplementation” being more desirable.37 As one interviewee put it, state employees, whether bureaucratic or political, are “not paid enough to not be corrupt”,38 while a state representative described it as understandable for officials to find informal sources to finance their salaries as they are “only human beings.”39 While inefficient, this form of IRG “is quite different from simple collusion and corruption” (Paler et al., 2017). In contexts of weak institutional capacity, therefore, the distinction between formal taxes, formal user fees, informal user fees, and illegal payments to state actors is far less clear. Formal payments should fund public salaries and services, but often do not reach state coffers, while informal payments may partially fund public salaries and services. Partly as a result, in practice taxpayers often make little distinction between official and unofficial payments (e.g. Heij, 2001; Paler et al., 2017).

Second, there are different contextual understandings of what is normally described as “corruption” in Western contexts. International observers are quick to label informal payments to access public goods as an “abuse of entrusted power for private gain” (Transparency International, n.d.). The common usage of the term corruption, meanwhile, is imbued with moralism (M. A. Thomas, 2015), with being corrupt defined as being “depraved”, “debased in character”, “infected with evil”, “wicked”, or “perverted from uprightness and fidelity”(“Corrupt, Adj.,” 2019). In practice, however, what is considered “corrupt” is influenced by local social, cultural, and political institutions and logics and the

longer state priorities” (Ferme, 1998, p. 564). Keen (2005a, p. 31) also describes how Sierra Leonean civil servants in post-independence Sierra Leone “resorted to corruption and petty extortion just to get by”.

37 This was expressed, for example, by FRE9.

38 FRE113

39 FRE3.4

practical norms of governance (e.g. Blundo & Olivier de Sardan, 2006; Nicaise, 2018, 2019; Olivier de Sardan, 1999), including norms of reciprocity and contextual conceptions of moral economies (Scott, 1976; Juul, 2006; Prichard & van den Boogaard, 2017). Informal bribe-like payments may be embedded within patrimonial networks, with payment required in order to avoid economic or social sanctions or ostracism.40 As explained by a World Bank consultant, while IRG “sort of shocks… our moral or our modern point of view… [as] it comes across as outright corruption”, it is easier to understand the prevalence of informal payments when we understand that they are based in relationships.41

The blurred lines between taxation, corruption, and extortion imply “a subjective and context-specific understanding of legality and legitimacy” (Prichard & van den Boogaard, 2017, p. 181). Understanding these context-specific nuances and knowing where revenue actually goes (e.g. for public or private gain) for each type of payment is nearly impossible, while making judgments from the outside are likely to lead to mis-categorisations. For example, where there are low or missing wages, should all petty corruption by state actors be seen as an informal mean of financing state salaries? It is nearly impossible to determine the tipping point between a “fair” supplemental wage and exploitation of taxpayers at the hands of a powerful government official. The power dynamics at play are critical as

bribes are not necessarily the result of extortion […] Yet, in an environment with low regulatory transparency, poor court enforcement, and inefficient organisations in the bureaucracy, tax officials enjoy high bargaining power in relationships with [taxpayers]” (Amodio et al., 2018, p. 2).

40 For instance,, Yang (1994) describes the example of guanxi, or personal relationships maintained by gift giving and reciprocal favours, in post-Maoist China.

41 Describing the relationship between a service provider charging informal fees and a service user, he explained, “What happens is this: That [service provider] becomes enmeshed in the community. They become one of them…. The relationship transcends that of just a service user and a service provider.” For instance, in rural areas, state employees may be the only person that travels to the city, with service users relying on that person to “take good news or bad news to their son who is in the city. They would use her to get uniforms when schools are re-opening. If they want something from their sons or their relatives in the city [that person can get it for them]. So, it becomes difficult for you to say those relations should be restricted to very formal, bureaucratic, Western behavioural conceptions of how services should be delivered.” FRE10

I do not gloss over these power dynamics and do not romanticise what may be “the banal, everyday abuses of authority by state agents” (Mbembe, 1992); instead, they are central to my analysis of informal tax burdens and equity considerations. Rather, I follow Scott’s (1976, p. 160) advice that analyses “must not begin with an abstract normative standard, but the values of the real actors”. I attempt to capture the nuance of whether and how different payments contribute to public goods provision in different contexts according to how people themselves understand this connection. This helps me to better understand how the burden of financing and/or accessing local public goods is distributed, without ignoring certain forms of payment altogether.

In so doing, I find that IRG is perceived by taxpayers on a spectrum of legitimacy.42 Illustrating the fluid nature of legitimacy and illegality, government officials in Sierra Leone described IRG as “very necessary in our communities,”43 as “improving communities,”44 and as “help[ing] them [taxpayers] greatly because government services do not meet them as they…expect.”45 One official noted that “payment may be illegal because it [the tax] is not a statutory instrument, but it is necessary [for the welfare of communities].”46 Exploring differences in local terminology and understandings of informal payments helps me to understand the meanings and levels of legitimacy of different types of payments,47 while

42 Prud’homme (1992) similarly finds that not all informal taxation is considered illegitimate, while Baaz et al. (2018) likewise find that taxpayers view informal payments on a “spectrum ranging from more or less legitimate”, influenced by similar factors to those that influence how taxpayers assess the legitimacy of formal taxation (e.g. methods of deterrence, fiscal reciprocity, social context, authorities’ legitimacy).

43 KOI242

44 KOI243, KAI181.3, KOI241

45 KAI189.3

46 KOI242

47 Such an approach is particularly useful in understanding models of “real” governance; indeed, interpreting “the language of the dark” (Hugo, 1862) or “disguised speech” (Haas, 1969) is necessary to understanding illegal and sensitive activities. Where payments operate outside of state legal frameworks, argot can help us understand what individuals—both taxpayers and state agents—wish to hide from authority (see e.g. Haas, 1969; Lefkoqitz, 1991) and what has become so normalized as to no longer be seen to require hiding.

exploring the real costs of service delivery helps me to make sense of the ambiguities between the public and private realms and the nuances of how IRG is understood by those who are affected by it.

2 Researching IRG

Defining IRG is complex; likewise, researching and analysing IRG presents several challenges. First, IRG may be difficult to perceive, as “outsiders” may not know what to look for and “insiders” may view it as so normal as to be unworthy of discussion. Second, taxpayers and taxing actors may have incentives to lie about the nature and extent of informal taxation. On the one hand, taxpayers and informal taxing actors may lie about their involvement in informal taxation, knowing that it is illegal. On the other hand, informal taxing actors may exaggerate the extent of their taxing capacity, particularly where they want to establish their authority or legitimacy to rule, with tax representing a symbol of statehood. Third, given the diversity of IRG, and given that its nature and politics are highly context- specific, it is challenging to capture data that allow for cross-context comparison and generalizable knowledge.

Research on informal public finance to date has insufficiently addressed these challenges. Studies in this area have typically been of two types. The first has relied on survey data with a narrow conceptualization of IRG in an attempt to establish cross-country comparisons and generalizable findings. However, such approaches have offered only a narrow perspective of the fiscal realities and burdens of informal public finance. Such approaches, while understandable given the relative complexity of collecting comprehensive data on fiscal payments, likely greatly underestimate the incidence and magnitude of informal taxation. Moreover, there is a real risk that cross-country survey data captures different phenomenon, as survey questions and concepts may be understood differently in different national and sub-national contexts. The second type of study has involved in-depth case studies, achieving greater contextual depth and contributing to our understandings of the political and power dynamics of informal tax institutions. Such approaches, however, limit our ability to develop overarching theories about systems of informal public finance.

I aim to bridge these different approaches while more effectively addressing the central challenges to studying informality and taxation. First, my broad definition allows me to capture the full range of payments made through systems of informal public finance, though allowing for greater nuance and categorical disaggregation. Second, my method of inductive theory-building through in-depth case studies combines the advantages of deep contextual knowledge with the analytic value of a generalizable theory that can be deductively tested in other contexts. In addition to prototypical case studies of formal–informal relationships, small-N sub-national comparison across districts and chiefdoms in Sierra Leone allows me to parse the relevant causal dynamics and mechanisms when developing this theory. I thus combine context-specific analysis with an understanding of how institutional and political dynamics around informal public finance may reflect common patterns across diverse contexts. Third, my methods of data collection—including ethnographic immersion in field sites and the use of mixed methods to triangulate research findings—allow me to build trust with research communities and participants, overcoming the risks of being deceived and allowing me to be better able to perceive and understand the nature and dynamics of informal tax institutions. This ethnographic immersion also enables me to be more sensitive to issues related to positionality insofar as they present potential risks to data quality. I explore how my identity and position affect research access and outcomes in Appendix 2c and consider the ethical considerations of how my position may affect the security and safety of research participants in Appendix 2d.

2.1 Case study method and inductive theory-building

I use in-depth case studies for formal–informal interaction in Sierra Leone in order to inductively build a theory of IRG and the state. This approach is appropriate given the limited knowledge of the topic and the absence of a theory of the relationship of IRG and the state (see e.g. Eisenhardt, 1989; Eisenhardt & Graeber, 2007). I engage in what Yom (2015) describes as inductive iteration—that is, the process of “revis[ing] causal propositions after discarding old assumptions and uncovering new mechanisms from interviews” and other

sources (Yom, 2015, p. 617).48 Having had the privilege to move back and forth between data collection and analysis at multiple stages of the research project, I engaged in continuous revision of my hypotheses, propositions, and theories. In so doing, comparative case analysis and within-case process tracing allows for detailed empirical analysis of how the phenomenon and related causal processes play out in actual cases, providing a starting point for an emerging theory to be replicated, contrasted, or extended in different contexts (Eisenhardt, 1989; Eisenhardt & Graeber, 2007; Yin, 1994).49 This approach accounts for complex causal structures, allowing me to identify critical junctures and make distinctions between necessary and sufficient conditions (see e.g. Pierson, 2004).

Sierra Leone is an ideal country for building a theory of IRG as it offers a unique opportunity for “unusual research access” while representing an “unusually revelatory” case—qualities which Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007, p. 27) describe as important for theoretical sampling (see also Yin, 1994).50 First, given the relatively understudied nature of IRG and the lack of data on this topic, research and data access is an important consideration for case selection and knowledge development. Three sub-national districts in eastern and northern Sierra Leone—Koinadugu, Kailahun, and Kono—offer a unique and particularly valuable research opportunity, as they were the sites of a large survey capturing IRG. This survey—which I played a leading role in designing, administering, and analysing—was the first of its kind and offers a unique starting point for deepening the study of IRG (van den Boogaard et al., 2019). This data provides a foundation for theory-building, furnishing me with “theoretical

48 In this way, inductive iteration descends from the classic sociological approaches of analytic induction (W. S. Robinson, 1951) and grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and shares a logical affinity with comparative historical analysis (Mahoney & Rueschemeyer, 2003).

49 As described by Bennett (2010, p. 208), “Process tracing involves the examination of ‘diagnostic’ pieces of evidence within a case that contributes to supporting or overturning alternative hypotheses.”

50 As the goal of the research is to develop theory rather than to test it, theoretical sampling is appropriate, with cases “selected because they are particularly suitable for illuminating and extending relationships and logic among constructs” (Eisenhardt & Graeber, 2007, p. 27).

hunches” (M. Mann, 1994, p. 42) in the absence of established theory on IRG, while my research experience in the region provides me with strong research networks in the country.

Second, theory-building requires an initial case that is unusually revelatory or an exemplar of the phenomenon under study. Existing data on IRG indicates that it may be more prevalent where (1) state institutional capacity is weak, (2) public services are insufficiently provided by the state, (3) conflict has affected the legitimacy of the state, and (4) actors outside of the state have taxing authority. Across these four indicators, Sierra Leone represents an extreme case amongst low-income countries, making it an ideal context within which to develop a theory of IRG and the state (Appendix 2e). Indeed, a long-time analyst of Sierra Leone described the country as an “essentially informal state”.51At the same time, the three sub- national case districts represent extreme cases within the country and among the 14 districts that existed at the time of research, making them ideal research sites for theory-building (Appendix 2f).52

2.2 Mixed methods and complementary data

There are no official records of IRG by chiefs or other actors in Sierra Leone, nor are there available estimates of the burden of formal taxes and user fees on households. A central contribution of this project is the use of original data collected from households and corroborated through qualitative data. To address the difficulties of verifying data around IRG, I combine a variety of data collection methods and sources as a means of triangulation. This allows me to delineate formal and informal tax payments and the broader realities of formal and informal local fiscal systems. The objective is to achieve within-case causal

51 FRE10.

52 In 2017–2018, the districts were de-amalgamated, increasing the total to 16. One of the case districts, Koinadugu, was de-amalgamated; likewise, Northern province was divided. Throughout this thesis, I refer to Koinadugu district, referring to the territory now covered by Koinadugu and Falaba, and Northern province, referring to territory now including Northern and North West provinces.

inference through a mixed methods research design.53 This mixed methods approach involves five key sources of data: original taxpayer surveys and secondary datasets, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, ethnographic immersion, and historical records. Further details of data collection design and administration are included in Appendix 2g.

The quantitative data includes two original taxpayer surveys that I administered to capture the nature and dynamics of systems of local public finance in Sierra Leone. First, I conducted a survey of 844 taxpayers in three districts in eastern and northern Sierra Leone. In contrast to previous studies that relied on a small number of measures of informal taxation or collective action to infer the prevalence of IRG, this survey attempted to capture the full range of local fiscal realities. Second, to determine whether the trends were unique to the relatively rural, marginalised, and conflict-affected districts of the eastern and northern provinces, I administered an additional survey of over 2200 taxpayers in eight cities—the two largest urban centres in each of the four provinces in Sierra Leone—in July 2017. Alongside original survey data, I rely on government and chiefdom revenue and expenditure data, provided variously by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MoLGRD), the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED), District Officers (DOs), and chiefdom authorities. I use several other datasets to support my analysis, which are cited accordingly when used.

To complement this quantitative data, I collected qualitative data in nine randomly-selected chiefdoms within the three case districts, as well as in the national, provincial, and district capitals. This included over 300 in-depth interviews with chiefdom administration and government representatives; community leaders; organisers and enforcers of informal revenue-raising; and taxpayers (see Appendix 2h).54 In order to build trust with interviewees, many of these were repeat interviews over the course of three years. Additionally, I conducted over 50 focus group discussions with community leaders, chiefdom authorities,

53 This research approach is appropriate given the various objectives of the study, including identifying both causal effects and causal mechanisms (Gerring, 2004; G. King et al., 1994).

54 I did not exclude people from being interviewed based on actual tax compliance. The label “taxpayers” refers only to individuals’ eligibility to pay tax, which includes all individuals over the age of 18 in Sierra Leone.

and taxpayers (see Appendix 2i). Additional insights were gleaned from a research dissemination seminar in Freetown in February 2018, where preliminary research results on the prevalence of IRG and taxpayer perceptions of it where presented to policymakers and government officials, including from MoFED and the three district councils (DCs) under study.

By virtue of long-term engagement in the areas of research, I collected additional qualitative data through ethnographic immersion. This enables me to assess the importance of cultural dynamics and to engage in “thick” description—that is, I observed processes and behaviour in context, allowing me to understand the underlying dynamics and relationships within which they were embedded (see e.g. Geertz, 1973; Pachirat, 2012; Pader, 2012; Yanow, 2012). By spending time within chiefdom case studies over the course of two years (2017– 2019), with previous research experience in the same chiefdoms in 2013, I witnessed chiefdom taxation, chiefdom governance processes, and non-state engagement in local tax collection. This immersion in the field improved my capacity to assess and interpret data (see e.g. Baiocchi & Connor, 2008; Bayard de Volo, 2009; Emerson et al., 1995; Schatz, 2009; Shweder, 1997; Tilly, 2006), while contributing to explanatory richness (see e.g. Bennett, 2010).

This qualitative data complements the survey data and enables me to move to a deeper understanding of how informal systems of public finance work and interact with the state— the central focus of my research. At the same time, using this qualitative data helps to overcome particular challenges with previous approaches to studying informal tax: it provides more in-depth information about how taxpayers understand certain payments, overcomes issues with self-reported tax payment (see e.g. Hessing et al., 1988; Paler et al., 2017), and helps to shed light on the institutional and political dynamics around local public finance. The qualitative data thus helped me to probe the validity of survey findings, allowed for deeper exploration of sensitive questions, and helped to capture the unknown, the missed, the forgotten—which is inevitable in recall-based surveys even with extensive

piloting and contextual experience.55 Further, I engage in historical analysis as a means of employing within-case process tracing over the longue durée. Use of records from the British Colonial Office, including analyses, records, and letters and dispatches from colonial officials are particularly enlightening and allow me to track changes and continuities in the nature of IRG and the relationships between the state and alternative taxing actors.

3 Conclusion

There is no set way to capture the payments that contribute to the provision of public goods in practice, though there is increasing evidence that many of these are informal and managed outside of state legal frameworks. In this chapter I have set out a framework for conceptualising and categorising IRG. By adopting an inclusive definition that allows for categorical disaggregation within analyses, this conceptual framework allows for a mapping of the real systems of public goods finance and sets the foundation for an analysis of the relationships between formal and informal tax actors. Using this conceptual framework, in the following chapter I map the fiscal realities of public goods provision in the case of Sierra Leone, setting the foundation for building a broader theory of IRG and the state.

55 This robustness check was particularly important given the difficulty of operationalising variables in some cases and the potentially sensitive nature of some survey and interview questions. For example, additional qualitative analysis allows me to probe some of the quantitative data captured by the existing taxpayer surveys, including rates of formal taxation and IRG.

Chapter 3: Informal revenue generation in Sierra Leone

We must never assume that local practice conforms with state theory.

Scott (1998b, p. 49)

If “public finances are one of the best starting points for an investigation of society, and particularly its political life” (Schumpeter, 1918/1991, p. 101), then we must first understand those systems of public finance in their entirety. This has implications for understanding real tax burdens faced by individuals, households, and businesses, as well as the broader functioning of service delivery, local governance, and state institutions. Building on the definition laid out in Chapter 2, this chapter outlines IRG in eastern and northern Sierra Leone. My empirical strategy allows a comprehensive picture of the reality of public finance in Sierra Leone, making clear that IRG is a significant phenomenon that cannot be ignored within analyses of taxation and statebuilding.

First, I describe the origins and nature of the formal tax system in Sierra Leone. Second, building on the broad definition of IRG set out in the previous chapter, I provide estimates of the prevalence of IRG and discuss distributional considerations. I then map the landscape of the informal system of public finance in Sierra Leone, disaggregating different categories of IRG, presenting data on the incidence of payment by tax type, and describing the nature of collection and institutional enforcement. In so doing, I show how the prevalence of different types of IRG relate to state weakness and the relative strength of alternative governance structures. There are no records of IRG by chiefs or other actors in Sierra Leone, nor are there any available estimates of the burden of formal taxes and user fees on households. One major contribution of this work is the use of original data collected from households and corroborated through qualitative data to paint a picture of formal and informal tax payments and the broader realities of the local fiscal system.

1 Formal taxation in Sierra Leone

The colonial institutional legacy in Sierra Leone is central to understanding the modern formal system of taxation, reflecting the “long-term effects of historical public finance choices” (van Waijenburg, 2018, p. 44; see also Huillery, 2009; Mkandawire, 2010b). The Sierra Leonean state emerged out of imperial ideas and is built around the British system of indirect rule, wherein local authorities were incorporated into the administration of the colonial government, performing and deriving certain powers and functions (Lugard,

1922).1 As elsewhere in British West Africa, “local government and local justice were placed firmly on the shoulders of traditional rulers” (Rathbone, 2000, pp. 48–49). This system delegated local governance to traditional rulers, named paramount chiefs (PCs), including the collection of poll taxes and the administration of justice, motivated by “convenience for conquest, ease of administration, economy” (Deschamps, 1963, p. 298; see also Killingray, 1986).

Unlike elsewhere on the continent, the power of PCs persisted even after the British created local government institutions in 1945 as a counterweight to the chieftaincy. After independence in 1961, the state used the same colonial methods of indirect rule to govern the interior and mobilise political support, in a process Richard Fanthorpe (2001) describes as “colonial ossification”. Despite the official jurisdiction of the local councils, chiefs continued to dominate local governance and remained responsible for collecting the local (poll) tax—once called the Chiefdom Tax (Hailey, 1951a, p. 33)—though they were expected to provide a share of the tax (a “precept”) to the local councils (GoRSL, 2004a). In 1972 the administration of Siaka Stevens abolished the system of formal local governance, instead centralising state power while allowing de facto local power to return to the increasingly politicised chieftaincies. At the same time, the role of formal state governance declined markedly at the local level, while the central government was unable to fund key services.

The centralisation of power, resultant deterioration in the provision of local services, and the politicisation of the chieftaincy were widely seen as causes of the 1991–2002 civil war (TRC, 2004). Launching an ambitious decentralisation programme was thus an immediate priority for the government and donors after the war, with city, municipal, and DCs established in 2004. Nevertheless, chiefdom administrations retained an important role in formal decentralised tax collection, collecting the local (poll) tax on behalf of the local government, with the precept being transferred to local governments. Despite the post-war

1 European colonial powers adopted the principle that colonies should be self-financing (Epstein, 1959; Hardy, 1988; Mendy, 2003; Reinsch, 1912), based in the notion that “If African administrations [we]re to be able to attain higher standards and expenditure or social improvements, the African population must pay the price which is necessary to earn them” (Hailey, 1938, p. 1465).

decentralisation effort, formal tax payment remains limited. Virtually all survey respondents (99.53 percent) reported paying the annual local tax, though for 60 percent of respondents, this was the only formal tax paid (Figure 5). Twenty percent of individuals paid property tax—the most important local tax in terms of revenue potential—though payment of this tax is concentrated in Kono district, reflecting uneven state presence and the inconsistent state of fiscal decentralization across the country (Figure 6). As most individuals fall below relevant thresholds, it is unsurprising that less than 1 percent of respondents paid any tax to the central government.2

Figure 5: Number of formal tax payments

2 Density

0 0 1 2 3 4 5 Number of formal tax payments Figure 6: Geographic distribution of property tax payments

.2 Proportion of respondents Proportion .1

0 Kono Kailahun Koinadugu

Moreover, the amount of formal tax payments is relatively small—for example, the local tax is SLL 5000 (USD 0.67) per adult per year, while market dues are generally SLL 500 (USD 0.07) a day.3 These figures are consistent with aggregate data on local government tax

2 Of these, all taxes paid were income tax.

3 While some perceive this as “small money”, others lament the burden of the local tax, with, for example, a local government official describing that “poverty makes it difficult” for people to pay (KAS140).

revenues, with reported tax revenues amounting to an average of only USD 0.17 per capita from 2005 to 2017—and only USD 0.06 per capita over the same period when excluding the relatively high revenue Western area (Freetown and its environs) (Figure 7). This implies a limited capacity of local governments to provide services, confirmed by local government officials and expenditure data.

Figure 7: Per capita local government revenue data, 2015 to 20174

$0.80

$0.60

$0.40 USD

$0.20

$0 2005 2010 2015 2020

Local government revenue, Local government tax revenue, per capita, all districts per capita, all districts Local government revenue, Local government tax revenue, per capita, excluding Western area per capita, excluding Western area

Data source: (GoRSL MoFED, n.d.) 2 Prevalence and distribution of IRG in Sierra Leone

Considering only formal statistics, we may assume that Sierra Leoneans pay little in direct taxes, reflective of broader trends and narratives about taxation in low-income countries (Chapter 1). However, while formal direct taxes remain low, informal taxes and user fees are often a prevalent and institutionalised reality. Indeed, in the context of persistently weak state presence at the local level and local sovereignty divided between local councils and chiefs, IRG has flourished, both as a means of “self-help” and through semi-exploitative forms of extraction by both state and non-state actors. Supporting this, I find that nearly all (99

4 Population data is from SSL census 2004 and 2015, with population weighted according to average annual population change between this period. Exchange from LCU to USD based on the annual average official exchange rate from the World Development Indicators for 2005 to 2013. For years that WDI data is not available (2014–2017), annual average exchange rate is based on annual market exchanges.

percent) of respondents paid at least one informal tax or user fee in the past year, with more than half (59 percent) of respondents making between 4 and 7 different types of informal payments in the previous year (Figure 8).5 By contrast, 89 percent of respondents paid 2 or fewer formal taxes or fees in the previous year. This reinforces, first and foremost, that IRG is a significant issue that needs to be considered within analyses of taxation and governance in low-income countries.

Figure 8: Distribution of number of IRG payments

.15

.1 Density

.05

0 0 5 10 15 20 25 Number of informal tax payments

The distributional and equity implications of revenue generation outside of the state are likewise significant. State revenues reflect and shape “the balance between accumulation and redistribution that gives states their social character” (Bräutigam, 2008, p. 1), with taxation serving as the main tool that governments have to redistribute wealth and address inequality (see e.g. Lustig, 2018; Prichard, 2018; Wimer et al., 2016). Where a state has little

5 Despite offering a more comprehensive picture of informal public finance than previous studies, there is still reason to believe that the data underestimates total informal payments. First, the survey may underestimate payment because of issues with respondent recall, which affects small payments in particular. (Paler et al., 2017). Second, formal tax payments may not actually reach government coffers, making them informal in a legal sense, though I cannot estimate this share with any precision. Third, bribes and extortion are self- reported, though such payments may be defined differently in different contexts (e.g. Olivier de Sardan, 1999), while these payments are the most likely to be underreported or hidden by taxpayers. Finally, the survey does not capture the number of times that every payment was made in a year, though many payments are made more than once in a year.

role in taxation and public goods are financed locally, the state has little policy control over redistribution, with negative implications for equity.

While taxpayers in Sierra Leone have more positive perceptions of informal taxes relative to formal taxes across a range of indicators—including their satisfaction with what they receive in return for payment, their belief that taxes benefit the community, and the likelihood of tax revenues being misused by leaders (van den Boogaard et al., 2019)—the overall equity effect of IRG is negative. First, individual distribution of IRG in Sierra Leone is regressive, with the lowest income quintile paying significantly higher in informal chiefdom taxes and informal user fees to access public goods relative to the highest income quintile (van den Boogaard et al., 2019).6 Second, as gender inequities are embedded in social, political, and economic structures, it is not surprising that they would be embedded within IRG institutions. Indeed, female-headed households in Sierra Leone are more likely to pay informal taxes and user fees to access public goods and services, while also paying a greater share of their income (van den Boogaard, 2018).

More fundamentally, many forms of IRG discussed below amount to the shifting of the financial responsibility of essential services, governance, and public infrastructure from the state onto citizens, with negative equity effects. The degree and quality of access to public goods depends on the relative wealth of a particular area and access to essential goods depend on the ability to pay. Put most simply: offloading the financing of public goods provision onto users will generally have regressive and inequitable outcomes. Where IRG is required to access public goods—whether provisioned by the state or community actors— access is definitionally exclusionary.

While there are significant equity concerns around IRG, this does not imply that the formal tax system is more equal or redistributive. Indeed, since the end of the civil war there has been widespread evidence of unequal enforcement of formal tax laws amongst political and

6 This is largely because many types of informal payment are set at a flat rate and is in line with previous studies indicating that IRG is likely to be regressive as a share of income (Beard, 2007; Olken & Singhal, 2011; Paler et al., 2017; B. P. Thomas, 1987; M. Walker, 2017).

economic elites, while formal tax exemptions and waivers for companies, particularly in the extractive sector, has raised serious concerns about the equity of the overarching system. In line with these realities, taxpayers often lamented the inequities of the local and national tax systems (see also van den Boogaard et al., 2019). Nevertheless, as will be argued throughout this thesis, the way in which the state engages with IRG—often coexisting with it, tacitly sanctioning it, or explicitly making concessions to it—may reinforce the inequities of the existing informal system, while in part reducing pressure on the state to strengthen and expand a progressive tax system.

3 Nature of IRG in Sierra Leone

With this understanding of the significance of IRG in Sierra Leone, it is useful to come to a more granular understanding of the nature of IRG, including common types of taxes, the relevant taxing actors, and institutions around collection and enforcement. Given the variety of payments captured under the umbrella label of IRG, I disaggregate the concept in order to avoid conflating distinct phenomena with potentially vastly different implications for the state. I make a primary distinction between IRG that diverges from or converges with state institutions, further disaggregating IRG within each category.7

Divergent IRG supports systems of governance and tax outside of the Weberian model of the modern state that pose a possible threat to modern state institutions. Fundamentally, divergent IRG has competing interests with the state. This may represent IRG through proto- states or rebel groups that threaten the existence of the state or may simply reflect IRG to maintain and strengthen parallel systems of governance, including traditional authorities.8

7 Situating this in Bellagama and Klute’s (2008) framework of state and non-state governance configurations, convergent IRG may be considered as operating “beside” or “below” the state, while divergent IRG may be considered as operating “beyond” the state. Non-state actors operating “beside the state” do so in spaces largely neglected by the state, but often with close interactions with the state; non-state actors operating “below the state” are clearly subordinate to the state; and non-state actors operating “beyond the state” may challenge state authority in sub-national arenas.

8 Traditional authorities are those associated with custom in the popular imagination, though are not necessarily accurate reflections of historic governance practices (Ranger, 1983).

On the extreme end of the spectrum, for example, the Islamic State levies a range of taxes to fund its administration and deliver public goods in Syria (M. R. Revkin, 2020). A less extreme example is reflected in traditional authorities in Sierra Leone, who do not threaten the existence of the state but that want to maintain and strengthen their own systems of governance and extraction outside of the state. In this way, traditional authorities diverge from “ideal” modern statehood as conceived by the international community. By contrast, where IRG works outside of, but does not threaten, state institutions—either because informal taxing actors cannot or do not want to challenge the framework of the state—it is defined as convergent. On the extreme end of the spectrum, IRG directly supports and supplements state-provisioned public goods, though it may also fill gaps left by the state, working outside the state framework without threatening state institutions.

The categorisation between convergent and divergent IRG is not binary, but instead exists on a spectrum (Figure 9). Informal taxing actors may also engage in divergent and convergent IRG simultaneously. For example, chiefs in Sierra Leone levy taxes in order to fund chiefdom administrations outside of the state (an example of divergent IRG), while supporting the state provision of public goods such as security (an example of convergent IRG). Moreover, these categories may be dynamic over time—that is, an actor levying IRG may move back and forth through divergence and convergence. This may be because of a change in their own ideology or, more commonly, as a result of a change in whether the state perceives them as a threat.9

9 For example, chiefs and fraternities of Mande hunters, or dozos, in the borderlands of Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea have reflected a shift from convergent to divergent informal taxing actors. In both countries, they have been central in providing non-state security provision and regulatory functions (Bassett, 2003; Ferme, 2001; Hellweg, 2011; Leach, 2000) and in the early 1990s the Guinean state saw them as supplementing and complementing its efforts to guard conservation areas and protect against the incursion of rebel groups from the civil war in Sierra Leone (Leach, 2000). However, by the mid-1990s, in the context of more intensified political rivalries, the government began to see them as a greater threat. A similar shift occurred for the dozos in Côte d’Ivoire, where the state went from seeing them as “helpful security agents” to “an armed brotherhood with regional loyalties” that threatened the state (Heitz-Tokpa, 2019, p. 152).

Figure 9: Spectrum of convergence and divergence

Divergent IRG may be rooted in the relative strength of alternative, competing, or pre- colonial governance structures relative to the state. In Sierra Leone, chiefs’ taxing authority is rooted in part in their pre-colonial authority, the strength bestowed upon them through colonial indirect rule, and their continued popular legitimacy in much of the country.10 While the colonial administration manipulated the institution of chieftaincy, including by reinforcing the strength of chiefs who were loyal to the British and removing those that were not (Abraham, 1978, p. 239), the colonial state likewise worked to instil the appearance of indigeneity and longstanding tradition as the foundation of the chieftaincy, which has endured to this day (Cartwright, 1970; Corby, 1990). While chiefs play a role in organising and enforcing IRG to support community- and state-provisioned public goods, described below, they also engage in IRG to fund their administrations (including salaries not covered by the state),11 to “top up” the salaries they receive from the government, and to finance

10 The description of these payments as informal does not imply that these payments are inherently illegal or unnatural. Indeed, many are based in some pre-colonial authority and legitimacy. Informality simply refers to their illegality in light of the “modern”, “Western” state – both the imposed colonial state and the “imported” independent state after 1961 (Badie, 1992). It thus does not judge these informal taxes as good or bad but takes a non-normative perspective in order to explore the relationship between the state and parallel tax authorities. At the same time, however, it is incorrect to assume that all of the informal taxes levied by chiefs are based in their pre-colonial authority, customs, or traditions. Indeed, some informal chiefdom taxes are rooted in colonial authority and manipulation of “tradition”, with, for example, some forms of communal labour emerging out of the colonial reliance on unpaid labour organized through chiefs (see Chapter 8).

11 Chiefdom administrations are expansive, including a hierarchical subdivision of section and town or village chiefs; a chiefdom council, consisting of among, other representatives, the PC (chairman), a senior speaker (the PC’s deputy and the vice-chairman in the council), two members from each DC ward elected by the chiefdom councillors, a women’s leader (Mammy Queen), and youth representative; a chiefdom police force; an administrative clerk; and a chiefdom court (see Appendix 3a).

traditional duties and activities, including hosting visitors.12 Within chiefdom administrations, only PCs, chiefdom speakers, chiefdom administrative clerks, and a small number of chiefdom police are paid salaries by the government, though the PC of Koinadugu noted that it is his responsibility to pay the administration “functionaries”, explaining that “if you don’t have revenues, you can’t lead.”13 Sub-chiefs, however, rely on community contributions: as explained by an urban sub-chief, in lieu of a salary or stipend from the government, “I survive through my community.”14 Since these revenues do not appear on “formal” chiefdom budgets, they are an “off book” means of financing chiefdom activities. As lamented by a MoFED representative, chiefs have “no transparency—the collect what they collect, and call it working capital… they’re basically just paying themselves”.15

More than a fifth of respondents reported paying at least one direct informal tax or contribution to a chief in the past year (see Appendix 3a). In some areas, these payments are rooted in pre-colonial customary rights of traditional authorities to extract tribute and personal labour from their subjects (e.g. Akintoye, 1970; Boahen, 1966; Busia, 1951), which were previously enshrined in colonial law but have since been officially prohibited. Meanwhile, 49 percent of respondents noted that such direct contributions to the chief are common in their communities, whether or not they had contributed in the past year. These payments may be made out of respect for the chief: for instance, respondents reported giving the chief “greeting kola” or “cold water”, denoting respect for the institution of the

12 This was explained by KOI258

13 KOI259. While the government has committed to start paying for chiefdom court staff, at the time of research this had not yet taken place. Accordingly, in some chiefdoms the PC allows court staff to be paid through “pinch”—that is, through the fees and fines they collect themselves (MAN 109).

14 FRE118

15 FRE1

chieftaincy.16 In some areas, the important cultural role that chiefs play within secret societies presents additional opportunities to collect contributions.17

In some areas, it is common for individuals to work on behalf of the chief, with respondents describing helping “brush” chiefs’ farms or otherwise providing labour for them.18 While it was once common for chiefs to hold slaves and to demand that chiefdom subjects work on their private farms (e.g. Arkley, 1965; Boahen, 1966), this forced labour has long been outlawed (GoSL, 1958; Hailey, 1951a). While much less common overall—with some chiefs lamenting having lost the power they had during the colonial era to have people work for them—in some areas it remains prevalent.19 As explained by a chiefdom speaker, “If I wanted to pay [for labour], I would hire a work club, but I can say ‘Bo, duya kam εp mi tide’ [Boy,

16 Open-ended survey responses. In many West African cultures, the kola nut represents a sign of respect and hospitality. When presenting oneself to a chief it is common to give kola nuts as a show of respect. A sign of hospitality in some areas is for chiefs (or the host) to split a kola nut to be shared with the guest. In common parlance in Sierra Leone, “giving kola” may refer to a gift of kola nuts, an oblique reference to a gift of money (see e.g. Ferme, 1998, p. 571 for a discussion of the practice of “greeting kola” among the Mende; and Uchendu, 1964 for a discussion of “kola hospitality” among the Igbo of Nigeria). (Note that it also refers to the beginning of the bride price.) Meanwhile, “cold water” is a common euphemism for an informal payment.

17 For example, Fanthorpe (2005, p. 42) describes how newly-elected PCs in the area of the pre-colonial Kpaa Mende confederacy serve as patrons of Wunde society initiations, collecting offerings from people in this capacity “as a measure of popular support for the chief”, while also allowing “a chief to recoup election expenses”. Secret societies are important cultural institutions that play a major role in controlling the rites of passages from childhood to adulthood. In pre-colonial times, they also played important political, cultural, and religious roles, many functions of which have since been taken over by “Western-type institutions” (C.Magbaily Fyle, 2006, p. 155). Poro is a prominent male secret society found among the Mende and Temne, while Wunde is prominent among the Kpaa Mende (a sub-section of the Mende ethnic group). Sande is a female secret society among the Mende, similar to the Bundo found among other ethnic groups.

18 Open-ended survey responses. While it is possible in certain regions, particularly in Mende and Sherbro communities, for women to be chiefs, it is rare in practice (Fanthorpe, 2004, p. 24; Richards et al., 2004), while being unheard of among northern groups (see e.g. Barrows, 1976, p. 16; van den Boogaard, 2018).

19 KAS40

come and help me today] and they will do it.”20 Likewise, a town chief described it as “right” for his subjects to work on his farm because of the work he does for the chiefdom.21

Additionally, respondents reported making contributions to chiefs in order “to take care of strangers”.22 This includes payments, “gifts”, and “settler’s fees”, allowing outsiders to settle within a chiefdom, in line with longstanding landlord-stranger customs in some regions (see e.g. Dorjahn & Fyfe, 1962; GoSL, 1927, p. par.13).23 More commonly, it includes contributions to help host guests, particularly state representatives. While chiefdoms commonly use part of the formal revenues they collect (i.e. from local taxes or market dues) to support such visits,24 these formal revenues are often supplemented by informal contributions, commonly through the contributions of foodstuffs.25 In Mongo chiefdom, for instance, chiefs described a “community tax” to provide for the food and lodging of visitors from the DC, while a local councillor from Koinadugu explained that although the DC sets an “entertainment” budget

20 MAN102

21 SUL 29. However, many chiefs are careful not to frame this as “forced labour”, showing an awareness of the ways that their local legitimacy is often at odds with the liberal democratic agenda of the state and its external supporters. Notably, as will be discussed in Chapter 5, post-war liberal statebuilding was partly premised on the idea that resentment about forced labour was a catalyst of the war. For example, the Paramount Chief of Mongo chiefdom, known for its continued practices of “compulsory labor” on chiefs’ farms (Reed & Robinson, 2012, p. 77), reported that he can’t force people to work on his farm, but “if people decide to do it, that’s fine” (MON25). A similar sentiment was expressed by a section chief in the same chiefdom (MON23). Likewise, in Sulima, one town chief described such farm work as being “requested” rather than demanded (SUL30).

22 Open-ended survey responses.

23 Settler’s fees were described as an importance source of “business” for chiefs in one area of Koinadugu district (KOI128).

24 For example, in Kailahun district, formal chiefdom budgets allocated on average USD 312 per chiefdom in 2017 for “official reception and entertainment” expenses.

25 For example, in one chiefdom I observed the section chief mobilise informal taxes from households in preparation for a visit from a state representative. In this case, the chief delegated collection to the town chiefs, with one town responsible for contributing a cow, another rice, and another chickens. Town chiefs were then responsible for deciding how to collect the necessary contributions from the town people. In another chiefdom, chiefs collected payments by household, with each community responsible for providing two cows for one upcoming meeting.

for each meeting it holds in chiefdoms, chiefs are “now taxing people to provide extra, over what the council provides” (cited in van den Boogaard et al., 2019, p. 17). As described by a town speaker, revenues are collected and spent on hosting visiting politicians “to encourage them to do development” in the area, supported by the maxim that you need to “show goodness to get goodness”.26

As reported by survey respondents, these direct payments to chiefs are made in cash; in- kind, notably through rice or other agricultural products; or labour, with average labour contributions amounting to five days per year per household. Those who contributed most commonly reported doing so once or twice a year (63 and 33 percent of respondents, respectively). As these payments are often based on respect for chiefs and cultural traditions, it is unsurprising that sanctions for non-payment are less severe than for other types of informal taxes levied by chiefs, with the majority (75 percent) reporting that nothing would happen if they did not pay. Nevertheless, it remains true that “people don’t joke with their paramount chiefs”,27 meaning that indirect pressures to contribute are strong. Indeed, survey respondents cited social pressure as an important reason for contributing (16 percent of respondents), while focus group participants described being ready to work for chiefs, as not doing so would lead to your disgrace.28

Finally, one of the most important roles of chiefs in modern Sierra Leone is local conflict resolution. Chiefs collect a range of payments linked to the provision of conflict resolution services through a traditional justice system, which is underpinned by chiefdom bylaws and coexists with the formal (i.e. state) justice system, with, in theory, clear divisions of cases that are heard by the two systems.29 In practice, however, traditional courts can substitute for the formal justice system, which are perceived to be associated with higher costs, in part

26 MAN110. This illustrates the role of chiefs as development brokers between the people and the state.

27 KOI242

28 MONFG3

29 MAN109, MAN104, MAN110

because individuals have greater capacity to negotiate fees and fines with chiefs.30 Taxpayers engaged with chiefdom justice systems at a much higher rate than the formal system in the previous year—50 percent of respondents relative to less than 1 percent—while reporting that in a hypothetical situation they would be more inclined to turn to the chiefdom justice system (70 percent) than the formal justice system (just 2 percent).31 This high degree of use is somewhat surprising given poor public perceptions of the chieftaincy court,32 though reflects the ongoing importance of the role of chiefs in justice at the local level and perceptions of the state system being associated with high costs.

Accessing traditional conflict resolution may involve formal sitting fees and fines that are enshrined in local bylaws, as when cases are heard publicly in the local court barrie.33 Keen (2005a, p. 67) notes that a decline in government revenues in the lead up to the civil war led chiefs to “charge a widening array of fines and levies”, while Fanthorpe et al. (2002, pp. 11– 12) describes that, “local courts had been reduced to revenue-generating instruments in which ‘justice’ went to the highest bidder” (see also Archibald & Richards, 2002a). Cases may be heard more informally as well—for instance, on the “chief’s veranda”—often requiring some small tip or kola payment to be made to chiefs as a show of respect.34 As described by a town chief in a focus group discussion of local leaders, he doesn’t receive fees for hearing

30 MAN110. The state, for its part, has been trying to “discourage” chiefdom courts and “create a single system of court” (FRE116).

31 Sixteen percent said they would use both systems, while 12 percent selected neither the formal nor chiefdom justice system, turning instead to another individual, community leader, or group. Respondents were able to select multiple responses.

32 Poor perceptions of the chiefdom (Native Administration) court were widespread, associated with them not being paid, wearing old, worn uniforms, and not having rain gear (LUA97, KOI126).

33 Barries are open-air chiefdom buildings used for hearing court cases and receiving visitors (Skinner, 1976, p. 507). Of those that reported using the service, most commonly, respondents reported paying a user fee or summons fee (34 percent), paying a settlement fee as a form of resolution (16 percent), or providing a tip for the service provider (chief) (2 percent).

34 These types of payments are recorded in historical accounts. For example, Ellis (1914, p. 83) describes how “A person desiring to enter a suit calls upon the chief and present him with a “dash” called “cold water”[…] After the dash the chief hears the statement of the case.”

small cases, but only expects some “small think to wash his hands” (referring to the common euphemism of “soap” to refer to small gifts for services).35 This reflects the reality that even where fees are not prescribed by chiefdom bylaws, they are often well institutionalised and necessary in practice.

3.2 Convergent IRG in Sierra Leone

Convergent IRG may be rooted in fundamental state weakness to govern through the provision of public goods and services. Indeed, it is inextricably related to the rise in the last three decades of non-state service provision in low-income countries corresponding to neoliberal democratisation, with ample evidence that non-state actors, including NGOs, faith-based organisations, and informal networks “have provided access to basic social services such as education and health care even more extensively than states” (MacLean, 2017, p. 358; see also Batley & McLoughlin, 2009).36 For example, in Sierra Leone, characterised by perennial state weakness, informal payments are virtually required to access basic public goods, including education, police services, and water (Figure 10).

Figure 10: Frequency of informal tax payment to access public goods

.2 Percent of respondents paying at least paying of Percent respondents one informal tax to access the public good tax to the public access informal one 0 Primary or secondary school Police services Communal water source Health care Agricultural dry ﬂoor Public market

35 KASFG1

36 While this trend includes privatisation and the establishment of two-tiered systems for the rich and poor, my work excludes privatised services, focusing only on the role of IRG in financing “public goods” (even where the state does not have a direct role in doing so).

First, almost universally individuals make informal payments to support public goods that are—at least ostensibly—provided by the state but are done so insufficiently in terms of quality and/or geographic reach. Convergent IRG for state-provisioned goods includes informal user fees necessary to access “universal” “free” public goods, such as education or health care; salary financing or “top-ups” for state employees; and informal payments and contributions for the construction, maintenance or rehabilitation of state infrastructure (Appendix 3b: Table 17). These are organised and enforced by local leaders, including chiefs, women’s leaders, youth leaders, or religious leaders; community-based associations and groups; and local or international NGOs.37

For example, one of the key duties of the state is to provide security. In Sierra Leone, however, the state depends on supplemental informal financing to fulfil security needs. These payments may directly support state security representatives: in many areas, requesting assistance from the police comes with the understanding that you will pay for the officers’ time and other expenses the police incur, including transportation. As the reach of the police is limited in many areas of the country, it is also common for communities and chiefs to organise security patrols, defence groups, or neighbourhood watch groups in times of particular insecurity.38 Chiefs, for instance, organise collective action around community protection or security during crises (i.e. the Ebola epidemic) and election periods, often creating patrols or roadblocks that require community contributions in the form of labour.39

37 Baldwin (2015) shows how traditional chiefs in sub-Saharan Africa may play a particularly important role in local public goods provision in part as a result of their embeddedness in local communities, which provides them with incentives to ensure positive development outcomes.

38 This was particularly important during the civil war, when civilians, including Mande hunters, organised civil defence forces to help protect themselves and their communities (Abdullah et al., 1997; S. Ellis, 1995, p. 195; Ferme, 2001; Gberie, 2005; D. Hoffman, 2007, p. 642; Keen, 2005a, p. 59,90; Leach, 2000; Muana, 1997; Peters, 2011). This is also common elsewhere, with community defense organisations are organised and financed at a local level in order to supplement state security delivery (e.g. Diallo, 2018; Mwaikusa, 1995; Pratten & Sen, 2007).

39 While reported contributions were almost non-existent in the year prior to the survey, key informants and focus group participants made clear that this was due to the timing of the data collection—after the Ebola crisis but prior to national and local elections. Research participants nevertheless noted that these payments remain important at different times, whether as a preventive or reactive measure. The community provision of security

While the burden of the labour for these community protection groups falls primarily on male youths, community members contribute necessary equipment, like flashlights and batteries, as well as “morale boosters” for the youth, including meals, “tips”, and ataya—the strong Chinese “gunpowder” green tea popular throughout much of West Africa.

At the same time, informal payments were made by 38 percent of respondents to access state health care in the previous year. Public health units and hospitals are financed by the state, while the Free Health Care Initiative (FHCI) of 2010 ostensibly removed fees for basic healthcare services for children under five and pregnant and lactating mothers (see e.g. F. M. Conteh, 2016, pp. 363–364; Witter et al., 2016, pp. 129–130). In practice, however, local clinics often have nurses and staff that are not on government salary, with clinics in need of extra money or support in order to operate.40 It is thus common for public clinics to require informal payments or non-monetary “gifts” before providing treatment (see e.g. Scharff, 2012), while community contributions are often required for the construction and maintenance of facilities.41 This has led some observers, including an analyst of the FHCI, to ask “whether it’s free health care or if it’s actually being delivered at a price” (see e.g. F. M. Conteh, 2016).42 As described by focus group participants, clinics offer “free care—but we give 10,000 leones [USD 1.34]”.43

Second, some forms of convergent IRG may support public goods that are financed and provided in part by the state and in part by community actors (Appendix 3b: Table 18). In rural areas of Sierra Leone, this is well reflected by education, where, as described in greater detail in Chapter 7, IRG supports state-built and -funded schools as well as schools financed

retains particular importance in chiefdoms that are proximate to international borders, have concerns about insecurity, and are afflicted by perennial conflicts between farmers and herders.

40 This was explained, for instance, by KAI267.

41 Informal user fees captured here should have been covered under this FHCI or other programmes to provide free drugs.

42 FRE10

43 GBEFG2

and built independently by communities. IRG for education is one of the most common types of IRG in Sierra Leone, with 95 percent of individuals making informal payments to support the provision of “free” education.

Third, convergent IRG for community-provisioned goods fills gaps left by the state entirely (Appendix 3b: Table 19). While the state should be responsible for providing some public goods, in some regions of the country it is effectively absent in doing so. For instance, while local governments have a role in water well maintenance, budgets are insufficient to maintain even a fraction of wells in any given district.44 The result is that water provision is commonly organised and financed at the local level. Water wells are often built by NGOs but maintained by communities, with water well caretakers charging households levies—mostly commonly SLL 2000 (USD 0.27)—on a monthly basis to provide a common reserve fund for maintenance costs and, in some cases, a “small incentive” for the caretakers.45 In one town, focus group participants explained that if the reserve fund was insufficient when a repair was needed, elders would get together and “tax themselves”.46 In rural areas, similar arrangements prevail in maintaining and financing crop drying floors, many of which have been built as part of agricultural business centres set up by the government with the support of the Food and Agricultural Organisation.

At the same time, community actors, most notably chiefs and youth groups, organise different forms of communal labour and community development projects entirely outside of the state (Appendix 3b: Table 20). Nearly all (98 percent) of respondents reported contributing for these types of public goods, including communal labour or other contributions for a community development project organised by chiefs or other public

44 KOI243. The government did not support any water wells in any of the communities visited within the chiefdom case studies.

45 This was, for example, explained in MONFG2, with common amounts verified in focus group discussions across the nine case study chiefdoms.

46 SULFG3

leaders in the past year.47 Most commonly, 96 percent of respondents reported participating in town-cleaning in the past year, while 99 percent reported that such activities are common in the community, whether or not they participated in the past year.48 As well as being the most common, town-cleaning is also the most burdensome, with households contributing on average 22 days of labour annually, most commonly on a monthly basis (Figure 11). Unlike other forms of communal labour, it was more likely for respondents to report that everyone in the community partakes, not just youth, though it was similarly enforced, with the vast majority reporting plausible threats of fines, chiefly interventions, or arrests for non- participation (Figure 12).

Figure 11: Frequency: Town-cleaning

Town cleaning

Once a week or more …

2 times a month 2 3 times time a s a year year Once a month 4 times a year Once a year

47 This includes responses to questions asking about household participation in road-brushing, town-cleaning, communal labour (e.g. road/bridge construction), a community development project organised by the chief or another actor, or other self-help activities; household contributions to the maintenance or construction of town barries and/or community centres; and contributions made to the chief as a “community contribution”.

48 Town-cleaning may involve general cleaning of the road, community, or public goods (i.e. schools, mosques, and community centres). Town-cleaning is most common in rural areas but is not exclusively a rural phenomenon: additional survey data in eight urban centres show 85 percent of households engaged in town- cleaning in the previous year—and even higher (89 percent) in Freetown or WAR district.

Figure 12: Sanctions for non-participation in town-cleaning49

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Chief intervenes Fine Arrest Social pressure/ ostracism Other Nothing

Further, 92 percent of surveyed areas and communal labour for road and bridge maintenance construction reported in 86 percent of surveyed areas, while 72 percent of respondents reported participating in “road-brushing”, or road maintenance, while 92 percent reported that such activities are common in the community, whether or not they participated in the past year (Figure 13).50 Road brushing involves the clearing of overgrown vegetation on communal “bush” paths that connect villages, as well as the maintenance of rural “feeder” roads that are not maintained by the state. As these paths are critical for local trade and communication, and because the surrounding vegetation may harbour poisonous snakes, keeping them clear is seen as a vital public good.

49 Respondents were asked, “What happens if you don’t participate in town-cleaning?”

50 Communal labour for road and bridge construction is most common in but not limited to rural areas: additional survey data from the eight urban centres Sierra Leone show that 68 percent of households contributed to road-brushing or maintenance in the previous year.

Figure 13: Prevalence of road-brushing and communal labour for road/bridge construction51

0 Participation in road brushing Existence of road brushing in last year in community in last year Participation in communal Existence of communal labour labour in last year in community in last year

On average, households reported contributing almost eight days of labour annually for road- brushing and ten days for other communal labour such as for road and bridge construction; additionally, others reported giving cash or in-kind contributions in lieu of or in addition to labour.52 A third of respondents reported engaging in road-brushing once a month or more frequently, while communal labour for road or bridge construction happens less frequently, with over 60 percent of respondents reporting engaging in the activity less than once a month (Figure 14). At the same time, these contributions are widely perceived to be mandatory, with strict enforcement through fines and chiefdom intervention (Figure 15), often defined by chiefdom-level bylaws.53

51 Sample size of 839 for road-brushing and 836 for communal labour.

52 In-kind contributions most commonly included rice, but also other in-kind goods, like batteries for the megaphone of the town crier who announces the road-brushing. 94 and 87 percent of respondents reported that it is most common for just male youths to do the road-brushing and communal labour, respectively, with women cooking for the workers, and households contributing for the food for that meal, either with foodstuffs or cash—in this way the community “can work all together” (MAN108).

53 UPP80, MAN101, MAN110. For example, a PC representative described sending a community member to the PC’s court for not contributing to communal labour (MAN101), while a town speaker described fining individuals USD 2.68 for not participating (MAN110).

Figure 14: Frequency: Road brushing and communal labour

Road brushing Communal labour for road/ bridge construction

As there is a need/ When the 3 times a year 4 times a year chief announces 2 times a month

Once a year 4 times a year As there is a Once a week or need/ When the more chief announces frequently

Once a month

Once a Once week or a Once a 3 times a year 2 times a year more … year 2 times a year 2 times a month month

Figure 15: Sanctions for non-participation54

Communal labour (N 533)

Road brushing (N 602)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Chief intervenes Fine Nothing

In addition to these common, recurrent forms of communal labour, 15 percent of respondents reported contributing to community development projects organised by the chief or another local actor most commonly through labour or in-kind contributions,55

54 Respondents were asked, “What happens if you don’t participate in [the community work]?”

55 Other organising actors include local politicians, religious leaders, youth chairmen, Mammy Queens (important local female leaders), and NGOs.

commonly including the rehabilitation of local court barries, community centres, or other public infrastructure. For community development projects, it was most common for all community members—men, women, youth, and children—to participate directly (as reported by 71 percent of survey respondents), though in different capacities (e.g. manual labour, cooking, toting water). I observed this with the rehabilitation of a court barrie in Gbense chiefdom, where community members explained, “we tax ourselves” in order to pay for it, with everyone paying SLL 500 (USD 0.07) and everyone contributing different forms of labour (Photo 1).

Photo 1: Court barrie rehabilitation

Source: Author photos, Gbense chiefdom, Kono district, 2017 4 Conclusion

In Sierra Leone, IRG is significant for individual taxpayers and communities, with implications for public goods provision, equity, and redistribution. While individuals have little engagement with the formal tax system and pay almost no direct taxes to the state, we cannot disregard citizen contributions to public goods provision. This reinforces the importance of maintaining a broad analytic lens in order to capture the “real” systems of tax and governance as they exist in weak institutional contexts. Moreover, it highlights the need to better understand formal–informal dynamics and how they affect state institutional capacity. I turn to this task in the following chapter, developing a theory of IRG and the state that guides the remainder of the thesis.

Chapter 4: A theory of informal revenue generation and the state

nius.1 lכ yεri de כn yu yet, dai כn yu If

Kono proverb

1 Literally, “If you’re not dead yet, you haven’t heard all the news”, or “There’s always something to learn.”

In a classic model of statehood, the state has a monopoly on taxation—that is, the coerced extraction of revenue from citizens.2 Mann (1984, p. 188) defines a constituent part of the state as its “monopoly of authoritative binding rule-making”, while Herbst (2000, p. 113) argues that “there is no better measure of the state’s reach than its ability to collect taxes.” No other actor outside of the state should have the authority to tax. Where the state loses its monopoly over these defining features of state authority, it is often considered to have “failed” or “collapsed”. This is based on the assumption that “modern states everywhere eradicate competing institutions as part of their own rise” (Englebert, 2000, p. 12).

Violations of the state’s monopoly on taxation may indeed represent state failure in extreme cases— as with the Islamic State’s tax bureaucracy in Syria (M. Revkin, 2020), the Taliban’s taxation and service delivery functions in parallel to and in competition with the Afghan state (e.g. A. Jackson, 2018; Kumar, 2018), and the institutionalisation of rebel taxation during the Burundian civil war (e.g. Sabates-Wheeler & Verwimp, 2014). These violations are, however, more common than theoreticians of the western state often assume and are not always associated with state failure. While evidence suggests that IRG is prevalent in contexts of weak state institutions, cases of state “failure” or “collapse” are relatively rare, indicating that one need not lead to, or even be correlated with, the other. Rather than necessarily compete with each other, formal and informal taxing actors—whether state or non-state—may coexist and work together in various ways. IRG may be a part of rather than detrimental to states’ governing strategies, unexpectedly reinforcing state authority.

In this chapter, I first explore the diversity of formal–informal relationships around IRG. Based on my research, I inductively group “entities according to their perceived similarities” in order to identify “their essential characteristics, the essence of a kind” (Locke, 2007, p. 870). I develop a typology of formal–informal relationships, categorising outcomes according to IRG’s convergence or divergence from state institutions and the nature of state engagement with IRG. Considering this variation in formal–informal relationships, I inductively develop a theory of IRG and the state. Whether the state coexists with or asserts

2 The element of coercion simply means that there is a reasonable threat of enforcement and punishment, in line with the idea of quasi-voluntary taxation (Levi, 1988).

control over IRG is shaped by the state’s governing constraints and the extent to which its governing capacity and authority depend on IRG and/or informal taxing actors. I then consider within-type variation of state coexistence and control, explaining how and why state strategies differ for divergent and convergent IRG. As models are “intended as surrogates for, not replicas of, the real world” (Barrows, 1976, pp. 39–40), they are necessarily simplifications. The objective of such model-building is not to outline deterministic conditions under which certain outcomes will emerge, but to identify relevant structural factors and to provide analytic tools that can be applied to different contexts. Finally, I outline the ideal typical case studies upon which this model of formal–informal hybridity is built, detailing case study selection and explaining how the case studies have informed the process of inductive iteration.

1 Formal–informal relationships

While informal taxing actors have been under-theorised, there is a considerable literature on informal institutions more broadly. Orthodox understandings see informal institutions as a threat to the state and its authority, with one form of authority acting as a substitute for the other and the informal undermining the formal. For example, analyses of clientelism, corruption and patrimonialism often see informal institutions as “dysfunctional, or problem creating”, serving “to undermine the performance of formal democratic, market, and state institutions” (Helmke & Levitsky, 2004, p. 728; see e.g. Böröcz, 2000; Collins, 2002; Lauth, 2000; O’Donnell, 1996). In contrast to the stark dichotomy often assumed to exist between formal and informal institutions, more recent work has demonstrated that formal–informal relationships are complex, with the “informal” often cooperating or coexisting with the “formal” in a variety of ways (e.g. Hart, 2005; Meagher, 1990, 2005; Roitman, 1990, 2005), with the potential to sustain, reinforce, or remake state authority (e.g. Cleaver et al., 2013; Lund, 2006; Roitman, 2005; Titeca, 2012; Titeca & De Herdt, 2011; Titeca & Flynn, 2014).

This conceptual disconnect leads me to first explore the empirical nature of the relationship between the formal and informal taxing actors. In line with the definition outlined in Chapter 2, formal taxing actors are those that have the legal mandate to collect statutory taxes—in

most instances, the state.3 In considering formal–informal interaction, I thus focus on the state’s interaction with informal taxing actors.4 Informal taxing actors are those actors or organisations—whether operating outside of the state or as state agents—that levy informal taxes.5

In line with more nuanced understandings of informal institutions, there is considerable variation in the relationships between formal and informal taxing actors, with different outcomes of hybridity emerging in areas with weak formal institutions.6 To capture this variation, I develop a typology of the relationships between formal and informal taxing actors, based on two dimensions: the state’s strategy towards informality and informal taxing actors’ relative divergence from or convergence with state institutions.

First, I categorise formal–informal relationships according to how the state engages with informal taxing actors, with state action varying in the degree to which it attempts to control or coexist with IRG. The state controls IRG when it attempts to assert its authority over or otherwise limit an actor’s informal taxing capacity. For instance, the state may assert control by prohibiting IRG or taking over informal revenues and tax collection responsibility. By contrast, the state coexists with IRG when it accepts—tacitly or explicitly—the informal taxing authority of actors outside of the state, relinquishing some degree of taxing power to

3 In most instances, this is the state, though it can also be actors to whom the state has delegated limited formal taxing authority.

4 As described in Chapter 1, I recognise that the state is not a monolithic actor though I primarily focus on “those centralised institutions generally called ‘states’, and in the powers of the personnel who staff them, at the higher levels generally termed the ‘state elite’” (M. Mann, 1984, p. 188).

5 While I am primarily focused on the “players”—i.e. the actors that collect taxes and informal taxes—these actors are understood to be embedded within and affected by broader institutions (e.g. the rules that different actors follow) (see e.g. Helmke & Levitsky, 2004; Huntington, 1968; D. North, 1990).

6 Helmke and Levitsky’s (2004) typology, by contrast, considers situations of both effective and ineffective formal institutions and categorizes relationships between informal institutions and ineffective formal institutions only as substitutive or competing.

them.7 The degree of control or coexistence exists on a spectrum and the state’s strategy may shift over time (Figure 16).

Figure 16: Spectrum of state control/coexistence

Formalization/ State oversight prohibition of over IRG IRG More state Less state control control Joint revenue State tax collection/ coexistence revenue sharing with IRG

Second, I categorise IRG based on how it relates to existing state institutions (Chapter 3). Divergent IRG supports systems of governance and tax outside of the Weberian model of the modern state, posing a potential threat to modern state institutions. Convergent IRG works outside state institutions, but does not necessarily threaten them, either because informal taxing actors cannot or do not want to challenge the underlying state framework. With convergent IRG, informal taxing actors fill gaps left by the state, but work towards the same goals that “formal institutions were designed, but failed, to achieve” (Helmke & Levitsky, 2004, p. 729). The degree of relative divergence or convergence likewise exists on a spectrum and may shift over time (Figure 17). Empirically, patterns of state control and coexistence differ for divergent and convergent IRG and have different implications for state authority and institutionalisation.8

7 In practice, defining coexistence requires distinguishing between official state policy and the actual enforcement of that policy, in line with Holland’s (2016) concept of forbearance.

8 While I do not attempt to explain variation between divergent and convergent IRG and while the two axes of variation are not independent—indeed, I assume that states are more likely to want to control IRG that threatens states institutions—it is thus necessary to distinguish between convergent and divergent IRG so as to not conflate what are different phenomena.

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Figure 17: Spectrum of IRG convergence and divergence

IRG by an armed group competing with the IRG for community- state for governance provisioned public authority goods More More divergent convergent IRG for state- IRG by traditional provisioned public institutions outside the goods state These two dimensions produce the typology shown in Table 2, capturing four ideal types of formal–informal relationships. First, state action may indeed align with our expectations of statehood, with the state seeking to assert control over IRG. A competitive relationship results where the state tries to wrest control over divergent IRG. This outcome aligns with intuitive expectations about the relationship between formal and informal taxing actors, with the formal and the informal competing for revenues, control, and occasionally sovereignty. This is most obvious where the state is in open conflict with actors that levy taxes with proto-statebuilding ambitions (e.g. Mampilly, 2011, 2019; Raeymaekers, 2010, 2013; M. Revkin, 2020). Less extreme competitive relationships may emerge in post-colonial contexts where formal state institutions were superimposed on indigenous institutions and authority structures that continue to exist in parallel to or in competition with formal systems of taxation and governance.9

Table 2: Typology of formal and informal hybrid outcomes

9 Several analogies exist in thinking about formal and informal institutions more broadly. For example, Price (1975) describes how the rules of the public bureaucracy in Ghana compete with traditional institutional structures that value kinship ties and patronage networks. Similarly, in many post-colonial societies, European legal systems created “multiple systems of legal obligation” (Hooker, 1975, p. 2; see also John Griffiths, 1986; Merry, 1988).

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Divergent Convergent IRG IRG

State Competitive Assertive controls

State Concessionary Supplementary coexists

Assertive relationships emerge where informal taxing actors do not threaten state institutions, but the state nevertheless attempts to assert control. For instance, when states introduce universal health care or education programmes, they often prohibit informal taxes and user fees that had previously supported public service delivery. State control takes various forms, including taking over informal taxes, sharing tax revenues, monitoring informal tax collection, or otherwise co-producing public goods.10 For example, some state governments in Somalia work with clans in order to fund public goods through a combination of formal and informal taxation (van den Boogaard & Santoro, forthcoming). Here, revenues are shared but managed separately, and there is a shared role in monitoring service delivery. In other cases, the government may take greater control over informal revenue-raising, as when the Kenyan post-independence state attempted to control self-help activities in order to “mobilize local resources… subject to planning and coordination from above” (Ngau, 1987, p. 523).11

However, state action does not always align with our expectations. While classic theories of statehood expect that the state should always attempt to control IRG, this is not always the case—even when informal actors pose a threat to the state. A concessionary relationship results where the state coexists with divergent IRG. In other words, the state accepts IRG which threatens the state itself. This is the most puzzling outcome as we expect that the state should try to control this type of IRG in particular. In such instances, the state may tacitly

10 For an excellent overview of institutionalised co-production arrangements see (Joshi & Moore, 2004).

11 A similar strategy took place with the formalisation of town-cleaning contributions through salongo (“obligatory civic work”) in the DRC and Rwanda, wherein the state plays a role in enforcement.

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accept the presence of informal taxing actors, such as traditional authorities or non-state armed groups, or may explicitly support these efforts. This might mean, for example, granting formal or informal legal or revenue concessions to informal taxing actors in support of their revenue-raising activities.

A supplementary relationship emerges where the state coexists with or cedes some taxing control to informal taxing actors that do not threaten state institutions. A common example is when informal taxing actors (e.g. community groups, traditional leaders, etc.) levy taxes in order to support or fund state services or provide a public good that the state does not provide. Supplementary relationships are prevalent in low-income countries for the provision of public goods commonly provided by the state, such as water, education, health, and security (e.g. Bruce Baker, 2008; Haver, 2009; Njoh, 2003; Starn, 1999). They are also common for some “self-help” activities organised at the local level to support public goods that the state does not provide, including town-cleaning or the maintenance of public, but non-state roads.12 For example, Barkan, McNulty, and Ayeni (1991, pp. 457–458) describe how a

host of private and voluntary associations… contribute to the process of economic development in Africa by providing needed infrastructure, as well as an array of social welfare services which the state is unwilling or unable to deliver, especially to small towns and rural areas. 2 Explaining variation between state coexistence and control

The variation in state engagement with IRG makes clear that the state does not only compete with informal taxing actors as we may expect. Even where IRG is illegal and informal taxing actors threaten state institutions, the state may still coexist with them. What explains this apparent puzzle? A state’s governing strategy is not just about controlling revenue or ensuring a monopoly on taxation. Indeed, IRG may support its governing strategy rather than undermine it. I primarily explore the proximate factors driving variation between

12 The public goods created by such activities “serve relatively small catchments areas and are autonomous” from the state (Barkan & Holmquist, 1989, p. 360). For descriptions of indigenous traditions of self-help elsewhere (see e.g. Tsai, 2001, 2007b, 2007a), as well as a relatively large body of work on harambee in Kenya (Barkan, 1984; Barkan & Holmquist, 1989; Hill, 1991; Holmquist, 1970, 1984; Mbithi & Rasmusson, 1978; Njau, 1987; B. P. Thomas, 1987; Winans & Haugerud, 1977).

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coexistence and state control, rather than attempting to explain more distant explanations of variation in state strategies.13 I posit that whether the state coexists with or asserts control over IRG is therefore shaped by its governing constraints, defined in part by its dependence on informal taxing actors for its governing capacity and authority (Table 3).14

Table 3: Explaining variation in state strategies towards IRG

Formal/ informal Formal/ informal objectives objectives diverge converge

State Competitive Assertive controls on informal actor on informal State Concessionary Supplementary coexists Increasing dependence of the state dependenceIncreasing of the state

The state’s governing constraints shape the nature of state interaction with IRG in two key ways: First, all else being equal, where the state depends more on IRG, it will be more likely to concede revenues to informal taxing actors. Second, the balance between the state’s dependence for its governing capacity and authority on informal taxing actors versus other actors—whether elites, voters, civil society, or international donors—shapes its capacity and desire to take over IRG. Thus, while the state may depend on informal taxing actors, what matters is the relative importance of that dependence in the greater context of the societal forces upon which it depends for its authority.15 The balance between the state’s multiple dependencies reflect its governing constraints, shaping how it engages with IRG by influencing both its capacity and desire to take control over informal revenues and taxing actors.

13 This question of more distant explanatory factors—including the origins of state capacity and dependence—are worthy of further explanation but beyond the scope of this thesis.

14 Dependence is in line with Huntington’s (1968) conception of state autonomy and subordination.

15 This reflects Migdal’s (2001b) notion of the “state-in-society” and the processes of state transformation by existing social forces as well as their incorporation of social forces into the state’s model of governance.

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The two dimensions of feasibility and willingness are significant: while orthodox theories of the state assume that the state will always want to control IRG, I do not make this assumption. Instead, I posit that the state’s desire to take control, independent of its capacity, is also influenced by its governing constraints. For example, all else equal, where international donors pressure an aid-dependent state to control IRG, it will have a greater incentive to do so. Nevertheless, in line with classic understandings of the state, I consider that the central objective of the state is to reinforce its authority and power.16 To achieve this primary objective the state has an interest in ensuring stability and security from external or internal threats, which may in turn be achieved through control or persuasion, in the form of legitimising activities such as the delivery of public goods or economic development. Thus I consider that states fundamentally seek what Forrest (1988) calls state “hardness”, including structural autonomy, “whereby state institutions, leaders, and officials effectively remove themselves from the influence of societal actors and influences and are thereby able to act and make decisions independently of social forces.” While this may be the ultimate goal, it is unattainable, with states everywhere embedded within and depending on a multiplicity of social forces, reflecting “states in society” (Migdal, 2001b). Put simply: the state will want to control IRG where it reinforces its power and authority and will not when it does not.

The nature and relative importance of the state’s governing constraints ranges from constrained governance to complete governing independence. Moreover, path dependence may affect the state’s strategy toward IRG over time. For instance, strategies adopted by the state in the short-run may impact its ability to make different decisions in the long-run, notably through the path-dependency of institutional decisions. By contrast, decisions adopted by the state in the short-run may affect the longer-term balance of power between formal and informal actors and thus prompt new strategies in the future.17 Partly as a result

16 In democratic contexts, staying in power implies winning elections; in authoritarian ones, this means avoiding protests, revolts, and coups.

17 For instance, a state may make concessions to informal actors and sacrifice revenue in the short-run as part of a strategy to strengthen its authority in the short-term through other channels. This strengthening of authority may, through increased quasi-voluntary tax compliance or strengthened state capacity, increase the

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of the non-binary and dynamic nature of these governing constraints, the path between conditions and outcomes does not follow a simple linear model of causality. Accordingly, my explanation of state strategy serves as an analytic framework rather than a deterministic model of state behaviour.

2.1 State dependence on informal taxing actors

Where a state depends on informal taxing actors to a greater extent, it will be more likely to coexist with IRG. This dependence can cause the state to attempt to reinforce its authority in the short-term by counterintuitively accepting informality or making concessions to informal taxing actors. For instance, the state may depend on informal taxing actors in order to deliver services and achieve developmental outcomes where it has low capacity or faces budgetary pressures, both of which may be pronounced in hard-to-reach regions. In these areas the state may not have the administrative, financial, or logistical capacity to deliver services, or the administrative capacity or political will to collect the revenues that would enable them to provide those services. As a result, the state may explicitly or implicitly offload service delivery pressures onto informal actors, who serve as providers or coproducers of state public goods, contributing to the state’s governing authority. The state may thus recognise a need to cede control to informal taxing actors.

Moreover, the state may rely on informal taxing actors for political outcomes, with informal actors serving as brokers of stability, state control, or electoral outcomes—or otherwise influencing citizens’ legitimating beliefs about the state.18 In such contexts, the state is more likely to coexist with or make concessions to informal taxing actors. Where informal taxing actors play this electoral brokerage role, the state may choose to coexist with them

state’s capacity to raise revenues independently in the long-run. This impact could therefore decrease the state’s dependence on informal actors in the long-run and change the state’s preferred strategy of interaction in the longer term. By contrast, concessions to informal actors may serve to entrench those actors further and enable them to pose a greater threat to state institutions, thereby influencing how the state engages with them.

18 The role of traditional authorities in influencing political outcomes has been well documented (e.g. Baldwin, 2013; Baldwin & Mvukiyehe, 2015; de Kadt & Larreguy, 2018; Koter, 2013), though the role of other actors, including local elites, clans, associations, or community groups may also be important.

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regardless of the threat they pose to state institutions in order to ensure its short-term political survival. State coexistence with IRG may thus reflect a “devil’s deal” made with informal taxing actors (Tendler, 2002), with the state relinquishing control over taxation in exchange for consolidating its authority in the short-term.19 While formalisation has historically been inseparable from the extension of state power (e.g. Migdal, 2001b; Tilly, 1990/1993; S. van de Walle & Scott, 2011), IRG may, in fact, reinforce state authority in the short-run—even if it does not necessarily contribute to long-term state institutionalisation.

2.2 Nature and importance of the state’s other governing constraints

It is not just a state’s dependence on informal taxing actors that shapes its interactions with IRG. Rather, its dependence on other actors—whether elites, voters, civil society, or international donors—likewise influence its capacity and desire to take over IRG. These constraints may encourage the state to either coexist with or take control over IRG. For instance, states everywhere face political constraints around taxation. Where the state faces political constraints against increasing its fiscal capacity (see e.g. W. Easterly & Rebelo, 1993), it may thus be relatively more dependent on informal taxing actors to achieve development outcomes that affect its governing legitimacy.

By contrast, where societal actors pressure the state to control IRG, the state will have greater capacity and desire to act. For instance, civil society actors or domestic voters may pressure the state to eliminate informal taxes or to make informal taxing actors more accountable. Similarly, the state may depend more on external actors than informal ones for funding or to validate its authority (see e.g. S. R. Dorman, 2018; R. Jackson & Rosberg, 1982). Where the balance of dependency has shifted from local to external actors, the state may face pressure to assert its authority in line with donors’ values and normative views of statehood. The phenomenon of “upward” or “external” accountability—that is, of states being

19 In this way, these relationships may be analogous to other situations wherein de jure legal rules are violated in order to enhance stability through different means. For example, Lijphart (1975, pp. 122–138) describes how the post-1917 Dutch democracy functioned on the basis of “informal, unwritten rules” of elite accommodation and power sharing that violated the democratic spirit of the constitution but enhanced democratic stability by reducing class and religious conflict.

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accountable and responsive to aid donors as well as, or instead of, taxpayers—is well documented in low-income, aid-dependent states (e.g. Gloppen & Rakner, 2002; Hyden, 1998; Mkandawire, 2010a).20 Mkandawire (2010a, p. 1149) describes heavily aid- dependent countries as having “two sovereigns act upon the same space but [being] accountable to different constituencies” with “the power of one of the two sovereigns… likely to impinge on the accountability of the other” (see also Whitfield & Fraser, 2009). This contributes to what he describes as “choiceless democracies” (Mkandawire, 1999), elsewhere referred to as “low-intensity democracies” (Gills & Rocamora, 1992). Similarly, Sobhan (1996, p. 122) declares, in contexts of high aid-dependency “aid recipients lose their capacity to think for themselves and thereby relinquish control”. For example, some observers have diagnosed Sierra Leone with a foreign aid “dependence syndrome” (Elnour, 2018; Mkandawire, 2010b), with donors’ ideologies and normative perspectives shaping state strategies.

20 These outward accountabilities of aid-dependent states are normally discussed in terms of the conditionality of aid, which was most prevalent, explicit, and coercive during the structural adjustment era of development (e.g. P. Collier, 1999; Dunning, 2004; W. R. Easterly, 2006; Stokke, 1995; World Bank, 1998, 2005b, 2005a). The development community has foregone the strict, contractual conditionality associated with the Washington Consensus in lieu of a “partnership” model of development that attempts to foster “mutual accountability” (OECD, 2005, 2011; World Bank and the IMF, 2005; for a review of this shift see Pender, 2006; Mosse, 2005). However, the reality is that pressure from donors and international lending institutions remains real—if less explicit (D Chandler, 2006; Harrison, 2001; Helleiner et al., 1995; Helleiner, 2000; Pender, 2006). Across aid- dependent low-income countries, there is significant evidence of “residual conditionality”, with donors’ “intimate involvement” in agenda setting and policymaking, with “a persistent element of coercion… indicat[ing] who still has the last word on setting priorities” (Pender, 2006). As described by Menzel (2019, p. 443), the partnership model of post-conditionality development “is very much on donors’ terms in that donors frame problems and shape policies that are to become officially ‘owned’ by national/local partners (see also Bergamaschi, 2014; de Jong, 2017). Similarly, Mkandawire (2010b) argues that “the willingness by donors to engage in ‘mutual accountability’ was… facilitated [in part] by the belief that donors had attained sufficient ideational hegemony in key policymaking institutions […] and had sufficiently ring-fenced these institutions that they could cede authority without jeopardising the core policy regime that they still adhered to.” As described by Duffield (2014, p. 10), aid is a “political project in its own right” that requires understanding “its particular forms of mobilisation, justification and reward.” In this way, former colonies remain “dependencies” in some ways, thus being particularly sensitive to external norms and priorities (see e.g. M. A. Thomas, 2015).

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2.3 The limits of state control

State strategies exist on a spectrum from total state control to mediated state control to state coexistence with IRG, reflecting different degrees of governing capacity (Figure 18). In the instance of total state control, the state may prohibit or formalise IRG. The state may enforce laws against informal payments for core services like universal free health care or education. Alternatively, it may formalise IRG by legalising informal taxing actors and the taxes they collect or taking over the organisation or enforcement of informal revenue collection. Where the state’s governing constraints limit its capacity and/or desire to take full control over IRG, it may engage a strategy of mediated control over IRG through hybridisation or supervision, accepting less than a full monopoly on taxation. It may engage in a hybrid partnership with informal taxing actors—for instance, working with IRG actors through joint revenue collection or sharing—or may supervise IRG without taking control over informal processes and revenues. In such cases, the state may simply assert its power to monitor or regulate IRG in an attempt to limit the ill effects of informality, including high or unequal informal tax burdens. Finally, where the state continues to depend on IRG or informal taxing actors more extensively, it may coexist with IRG, whether tacitly or explicitly.

Figure 18: Spectrum of state strategies towards IRG

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In weak institutional contexts, where states lack sufficient structural autonomy, governing constraints often limit states’ capacity to take full control over IRG. Indeed, my empirical evidence suggests that constraints make it unlikely for the state to take total control over IRG and informal taxing actors. Instead, where the state has capacity to assert control, it is more often a mediated form of control, reflecting hybrid governance and sovereignties. The prevalence of mediated outcomes reflects the common reality of hybrid sovereignties in weak institutional contexts and particularly in post-colonial or conflict-affected states where there are competing governing authorities (Agnew, 2005; Berti, 2016; Menkhaus, 2008; Podder, 2014; Ray, 1996). In such contexts, where the state attempts to take full control over IRG—through, for example, the prohibition or formalisation of informal taxes—it often fails, eventually reverting to coexistence. This failure to formalise is explained by a lack of structural changes to the state’s underlying governing constraints. Changes to laws, political will, and leadership are insufficient to institute sustainable reform to the state’s engagement with IRG. Instead, the bricolage of structural governing constraints must change. Thus, in weak institutional contexts, it is often more productive for the state to work with informal taxing actors than to try to take them over.

3 Explaining within-case variation As ideal types, the formal–informal outcomes outlined above are useful, but limited, representations of complex empirical realities. Indeed, variation exists within each ideal type, as both of the categorical dimensions exist as gradients, rather than binary variables. State control over IRG exists on a spectrum from outright control to mediated control to coexistence. For each level of control, there is additional variation in the nature and effectiveness of state strategies. State interaction with IRG is not bound by strict dichotomies of conflict or cooperation, control or coexistence. Empirical evidence suggests that the nature of this variation is different for divergent and convergent IRG. On account of the ontological differences between divergent and convergent IRG, different explanatory variables are relevant for divergent and convergent outcomes. I address these differences in turn.

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3.1 Variation in divergent outcomes: The autonomy of informal taxing actors State relationships with divergent IRG first vary according to the degree of state control, ranging from total control to mediated control to coexistence. As described above, this is determined by the state’s governing constraints and the degree to which it depends on informal taxing actors for its governing capacity and authority. Within each of these categories (i.e. total control, mediated control, coexistence), however, a range of possible outcomes may emerge. For divergent IRG, these outcomes reflect the effectiveness of state control and the willingness of the informal taxing actor to cooperate with the state, which are shaped by the relative autonomy of the informal taxing actor and the associated balance of power between the two actors (Figure 19).21

Figure 19: Variation of state strategies (divergent IRG): Independent state governing capacity and the autonomy of the informal taxing actor

(C1) (C2) Control: Control: Total state Conflict control/ prohibition

(B1) (B2) Mediated Mediated control: control: Negotiated Competitive settlement stalemate

(A1) (A2) Coexistence: Coexistence: Tolerance/ tacit State Increasingindependent governing capacity acceptance concessions to informal taxing actor

Increasing autonomy of informal taxing actor

Three aspects of autonomy are particularly salient to understanding the state’s capacity to effectively assert control and the informal taxing actors’ willingness to cooperate: ideology, fiscal autonomy, and legitimacy. First, the ideology of the informal taxing actor informs its

21 Autonomy may be thought of in line with Weberian (1968) concepts of state domination and thus the degree to which an actor “must obey the authority claimed by the powers that be” (Gerth & Wright Mills, 1946, p. 78). The degree of autonomy from the state thus affects the relative balance of power within a state-in-society model of interaction (Migdal, 1994, 2001a).

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position relative to the state and, in turn, how the state will react to the informal actor. Where informal actors possess an ideology that threatens the state’s authority or very existence, the informal actor is existentially autonomous from the state and less likely to cooperate. This autonomy, however, can be less extreme, with divergent informal taxing actors desiring local rather than national sovereignty or sovereignty over a confined territory, with the informal taxing actor correspondingly more likely to cooperate in a circumscribed manner.

Second, the fiscal autonomy of the informal taxing actor influences the extent to which it can effectively challenge the state. Where informal actors depend on the state for finances—for instance, through fiscal transfers or formal institutional recognition that is necessary to access donor financing—they will be less likely to challenge the state’s institutions and authority, as they depend in some way on that authority. By contrast, where informal actors have greater fiscal autonomy—for instance, where they have access to resource rents—they will be less likely to cooperate with the state.

Finally, the degree of popular legitimacy of the informal taxing actor independent of the state shapes its willingness to cooperate with the state. For example, where informal actors’ legitimacy is based on cultural or traditional factors outside of the state, as is the case with some traditional authorities across sub-Saharan Africa, or where an actor has greater legitimacy based on its record of governance and service delivery, as with some armed groups with ambitions of statehood, they will be less willing to cooperate with the state. By contrast, where the informal taxing actor depends to some degree on the state for its legitimacy—for instance, through constitutional or political recognition—it will be more willing to cooperate with the state.

In contexts of low state independent governing capacity, the state will be more likely to coexist with divergent IRG, leading to concessionary outcomes. However, the state may coexist tacitly or explicitly, depending in part on the relative autonomy of the informal taxing actor (Figure 19: A1/A2). Where informal taxing actors have greater autonomy, the state is more likely to explicitly sanction their role in taxation or make informal revenue concessions to them (Figure 19: A2) rather than simply tolerating their role in IRG (Figure 19: A1). For example, in Sierra Leone the state depends on chiefs to deliver political outcomes, including

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control, stability, and votes. The state has thus coexisted with chiefs and their informal taxing authority in order to ensure its own governing capacity and authority (Chapter 5). As described in Chapter 5, the state has historically been more likely to make informal revenue concessions to chiefs in electorally influential districts and during election periods, when chiefs have greater autonomy and power over the state’s authority.

In contexts of greater independent governing capacity, the state is more likely to assert control over IRG, leading to competitive outcomes. However, competitive outcomes differ according to the informal taxing actor’s relative autonomy. Where the informal taxing actor is less autonomous, it will be more likely to cooperate with the state, with the state able to assert a higher degree of effective dominance over informality (Figure 19: C1/B1). Where the state has fewer governing constraints that limit its capacity to take control over IRG, informal taxing actors may effectively prohibit IRG. For example, several postcolonial states institutionalised the role of traditional authorities within the national state as a means of subordinating their authority to the state. Indeed, the nationalist government of Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah competed with the chieftaincy for political control in rural areas. The state used its power to subordinate chiefs early in the post-independence era, critically taking away chiefly revenue sources and establishing the government as the sole fiscal authority at the local level (Rathbone, 2000; Ray, 1996). Because of this effective subordination, the state has effectively controlled much of the chieftaincy’s power over informal revenues at the local level, reflecting an outcome of state control (Figure 19: C1). By contrast, where the state is more constrained—as where it depends politically on informal taxing actors—the state may reach a negotiated settlement with informal taxing actors in order to limit IRG (Figure 19: B1). This may manifest as an agreement with the informal taxing actor to share informal revenues or jointly control informal revenue collection.

Where the informal taxing actor is more autonomous, the informal taxing actor will be less willing to cooperate and the state will be unable to effectively assert some dominance over IRG, resulting in a competitive stalemate or conflict with the informal taxing actor (Figure 19: A2/B2). Under competitive stalemates or open conflict, the state attempts to assert its

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power over informal taxing actors, though with an uncooperative actor that means that the effectiveness of these efforts will be the result of the balance of power between the two actors and the state’s governing capacity. For example, in Somalia, Al-Shabaab represents a strongly autonomous organisation, ideologically committed to the destruction of the Somali state and financially autonomous from the state, self-sufficient as it is based on tax and other revenues (see Chapter 6). Under these conditions, the Somali state can only oppose Al- Shabaab and its informal taxing efforts, though the effectiveness of this opposition depends on the balance of power between the actors at any given stage, resulting in a state strategy of conflict (Figure 19: A2). Where the state is more constrained, having less capacity and desire to take control over IRG—which may be likely, for instance, if the informal taxing actor does not threaten the state with violent conflict—a non-violent competitive stalemate may result, with the state unable to take control over the actor but unwilling to stop trying (Figure 19: B2).

3.2 Variation in convergent outcomes: The acceptability of IRG

Like divergent IRG, convergent formal–informal outcomes first vary according to the degree of state control imposed over IRG, ranging from total control to mediated control to coexistence. As described above, this is determined by the state’s governing constraints and the degree to which it depends on informal taxing actors for its governing capacity and authority. Variation within each category is shaped by the relative acceptability of IRG to the actors upon which the state’s governing authority depends (Figure 20).22

22 To some degree, the nature of the acceptability of IRG may influence the independent governing capacity of the state. That is, where IRG is relatively acceptable, the state may have greater capacity/ desire to take over IRG; by contrast, where it is unacceptable, the state may be more dependent on informal taxing actors to control activities, even where the state has an interest in the outcomes.

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Figure 20: Variation of state strategies (convergent IRG): Independent state governing capacity and the acceptability of IRG

(C1) (C2) Control: Control: Prohibition Formalization

(B1) (B2) Mediated Mediated control: control: Supervision Formal hybridization

(A1) (A2) Coexistence: Coexistence: Explicit Increasing independent Increasing capacity governing Tacit acceptance sanction

Increasing acceptability of IRG

While we may expect that informality is always unacceptable to the state, the ideologies and normative views of the state and the actors upon which its governance depends (i.e. the electorate, power brokers, international donors) shape the acceptability of IRG. Put simply: IRG is not always unacceptable to the state. Acceptability depends in part on the threat posed to state institutions by IRG—that is, divergent IRG is assumed to always be unacceptable to the state because of the threat it poses to it. Where IRG does not pose such a threat, as with convergent IRG, acceptability may depend on normative, ideational and discursive contexts, including socialist, anti-capitalist, or anti-colonial ideologies that encourage self-reliance through IRG; liberal ideologies that denounce IRG on equity grounds; developmentalist ideologies that perceive IRG as a way of encouraging “ownership” over local development; and neoliberal ideologies that implicitly see IRG as a way of streamlining government functions and budgets. At the same time, acceptability of IRG exists on a spectrum: in some contexts, relevant actors may view IRG as always illegitimate, as where it is conflated with corruption, or they may view it as being beneficial for desired outcomes, though with negative impacts, including for equity, accountability, and transparency.

The importance of to whom IRG is acceptable depends on the state’s governing constraints. Where an electorate holds sway over legitimate governing authority, their perceptions of acceptability must be considered; where the state depends heavily on and is influenced by

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international actors, external perspectives and norms will often prevail. In low-income countries, the acceptability of IRG to international donors is particularly relevant given states’ dependence on them. At the same time, the salience of the public good that IRG funds also affects IRG’s legitimacy. For example, in crises donors may be more likely to accept “second best” governance strategies, where the state is not the sole or even the most important governance actor. Indeed, in conflict-affected contexts, the international community is more willing to accept mediated forms of statehood in order to deliver basic public goods. Likewise, during security or public health crises, the state may be more willing to coexist with informal means of revenue-raising and governance in order to achieve peace and stability. In effect, the salience of the end justifies the informal means.

Where the state depends on informal taxing actors for some degree of its governing authority, it is more likely to coexist with IRG, resulting in supplementary outcomes. Where IRG is relatively unacceptable, the state is more likely to tacitly, quietly coexist with IRG (Figure 20: A1). This outcome is described in Chapter 7: The state depends on IRG to deliver key public goods that are central to its governing authority, though also depends on international donors. As these external actors view informal taxes for education as illegitimate according to the rights-based normative framework that supports universal free education, the state can only tacitly coexist with IRG, while officially encouraging its prohibition. By contrast, where IRG is more acceptable, the state may explicitly sanction it, even where it does not have sufficient independent governing capacity to take control of it (Figure 20: A2). For example, on the Indonesian island of Bali, until 1997 the state accepted proof of participation in communal labour (gotong rojong) as a substitute for paying land and building tax, though the state did not officially sanction communal labour and was not involved in collecting or enforcing it (Heij, 2001, p. 76).

Where the state has greater independent governing capacity and is able to assert a degree of control over informal taxing actors, we may expect that it would move to prohibit, or at least limit, IRG, resulting in assertive outcomes. Empirical evidence suggests that this does not always happen in practice. The reality is thus that some forms of IRG are more acceptable than others, making it possible for the state to work with, rather than against, IRG. Where

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IRG is unacceptable—for instance, where it is conflated with corruption—a relatively independent state will be more likely to prohibit it (Figure 20: C1). For example, as a result of donors’ distaste of informal taxes and user fees to access education and health care, states have commonly prohibited IRG—at least on paper (Chapter 7). Where the state has less capacity or desire to assert control, it is more likely to assert state control through oversight—for instance, through regulation or supervision to limit the negative side effects of informal, decentralised governance (Figure 20: B1).23 For example, in one district in Sierra Leone, the government has attempted to take some control of the role of water well management committees that levy informal fees for water well usage.24 While water well caretakers are common in villages, the local government has worked with Oxfam and the National Commission for Social Action to formalise the committees and insert oversight over informal revenue collection. When the state faced greater pressure from international donors to ensure the accountability of this IRG and to include communities in participatory development plans, it faced political constraints that made it more willing to increase state control over IRG—even if its administrative capacity did not noticeably change. State supervision thus reflects a shift from a supplementary relationship, with the state coexisting with IRG, to an assertive relationship, though with a mediated degree of state control. The government is not trying to prohibit informal taxation or take over the revenues. Instead, it is incorporating some measures of accountability in order to better monitor the informal revenue collection and ensure its fairness and accountability. In this case, a local government official noted that these informal payments “had some formal arrangements, thus the line between formal and informal taxes are getting thinner in their communities.”25

23 Such an outcome requires a degree of independent governing capacity by the state in order to operationalise supervision of IRG, though requires less governing capacity than strategies of prohibition and formalisation.

24 KOI243. These water well management committees commonly collect monthly fees from communal users in order to access water wells that have been constructed by NGOs—in this case, Oxfam—and that should be (but are not) maintained by the state.

25 KOI243

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By contrast, where IRG is more acceptable, a more independent state will be more likely to formalise IRG, directly controlling or enforcing it (Figure 20: C2). Thus, even if it has the capacity to prohibit it, the state may choose not to. For instance, after independence, the Kenyan government took control over local self-help activities through its embrace of harambee. The state not only had relative independent governing capacity, but IRG was also relatively acceptable, framed by the state in terms of post-colonial ideologies that emphasised the need for “self-reliance” (see Chapter 8). Where the state has less independent governing authority, but IRG is relatively acceptable, it will be more likely to engage in a hybrid partnership with informal taxing actors (Figure 20: B2). For example, in south Somalia, the state has partnered with local clans to engage in joint revenue collection for local public goods provision (van den Boogaard & Santoro, forthcoming). In this prototypical context of “mediated” statehood (Menkhaus, 2006b), international donors and the state have supported IRG in recognition of the reality that alternative, less than ideal governing strategies are required to meet basic governance (van den Boogaard & Santoro, forthcoming). Despite its weakness, the state is able to engage with informal taxing actors, rather than coexisting with them, because the state is essentially propped up by international actors.26

4 Ideal typical case studies

In Parts II and III of this thesis, I use case studies to parse the explanatory model, mapping the explanatory variables and pathways in the particular context of Sierra Leone. Within the broader context of IRG in Sierra Leone (Chapter 3), I selected case studies according to variation across the two key conditions: divergence versus convergence and state coexistence versus state control. Exploiting cross-case and within-case variation, I employ ideal typical cases in order to show how the generalizable model manifests in a specific context. Cross-case comparison demonstrates how the nature of the state’s governing constraints affect its capacity and desire to assert control over IRG, while within-case process

26 For example, in the co-financing partnerships between the state and clans in south Somalia, the state’s portion of financing was contributed through an international NGO.

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tracing shows empirically how generalizable causal processes play out in a prototypical case while explaining the nature of within-type variation (Beach, 2017; Bennett, 2010; Checkel, 2006, 2008).27

4.1 Concessionary formal–informal relationships

Chapter 5 considers an example of a concessionary relationship between informal taxing actors and the state, where the state opts to coexist with divergent IRG. This is the most theoretically puzzling outcome, as we expect that the state should want to control divergent IRG at all costs. I consider when the state fails to do so, through an analysis of the relationship between the Sierra Leonean state and traditional authorities from the imposition of the colonial state to the contemporary period. I trace this relationship across four periods of statebuilding and consolidation, when we would particularly expect that the state would attempt to limit the role of informal taxing actors and assert its authority and monopoly on taxation. By contrast, in these periods, the Sierra Leonean state not only coexisted with IRG, but made explicit concessions to traditional authorities, reinforcing their power to collect informal taxes.

The empirical evidence suggests that the state chose this strategy of coexistence because of its dependence on traditional authorities for political outcomes that affect its governing capacity and authority, including chiefs’ role in supporting state control and delivering electoral outcomes. Accordingly, any possible threat to the image of a “modern” state is outweighed by the state’s reliance on chiefs to ensure its political authority. With this high dependence on informal taxing actors, the state essentially makes a “devil’s deal” with them (Tendler, 2002), trading its monopoly on taxation for the short-term stability of its authority. Through sub-national comparison and historical process-tracing over time, I show that where chiefs have greater autonomy from the state and where the balance of power is tilted towards chiefs—including at critical junctures of state weakness and state expansion, in

27 Using this method, I give particular attention to processes of complex causality and the micro-foundations of explanatory variables, focusing on the observable implications of a theory rather than limiting the analysis to a linear model of causality based on an observable outcome variable.

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electoral swing districts, and during election periods—the state has been more willing to make informal revenue concessions to chiefs rather than tacitly coexisted with them.

4.2 Competitive formal–informal relationships

Chapter 6 then looks at the case of a competitive relationship between formal and informal taxing actors, where the state attempts to control divergent IRG. Continuing to consider the relationship between the state and traditional authorities in Sierra Leone, I analyse the relatively rare instance of the state trying to assert control over chiefs. In Sierra Leone, this has happened in recent years at the local level, with local governments and chiefs fighting for local revenues and sovereignty. Comparing these relatively rare instances to the status quo of state coexistence with chiefs, I show that where local governments asserted more control, they did so thanks to a shift in their governing constraints. This manifested as pressures from the central government, donors, and civil society to take back control over IRG, as well as local political leadership that is relatively independent of chiefs for its governing authority.

Illustrating broader challenges of asserting control in weak institutional environments, however, local governments have been unable to assert full control, but rather a mediated form of it. Accordingly, they have engaged in a form of hybrid taxation with chiefs, negotiating with them in order to take control over some formal revenues that had previously been controlled—informally—by chiefs. This mediated form of control requires that the state concede some formal revenues and authority to chiefs, with an understanding that in order to regain control over formal revenues, the state must “work with the grain” of the reality of informality, rather than by the letter of the law that has not been enforced in practice.28

Exploiting sub-national variation in the effectiveness of these negotiations, I show that the nature of autonomy of informal taxing actors and the balance of power between them and

28 Such informal negotiation processes are reminiscent of blat—the informal norms that emerged under Soviet rule as a means of “find[ing] a way around formal procedures” and strict formal rules that were not conducive to meeting individuals’ goals (Ledeneva, 1998, p. 43; see also Berliner, 1957).

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the state affects chiefs’ willingness to cooperate with the state and the effectiveness of state control. Where chiefs have greater autonomy from the state and greater power in relation to it, negotiations have fallen apart. By contrast, where the states have less autonomy, negotiated settlements have been effectively reached, with hybrid formal–informal partnerships implemented.

4.3 Supplementary formal–informal relationships

Chapter 7 then turns to considering convergent IRG, exploring when the state has coexisted with IRG, resulting in a supplementary relationship. I explore this outcome through the example of the co-provision of public education in Sierra Leone, which is a representative example of how public goods are financed in many countries with weak state institutions. As a result of perennial public finance shortfalls, the state has left major gaps in the provision of “free” primary public education. In turn, and despite commitments to universal “fee free” primary education, local actors—including parent teacher associations (PTAs), school management committees (SMCs), and chiefs—levy informal taxes and fees on parents, households, and community members in order to finance the construction and maintenance of schools, teachers’ salaries, and the overall provision of education.

In this case, the goals of the state and those of informal taxing actors align: The state wants to deliver free public education, which it views as a political necessity to its authority based on both internal (voter) and external (donor) pressures. At the same time, informal taxing actors aim to contribute to the state system of public education, rather than creating parallel systems of education. They do not serve as a threat to the state’s authority as they respect the ultimate authority of the state to deliver and regulate public education, recognising that viable alternatives to the state system do not exist. Accordingly, we see that informal taxing actors have limited autonomy relative to the state, again reflecting a typical balance of power between informal taxing actors and the state in contexts with weak state institutions.

The state coexists with IRG as a result of its dependence on informal taxing actors to deliver essential public goods. In policy statements, the state denounces what it deems as “illegal” school fees, but privately recognises that they are necessary to deliver education across the

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country and particularly in hard-to-reach areas. Rather than explicitly sanctioning these informal taxes and fees, the state tacitly coexists with them, reflecting the unacceptability of IRG to donors, who hold normative views about the value of universal free education. As with concessionary hybrid outcomes, this case thus illustrates where the state may reinforce its authority by accepting a lack of monopoly on taxation. There is a tendency, particularly among development partners in low-income countries, to view informality as detrimental to the state. This case study shows that informality is not inherently destructive but may actually contribute to the state’s objectives and reinforce its authority in unexpected ways.29

4.4 Assertive formal–informal relationships

Chapter 8 features the final empirical case study, considering how and when the state asserts control over convergent IRG, resulting in an assertive formal–informal relationship. I explore the case study of the Sierra Leonean state’s engagement with informal labour taxes from the colonial period to the present day. Over time, the state has variously controlled and coexisted with informal labour taxes, with this variation allowing me to isolate the necessary conditions for state control. In so doing, I demonstrate that the state has been able to take control when it has had sufficient independent governing capacity to do so, variously manifested through colonial power, strong electoral mandates, support from international donors, and emergency or crisis situations wherein the public good being supported by informal labour taxes became relatively salient.

Through this tracing of state engagement over time, I also show that periods of state control are relatively rare. As with competitive formal–informal outcomes, the weak institutional context of Sierra Leone means that the governing constraints against taking full control over IRG are strong, making mediated forms of control more likely. With respect to informal labour taxes, this manifests as hybrid formal–informal arrangements wherein the state sanctions and works with informal labour taxes but does not control them.

29 Nevertheless, and as will be further explored in Part IV of this thesis, coexisting with convergent IRG has long-term equity implications, with negative implications for state institutionalisation.

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At the same time, the case study shows that there is variation in how the state engages with informal labour taxes independent of its governing capacity and desire to assert control. For instance, where the state has had greater independent governing capacity, it has variously prohibited informal labour taxes and formalised them, taking them over and making them mandatory. By tracing these shifts in engagement during the colonial, post-independence, and contemporary periods, I show that the state’s manner of engagement is influenced by the relative acceptability of informal labour taxes, which itself has shifted over time. Once seen as necessary by colonial authorities, a growing international labour movement caused them to be seen as illegitimate. Over time, however, informal labour taxes were reframed as part of “traditional” obligations, central to the post-independence “self-reliance” movement, and indicative of “ownership” and “participation” within development projects, making them more acceptable to international donors and domestic populations. The fluidity in the relatively acceptable of informal labour taxes over time corresponds to how the state has interacted with IRG.

5 Conclusion

This multifaceted theory of IRG and the state explains empirical variation in formal–informal relationships. By shedding light on how state strategies towards IRG vary, it provides a necessary corrective to simplified understandings that the state should always want to control or forbid IRG. Instead, we see that the state may coexist with and work with IRG, while reflecting important variation in how it engages with different types of IRG. At the same time, it shows that asserting full control of IRG in weak institutional contexts is challenging, with mediated forms of control more common given the underlying governing constraints that weak states face.

The next two sections turn to the empirical case studies that inform the inductive theory- building process, tracing causal processes and explaining outcome and within-case variation in the four ideal-type case studies. Part two explores variation in how the state engages with divergent IRG, resulting in concessionary and competitive outcomes. Part three then

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considers supplementary and assertive outcomes, which result from variation in how the state engages with convergent IRG.

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Part II: Variation in formal–informal outcomes: Case studies of divergent IRG

Divergent IRG supports systems of governance and tax that are outside of and pose a threat to modern state institutions. Informal taxing actors that engage in divergent IRG are particularly common in conflict-affected areas, where the boundaries or very existence of the state are in question and, more commonly, in contexts where modern state institutions were superimposed on pre-existing political institutions and authorities. In the next two chapters, I explore how and why state strategies of engagement with divergent IRG vary. In both chapters, I explore a prototypical case of divergent IRG in Sierra Leone—IRG to support chiefs and chiefdom administrations. Chapter 5 considers the conditions under which the state coexists with divergent IRG—a concessionary formal–informal relationship. I demonstrate that this outcome emerges when the state depends on informal taxing actors for some degree of its governing capacity and authority. Chapter 6 then explores the conditions under which the state is able to break free of this dependence to take some degree of control over divergent IRG, resulting in a competitive formal–informal relationship. Through these case studies, I show that without structural changes to the governing constraints and dynamics of the state, full control of IRG is unlikely, with the state more likely to accept a mediated form of control. Together, these chapters trace variation in state engagement with divergent IRG, explaining the puzzles of why the state may engage with it and when the state may move to assert its sovereign authority.

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Chapter 5: Concessionary formal–informal outcomes: Informal revenue generation as patrimonial resource distribution

ntri.1כk lכf na pawa gεt כn Kakroch

Krio proverb

1 Literally, “The cockroach has no power in chicken country.”

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Forced out of Jordan in 1969, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) fled to Lebanon and established proto-state institutions in exile, often described as a “state within the state”. It maintained strong institutions (Atzili, 2010, p. 768; Beker & Van Oordt, 1991; Brynen, 1989, p. 16; Ramadan, 2008, p. 666), provided governance and public goods, and boasted an extensive bureaucracy and taxation system (Brynen, 1989, p. 51; Rubenberg, 1983, p. 78; Sayigh, 1997, p. 459,666, 680; Stel, 2017b, p. 356). Despite posing a threat to Lebanese state sovereignty, being viewed as an “unwelcome rebel group” (Stel, 2017b, p. 351; see also Hirst, 2010, p. 91; Sayigh, 1997, p. 668), the Lebanese state accepted the PLO’s informal governance and tax authority.

How can this concession of state authority to an informal taxing actor that threatens the state be explained? Indeed, conventional state theory expects that state should assert control over IRG—particularly where informal taxing actors pose a threat to state institutions. In practice, however, the state may coexist with divergent IRG rather than controlling it. It may do so by turning a blind eye to IRG, not enforcing laws against it, or explicitly making formal tax revenue concessions to informal taxing actors through informal channels. My research shows that this counterintuitive dynamic—what I term a concessionary formal–informal relationship—emerges when the state depends on the informal taxing actor for some part of its governing authority, whether for stability, control, political outcomes, or public goods provision (Table 4). This serves as a fundamental constraint shaping the state’s governance strategy. For example, an informal taxing actor may serve as an electoral broker for the state or as a source of stability in fragile contexts. At the same time, the informal taxing actor has a degree of autonomy from the state, based, for example, in independent sources of legitimacy or finances. As a result, there is a power imbalance between the two actors in favour of the informal taxing authority. To correct this imbalance and ensure the support of the informal taxing actor, the state coexists with IRG as a form of patrimonial resource distribution. It makes a “devil’s deal” with informal taxing actors, ceding its monopoly on taxation in order to secure short-term authority or control.

Table 4: Concessionary formal–informal relationship

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Formal/ informal Formal/ informal objectives objectives diverge converge

State Competitive Assertive controls on informal actor on informal State Concessionary Supplementary coexists Increasing dependence of the state dependenceIncreasing of the state

In line with this, the Lebanese state accepted the PLO’s role in taxation outside of state frameworks in part because of its weakness relative to the PLO during the relevant period (1970 to 1982) (see e.g. Fregonese, 2012; Kingston, 2004, p. 5; Kingston & Zahar, 2004; Migdal, 2001b, p. 136) and because of its dependences on the organisation. It depended on the PLO to provide public goods to Palestinian refugees and even some Lebanese citizens(see e.g. Brynen, 1989, p. 52; Stel, 2017b), as well as to keep administrative tabs over the PLO refugee camps—an important means of maintaining control and order (Chabaan, 2014; Czajka, 2012; Long & Hanafi, 2010, p. 685; D. Martin, 2011, p. 185; Stel, 2016). Accepting IRG by the PLO was necessary for the Lebanese state to govern; as described by Stel (2017b, p. 360), “PLO governance at times propped up the faltering Lebanese state”.

State coexistence with informal taxing actors with divergent interests may be particularly likely in patrimonial systems, where the state is embedded in and reliant upon power brokers for its authority. In such contexts, where the state is unable to distribute resources to clients through formal channels (e.g. salaries, tax exemptions)—as a result of a fiscal or economic crisis or pressure from international actors or civil society—the state tolerates IRG or cedes formal tax revenues through informal channels to rebalance the relationship upon which its authority depends.

Coexistence with non-state armed groups is less common but may similarly exist. Concessionary relationships with armed groups may be particularly likely where the state does not prevent an armed group from extracting state resources (real or potential) that the state finds inconvenient to withdraw, or where an armed or rebel groups restrict themselves to particular areas (Kasfir et al., 2017). In such contexts, the state may cede authority and control over resources in exchange for a degree of stability and peaceful coexistence – though 128

such “tacit cooperation” is “invariably denied” by the state (Kasfir et al., 2017, p. 266). For example, rather than Hezbollah operating as a “state within the state”, competing for sovereignty, control and legitimacy, Berti (2016) shows that its relationship with the Lebanese state has varied from conflict, to competition, to cooperation and shared governance.2 Moreover, moving beyond the notion of rebel groups “as only challengers or alternative to the state”, the Lebanese state has relied on Hezbollah to deliver development outcomes in Shiite-majority areas across the country (Berti, 2016, pp. 128, 130; see also Flanigan, 2008; Hourani, 2013).

Concessionary relationships thus reflect contexts of “mediated statehood”, where a state with limited power and capacity relies on diverse actors, including “local intermediaries and rival sources of authority”, to execute core functions of government and mediate relations between local communities and the state” (Menkhaus, 2006b, pp. 78, 103; see also Stel, 2017b). In such contexts, the “powers of legitimate coercion and control” are “widely diffused throughout society” (Given, 1990, p. 248), leading the state to counterintuitively coexist with groups that can threaten the state’s very existence. This is in contrast to common assumptions that groups that threaten the state’s existence or sovereignty will always exist in competition or conflict with the state, with both parties competing “for sovereignty, control and legitimacy” (Berti, 2016, p. 128). Rather than a zero-sum relationship, coexistence between state and informal, rival taxing actors is possible.

In this chapter, I explore how and why the state coexists with divergent chiefdom IRG in Sierra Leone. Traditional authorities in Sierra Leone do not threaten the existence of the state; however, they do want to maintain and strengthen their own systems of governance and extraction outside of the Weberian institutional model of the modern state. As parallel

2 As Staniland (2012) shows, relationships between armed groups and states need not lead to conflict, but can vary from open conflict or clashing monopolies, to tacit coexistence and effective détentes, to cooperation, collusion and mutual dependence, or shared sovereignty. For example, though Hezbollah’s autonomous armed wing “does challenge in a fundamental way the state’s monopoly on the use of force”, the group has cooperated with the Lebanese Armed Forces in times of greater state dependence on it—for example, to address jihadist rebel factions in 2007 and to conduct joint operations along the Syrian-Lebanese border since 2014 (Berti, 2016, p. 128; see also Alami, 2014).

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institutions of governance and taxation, they represent a possible threat to the “modern” state of Sierra Leone, supported since the post-war period by external donors who would like traditional institutions to be more in line with a western model of statehood and democracy (see e.g. Fanthorpe & Sesay, 2009; Sawyer, 2008). In this way, traditional authorities have a goal that diverges from “ideal” statehood as conceived by the modern state and the international community. Nevertheless, the state has consistently accepted chiefdom IRG and has even made explicit informal revenue concessions to chiefs, ceding formal tax revenues to chiefs through informal channels. As this “formal” revenue is not the statutory purview of chiefs and is not subject to budgetary oversight, it contributes to the informal revenues of chiefs.

This apparent puzzle is explained by the state’s dependence on chiefs for state control, stability, and authority. Moreover, as the state provides limited oversight and insufficient revenues to chiefdoms, chiefs are relatively autonomous from the state. This imbalance of power leads the state to make concessions to chiefs in order to maintain their support, with informal revenues serving as a means of patrimonial resource distribution to secure the state’s authority. In effect, the state concedes to informal taxing actors as part of a strategic trade-off between its monopoly on extraction and stability, control, and power. In this way, politicians or the state purposefully tolerate illegal actions because of distributive or electoral considerations (Holland, 2015, 2016; Tendler, 2002). While it is commonly assumed that “laws go unenforced due to resource constraints or inadequate control of the bureaucracy” (Holland, 2016, p. 232), there is another possibility—that the government is intentionally lenient in order to ensure stability and/or maximise votes, strengthening its short-term authority. I explore how these dynamics manifest in Sierra Leone by first considering the nature of state revenue concessions to chief. Tracing the relationship between the state and chiefs from the colonial period to the present day, I illustrate that state coexistence with chiefdom IRG has been an intentional governing strategy, underpinning state consolidation and the reinforcement of state authority. As described by Mamdani (1996), rather than being contrary to it, “customary” governance is built into the logic of the post-independence state. I then demonstrate that these concessions emerge out of the state’s dependence on chiefs

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and the state’s inability to firmly institutionalise and subordinate chiefs to the state. This leaves chiefs as relatively autonomous from the state, with the state thus using IRG to subdue them.

1 State concessions to the informal taxing authority of chiefs

Evolving out of the Lugardian model of indirect rule developed in northern Nigeria,3 chiefs in Sierra Leone are central to formal decentralised tax collection. Above all, the state relies on chiefs to identify taxable individuals and collect the poll tax, known as “local tax”, shared with councils, while also having other formal sources of revenue.4 Outside of this formal role, however, chiefs also have informal tax authority, collecting a range of informal taxes, contributions, and fees from their subjects. As described in Chapter 3, chiefs levy a range of taxes and are often deeply engaged in communal forms of convergent IRG for public goods provision. In this chapter I focus on the forms of divergent IRG organised by chiefs, including direct informal taxes to chiefs that are not clearly linked to community development, collective action, or public goods, but instead contribute to the funding of chiefdom administrations and institutions. At the same time, chiefs informally control some formal tax revenues, meaning that they do not go through formal budgetary channels and serve as an “off the books” means of financing chiefdom activities.

How does the Sierra Leonean state interact with this divergent IRG? A classic model of statehood expects that the state should assert control over the informal revenues of chiefs. We would particularly expect this to be true during critical periods of state consolidation or statebuilding, when the state is trying to extend or assert its authority and control. In contrast to these expectations, the state has a long history of accepting and coexisting with the informal tax authority of chiefs. While the state has often coexisted with parallel

3 Lord Lugard was the Governor-General of Nigeria from 1907 to 1912 and is largely credited with designing the British colonial system of indirect rule.

4 “Formal” sources of revenues for chiefdom administrations include the proportion of revenues they are allowed to keep from local tax, the proportion of revenues they keep from market dues, fees and charges that are outlined in chiefdom bylaws, mining revenues, and other income generating activities, including guest houses, community centres, youth centres, and communication poles (commonly used as charging stations).

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chiefdom taxation, it is paradoxically during periods of active state consolidation that the state made explicit concessions to chiefs. During these periods, the state took ostensible steps to formalise state institutions and extend its authority, while at the same time making informal tax revenue concessions to chiefs in contravention of state laws and its stated goals. When faced with the relative weakness of its own legitimacy, power, and institutions and the relative autonomy of chiefs, the state ceded its monopoly on taxation as a means of ensuring its control in the short-term, though with ultimately negative implications for the strength of its institutions, particularly at the local level. Effectively, it has used informal taxes as a way of distributing real or potential state resources through the patronage-based networks upon which its authority depends. Accordingly, despite the tendency to think of informal taxes—and particularly those levied by traditional authorities—as reflecting “traditions” that will fade away with “modernisation”, this section shows that informal taxes may be reinforced or produced by periods of “modernisation” and state “development”.

1.1 Early colonial statebuilding

When the British first colonised parts of territory within the boundaries of contemporary Sierra Leone, their control was limited to the Colony (Freetown and its environs). However, the British soon began to extend the implicit authority of the colonial administration, spurred by the need for revenues to fund the colony and by pressure from British missionaries and traders (Ayandele, 1971; Fyfe, 1962). British administrators extended indirect influence and control over trade and taxes by entering into closer relations and sometimes “treaties of friendship” with the coastal and interior kings (Alie, 1990, pp. 112– 114). Despite this informal presence in the interior, the threat of French expansion from Guinea and a fiscal crisis led the British to want more formal control over the territory (Barrows, 1976, p. 73).5 This combination of external threat and revenue pressure meant that “extra revenue-collecting areas had to be explored” (Alie, 1990, p. 112), spurring a

5 Control of the outlawed slave trade is also often cited as a reason for expanding into the interior, though historical evidence suggests that at least some British governors, including Governor Charles Turner “used the suppression of the slave trade as a smoke-screen to justify [their] expansionist policies” (Alie, 1990, p. 113).

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concerted statebuilding effort and leading to the establishment of legal-administrative institutions and the pronouncement of the Protectorate in 1896.

The colonial state was unable to expand or enforce its authority independently. With insufficient revenue and capacity to control the territories, the colonial authority formalised the “treaties of friendship and petty alliances of former days”, adopting a system of indirect rule (Barrows, 1976, p. 74).6 To maintain control over the former traditional authorities and kings, now chiefs, it struck a reciprocal bargain with them: if chiefs were “to supervise tax collection, keep the peace in [their] chiefdom[s] and act as a link in what communication network there was” (Finnegan & Murray, 1970), then chiefs were granted considerable local autonomy in their own revenue collection and governance.7 This relative autonomy to run their chiefdoms and finances independently was partly based in the state’s fear that “depriv[ing] the chiefs of their authority and their traditional sources of revenue” would lead to subversion of state laws and colonial control (Alie, 1990, p. 133). In effect, the modern state of Sierra Leone was founded through concessionary bargains made with chiefs: chiefs could maintain control over their own chiefdoms and informal tax collection in exchange for their role in helping to consolidate state control over territory, citizen-subjects, and tax and trade revenue.

1.2 Consolidation of formal state institutions

After relying on a rather “laissez faire” form of indirect rule as a means of colonial control (Crowder, 1968, pp. 221–226), from the late 1930s the colonial state began to consolidate

6 In order to do so efficiently, it created a multiplicity of small chiefdoms, often dismantling large pre-colonial polities in the process (Abraham, 1976; Barrows, 1976, pp. 79–80). This strategy of domination through collaboration with chiefs have immense implications for how chieftaincy institutions evolved, as the colonial authority was prone to disregard leadership rights within pre-colonial polities and kingdoms, prioritising instead the willingness to collaborate (Abraham, 1978, pp. 244–280; Barrows, 1976, pp. 79–82; L. R. Day, 1994; Fanthorpe, 1998, p. 559; Grace, 1975, pp. 107–131; Little, 1951, pp. 176–179; Wylie, 1977, pp. 190–207).

7 The state’s emphasis on willingness to collaborate grew in importance after prominent chiefs led resistance to colonial taxation, culminating tin the Hut Tax War. As described by Barrows (1976, p. 80), “Ability to collect taxes and good behaviour during the [Hut Tax] War seemed the prime criteria for installation as ‘Paramount Chief’”, implying that those local leaders that collaborated with the colonial authority were duly rewarded.

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formal state institutional power. This was motivated by increased pressures on the colonial state, including from progressive labour movements in Great Britain and changing dynamics of domestic political engagement, including the rise of “town-dwellers” who had begun “to question the right of the chiefs to demand customary labour and tributes” (Alie, 1990, p. 152). To avoid political instability, the colonial authority sought to increase state control and supervision of chiefdoms and their informal taxing authority.

First, it created formal institutions as a counterbalance to chiefs, attempting to rein in the previously “[u]nharnessed chiefly rule” (Barrows, 1976, p. 100). The state transferred economic and juridical powers from PCs to a newly-established chiefdom council (then known as the Native or Tribal Authority) (GoSL, 1938b), described as the “the Cabinet of the chiefdom”.8 Further, the introduction of chiefdom treasuries “inserted an institutional buffer between a chief and his individual supporters, enabling at least a nominal distinction between public funds and a Paramount Chief’s private purse” (Barrows, 1976, p. 107).9 Second, the state took steps to control chiefdom informal taxes. For the first time, chiefs were given a fixed salary with the intent that it would replace the tribute that had previously sustained them (Alie, 1990, p. 153). Moreover, there is evidence of the state stepping in to control illegal taxation by chiefs, including a prominent example of a female PC being deposed by the state as a result of “forced labor, illegal levies, failure to appoint a Speaker, and a failure to consult with her advisors” (Barrows, 1976, p. 100).

These efforts to consolidate formal state institutions, however, were largely superficial. State attempts to control illegal taxation was limited to chiefdoms close to district headquarter

8 KON52

9 At the same time, the state tried to limit chiefs’ absolute authority over judicial matters (GoSL, 1933b, 1933a, 1946), with chiefs fearing that a reduction in their “jurisdiction over civil and criminal courses would seriously curtail their sources of revenue and further lead to loss of their powers of political sanction” (Alie, 1990, p. 138; see also Hargreaves, 1956, pp. 63–64; La Ray & Crowder, 1970, p. 171).

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towns.10 As Barrows (1976, p. 100) notes, “In general a wide range of behavior was permitted, as much by default as by the deliberate policy of bolstering chiefly authority”, with little being done in practice “to prevent Paramount Chiefs from continuing to collect payments for political and jural services, and appropriating tax revenue for private uses” (Fanthorpe, 1998, p. 558; see also Barrows, 1976, pp. 98–142; Kilson, 1966, pp. 53–68). Despite ostensible efforts at institutionalising and formalising state power, the state accepted that “many chiefs continued to exploit their subjects in order to augment their income” (Alie, 1990, p. 153).

At the same time, formal institutions, ostensibly introduced to rein in chiefs’ power, actually strengthened chiefs’ ability to collect illegal taxes. For example, the Chiefdom Tax and Treasuries Ordinances (GoSL, 1937, 1938a)—ostensibly an attempt to systematically supervise chiefdom revenues—effectively “served to support with Government legitimacy and power the claims that chiefs could make upon their subjects” (Barrows, 1976, p. 100).11 Similarly, the Forced Labour Ordinance—ostensibly introduced to set limits on unpaid labour to chiefs—effectively backed with state power the right of chiefs to call upon their subjects to work on their farms for a set number of days each year (GoSL, 1932, 1956, p. 166; Hailey, 1951a). At the same time, monitoring of these ordinances was limited in practice, resulting in “little external restraint on [chiefs’] use of courts, of labor services, or monies public or private”, while “internal restraints were actually diminished as a result of the weight given to chiefs by Government recognition” (Barrows, 1976, p. 100).12

10 This reflects the limited reach of the colonial state—in 1954 the equivalent of just five officials per day inspected the 150 chiefdoms that were spread over 27,000 square miles (see GoSL, 1955a, p. 33; Lange, 2009, p. 98)—which led to its continued tacit acceptance of informal taxes in practice.

11 Moreover, the formalisation of chiefdom courts provided chiefs with the “coercive resources” necessary to extract revenue from their subjects (Lange, 2009, p. 105).

12 This reflects broader trends of colonial rule; as Boone (1994) and Migdal (1988) illustrate, in some cases colonialism served to empower local chiefs and institutionalise despotism (see also Ashton, 1947; Crowder, 1968; Crowder & Ikime, 1970; Mamdani, 1996).

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As a result, the reforms “inaugurated in 1937 did not signalize a material departure from the principles on which administration had been conducted from 1901 onwards” (Hailey, 1951b, p. 33).13 Instead, the state continued to reinforce chieftaincy power, effectively supporting “the actions and interests of chiefs under all circumstances” (Lange, 2009, p. 104), leading to a situation wherein, as described by the state, “the Paramount Chief is now bigger than the D.C. [District Commissioner, the representative of the central state ostensibly in charge of supervising chiefs]” (GoSL, 1956, pp. 48–49).14 During this period of ostensible state institutionalisation, the colonial state made informal revenue concessions to chiefs, even when we would expect the state to rein in informal taxing power.

1.3 Consolidation of the independent state

In the post-World War Two period, economic and social changes in Britain meant that it could no longer sustain the same model of colonialism around the world (e.g. Darwin, 1988; Flint, 1983; Hyam, 1992; R. Pearce, 1984; R. Robinson, 1980). At the same time, changing global norms of national sovereignty and self-determination made clear that colonialism was morally untenable under a liberal international economic order. Some combination of these motivations led the Colonial Office to envision a future for the colony and protectorate, with power to “be transferred to Africans, to the educated middle class and not the tribal chiefs” (R. Pearce, 1984, p. 77; see also Davidson, 1953). In line with this, the state created local government institutions in 1945 as a counterpoint to the chiefdom framework (Hailey, 1951a, pp. 315–316).15 The colonial administration also attempted to delegitimise illegal levies and forced labour by chiefs, for example by repealing the previously codified right of chiefs to extract forced labour from subjects (GoSL, 1958).

13 Lord Hailey was a British peer and influential advisor to the colonial administration in British Africa leading up to decolonisation (see e.g. R. D. Pearce, 1982, pp. 36–59).

14 For greater evidence of chiefs’ unrestrained power at this time, see e.g. (GoSL, 1959).

15 This aligned with the new British Labour Government’s colonial policy “which resolved to democratise from the bottom up and thus to displace the chieftaincy in favour of forms of Local Government modelled on those of the British Isles” (Rathbone, 2000, p. 51; see also Hyam, 1992).

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Despite these efforts to consolidate formal institutions and authority, the impact on state institutionalisation was limited in practice. The colonial regime lacked the legitimacy to institutionalise the reforms without risking a loss of control. Indeed, by the early 1950s, chiefs came to effectively control DCs, using their local authority to persuade council members that they should be voted as the council president (Lange, 2009; Visawasam, 1973).16 With this authority, rather than bringing development closer to the people, councils served as “a means for chiefs to divert resources from development activities” (Lange, 2009, p. 101). At the same time, DCs formalised chiefs’ role as tax collectors on behalf of the state, further legitimising chiefs’ capacity to extract revenues from citizens, with evidence that this authority from the state led chiefs to “graft extensively” (Dorjahn, 1960, p. 135). In effect, “with the power of Government apparently behind him and the breakdown of the traditional checks on autocracy” through the weakening of the links between chiefs and their subjects (Dorjahn, 1960, p. 135), chiefs “collected and pocketed excessive rent from the local populations that did not end up in the books” (Lange, 2009, p. 102).17

Further, the colonial state’s power to depose chiefs was transferred to ministers of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), the first ruling party of independent Sierra Leone. Known to have a “symbiotic relationship” with chiefs (Lange, 2009, p. 107),18 this led to further chiefly autonomy, with the SLPP declaring that “chiefs ought to be protected at almost any cost and paid reasonably” (GoSL, 1956). This had the effect of “encourag[ing]” “rapacious” behaviour by “white-washing one chief after another who had been deposed for extortion and oppression” (GoSL, 1955c, p. 13). While some chiefs were investigated for misrule and eight were suspended or deposed, all were eventually reinstated (Cartwright, 1970) and “no major institutional reforms were made during the final years of colonial rule to weaken” the

16 Before a reform in the early 1950s that let local council members choose their president, council president had previously been the DC, the representative of the central government.

17 As a result, in 1948, chiefdoms with treasury records officially collected on average only GBP 1049, of which 62 percent was spent on chiefdom administration, left in the hands of chiefs (Hailey, 1951a, pp. 307–308).

18 Indeed, many SLPP leaders were chiefs or the direct relations of chiefs (F. M. Conteh & Harris, 2014; Fanthorpe et al., 2011; Kilson, 1966; J. Robinson, 2010; Tangri, 1980).

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chieftaincy (Lange, 2009, p. 106). Instead, SLPP officials allowed “local institutions to go on much as before” even after widespread protests against chiefly extraction—variously described as a “civil war” between chiefs and subjects (GoSL, 1955b) and a “Chiefdom Revolution” (GoSL, 1955a)—suggesting “how far they were committed to preserving the powers and privileges of the chiefs” (Cartwright, 1970, p. 102).

Soon after independence, successive governments took steps to reassert the power of the chieftaincy (Barrows, 1976, pp. 98–142) and to make revenue concessions to them at the expense of local councils. These concessions to chiefdom authority culminated with the All People’s Congress (APC) administration. While at least superficially formed in opposition to the chieftaincy,19 the APC administration took a number of steps that strengthened both state centralisation and chiefly powers. Notably, it suspended all democratic aspects of the DCs in 1972—which allowed chiefs to rule them according to their personal wills (Fanthorpe, 2001, p. 381)—and eventually suspended local governments altogether (Y. Bangura, 1997, p. 135; Rosenbaum & Rojas, 1997, p. 534). This strengthened chieftaincies and their local autonomy to levy informal taxes, as they represented the only form of governance and power in the provinces (Srivastava & Larizza, 2011, p. 142; see also Tangri, 1978a, 1978b).20 With a “lack of formal state structures”, chiefs “became increasingly active in the collection of revenues on behalf of the central state”, though “they had no service delivery or development functions” (Srivastava & Larizza, 2011, p. 142), while lax oversight implied a tacit acceptance of chiefly power to levy informal taxes and labour.

While ostensibly heralding a period of institutional reform and state consolidation, the post- independence period actually reinforced the patronage-based system, with the state continuing to grant significant autonomy over revenue collection to chiefs in exchange for

19 In contrast to the SLPP, the APC was formed in 1960 out of a “radical movement against what they apparently considered a ‘neocolonial’ regime underwritten by ‘feudalistic’ institutions of chieftaincy and rural conservatism” (Barrows, 1976, pp. 10–11).

20Moreover, it was at this time, chiefs were granted the power to distinguish who was a “native” in chiefdoms (Lange, 2009, p. 108), conferring them the right to grant citizenship that is central to the chieftaincy’s local authority to tax.

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their cooperation with the state. This turned out to be a Faustian bargain. The APC administration’s reliance on patrimonial networks and centralisation of executive power at the expense of weak state institutions was central to the country’s descent into civil war by the early 1990s. Indeed, the war can be explained to a large extent by the failure of the government to invest in building strong state institutions capable of delivering public goods, its proclivity for distributing state resources through patrimonial networks, and its acceptance—in part because of an inability to fund chiefs’ salaries—of informal extraction and forced labour by chiefs, which fuelled popular discontent. This highlights the true nature of the devil’s bargain—while the state could coexist with IRG by chiefs in the immediate post- independence period, the concessions that it made to chiefs to secure its authority in the short-term ultimately led to the collapse of the state.

1.4 Post-war liberal statebuilding

Following the civil war, the international community strongly pushed to strengthen formal, decentralised state institutions and authority at the expense of the authority of chiefs. This effort was grounded in two key assumptions. First, it was the prevailing belief within the international community that the war was caused by a lack of strong state institutions, the deterioration of social welfare provision at the local level, and popular grievances against chiefs, particularly with respect to informal taxes, levies, and forced labour, contributed to the start of the war (Archibald & Richards, 2002b, 2002a; Fanthorpe, 2003, 2005; Humanitarian Accountability Project, 2002; P. Jackson, 2005; Keen, 2005a, pp. 10–11; Mokuwa et al., 2011; Reno, 1995; Richards, 2004; Richards et al., 2004; Richards, 2005; Srivastava & Larizza, 2011; TRC, 2004; Zhou, 2007).21 Second, international actors viewed chieftaincy as an “irredeemably illiberal institution” that would not fit within a model of liberal statebuilding (Fanthorpe, 2005; Hanlon, 2005; see e.g. ICG, 2004; Jay & Koroma, 2004; K. Moore et al., 2003).

21 The accuracy of these grievances has been questioned (Fanthorpe, 2005). Regardless of the veracity of claims, however, it is clear that very idea of informal taxes and institutions did not fit within the international community’s ideal of liberal statebuilding. Accordingly, it is not surprising that alternative conceptions of the role of chiefdom taxes within society were not widely considered by the international community.

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As a result, the international community—central to shaping post-war statebuilding— prioritised strengthening formal institutions and diminishing the power of chieftaincy institutions.22 Decentralisation was key to this programme, seen as a way bringing government services, democracy, and “good governance” to the people (e.g. Bardhan & Mookherjee, 2006; Zhou, 2007). The international community viewed Sierra Leonean society as “a plastic state, like half melted wax out of which anything can be moulded” (K. Moore et al., 2003, p. v), representing a rare “window of opportunity” where state institutionalisation could take place (Carnahan, 2007; Zhou, 2007; see also World Bank, 2003, pp. 43–44). Consequently, in an attempt to diminish chiefs’ power, the state reinstated local government councils and deemed them to be “the highest political authority” at the local level (GoRSL, 2004a, p. par. 20(1)).23 The Local Government Act (LGA) clearly defines taxing authority and the realm of legal payments; by leaving out “traditional” chiefdom taxes, the act makes clear that these taxes are not statutorily mandated. In this way, decentralisation was “generally perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a threat” to chiefs’ informal taxing authority (P. Jackson, 2005, p. 53).

While officially supportive of international priorities to consolidate and strengthen state institutions (Fanthorpe, 2005), successive post-conflict administrations took several steps that undermined the taxing authority of local councils in favour of that of chiefs. First, the central state fomented confusion over whether local councils were, as stipulated in the LGA, the “highest political authority” at the local level.

The government did not repeal various laws governing the chieftaincy that were in conflict with the LGA,24 leading to confusion that the “same powers [were] given to councils [that

22 Donors, with the exception of the British, demonstrated “very little support or interest in developing the chiefdom system” partly as a result of the prevailing “negative views of the chiefdom system” (Glentworth, 2003; see also Fanthorpe, 2005; World Bank, 2004, p. 17).

23 The LGA describes that local governments can delegate functions to chiefdoms, establishing chiefdoms as a subordinate, rather than equal, institutional tier of governance (GoRSL, 2004a, p. par. 28).

24 FRE2

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were] first given to chiefs”.25 As described by the Kono DC (2018, p. 4), “when the Local Government Act was enacted to provide for decentralisation, it was not sufficiently clear about the relationship between the local councils and chiefdom authorities in some areas”. As described by a MoFED representative,

there was still this provision in the Act that started creating confusion about who is the highest political authority in the country. The Act was saying that the council is the highest political authority within its justification. The paramount chiefs felt offended about that provision…[and]created a lot of problems.26

A former member of parliament (MP) declared that the government intentionally sowed confusion over “who does what”,27 while a World Bank employee noted that “some of the confusion is coming from the centre”, which “itself seems to be stifling the local governments” and not “treat[ing] the idea of decentralisation with the utmost seriousness [it] deserve[s].”28 This had the effect of keeping “the local councils weaker than they could be” (Srivastava & Larizza, 2011, p. 143).

Rather than clarifying this confusion, the National Decentralisation Policy of 2010 contradicted the LGA by stating that “local councils shall continue to exist as the highest development and service delivery authority” (GoRSL, 2010a, p. 7 emphasis added), rather than the “highest political authority” as previously defined in the LGA. There is evidence that this subtle but important shift was a result of pressure on the state from PCs. As described by a MoFED representative, “the paramount chiefs plied pressure on the government [saying] that if you really want your decentralisation to succeed, you should… expunge that provision [in the LGA that gave political authority to local councils].”29 Local government representatives universally lamented the role of the central government in fomenting this ambiguity; for example, a local government Chief Administrator (CA) stated, “We need

25 FRE1

26 FRE3.1 Also explained by FRE9, KOI130, FRE7.1, KOI260, KAI174, KAI267

27 MAN105

28 FRE2

29 FRE3.1

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political will [from the central government]. Let there be a line drawn [specifying areas of jurisdiction]… But if… you refer to Freetown [requesting clarity], nothing comes…of it.”30 The “ambiguity on the part of the national government” emboldened chiefs to disregard the LGA, fomented tension between the local institutions, and enabled chiefs to maintain institutional authority to collect taxes outside of the legal framework (Srivastava & Larizza, 2011, p. 143; see also Fanthorpe, 2005; Sawyer, 2008; F. M. Conteh, 2017).

Second, the state made explicit revenue concessions to chiefs, effectively giving them greater control over formal revenues from the local tax, collected by chiefs, though with the mandate that they submit to council a “precept” of total revenues collected.31 The state ceded these revenues in two key ways. In 2008, the MLGRD substantially lowered the amount of precept to be paid to councils,32 despite the law stating that it is up to councils to decide on the precept rate (GoRSL, 2004a, p. par. 59(1b)).33 Additionally, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development published an official government memo in which he “advised the chiefs not to share local tax revenues with the local councils” (Srivastava & Larizza, 2011, p. 150). This was widely interpreted as “empowering [chiefs] to collect everything and not report to council”, giving them greater revenue collection power than was provided by the LGA.34 Referring to the memo, the Director of the Decentralisation Secretariat described that

30 KOI127. Indeed, while there is ongoing discussion of revising the LGA (FRE2, KAI183.2), the reality is that, to date, the ambiguity has been intentional.

31 Because chiefdom authorities are not subject to oversight, these concessions have effectively ceded formal government revenues to an informal and unaccountable taxing authority (FRE1, KON50). As described by a district council chairman (DCC), local governments “are accountable because we are being audited on a regular basis, [but] nobody is auditing the chiefdom administration, nobody. So, they collect what they collect, and they do what they do, or they don’t… nobody seems to ask…or know what they [the chiefs] do with the rest [of the money], nobody know” (KOI130).

32 The Ministry set the range from 0 to 20 percent, depending on the class of chiefdom, though until 2008 most chiefdoms had been mandated to pay a 60 percent precept (Srivastava & Larizza, 2011, p. 150). Discussed by FRE3.1

33 Notably, even central government officials responsible for the fiscal health of local governments remarked that “we cannot get clear instructions from the central government” about the rate of the precept (FRE1).

34 KAI183. 2

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“one blunder by one local government minister changed everything” that the international community and dedicated civil servants within local governments were trying to institutionalise.35

As a result, chiefs largely refused to give governments local tax precepts. Chiefs repeatedly pointed to the letter as justification for keeping formal tax revenues; despite the letter being “completely wrong” the “chiefs hold onto [this letter]” and use it to not comply with existing laws.36 There was a steady decline in the amount of local tax precepts that chiefs remitted to local councils,37 never recovering thereafter (Figure 21, Figure 22). In one district in 2017, for example, chiefs should have submitted SLL 68.63 million to the local government, though in fact, they remitted nothing at all.38 The central government could change this if it wanted to: it has a representative in each district (the DO), who ostensibly “should have a role in encouraging the chiefs to submit precepts.”39

Figure 21: Ratio of actual versus expected local tax remittances (precepts)40

35 KAI183. 2

36 KOI130. Even though it should not supersede the LGA, because “it is in their [chiefs] favour, they [chiefs] are going with what the Minister says,” (KOI127), with the letter thereby effectively “contradict[ing and] supersed[ing] what is in the Act” (FRE3.3, also expressed by KOI129).

37 This is despite an increase in the local tax rate from SLL 2000 to 5000 in the same year, which the state introduced under pressure from donors to increase local government taxation and to harmonize the rate across districts (FRE3.1).

38 Estimated amount is 20 percent of anticipated revenues minus printing costs. Chiefdom projections obtained from Kailahun central chiefdom administrative clerk (CCAC) for FY 2017. Actual local tax revenues from financial statements of local councils for FY2017.

39 KAI90

40 Expected revenues from the local tax is estimated based on an estimate of the adult (over 18) population, the amount of local tax, and the average rate of the precept provided by chiefs. Population data is from the 2004 and 2015 censuses (GoRSL SSL, 2004, 2016), with annual population growth extrapolated. This is obviously imperfect, as it assumes consistent population growth each year. An estimate of the adult population is taken as 50 percent of the total population, based on an estimate by the United Nations (UN)n A that 43 percent of the population was under 15 in 2012 (UN Statistics Division, n.d.). The increase of the local tax rate from SLL 2000 to 5000 is counted after 2008. The amount of the precept is estimated at 60 percent until 2007, and 20 percent after 2008. This estimate does not detract the cost of collection prior to estimating the precept due to 143

60%

40%

20%

0% 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

State memo/ reduction of precept rate National Outside Western area

Data source: (GoRSL MoFED, n.d.)

Figure 22: Local tax revenues missing from local governments41

.20

.15

.10 Percent of Percent GDP .05

0 2005 2010 2015 2020

Estimated revenues from Total estimated revenues local tax that local from local tax governments should receive Actual revenues from local tax to local governments

Data source: (GoRSL MoFED, n.d.)

Third, the state has similarly made concessions with respect to market dues, fees levied on traders within daily and weekly local markets. Despite being the sole purview of local governments according to the LGA (GoRSL, 2004a, p. par.57(a)), the state has effectively turned a blind eye to the reality that chiefs commonly continue to levy market dues, and to keep the bulk of revenues for themselves.42 As described by a CA, local governments have reported the issue of chiefs retaining formal market revenues, though the state has failed to

local councils on account of this data not being available, though it is common for the chiefdoms to remove these costs before estimating the amount to be shared with council.

41 Revenues as a percent of GDP calculated using the IMF’s WEO GDP series.

42 Expressed, for example, by KOI34, MON18, MON21, KAS39, KAS42, KAS46, KON50

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address the issue with chiefs: “If there was a will, they [the state] would have come and said, ‘no, chief, this is not right’”.43 Instead, chiefdom administrations “don’t go by what the Act says, they do what they want.”44 Even where chiefdoms have informal agreements with local governments to share a portion of revenues collected from markets, the state does not enforce this in practice. Accordingly, one district estimated that it should receive SLL 13. 67 million in market dues from chiefs in 2017, though from 2005–2016, the local council received on average only SLL 2.94 million—and received nothing at all for nine of 12 of those years.45 As noted by a MoFED representative, “the government [does] back those paramount chiefs… even when they are violating the provisions in the [Local Government ] Act. If the government decided to stay silent, it means consent”.46

Fourth, the central state has implicitly accepted chiefdom IRG. For instance, it is common for chiefs to levy taxes in order to host guests, who are most often state representatives. As explained by a DO,

one of the responsibilities [of chiefs] is to maintain government visitors… sometimes they can provide food… so the government officer can’t be able to say that the chief shouldn’t be paid [by informal taxes], since he has no other source of getting revenue and he knows that he [the chief] is purely responsible for the visitor. He [the chief] just has to ask the town people [to pay] something small, so they’ll all go chip in so that it reduces the burden on everyone to pay the informal tax.47

State officials’ acceptance of this hospitality implicitly recognises and condones the informal taxes that chiefs levy in order, further highlighting the blurred lines between informal taxes and the state. A district council chairman (DCC) notes that, “When ministers come to visit,

43 KOI127

44 MAN107

45 Estimate based on 20 percent of anticipated revenues minus cost of printing market receipts and collectors’ share. Chiefdom projections from CCAC, Kailahun district, FY 2017. Actual local tax revenues from financial statements of local councils, FY2017.

46 FRE3.1

47 KAI181.3

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they exploit chiefs” by expecting gifts, though they know that chiefs’ salaries have not been paid.48

2 What leads to a concessionary relationship?

Throughout these periods of statebuilding in Sierra Leone, the state consistently accepted chiefdom informal taxes and made explicit, informal concessions of state revenues to them. This can be primarily understood through the state’s dependence on chiefs for its authority and capacity to rule, with chiefs central to the state’s administrative functions and its ability to control the population and secure votes. In effect, as was described by a state official, the state “cannot have power without chiefs, cannot have authority at all”.49 As a result, in a classic example of patrimonialism, the state distributes resources—in the form of informal taxes and state revenues from formal taxes—through “networks of patron-client relations in an attempt to maintain some form of support among influential social actors” (Lange, 2009, p. 108). In effect, accepting IRG creates a reciprocal relationship, with chiefs receiving wealth and local autonomy in exchange for votes and other forms of political support (Kilson, 1966, p. 287). The failure of state institutionalisation at the local level is thus not a technocratic story, but a political one, with the state unwilling to exert pressure on chiefs because of its dependence on them.

Moreover, the disconnect between official state policy, which supports decentralisation, and state practice, which has undermined it, can be understood through the extreme dependence of the state on donors in the post-war period. As described by an employee of a European diplomatic mission in Freetown, in order to receive the international funding that comes with being a stable post-conflict country, “states just have to accept so much from donors. Donors tell them what to do, and states have to do it”.50 Central government staff recognised

48 KOI260

49 KAI93

50 FRE270

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the challenges of introducing “formalisation” policies that would alienate chiefs, but the reality, as described by a central government official, was that the “World Bank is pushing a lot of things on us, that’s a fact.”51 Accordingly, a DCC lamented that the LGA was “hastily done” because of World Bank pressure to reconstitute local councils.52 In effect, the state has had to appease the sources of power upon which its governing capacity and authority depend. Accordingly, it accepts polices promoted by the international community, though, to maintain the patrimonial networks upon which its immediate authority and ability to rule depended, the state “supports chiefs instead of local governments” and thus “institutionalised failure” of the formal system.53

The state’s dependence on chiefs, however, is insufficient to understand state’s coexistence with IRG. Why doesn’t the state buy chiefdom support through formal institutional channels? It is conceivable, for instance, that if the state could provide chiefs with sufficient salaries, it would maintain their support while also controlling IRG. In theory in Sierra Leone, chiefs and the state have a relationship of mutual dependence: the state needs chiefs to govern, though chiefs are also supposed to receive salaries from the state through formal state channels.54 When this equilibrium exists, the state is more likely to be able to control IRG, without losing the support of chiefs.

In practice, however, state coexistence can be understood as a result of chiefs’ relative autonomy from the state. For one, salary payments to chiefs are insufficient, meaning that mutual dependence is in disequilibrium. At the same time, in the post-war period the state’s governing authority and capacity depend on external donors, who view chiefs as antithetical

51 FRE1. As explained by a World Bank employee, international development partners failed to understand the “networks [and] micro-politics” that actually govern the country, leading to a “disconnect between… how donors conceived of institutions and how they actually work on the ground” (FRE10).

52 KOI260

53 He describes how pressure from donors led the state to “limit their scope intentionally” (FRE113).

54 This is in line with research showing that institutionalisation of chiefs within state structures (Henn, 2018; Rathbone, 2000).

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to a liberal statebuilding agenda. Accordingly, the state cannot simply incorporate chiefs into the formal system in a more systematic way. The Sierra Leone state has managed to balance its dual dependency by undertaking institutional reforms that ostensibly reinforce its sovereign taxing authority, while at the same time undermining those reforms in order to maintain the support of chiefs. In effect, the state makes explicit concessions to chiefs, using informal taxes as a way to “buy” the support of chiefs, as it is unable to do so through formal channels of redistribution. Facing the dual constraints of relatively strong chiefs and relatively weak independent state legitimacy and power, the state has made a “devil’s deal”, accepting and conceding to IRG rather than trying to assert its own sovereign authority.

2.1 Relative state dependence on chiefs

The modern Sierra Leonean state depends on an “unholy alliance” with chiefs (Alie, 1990, p. 154), making strategic overtures to chiefs at critical points to consolidate its authority. Accordingly, despite attempts to institutionalise “Western” models of statehood and despite donor understandings of a “plastic state” in the post-war period (K. Moore et al., 2003, p. v), local political dynamics have proven path-dependent over time. The state’s ability to rule depends heavily on chiefs through their role as (1) brokers of state control, and (2) electoral brokers (e.g. Barrows, 1976; Cartwright, 1970; Kilson, 1966). The state has depended most heavily on chiefs at critical junctures in the state’s history—that is, periods of statebuilding and consolidation and election periods in the post-war democratic era.

2.1.1 Chiefs as brokers of state control

The state relies on chiefs in order to maintain control over citizens and to ensure the stability that it requires to govern. This is part of the legacy of indirect rule, where the colonial state relied on chiefs to run local administrations, with implications for how the state interacted with citizens. This led a local government official to explain, “Within his own chiefdom, the PC is more powerful than the [DC] chairman, [or even] the President” (cited in van den Boogaard et al., 2019). The state depends on chiefs to levy state taxes, to provide land for development projects, to oversee development projects and service delivery, and to

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otherwise administer rural areas; indeed, local governments would “be at a loss, [would] not be functional without chiefs”.55

At the same time, the state depends on chiefs to ensure stability and extend its control. During the colonial period and the era of one-party rule, the state relied on chiefs to control the population and maintain law and order (Lange, 2009, p. 98).56 As described by the colonial governor of Sierra Leone the year before independence, “Maintenance of law and order throughout the country depends more upon the authority of the chief, of the chiefdom court and its committees than probably on any other single factor” (M. Dorman, 1960 cited in Lange 2009, 98).57 Even the one-party state of Siaka Stevens, whose party was founded in opposition to the chieftaincy, knew it needed chiefs’ backing in order to effectively control the country. Stevens’ coercive power and patrimonial state “did not eliminate his dependence on others”; rather, it enabled him to “manipulat[e] state resources to control social relations” and ensure the support of chiefs (Lange, 2009, p. 109; see also Abraham, 2001, p. 206; Allen, 1978, p. 203; Fanthorpe, 2001; Kandeh, 2002, p. 180; Reno, 1995; Hayward, 1989, pp. 167–168).

With the reintroduction of democracy and despite attempts to institutionalise a “western” model of statehood, the reliance on chiefs for state authority and control remain relevant.58 As explained by a sub-chief in Freetown, “My role in this community? I’m the government’s

55 KAI183

56 For instance, pre-existing and newly-appointed chiefs were used by the colonial state to curb future resistance following the Hut Tax War—a chief-led resistance in 1898 in the newly-annexed Protectorate to the imposition of a colonial tax (e.g. Barrows, 1976). In the later colonial period, the central government requested tribal headman (chiefly equivalents in Freetown) “to use their influence to frustrate and sabotage and quieten the people” during the 1955–56 riots (Alie, 1990, p. 162).

57 He noted that if chiefs were not supported by the state, even where there were serious allegations of misrule and societal opposition, “none of them [chiefs] will dare to exercise any authority and our careful build up of security will collapse” (M. Dorman, 1960 cited in Lange 2009, 98; see also GoSL, 1959; Hall, 1954).

58 At the same time, the breakdown of chiefly authority is often seen to have been a contributing factor to the civil war, reinforcing for the state the need to have chiefs on its side.

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eyes in this community to ensure that everything is quiet.”59 For one, the process of “seeing” citizens is largely achieved through tax assessment rosters, with PCs’ subordinates (section chiefs and town chiefs) responsible for collecting and maintaining chiefdom registers (Cox- George, 1961, pp. 70–75). Significantly, “many rural people remain unknown to the state except as chiefdom taxpayers” (Fanthorpe, 1998, p. 558). The amount of possible tax revenues resulting from this process is meagre from the perspective of the central government: even if 100 percent of local tax revenues went to the state, it would have only amounted on average to 0.12 percent of total government revenues, or 0.013 percent of GDP, each year from 2005 to 2017.60 With the low potential of local tax revenue, the process of tax collection can be understood as a way for the state to extend its control.61

In this way, the processes through which tax is collected are not “mere tools of observation”, but deeply intertwined with politics and power (Scott, 1998b, p. 47; see also Bush & Maltby, 2004; Gardner, 2012).62 Accordingly, as described by a central government representative, the arrangements made with chiefs are “an attempt to control”, with the state employing the “same mindset” as during “the colonial era”, wherein the state had a “utilitarian perspective of chieftaincy”.63 Seen in this light, the fact that the state has ceded formal local tax revenues to chiefs is less surprising, given that it cares less about the small amounts of revenue ceded

59 FRE118

60 Estimates based on methods described above. Currently, local tax revenues amount to 0.07 percent of government revenues (0.007 percent of GDP).

61 Of course, this also reflects the major tensions that have existed between central and local government (see e.g. F. M. Conteh, 2017; Fanthorpe et al., 2011; P. Jackson, 2005; Srivastava & Larizza, 2011), given that these revenues are much more important to local government revenues and capacity. Indeed, if 100 percent of local tax revenues went to the local government, it would amount to 11.69 percent of total local revenues (currently amounts to 5.07 percent).

62 Likewise, Kain and Baigent (1993) describe the power dynamics of cadastral maps used to levy property taxes: “The cadastral map is an instrument of control which both reflects and consolidates the power of those who commission it […] The cadastral map is partisan: where knowledge is power, it provides comprehensive information to be used to the advantage of some and detriment of others”.

63 FRE116

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than about the control of local populations that the tax collection process implies. Instead, it sees informal revenues as a way of mollifying the patronage networks upon which its governing authority depends.

2.1.2 Chiefs as electoral brokers

The state also strongly depends on chiefs to secure electoral outcomes, in a way that has been “built into the political system” (F. M. Conteh & Harris, 2014, p. 67). Indeed, the chieftaincy has been “the historic focus of struggles for political control over the Sierra Leonean countryside” (Fanthorpe, 2005, p. 27; see also Cartwright, 1970; Barrows, 1976; Minikin, 1973; Tangri, 1978b), with PCs securing grassroots political support and acting as political brokers between the state and voters (Barrows, 1976, pp. 143–242; F. M. Conteh, 2014; Jalloh, 2018; Kilson, 1966, pp. 219–280; Minikin, 1973; Reno, 1995; Tangri, 1980).64 This is partially possible because chiefs have “more say with their people… and more followers when it comes to getting them to go with what they say.”65 Chiefs retain local and cultural legitimacy through their role as guardians of land and local citizenship, meaning that they retain importance in everyday life and “continue to command the primary political affiliations” of the majority of citizens (Fanthorpe, 2005, p. 46). As explained by a PC in Koinadugu, “I can contribute to making government stay in power for a long time. I am the custodian of the land and people. If I say what I like, people will follow… We play a pivotal role in politics.”66 PCs’ influence is amplified by the fact that parliamentary constituencies

64 KAI267

65 FRE4.1 This is in line with studies of traditional authorities in Africa serving as vote brokers or “electoral intermediaries” who are able to “command moral authority, control resources, and can influence the electoral behavior of their dependents” (Koter, 2013, p. 189; see also Baldwin, 2016; Boone, 2014; de Kadt & Larreguy, 2018; Kitschelt & Wilkinson, 2007; Lemarchand, 1972; Medina & Stokes, 2007; O’Brien, 1971; Schaffer, 1998; Schatzberg, 2001; Stokes, 2005; de Kadt & Larreguy, 2018). While earlier literature saw this brokerage role as detracting from democracy and hindering the development of programmatic politics (e.g. P. Keefer & Vlaicu, 2008; Lemarchand, 1972; Lemarchand & Legg, 1972; O’Brien, 1971; Stokes, 2007), more recent evidence makes clear that electoral brokers are not necessarily bad for democracy and may actually enhance the responsiveness of democratic governments (e.g. Baldwin, 2013, 2014, 2016; Baldwin & Holzinger, 2019; Koter, 2013; Kramon, 2017).

66 KOI259

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outside metropolitan areas closely follow chiefdom boundaries (GORSL NEC, 2017, 2018). As a result, some estimates indicate that chiefs are able to influence 10 to 20 percent of voters in their jurisdictions for national elections (Srivastava & Larizza, 2011, p. 150).

Since the founding of democracy in Sierra Leone politicians have, in line with electoral brokerage models, paid attention to these “patterns of influence and dependence” and “responded to pre-existing networks and channels of authority” (Koter, 2013, p. 189). For example, the SLPP, as the party founded “to represent, defend, and advance Protectorate interests”, has been historically closely linked to chiefs (Alie, 1990, p. 214; see also Jalloh, 2018).67 In the post-independence period, the SLPP in particular heavily depended on PCs, with the party organisation “almost non-existent apart from chiefdom structures which became available to it at election time” (Barrows, 1976, pp. 53–54; see also Kilson, 1966, p. 287; Tangri, 1978b, p. 167).68 Likewise, while the APC was set up as a way of combatting what it saw as the patronage inherent to chieftaincy politics, it soon realised that it could not compete with the SLPP unless it engaged in similar tactics (Barrows, 1976).69 In this way, both main political parties “have cultivated a mutually beneficial patronage system with local elites” which “enables politicians to rely on a comfortable base of popular support” (World Bank, 2018a, p. par. 6), with “politicians put[ting] weight to have them [chiefs] work in their favour.”70

67 The founding president of Sierra Leone, Sir Milton Margai “had great respect for traditional authority”, with the party continuing in the post-independence period to work through chiefs and other influential people at the local level (Alie, 1990, p. 214).

68 The two first prime ministers of Sierra Leone, Albert and Milton Margai, had blood ties and a long association with chiefs, embracing their role in politics and electoral brokerage (see e.g. Jalloh, 2018, p. 68). Illustrating his deep commitment and connection to the chieftaincy, Prime Minister Albert Margai declared, I am from a ruling family and I will one day leave government activities and become a chief. If under my government chieftaincy matters are neglected, I would be going against my conscience and the wish of my people” (cited in Jalloh, 2018, p. 92; see also G. Collier, 1970; M. N.-A. Conteh, 2016)

69Indeed, early fights between the SLPP and APC were enacted through the chieftaincy, with chiefs used by respective parties to prevent the other from growing its electoral base.

70 KON50, also expressed by KOI259.

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Despite being officially politically neutral,71 chiefly support of political candidates remains critical to ensuring their electoral success in many parts of the country, with ample evidence of PCs campaigning on behalf of politicians. There are numerous reports of PCs actively campaigning for political candidates in the post-war elections (see e.g. F. M. Conteh & Harris, 2014; Fanthorpe, 2005; P. Jackson, 2005), with PCs threatening to depose subordinate chiefs who failed to support their party of choice (Fanthorpe, 2005, p. 47). For the 2018 elections, I observed traditional leaders pledging public support for the APC party, demonstrating the openness with which chiefs campaign on behalf of politicians in some areas, in contradiction to their political neutrality. Similarly, an elections observation team raised concerns about “paramount chiefs openly supporting the ruling party”, which election stakeholders saw as “an abuse of their role as traditional leaders in light of the extreme influence they have over their community members” (The Carter Center, 2018, p. 38).

There is also ample evidence of politicians pandering to chiefs prior to elections.72 Indeed, political candidates remain “obliged to ally with local political factions in order to win votes” (Fanthorpe, 1998, p. 558). One district councillor explained how he gave his first pay cheque (SLL 3 million) to chiefs in his district as a “token of thanks” and to show the “benefit of politics” to them.73 Meanwhile, it has been noted that “months if not years before the [2012] election, [APC presidential candidate Ernest Bai] Koroma had been going around the country performing acts of kindness far in excess of what was accepted as normal” (SLPP chairman cited in F. M. Conteh & Harris, 2014, p. 63).

71 The Dove-Edwin Commission following the 1967 coup made clear that “Paramount Chiefs were above party politics and that it was their bounden duty to support the government of the day” (Alie, 1990, p. 238). While PCs are not legally banned from supporting electoral candidates, the Political Party Registration Committee’s code of conduct prohibits it and the 2013 Code of Ethics and Service Standards for Chiefs mandates chiefs’ political neutrality.

72 At the same time, the importance of chiefs to electoral outcomes has led political parties to try to influence the “non-partisan” elections of PCs (see e.g. F. M. Conteh & Harris, 2014, pp. 60–61).

73 MAN105

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Where the state depends on chiefs for political survival, coexistence with IRG reflects the political incentives of the state. As described by a district councillor, in order “to stay in power [we politicians] need to accept things that should not be.”74 As described by a central chiefdom administrative clerk (CCAC), “Everybody, everybody fears politics!”75 For example, the state’s role in “setting of the [precept] rate has to do with politics.”76 Likewise, a local government official described that chiefs collect market dues instead of local governments because of “political interference”.77 Indeed, as described by a district councillor, “by right, we should collect market dues, but… we can’t really resist chiefs because of election requirements.”78 Moreover, the MoLGRD memo was widely seen as the government

“tamper[ing] with … the law” in a political move to win over chiefs.79 As described by a CA, “this is a political issue. The Minister doesn’t want to reverse this—he wants the support of the PCs.”80 Despite outcry from local government officials, subsequent ministers would not reverse what was said in the memo, with the state in a continual bind between supporters of decentralisation and the necessity of keeping chiefs on its side.81 As described by a DCC, despite appealing for the government to reverse the memo, and despite knowing “that what that man [the Minister] has done is not correct… they [the state] don’t have the political will”

74 KAM70

75 KAI174

76 KON50

77 KOI127

78 MAN107

79 KOI130

80 KOI127, also expressed by KAI173

81 KOI127

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to do so.82 Indeed, as described by a central government employee, “the state is not willing to end the arrangements [with chiefs]. They don’t want to stop the political support.”83

In this light, decisions of the APC government to make explicit concessions to chiefs in the form of local tax revenues after its election in 2007 can be interpreted as a way of consolidating its authority and influence amongst the decentralised power bases of the country, particularly given the historically close relationship between chiefs and the opposition SLPP (see e.g. Barrows, 1976; Fanthorpe, 2005). Accordingly, it is unsurprising that remittance of local tax has seen particular drops in election years (Figure 23). While reasons for payment of remittances vary across districts, national averages indicate that precepts are particularly low during election years, either as a result of the state not pushing enforcement at these times, or chiefs knowing they can keep more revenues when the state depends on them to a greater extent.

Figure 23: Average ratio of actual versus expected local tax remittances and voting years84

70%

50%

30%

10%

-10% 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Election years

Data source: (GoRSL MoFED, n.d.)

82 KOI130

83 FRE116

84 Estimates based on methods described above. Excludes Western area. Note: the election was held in 2018, though data is shown for 2017, when elections should have been held.

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District-level data also shows that remittance of local tax is weakest in areas of greatest state political dependence. For instance, in the 2007 and 2012 elections—both won by the APC party—local tax remittances were lowest in APC party strongholds and the one swing district outside of Western area, Kono (Figure 24).85 Looking at Kono district in particular, we observe significant drops in remittances in the years prior to elections: For instance, from 2006 to 2007, the ratio of actual local tax remittances to those that were expected fell from 41 percent to 2 percent; from 2011 to 2012, the ratio fell from 17 percent to 8 percent. Moreover, during the years that the SLPP was in power, we see that remittances were on average lower in APC districts, while the reverse was true for the years that the APC was in power (Figure 25).

Figure 24: Average ratio of actual versus expected local tax remittances, by district political affiliation

25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 2007 2012

APC districts SLPP districts Swing districts

Data source: (GoRSL MoFED, n.d.)

85 Kono is classified as such because of shifted allegiance between parties in presidential elections in 2002 (SLPP), 2007 (SLPP), 2012 (APC), and 2017 (SLPP).

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Figure 25: Average ratio of actual versus expected local tax remittances and voting years, by political leaning of district86

25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% SLPP years (2005 to 2007) APC years (2008-2017)

APC districts SLPP districts

Data source: (GoRSL MoFED, n.d.)

In addition to evidence that revenue concessions to chiefs were politically motivated, there is also evidence that chiefdom IRG is not punished and planned auditing requirements will not be enforced for similarly political reasons. For example, a recent Public Financial Management (PFM) Act includes provisions for auditing chiefdom authorities (GoRSL, 2016b), which would limit chiefs’ capacity to misuse revenues, though there is an overwhelming lack of political will to actually enforce financial auditing of chiefs or to otherwise hold them accountable.87 For example, a DO reported that even if he were to try to reprimand chiefs’ wrongdoing, he would be unable to: “There are chiefs who have political influence, so even if you try to bring them to justice, they will not comply.”88 As described by the Director of the Decentralisation Secretariat, “when you want to curry the political favour

86 Estimates of actual versus expected local tax remittances are based on methods described above. Party strongholds are defined as those districts where allegiance between parties has not changed in the post-war elections and whose margin of victory in the 2018 presidential elections was more than 55 percent. These estimates do not include newly-created districts, for which there is no historical data on local tax remittances. Estimate excludes Western Rural and Western Urban districts, as the role of traditional authorities is less relevant in these areas than elsewhere in the country. Estimate further excludes the only swing district outside of Western area (Kono).

87 MAN105, KON265. At the same time, interviewees widely noted that there is insufficient capacity within chiefdom administrations to follow the requirements (FRE1, FRE3.4, KON50, KON50.2).

88 KAI181.1

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of PCs, [you] will dance to the music of the PCs.”89 This reflects the initial bargains made between the colonial state and chiefs, where the state traded a revenue monopoly for control. After independence, the relationship did not change: chiefs were granted relative autonomy “[s]o long as Paramount Chiefs pledged support for and rendered political assistance to the ruling party” (Tangri, 1980, p. 188).

2.2 Relative autonomy of chiefs

While the state clearly depends on chiefs, explicit revenue concessions need not be the only possible formal–informal outcome. Indeed, if the state could formalise a system of patronage with chiefs—essentially, bringing them into formal structures in a more institutionalised way—the state could conceivably continue to benefit from chiefs’ support, while also controlling IRG. At least in theory, the state has institutional channels of power over chiefs, which should maintain an equilibrium of mutual dependence between chiefs and the state.

First, while a chief’s legitimacy “derives from more than the formal executive authority allocated to him” (Barrows, 1976, p. 22), it is also subject to constraints placed on the institution by the modern state. Critically, the only way a chief can be deposed is through the central government, representing “the ultimate source of national control over localities” (Barrows, 1976, pp. 15–16).90 That power is enshrined in the Chieftaincy Act (2009a), which is the source of the central executive’s “effective leverage over the chieftaincy” through its role in approving who is eligible to stand in chieftaincy elections, in running elections and declaring victors, and in removing PCs (Srivastava & Larizza, 2011, p. 150). Moreover, DOs are the central government’s representative in the provinces, supervising chiefs, including with respect to chiefdom elections, tax assessments, and misconduct. One DO explained that, “They [chiefs] always look up to us, because we act as an intermediary between them and

89 KAI183.2

90 This power, first enshrined in an 1897 amendment to the Protectorate Ordinance, represented the first real shift in power from the pre-colonial hinterland kings to the colonial authorities, with the legitimacy of traditional rulers no longer solely dependent on acceptance by their subjects (M. N.-A. Conteh, 2013, p. 18; Abraham, 2002).

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the central government”,91 describing himself as the “head of government” in the district,92 while another DO declared, in reference to his role in chiefdom elections, “I crown you, [therefore] I am the authority over you.”93

Second, state financial support to chiefdoms serve as an important counterweight to chiefs’ power. Salaries have been institutionalised for PCs and a select number of their staff since 2014.94 Providing regular salaries was a “deliberate” attempt by the state to control IRG, giving the state the power to tell chiefs, “it is high time you take your hands off collection” at the local level.95 As explained by a DO, “because they [chiefs] do not have funds to do their local responsibilities… paying them will make them able to meet the needs of their communities without asking people to [be] involve[d] in informal taxation.”96 In effect, salaries would allow state resources to be distributed directly to chiefs, though in an manner more palatable to international donors than simply coexisting with IRG.

In practice, however, these sources of state power are weak, leaving chiefs with considerable autonomy from states and reducing mutual dependence. For one, the state’s power of deposition is used infrequently and has often been the source of great controversy when it

91 KAI181.1

92 KAI181.2

93 KOI138

94 FRE3.3, KOI126. From the time of the treaties of friendship that were forged with pre-colonial authorities from the 1830s, traditional rulers were given an annual fixed sum called “stipends” in return for their cooperation (Alie, 1990, p. 114), though as state capacity broke down in the post-independence era, salaries weren’t paid. Today, salaries are provided for PCs, chiefdom speakers, chiefdom administrative clerks, and a limited number of chiefdom police.

95 FRE3.1

96 KAI181.3. At the same time, salaries were intended to minimize state corruption, replacing patrimonialism in which chiefs received “handouts by government” on an ad hoc basis, with a “lack of transparency about what this [money] was for” (FRE3.3).

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has been used.97 Moreover, formal financing through the state is insufficient, leaving chiefdom administrations underfunded through “formal” channels, and less dependent on the state.98 First, the salaries provided by the state do not cover all of the staff of the chiefdom administration.99 For example, in Kailahun district, each chiefdom administration employs on average nine additional staff that receive no state salaries.100 While the salaries of chiefdom police are financed by the state, a near universal complaint amongst chiefdom authorities was the insufficient number of police being financed. For example, ten of 14 chiefdoms in Kailahun district highlighted within their annual budget that a major impediment to tax collection is the low number of chiefdom police officers relative to the territory of tax enforcement, with, on average, six police officers per chiefdom, covering on average 106 villages, which are not well connected by roads or communication networks.

Second, only PCs receive salaries, not any of the subordinate chiefs. As remarked by a town chief, "the services we render are too much, but we don't receive a salary.”101 In the 14 chiefdoms of Kailahun district, there are, on average, 6 section chiefs and 106 town chiefs per chiefdom. The only formal income these chiefs receive is the rebate from local tax

97 This has particularly been the case where it has been used politically by the state, or where it has been used by opposition ruling families within chiefdoms (Fanthorpe, 2005, p. 42). For instance, an interviewee explained that after the SLPP came to power in 2018 he was aware of at least three instances of “APC PCs” that risk being dethroned because of their politics. As he noted, “their godfathers aren’t there to protect them anymore” (FRE111.3).

98 In part, this insufficient funding can be explained through the political constraints against taxation: that is, it is politically less costly and more expedient to relinquish control of some state extractive power than to attempt to directly raise more formal taxes, which could be transferred to chiefs through formal salaries. However, as described above, external donors are hesitant to give greater formal authority to chiefs; accordingly, even if the state had more tax revenues to distribute, it is unclear whether it would be able to do so in practice.

99 The state has promised to provide salaries for chiefdom court staff, but this has not yet happened (MAN109, KON50).

100 These include staff working at chiefdom courts (court chairmen, court clerks, court members, assistant chiefdom administration clerks, revenue collectors, health overseers, labourers, and office maintenance staff) (FY2017 budget projections, CCAC, Kailahun district).

101 MAN104

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collection, which is very small in practice: the amount allocated per subordinate chief in rebates in 2017 was on average only SLL 36,650 (USD 4.90) annually. In practice, section and town chiefs reported receiving much less, with a chiefdom speaker for example reporting receiving only SLL 5000 (USD 0.67). Unsurprisingly, this is seen as only a “small token” for their efforts, rather than as an incentive for collection or as a supplement to other sources of income.102 Accordingly, an urban sub-chief explained that, without a stipend or salary, “I survive through the community.”103

Finally, even those chiefdom staff that receive a government salary commonly complained of delays in payments,104 a reality confirmed by central government officials, and by chiefdom records of payments in arrears (Photo 2).105 Indeed, in Kono district, all staff across 14 chiefdoms had not received their stipends for periods ranging from five months to four years.106 As described by a CCAC, “this is the number one burden” that “cuts across all chiefdoms across the country, affecting all 149 chiefdoms”.107 Because of these delays, chiefdom officials explained that they had to collect informal fees to run the administration. As explained by a CCAC, they’re “not asking for a bribe or a tip, just asking for “hospitality” to get the job done.”108 At the same time, the amounts paid are relatively small (Table 5)— described as “just a token”, with chiefs calling it a “stipend” instead of a salary.” 109

Photo 2: Records showing salary payments in arrears

102 MAN102

103 FRE118

104 Expressed widely, for example, by MAN102, MAN103, KAS42, KOI126, KOI259, KON52, KON50.

105 FRE3.1, FRE3.3

106 KON50, KON52

107 KON50

108 KON50.2

109 FRE118

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Source: Author photos, Eastern province, 2017

Table 5: Chiefdom administration annual salaries110 Paramount Chiefdom Chiefdom Chiefdom Chiefdom Chiefdom chief speaker administrative police police police clerk (Sergeant) (Corporal) (Private) $4,391.52 $3,074.06 $2,612.95 $1,295.50 $1,273.54 $1,251.58

Insufficient state funding puts the state in the position of accepting IRG in order to maintain chiefdom support. It is unable to provide sufficient revenue to chiefs through formal channels. Accordingly, rather than a relationship of mutual dependence, the state makes informal concessions to chiefs as a means of distributing real or potential state resources to maintain the patrimonial networks upon which it depends (Fanthorpe, 2001; Kandeh, 2002; Lange, 2009). When the state is unable to give “formal” reciprocal benefits to chiefs to sustain “reciprocally dependent relationships”, it has instead turned a blind eye to IRG and made explicit revenue concessions to chiefs as a form of appeasement and as a way to prevent the “breakdown of patron–client relations” (Lange, 2009, p. 110).111 As described by a CCAC, “How can we implement PFM… if [chiefs] don’t get emoluments to eat?... I can’t monitor those

110 FY2017 budget projections, CCAC, Kailahun district.

111 In the early days after independence, Kilson (1966, p. 287) identified this reciprocal balance as a risk to the alliance given the financial strain it implies: “[T]o persist in the modern context in utilizing traditional guideposts to political relations or behavior like the reciprocity principle is […] inevitably to court basic sociopolitical breakdown or disequilibrium, especially in view of the sizable wealth required for these guideposts to function in the modern system”.

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that I don’t give wages to.”112 Essentially, he could or would not prevent informal taxation by those not receiving a salary.

3 Conclusion

The history of modern statehood in Sierra Leone reflects the state’s “attempt… to subjugate the local”,113 which it has repeatedly done by making a Faustian bargain with the brokers of state control and electoral outcomes upon which it depends—the chieftaincy. To ensure its ability to rule in the short-run, it has continuously accepted IRG by chiefs, by turning a blind eye and not enforcing laws prohibiting them, as well as by making explicit formal revenue concessions to chiefs through informal channels. Concessions made to traditional authorities through informal taxation have in effect constituted “a form of elite bargain that help[s] extend the reach and authority of the state to the interior through patrimonial relations” (World Bank, 2018a, p. par. 6).

In this way, we are able to understand the puzzling outcome of the state coexisting with and even enabling IRG, even where it threatens modern state institutions. IRG is not antithetical to the modern state, as it has been during key periods of statebuilding and consolidation that the state has used IRG to buttress its governing strategy. While this governing logic has been central to reinforcing state authority in the short-term, it likewise detracts from long-term state institutionalisation, particularly at the local level. Indeed, the state has diminished real and potential state revenues and undermined local government capacity. Given the relative balance of a weak and dependent state and strong and autonomous chiefs, the state has accepted this trade off rather than attempting to reign in chiefly power. The next chapter considers when and how the state may break the relationship of dependency in order to take control over divergent IRG, gaining back control over formal local tax revenues. What does it take for the state to move from a position of coexistence to control?

112 KON50

113 FRE116

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Chapter 6: Competitive formal–informal outcomes: Mediated state control through hybrid tax collection

was.1 כf na wata na mכdכf nכd man We

Sierra Leonean proverb

1 Literally, “when one falls into water, one ought to wash”, or “Make the best of what you have.”

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The Federal Government of Somalia competes for sovereignty and legitimacy with multiple proto-state actors—most prominently, Al-Shabaab. While most often associated with terror and atrocities, Al-Shabaab runs a “shadow government”, including a highly efficient and centralised taxation system that is applied consistently across southern and central Somalia (UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, 2018, p. 4; Joseph & Maruf, 2018; Hiraal Institute, 2018). Its taxing capacity extends beyond its areas of territorial control— even spreading into the capital, Mogadishu, the only city that the government has reliably controlled—and is broader, more effective, and more systematic than that of the federal government (Faruk & Bearak, 2019; Hiraal Institute, 2018; Maruf, 2018; UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, 2018, p. par. 86).2 The state and its supporters—namely, the UN, the African Union, and the United States—view this taxing role as a serious threat, both as it enables anti-government violence and challenges state sovereignty. Accordingly, a spokesman of the US African Command noted that the US military targets Al-Shabaab’s “financial and collection operations” (John D. Manley cited in Faruk & Bearak, 2019).

When considering IRG, therefore, there are clearly cases where state action conforms with conventional state theory—that is, the expectation that where there is a non-state actor simulating state functions and threatening state sovereignty, the state will assert its authority and attempt to take control of IRG. This is in line with the idea that “modern states everywhere eradicate competing institutions as part of their own rise” (Englebert, 2000, p. 12; see also Spruyt, 1994). The fact that this outcome does not always emerge, however, requires us to examine its enabling conditions more closely. As described in the previous chapter, the state may coexist with IRG, entering into Faustian bargains with informal taxing actors because of the state’s dependence on them for some degree of its governing capacity and authority.

Under what conditions, then, does the state assert control over divergent informal taxing actors? My research shows that this outcome—a competitive formal–informal

2 Notably, it is significantly more effective at directly taxing income than the central government, which relies predominately on indirect (mostly customs) taxes (Ahmad, 2017; UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, 2018).

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relationship—emerges where the state has some degree of governing authority independent of the informal taxing actor, with fewer constraints on its governing capacity to control IRG (Table 6). Governing constraints may be reduced when, for example, the state gains a decisive electoral mandate with pressure to take control over competing authorities or faces pressures from international donors to assert state authority. State control exists on a spectrum from total control to mediated control to coexistence, reflecting a corresponding spectrum of dependence on or independence from informal taxing actors. This reflects the empirical reality that state control, as with state sovereignty more broadly, is non-binary and liminal.

Table 6: Competitive formal–informal relationship

Formal/ informal Formal/ informal objectives objectives diverge converge

State Competitive Assertive controls on informal actor on informal State Concessionary Supplementary coexists Increasing dependence of the state dependenceIncreasing of the state

This diminution in the constraints on the state’s governing capacity explain how state control is possible, but can we assume that the state control is always desirable for the state? Just because they can take control, does not mean they will want to. While convergent IRG varies in terms of how acceptable it is to the state (Chapter 8), divergent IRG is assumed to always be unacceptable to the state because of the threat it poses to state sovereignty and institutions. Divergent IRG poses a threat because the act of levying taxes does not just represent revenue losses to the state, but also the exercise and display of power and the performance of statehood (see e.g. Hagmann & Péclard, 2010; Hansen & Stepputat, 2001;

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Lund, 2006).3 State control may thus be desirable not only to limit the revenues of the informal taxing group, but also, critically, to reinforce state sovereignty.

In the case of Somalia, for instance, the state has the capacity and will to assert its authority, given the support it receives from the international community, while its governing legitimacy, dependent on both domestic and international actors, requires that it address threats to the state. It moreover has the will to do so not only because the international community wants a strong Somali government and domestic actors want to avoid being taxed by multiple actors, but because to not do so represents an existential threat to its nascent independent statehood. While Somalia’s legal statehood does not depend on this legitimacy, its governing capacity and authority does.

The diminution in the constraints on the state’s governing capacity explain how state control is possible, while the threat posed by these informal taxing actors shows why it is desirable for the state. However, these are insufficient for us to understand variation in the relative effectiveness of state strategies of control. Variation in state strategies of control and mediated control can be explained in part by the extent to which informal taxing actors are autonomous from the state, related to the balance of power between the actors. Combined with the capacity and desire of the state to take control over IRG, the autonomy of the informal taxing actor determines the nature of the formal–informal outcome (Figure 26). Where the informal taxing actor is less autonomous, the informal taxing actor will be more likely to cooperate with the state, with the state able to assert a higher degree of effective dominance over informality (Figure 26: B1/C1). Where the informal taxing actor is more autonomous, the informal taxing actor will be less willing to cooperate and the state will be unable to effectively assert some dominance over IRG, resulting in a competitive stalemate or conflict with the informal taxing actor (Figure 26: B2/C2). For example, in Somalia, Al- Shabaab represents a strongly autonomous organisation, ideologically committed to the destruction of the Somali state and financially autonomous from the state, self-sufficient as

3 For a foundational overview of how rebel groups “perform the nation-state” see (Mampilly, 2015; also Gutiérrez, 2018).

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it is based on tax and other revenues, including from the charcoal trade and from transnational supporters. Under these conditions, the Somali state can only oppose Al- Shabaab and its informal taxing efforts, though the effectiveness of this opposition depends on the balance of power between the actors at any given stage, resulting in a state strategy of conflict (C2).

Figure 26: Variation of state strategies: Independent state governing capacity and the autonomy of the informal taxing actor

(C1) (C2) Control: Control: Total state Conflict control/ prohibition

(B1) (B2) Mediated Mediated control: control: Negotiated Competitive settlement stalemate

(A1) (A2) Coexistence: Coexistence: Tolerance/ tacit State Increasingindependent governing capacity acceptance concessions to informal taxing actor

Increasing autonomy of informal taxing actor

While formal–informal competition is most obvious in conflict-affected contexts, competitive formal–informal outcomes are not limited to such extreme contexts. Indeed, it is also common in post-colonial states that emerged out of an “imported state model” (Badie, 1992).4 In such contexts, pre-colonial authorities are often viewed as a threat to “modern” statehood; indeed, prominent theoretical frameworks and conventional wisdom present a dichotomous, conflictual, and incompatible relationship between the state and traditional authorities. For instance, modernisation theory contrasts traditional political authority with an ideal type of rationalised bureaucratic authority (see e.g. Huntington, 1968; Lerner, 1958). The processes of modernisation are assumed to displace the traditional—the gesellschaft overtaking the gemeinschaft (Tönnies, 1964), the legal-rational authority

4 This contrasts with newly-independent states whose political form was more congruent with pre-existing political systems and norms of political authority (Englebert, 2000)—what have been termed “restored states” (Alexandrowicz, 1969).

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overtaking the traditional (Weber, 1958). Emerging from these conceptual frameworks, a logic of substitution and competition permeates the analysis of traditional leaders and the modern state (e.g. Clayton et al., 2015; Mershon & Shvetsova, 2019; Oomen, 2000a, 2000b).5 Accordingly, traditional authorities have often been situated in opposition to the modern state; as noted by Ray (1996, p. 181), “When chiefs have been seen as competitors for sovereignty, the state has moved to limit their power”.

While Chapter 5 makes clear that these notions of inevitable competition between the state and traditional authorities in Sierra Leone are too simplistic, in this chapter I consider the outlying instances where the Sierra Leonean state has moved to take control over the informal taxing authority of chiefs. While the central state has consistently made concessions to chiefs (Chapter 5), in some sub-national areas there has been a recent assertion of state control over local informal revenues controlled by chiefs, reflecting a broader struggle for local sovereignty. By focusing on a case of sub-national competition over revenues and authority, I make clear that the state is not monolithic, adding nuance to the analysis of formal–informal relations. Different parts of the state may have different goals and objectives in reinforcing their governing legitimacy and authority, implying that they need not be moving in unison and, indeed, may actually be in conflict with each other.

Section one describes how three sub-national governments have asserted a mediated form of control over chiefs through hybrid tax collection agreements, taking back some control over formal revenues that have been informally ceded to chiefs. By tracing these three cases comparative context and over time, I am able to identify common themes and conditions that were necessary for the assertion of state control. At the same time, variation in the effectiveness of state strategies of control allows me to distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions of effective state control. The following section explains that local

5 For instance, scholars of governance and democratisation have conventionally viewed traditional authorities as incompatible with “modern” democratic statehood because they are assumed to be unaccountable institutions led by undemocratic leaders (see e.g. Acemoglu et al., 2014; Hariri, 2012; Mamdani, 1996; Ntsebeza, 2005).These ideas are based in the emphasis on the role of elections in creating accountability that is prevalent in democratic theory (see e.g. Barro, 1973; Besley & Burgess, 2002; Ferejohn, 1986; Manin et al., 1999; Schumpeter, 1942).

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governments want to regain this control because of the revenue pressures they face, as well as the threats posed by chiefdom competition to their governing legitimacy and local sovereignty. Section three then considers, how state control—even in a mediated form—was feasible, showing how the local state faced incentives through increased pressure from international actors and the central government, a facilitating role of civil society, and leadership less constrained by political dependence on chiefs. While these factors explain the state’s shift from coexistence to mediated control, what explains why the state is not able to take a more complete form of control? Section five shows that total control was not possible given local governments’ continued administrative dependence on chiefs, which makes it impossible for them to take back some control without making some concessions. Finally, section six explores sub-national variation in the outcomes of mediated state control and the relative effectiveness of state engagement with chiefs. I show that formal–informal engagement has been more effective where chiefs have less autonomy.

1 Local government assertion of control in Sierra Leone

In Sierra Leone, the conflict between traditional forms of authority and the imposition of “modern” statehood has manifested through competition for local legitimacy, symbolised by authority to tax. As described by Ferme (1998, p. 563), with the colonial expansion into the hinterland, “taxation and loss of sovereignty became coterminous”, with taxation being a marker of both statehood and citizenship. Reflecting opposition to that loss of sovereignty, the Hut Tax War of 1898, soon after the introduction of “alien rule” (Chalmers, 1898b, p. 573), represented anti-tax and broader anti-state movements (Barrows, 1976; Chalmers, 1898a, p. 73; Conteh-Morgan & Dixon-Fyle, 1999; La Ray & Crowder, 1970). Following ten months of rebellion, the British suppressed the uprisings, notably by taking a stronger role in deposing chiefs and instituting chiefs that were more easily subdued and replacing legitimate pre-colonial rulers “with people who were more cooperative” (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012, p. 342; see also Abraham, 1976, 1978; Barrows, 1976, pp. 79–82; Paracka, 2003, p. 96; L. R. Day, 1994; Fanthorpe, 1998; Grace, 1975; Little, 1951, pp. 176–179; Wylie, 1977). The colonial state thus effectively subdued anti-imperial resistance.

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Though tax remains deeply linked to questions of sovereignty and governing authority, the competition between chiefs and the state manifests at the local, rather than central level.6 Chiefs saw the reintroduction of DCs as a threat to their authority and the revenue sources that they had previously controlled—in the words of a CCAC, “leaving chiefs empty” and “victimized”.7 As described by an NRA representative,

The chiefs were all collecting… all these things informally…so when local government came back… obviously they might be having some problems with the local government in terms of who has the right to collect or not. So, they might think some of the monies, it is their right for them [chiefs] to collect them.8

While the central state has effectively ceded local (poll) tax revenues to chiefs (Chapter 5), chiefs have also kept control of other formal tax revenues—statutorily under the control of the local councils —that they have kept “off book”. In some areas, this includes market taxes, timber extraction fees, intrastate evacuation fees, and ware (cattle) fees; in others, chiefs are even “taking the property rate” away from local councils.9 As described by the Director of the Decentralisation Secretariat, after the state effectively conceded the local tax precept to chiefs, chiefs began to take control of even more: “It started with precepts, then chiefs began taking licences, evacuation fees, market luma [i.e. fees from weekly markets].”10 Essentially, chiefs—empowered by the central state and fighting to reinforce their legitimacy, authority,

6 Chiefs no longer represent an existential risk to local governments, given international donors’ commitment to decentralisation. In this way, and analogous to what Spruyt (2009, p. 223) describes as the “internationally enfranchised” postcolonial states, local governments may be essentially propped up by the international community—though chiefs pose a real threat to local governments’ de facto governing capacity, legitimacy, or authority (see also Bates, 2010; R. Jackson, 1995; Sørensen, 2001).

7 KAI174, also expressed by KON50.2, FRE2, KON265, KOI130, KOI34.1

8 FRE9

9 FRE3.1

10 KAI183.2

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and revenues—grew as a competitive force at the local level,11 with both sides “looking at each other with ugly eyes.”12

In recent years, however, some sub-national governments have engaged in extra-legal negotiation with chiefs as a means of asserting state control over local revenues, with a particular focus on gaining control over property and other local tax revenues. These negotiations, facilitated by local NGOs, aimed to “improve the revenue basis” of local government through a “partnership” model (Kono DC, 2018, pp. 5–6). These attempts at state control reflect different degrees of effectiveness in asserting state authority.

First, in Kailahun district, in early 2017, both parties agreed to engage in joint revenue collection and revenue sharing for landing fees, business and other licences, property tax, evacuation fees, and power saw licences. This built on a previous, limited agreement to jointly collect and share timber revenues between the Ministry of Agriculture, the DC, and chiefdoms. Revenue was shared with 60 percent going to the DC and the remainder going to chiefdoms, with revenue collectors appointed by both the council and PCs.13 As explained by the Deputy CA, “Though we have the right to collect, for the sake of peace, let us collect collectively.”14 Despite initial hopes for positive outcomes,15 however, the agreement quickly fell apart, with chiefs refusing to cooperate with the DC. Negotiations resumed in 2018, resulting in a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) and a negotiated settlement in favour of the DC. Indeed, the DC gaining total control over 20 percent of revenues, earmarking another 50 percent for development projects in the chiefdoms where revenue was collected, while 25 percent of all revenues goes directly to PCs and chiefdom clerks.16

11 KAI183.2

12 KAI174

13 KAI89.1, KAI179.

14 KAI90

15 Expressed, for example, by KAI93, KAI96.1

16 PCs take 20 percent and clerks 5 percent. The remaining 5 percent is the commission for revenue collectors.

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After this agreement, widely supported by both sides, chiefs promised to give the local tax precept that they owe council, indicating the possibility of a more positive relationship moving forward.

Second, in Koinadugu district, from 2016, the DC engaged in joint revenue collection and sharing agreement for timber revenues.17 By 2017, a comprehensive agreement covering all other revenues in the district was signed, with the DC getting 60 percent of revenues and being touted as a “success story”.18 While all chiefs consented, not all chiefs actually shared the revenues, with the agreement falling apart in some chiefdoms by the end of the year.19 Negotiations reopened in 2018, with revenues split equally between the parties, resulting in a negotiated settlement that was seen as favourable to the chiefdom administrations.20 Reflecting the autonomy of chiefs with this revenue, the DCC noted that “No one will ask chiefs what they do with their 50 percent, but they can ask us… to be accountable.”21 Even with greater concessions to chiefs, however, the MoU has not been implemented in all of the chiefdoms across the district. While successful in some chiefdoms, in others, the MoU is said to be “struggling a lot”.22

Finally, in Kono district, an initial agreement on joint collection and revenue sharing of property tax was reached in 2017, with the DC gaining total control of 30 percent of property tax revenue, while earmarking 50 percent for chiefdom development, 10 percent as a commission for revenue collectors, and 10 percent for PC “supervision”, to be divided

17 KOI34.2, KOI241

18 FRE111.1

19 KOI127

20 FRE111.1, FRE111.3

21 KOI260

22 KOI258

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between PCs and their treasury clerks.23 By 2018, a comprehensive agreement was reached, covering other revenues in the district, with the same revenue sharing arrangement.24 As chiefs’ cooperation varied across the district, however, the comprehensive deal quickly fell apart. As explained by the DCC, “They [PCs] signed the agreement but didn’t accept [it] in practice.”25 Rather than simply tolerating chiefly control over formal tax revenues, the DC has persisted in trying to control over revenues, resulting in a competitive stalemate. As described by the DCC after the failure of the agreement, “we gave a lot… and we’re trying to take it back now… we want to take back our rights of collection”,26 which it is doing by following through with independent collection of revenues that it had previously agreed to jointly collect and share with chiefs.27 This has brought the relationship back to a “a sort of cold war”.28

2 Desire for control

While informal, and not representing full state control, these state strategies nevertheless represent the assertion of local government power. What leads the state to assert control in these cases? First, we need to understand why the state wants to assert control over IRG. Though the Weberian ideal type of modern statehood based on rational-legal authority is defined by a state monopoly of control, this monopoly is in practice a variable rather than an attribute of statehood. Accordingly, we cannot assume that the state will always want to take control of IRG. Moreover, recognising that the state is not monolithic, it is clear that different parts of the state may find different actions more or less desirable. From the perspective of sub-national governments in Sierra Leone, three key reasons make it desirable for the state

23 KON69.1, KON265

24 KON263 With the exception of market dues, which were given 100 percent to chiefdoms (KON265).

25 KON263

26 KON263

27 KON263, KON264

28 KON50

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to take control over IRG controlled by chiefs: (1) local governments face significant revenue pressure, (2) this fiscal insufficiency threatens local government legitimacy, and (3) chiefs pose a threat to local sovereignty.

2.1 Revenue pressures

Local governments face considerable revenue pressures. Reflecting broader challenges of decentralisation seen across sub-Saharan Africa in the last forty years (Bahl & Bird, 2008; Burki et al., 1999; Devarajan et al., 2009), the revenue handles are insufficient to meet revenue needs.29 It is widely acknowledged that decentralisation has been insufficient or incompletely implemented, with DCs not yet given the resources and capacity they need, particularly with respect to fiscal decentralisation.30 As described by a local government official, “Decentralisation hasn’t taken place yet”,31 while a MoFED representative acknowledged that “we have a long way to go” in the implementation of fiscal decentralisation.32

Accordingly, councils continue to rely almost entirely on financial transfers from the central government (Figure 27). This dependence on the central government creates issues for local operations, particularly as transfers are unreliable and often late.33 This desire for greater self-reliance motivated the DCs to engage in negotiations with chiefs; for example, the Kono DC (2018, p. 4) noted that,

In the absence of effective own source revenue mobilisation, in order to function effectively and deliver services to their people, District Council has to solely rely on Central Government grants…. Central Government grants to the District Council are mostly inadequate and most times transferred very late, limiting the potential to make the required impact.

29 This is in line with why McCarney (1996) refers to local government as “the neglected tier in development.”

30 FRE1, KAI93, KAI183, KAI267

31 KAI267

32 FRE1

33 This was a commonly expressed complaint across councils, expressed, for example, by KAI89.1, KAI173.

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Figure 27: Average local council budget composition

100% 75% 50% 25% 0% 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Own revenues as percent of expenditures Transfers as percent of expenditures

Data source: (GoRSL MoFED, n.d.) 2.2 Threat to local governing legitimacy These revenue pressures affect local governments’ governing legitimacy and authority. Local governments have little control over central government revenues spent on development in their districts. The central government directly funds devolved public services, such as health care and education, while since 2012, block development grants have been under the control of MPs rather than local councils.34 Transfers from the central government only cover recurrent costs, with local development projects funded only through councils’ own source revenues. Local government tax revenues outside of Western area amounted to only USD 0.06 per capita from 2005 to 2017 (Chapter 3), implying limited capacity to provide public goods and services. For example, in Koinadugu district, tax revenues in 2016 were only enough to purchase some tools for each of the 24 wards in the district—intended to support community development and self-help projects, rather than the district getting involved in development more directly.35 Local government officials lamented their limited autonomy and capacity “to do development”.36

34 The SLPP government elected in 2018 has promised to return these “block” development grants for council (KAI183.2).

35 KOI127 and KOI130. This situation is not unusual across the country. For example, in Makeni, the third largest city in the country, in 2016 the city council spent less than USD 5000 (2.4 percent of the total budget) on any development-related expenditures in the city. This came in the form of a single public toilet rehabilitation.

36 KOI127, similar sentiment expressed by KAI 183.

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Local officials described being in a “budget trap”, with local government revenues incommensurate to public expectations of services.37 This creates considerable obstacles for local governments’ authority. As described by a representative of the MoFED,

People expect services if they pay, but even if everyone pays, it’s impossible to deliver services across all the mandated areas…We need to make people understand that collection is not about collecting and providing services immediately, particularly as not all, or even most, of collection can be used for services at the local level. Much of the revenue goes to paying for administration, management of waste, and salaries for those employees that are not paid by the central government… over time people are reluctant to pay.38

Similarly, a local government official explained there’s “not enough money to take on capital expenditures. We have limits. There are challenges communicating this [with taxpayers]. The expectations are very high […] People blame you for everything.”39 Accordingly, councils noted that their assertion of control was in part a desire “to be seen delivering more efficient and effective services to the people” (Kono DC, 2018, pp. 4–5).

2.3 Threat to local sovereignty

Conflict over revenues reflects some degree of competition for local authority more broadly. As described by the DCC of Kailahun district, chiefs are “gradually squeezing [the local] council to the corner”, with chiefdoms trying to assert their authority over the local government (cited in van den Boogaard et al., 2019). This is exacerbated by ongoing debate over which actor is the “highest” or “final” power at the local level, resulting from disconnect between the LGA’s statement that the council is the highest power, and central government statements to the contrary (Chapter 5).

This has implications for local sovereignty. As described by King (1987, p. 493), “[a] sovereign decision is final in the specific sense that no inferior (subordinate) agent within the hierarchy can (or is entitled to) reverse it”. Sovereignty can be divided among a plurality of agents , in so far as there is clarity about which actor has the highest and final power (P.

37 KOI34.2

38 FRE1

39 BOM125

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King, 1987, p. 495). At the local level in Sierra Leone, this clarity has been lacking, resulting in a competition for local sovereignty. In some ways, government assertion of control may be not just about regaining revenues, but regaining this sovereignty, with control over taxes and ability to deliver services key symbols of authority (see e.g. Hagmann & Péclard, 2010; Hansen & Stepputat, 2001; Lund, 2006). Thus, the threat from chiefs is not just about revenues and governing legitimacy but represents broader challenges to the authority of local governments. 3 Feasibility of control

Together, revenue pressures, threats to governing legitimacy, and international pressure have made it desirable for local governments to assert control over revenues informally controlled by chiefs. Just because a state wants to take control, however, does not mean that it will be able to do so. Fundamentally, state control requires that local governing capacity is less constrained by chiefs. This situation results from pressure from the central government and international donors for local governments to assert control, a facilitating role of civil society that empowers local governments, and the political will of local leaders that depend less on chiefs for their authority. 3.1 Pressure from central government and international donors

Pressure from the central government and international donors make it more feasible for the state to assert control. First, in recent years, there has been increasing pressure from the central government to increase local revenue mobilisation. For instance, the Minister of MoLGRD, in her position since 2015, put increasing pressure on local governments to increase revenue collection, signalling that she wanted councils to rely less on government and to be more financially independent.40 The Minister attended some of the negotiations and MoU signing ceremonies and voiced support for the extra-legal negotiations, with ideas of supporting the expansion of negotiations nationwide.41 This was interpreted by some as

40 FRE7.3

41 FRE111,1, KOI129, KAI90, KAI89.1, KAI183, FRE7.3, FRE3.3, KAI183.2

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the state attempting to walk back the “blunder” of previous state actors that had ceded local authority to chiefs (Chapter 5).42

Moreover, international donors have put pressure on local governments to assert control over local revenues and fully implement the decentralisation agenda. There was an initial four-year transition period after decentralisation was initiated in 2004, where international expectations were more lax; however, after 2008, international expectations for effective decentralisation increased.43 The donor-supported Decentralisation Secretariat introduced performance measurements—the Comprehensive Local Government Performance Assessment System (CLoGPAS)—that has increased pressure on local governments to improve performance and increase own source revenues. CLoGPAS assesses governments across a range of indicators, including fiscal capacity and local revenue generation, with a goal of encouraging local governments to be self-reliant and “remain afloat”.44 This performance measure is associated with status and intra-party rewards for strong leaders, which “really affect[s] leaders, motivates them to act in certain ways” and “creates competition among districts”.45 Local government officials take this measure seriously: Government officials boasted of increased rankings and proudly displayed CLoGPAS awards.46

3.2 Civil society facilitation

In all three sub-national cases, the role of civil society was critical in opening dialogue between the two groups and facilitating space for mediation, as well as putting pressure on

42 KAI183.2

43 FRE3.1, FRE7.1, FRE7.2

44 FRE7.1

45 FRE7.1

46 This was observed, for example, in an interview with the DCC in Koinadugu district (KOI130).

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local governments to take back more control and demand accountability of chiefs.47 Civil society opened political space for reform by facilitating dialogue between the two sides, allowing both sides a chance for “venting grievances”,48 while putting pressure on chiefs to cooperate. In Kailahun, for instance, Fambul Tok, a local NGO, hosted meetings to discuss issues in the district, identifying the chiefdom–council conflict as the most serious hindrance to development in the area.49 Fambul Tok described their role as “providing a safe space to raise issues” and to allow for “emotional interaction”, while ensuring that the “process is apolitical”.50 It also put pressure on chiefs that enabled them to come to the table; according to some in the Kailahun DC, “Fambul Tok made the chiefs see reason.” 51 Fambul Tok built on its initial success in Kailahun to convince the Koinadugu DC to assert control over their district.52 As described by a representative of the NGO, the initial “Fambul Tok success in Kailahun made us want to try it in Koinadugu.”53 Facilitating meetings in Koinadugu allowed space for negotiation—as described by the Deputy DCC, it’s “very difficult for two people who are quarrelling to make up by themselves.”54 Meanwhile, in Kono, the local NGO, Knowledge for Community Empowerment Organisation (KoCEPO) was involved in

47 This is likewise true in the only other district where an agreement was reached (Moyamba).

48 FRE111.1

49 FRE 111.1, 111.3 Fambul Tok is an NGO that focuses on community healing and, in particular focused on reconciliation in the post-war period (see e.g. Terry, 2011). In peacetime, they have continued to focus on the underlying issues that affect peace and development (KOI129).

50 FRE111.1

51 KAI93. They mediated chiefs’ concerns that they were being undermined, as chiefs worried, ironically, that the state was “creating parallel structures” for governance and revenue collection (KOI129, KOI130).

52 Meanwhile, early negotiations between the DC and chiefs in Koinadugu had been facilitated by the NGO ENCISS (KOI127). Fambul Tok invited representatives from Koinadugu DC and district chiefs to the initial meetings in Kailahun, which made them willing to try to come to an agreement with chiefs in their own district (KOI129, KOI130).

53 KOI129

54 KOI258

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mediation, negotiation, knowledge dissemination, and committed to possible arbitration (Kono DC, 2018, p. Arts. 8, 10). As described by a KoCEPO representative, “We understand that there is bad blood between the council and the chiefs… [and we were able to help come to an agreement because] the chiefs respect us more than the council because we consult them and carry their interest on board.”55

In addition to facilitating the negotiations, civil society groups put pressure on local governments to take back more control and hold chiefs to account. Civil society facilitators and central state supporters wanted the local governments to cede no more than 40 percent of revenues to chiefdoms, with all of that revenue going to the chiefdom council, rather than chiefs personally. Moreover, in all districts, the parties to the agreement set up joint bank accounts “for prudent financial management” (Koinadugu DC, 2019, p. 2), with the council and supporting NGO placing an emphasis on the “transparency and accountability” of shared revenues (Kailahun DC, 2018, p. 2).56 In Kono, DC officials described the role of civil society as vital in witnessing the agreement, putting pressure on both sides to implement the agreement, and in sensitising communities about the collaboration.57

3.3 Unconstrained leadership

The role of leadership and local political will was widely cited by interviewees as important to asserting local government control.58 Indeed, representatives from Fambul Tok explained that they would only engage with local governments where there was sufficient political will to reform the relationship with chiefs. Within local governments, directly elected DC Chairmen are particularly powerful figures and can be decisive in pushing through reforms. Where these leaders are less electorally dependent on chiefs, we see that leaders are more

55 KON208

56 KAI179 notes that Fambul Tok insisted that there be a joint account for this reason.

57 KON207, KON69.2

58 Expressed, for example, by FRE111.1, FRE111.3.

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likely to take steps to assert government control in what is otherwise a delicate dance in showing respect to them and maintaining their support.

In Kailahun, the initial success of the negotiations may be in part attributed to strong leadership within the DC under the Chairman, Alex Bonapha, who was described as having “spearheaded the initiative” with Fambul Tok,59 even writing the MoU himself.60 Critically, he saw himself and his career as less politically-dependent on chiefs. Not a career politician, and with considerable national-level political connections, he was somewhat removed from the pressures other politicians feel to pander to chiefs.61 Some implied that he had never been committed to working in the district for the long-term,62 though his outside connections also meant that he was less enmeshed in the local politics and depended less on the support of chiefs.

In Koinadugu, meanwhile, a change in leadership in 2012 was described as “decisive” to improving a tense relationship between the DC and PCs and ultimately enabling the DCC to assert greater control over district revenues.63 The DCC explained that he was able to approach the chiefs while still taking back control of some district revenues because he wasn’t “power conscious”, “not worried about getting kicked out”, but focused on results, thus enabling an environment for the state to assert control.64 He explained that while his predecessor “wanted to be the boss” and to have his authority affirmed, he believed that

59 KAI89.1

60 KAI173

61 As a lawyer, he continued to take legal work and consultancies while in the position of the DCC. Moreover, illustrating these national political connections, he was appointed as the Director of the Decentralisation Secretariat when the SLPP government came to power in 2018. Described by KAI89.2

62 FRE111.3

63 KOI127

64 KOI130

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it is not about me, it is about the district. So if I have to lie down, [have] people step on me if that will ensure that the district [benefits], I will lie down. At the end of the day… I can get up and dust myself off as long as I can point to something [that I’ve accomplished].65

In Kono, the DCC was likewise critical in asserting control. When the MoU with chiefs fell through in 2018, another leader, more dependent on chiefs and conscious of keeping their support, may have reverted to coexisting with chiefs, quietly tolerating their control over local revenues. However, the DCC, elected in 2018, refused to do so, taking it as a personal affront that the chiefs were not cooperating.66 He described that “we’re taking a stance… we’re not going to share revenues. We can’t wait, we need to collect. People are waiting for development.”67 Accordingly, he refused to cooperate further with chiefs, instead collecting tax revenue independently. He declared, if they want to try to work with us and share revenues, “they should come to us. We won’t come to them again”.68 4 Variation in the effectiveness of state control

External pressures and political changes may shift the underlying governing constraints that enable state control. However, these conditions do not guarantee effective state control. Indeed, in the subnational case studies, there is wide variation in the extent of control taken back by the state, from 70 percent of revenues in Kailahun to 50 percent of revenues in Koinadugu, to Kono, where no agreement has been made, with the local state in a competitive stalemate with chiefs. What leads to such stark variation in outcomes? In interviews, observers were quick to give credit for successful outcomes to the role of the local NGOs who facilitated the negotiations and to the leadership of the DCs for providing political will. Likewise, where agreements failed, they viewed “a personalised problem”, where a change

65 KOI130

66 Local officials described that he was “furious” when chiefs did not cooperate, while likewise feeling offended. This was likewise rooted in a sense of chiefs cheating the DC, particularly around mining companies (KON264, KON265)—a fact confirmed by Frankfurter et al. (2018).

67 KON263

68 KON263

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or “vacuum of leadership” can lead to the downfall of a reform.69 However, these conditions were present in all of the cases throughout the period of study, thus making them incomplete explanatory variables (Table 7). Indeed, these may be necessary conditions to enable a government strategy of control, but they are insufficient to explain how effective that control will be.

Table 7: Necessary but insufficient conditions for successful outcomes External Civil society Political Outcome pressures facilitation will Kailahun, 2017 1 1 1 Failed agreement Kailahun, 2018 1 1 1 Negotiated settlement, 70 percent state control Koinadugu, 2017 1 1 1 Failed agreement Koinadugu, 2018 1 1 1 Negotiated settlement, 50 percent state control, variable implementation Kono, 2018 1 1 1 Failed agreement

Indeed, the case studies show that where agreements rely on the will of an individual, their effectiveness and sustainability are at risk. Where the agreements have depended on a leader, the agreements have been prone to fail with subsequent leadership changes.70

Accordingly, one interviewee noted that you need “more than just a mayor” for success.71 Likewise, facilitation by civil society is insufficient without changes in the underlying power dynamics at the heart of the conflict. As described by an interviewee, “Fambul Tok can only facilitate”,72 while a MoFED representative wondered, “They set up the MoU, but then what?

We need more engagement to make sure it [the agreement] happens.”73

69 FRE111.1, FRE111.3

70 FRE111.3

71 FRE10. By contrast, describing the case of Moyamba—the other district where an agreement had been made—leadership in the council was described as “key” in enabling the initial agreement, but what made the agreement sustainable after the DCC was voted out was that “systems were put in place”, allowing for structural changes in the way that the DC and chiefs interacted and worked together (FRE111.3).

72 KOI129

73 FRE3.4

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Instead, an analysis of the case studies in comparative context and over time shows that the effectiveness of state control depends on two key factors (Table 8). First, in the context of continued administrative dependence on chiefs, the effectiveness of state control depends in part on the willingness of the state to accept hybrid agreements and make extra-legal concessions to chiefs. In short, this means that the state has to be willing to work with the grain of local political dynamics, recognising that it is incapable of taking complete control over local revenues. Second, the relative autonomy of chiefs, situated in the context of the balance of power between local governments and informal taxing actors, shapes the extent to which chiefs are willing to cooperate and negotiate in good faith. Where there is a systemic shift in the balance of power in favour of local governments, agreements have been more effective for the state. Fundamentally, there needs to be underlying changes in political dynamics and the governing constraints of the state in order to enable reform that allows the state to effectively take back control.

Table 8: Truth table: Reinforcement of local authority and autonomy of chiefs Willingness of Reinforcement of authority Outcome DC to cede of local government by the revenues central government Kailahun 2017 0 0 Failed agreement Kailahun 2018 1 1 Negotiated settlement, 70 percent state control Koinadugu 2017 1 0 Failed agreement Koinadugu 2018 1 1 Negotiated settlement, 50 percent state control, variable implementation Kono 0 0 Failed agreement 4.1 Willingness to make concessions to chiefs

While local governments may be able to take back a degree of control over local revenues, the sub-national cases all represent a mediated form of control. That is, rather than prohibiting chiefs from informally keeping formal revenues or taking full revenues by force, they embrace and formalise a hybrid outcome, sharing tax collection responsibility and revenues with chiefs.74 Why do local governments accept only a mediated form of control? Fundamentally, local governments still depend on chiefs to collect taxes and govern,

74 Moreover, local governments are not asserting control over informal taxes levied by chiefs but are just focusing on formal tax revenues.

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particularly in rural areas (the majority of the country).75 In this regard, the underlying dynamics and governing constraints have not fundamentally changed, so it is unsurprising that local governments are not trying to assert control in a more ambitious way. Observers described that in some areas the chiefs are more powerful than councils;76 as described by the DCC of Kailahun, the “DC will be at a loss, won’t be functional without chiefs”; thus, despite the concessions representing a “huge sacrifice, “until we’re able to support ourselves, the LGA is void”.77 Accordingly, government officials recognised that though the agreements contradict the LGA, they were viewed as “the best way out of a conflict situation” and a reasonable second-best option (e.g. Grindle, 2004).78

4.1.1 Local government administrative dependence on chiefs

In Sierra Leone, traditional authorities are a central part of a broader system of fragmented sovereignty and authority. Local governments cannot levy taxes without chiefs for three key reasons. First, chiefs have the capacity to block the state from taxing at the local level. For example, government officials indicated that part of the slow implementation of property tax outside of the country’s major urban centres was a result of a lack of chiefly cooperation.79 In Kamara chiefdom, the PC refused to provide support to the local council in collecting property taxes, fostering what he described as “a small tax revolt—something like the Hut Tax War” (cited in van den Boogaard et al., 2019). In Kono district, a PC stated that he is “like a Cabinet Minister, [so] if he didn’t want council to collect, he would stop them.”80

75 In 2015, 85 percent of the population lived outside of Freetown, 79 percent lived outside of Western area (Freetown and Western Area Rural district), and 71 percent lived outside of Western area and the four major urban areas (Kenema, Koidu, Makeni, Bo) (GoRSL SSL, 2016)—implying that the vast majority of Sierra Leonean citizens continue to live in areas effectively controlled by chiefs.

76 FRE120

77 KAI183

78 FRE120

79 For example, FRE3.4 described how PCs blocked property tax in Kenema for two years.

80 Described by KON265

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This blocking happens through several mechanisms. For one, using their influence over local subjects, chiefs encourage taxpayers to refuse tax payment.81 I witnessed chiefs publicly refusing to pay their own property tax—and in areas where property tax had not yet even been introduced, promising to never pay it—with broader effects on compliance. While only 2 percent of survey respondents reported having had their chief advise them to not pay a government tax, these responses were primarily concentrated in just one chiefdom—with 15 percent of respondents in Mongo chiefdom having had such advice from the chief.82 Critically, of those that had received such advice from the chief, 88 percent reported that they complied and refused to pay the tax to the government. Further, chiefs may actively assist taxpayers in evading government tax. In some areas, taxpayers recounted that in times when they’re unable to pay, they could run from government tax collectors and “hide” in chiefs’ compound to evade them. As explained by a central government official responsible for overseeing local councils, it happens that “when councils are coming to collect [taxes], chiefs will warn people, tell them that they’re [council collectors] are coming for two days, and those people will go underground during these days”, describing this as “some sort of sabotage from chiefdoms”.83 There is likewise evidence that chiefs in diamondiferous areas, including Kono, assisted mining companies in evading government regulation and taxes in exchange for compensation by the companies (e.g. Frankfurter et al., 2018)—a fact lamented by local government officials in this district.84 Moreover, chiefs may simply refuse to facilitate state taxation, by limiting access to chiefdoms and withholding information about

81 KAI179

82 In this case, resistance was based in conflict over local chieftaincy elections, critical in the period prior to de- amalgamation. While resistance in this case thus did not reflect anti-state sentiment or a conflict over local sovereignty, this concentrated example of chiefdom resistance to government taxation is indicative of chiefs’ capacity to influence taxpayers and encourage them to evade government tax to support their objectives.

83 FRE1

84 KON265

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populations.85 In some areas of Koinadugu, local government officials explained that it is Chiefdom Treasury Clerks that have prevented government access to local areas, thereby limiting the potential effectiveness of property tax implementation.86

Second, the hierarchical structure of chieftaincies provides logistical capacity that enables efficient tax collection in rural areas. This organisational structure delegates responsibility for registering taxpayers and collecting revenues (Photo 3). At the bottom, each chiefdom councillor is responsible for only 19 other taxpayers.87 These councillors are accountable for the tax liabilities of these 19 individuals, with reports of PCs imprisoning councillors—and even town chiefs—for not submitting tax revenues over which they are responsible. More commonly, where chiefdom councillors are not able to collect taxes, they cover the revenues themselves. As explained by a chiefdom councillor, “at times, it’s us that pay... out of pocket [for other taxpayers]... Like last year, out of 19 people... I think about only six or seven were able to pay. I paid the rest.”88 This system of accountability for tax revenues, though with its own issues related to local politicisation,89 is almost unimaginable through the state bureaucracy. Moreover, this hierarchy enables knowledge of local populations that is essential for taxation, as well as broader state control (Chapter 5).90

85 The importance of PC cooperation for DC access to chiefdom territory was explained, among others, by KOI260, KON260, FRE3.1, FRE1, KAI268.

86 KOI127

87 Chiefdom councillors were formally known, and continue to be colloquially known, as tribal authorities or TAs. Chiefdom councillors, who must pay local tax in order to be eligible for their position, are the only voters in paramount chiefdom elections (GoRSL, 2009a)

88 LUA 189

89 Local tax revenues are important to chiefdom elections and governance; accordingly, there are incentives for local chiefs to create fraudulent lists of eligible taxpayers in order to get more chiefdom councillors (Fanthorpe, 2004). Because of their politicized nature, there is thus the possibility that tax revenues are being collecting inaccurately—though the revenues are collected, whether or not the taxpayer exists.

90 FRE3.4 There is growing evidence that local communities have more and better information about individual incomes than the state (Alatas et al., 2012; Alderman, 2002). This logic parallels evidence from informal insurance and credit markets, which finds that where information is better, individuals are better able to

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Photo 3: CCAC distributing local tax “books” to sub-chiefs

Source: Author photo, Kono district, 2017

Third, chiefs’ local legitimacy make them more effective at levying taxes than the state.91 Subjects comply with chiefly orders; for example, a local government official explained “taxpayers won’t resist to [pay to] the PC, even for property tax [which they disagree with]”,92 while another official noted that “no one will dare say [critical] things to the PCs.”93

enforce sanctions for loan defaults (Banerjee & Newman, 1998; Besley & Coate, 1995; Ghatak, 1999; Townsend, 1995).

91 This is despite the reality that chiefs’ power over their subjects has diminished over time as a result of colonial rule, the consolidation of the modern state, and popular questioning of chiefs’ legitimacy, as well as patterns of economic development and urbanisation that weakened the link between traditional rulers and their subjects (Dorjahn, 1960; Finnegan, 1965; Finnegan & Murray, 1970; Little, 1951, pp. 175–215; Wigmore, 2015). Indeed, colonial rule meant that chiefs largely answered to the British rather than their people (Alie, 1990, p. 143; M. N.-A. Conteh, 2013, p. 18; see also Abraham, 2002), while there is ample evidence that during the colonial era chiefs were crowned by the colonial authority according to their willingness to cooperate with the colonial state, rather than on the basis of pre-existing rights to local authority (Abraham, 1978; Alie, 1990, pp. 142–143; Barrows, 1976, pp. 79–82; L. R. Day, 1994; Fanthorpe, 1998, p. 559; Grace, 1975; Little, 1951, pp. 176–179; Wylie, 1977). This effect was tempered by the fact that “the colonial state allowed chiefs, headmen and elders to define a customary law that asserted and legitimated their power and control over the allocation of resource against the interests of juniors, women and migrants” (Berman, 1998, p. 321). Further, however, leading up to and during the civil war, chiefs in some areas were accused of corruption or collusion with rebels (Archibald & Richards, 2002a, 2002b; Fanthorpe, 2003, 2005; Humanitarian Accountability Project, 2002; Richards, 2004, 2005; Richards et al., 2004). In the post-war period, citizens have at times questioned chiefs’ legitimacy and right to rule, while others have called for institutional reform, including an expanded franchise for chieftaincy elections.

92 KOI261

93 KON265

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This legitimacy stems from multiple sources. For one, chiefs hold significant popular respect as the guardians of custom and tradition—even where that “tradition” was shaped and manipulated by colonial interests. In some areas, they also play important roles in secret societies; for example, in Kailahun district the PC is automatically the head of the Poro society, responsible for authorising all initiation rites as well as regulating socioeconomic and political practices (Christensen, 2012, pp. 70–71; Fanthorpe, 2007, p. 10). This role facilitates tax collection;94 while the connection to spiritual beliefs means that PCs “can instil fear in subjects”.95 In short, “people don’t joke with their paramount chiefs.”96

Further, chiefs’ local authority is well-entrenched because of the critical role they play in securing land and local citizenship rights (Fanthorpe, 1998, 2001; Richards, 2003). Indeed, chiefs determine “native” status, which confers chiefdom citizenship (Toboku-Metzger & van der Laan, 1981, p. 30) and determines an individual’s ability to vote in chiefdom elections, secure land and mining rights, and have disputes settled (P. Jackson, 2005, p. 53). At the same time, chiefs maintain an important role in social welfare provision, often providing the social safety net that is not provided by the state.97 Indeed citizens widely explained that their willingness to pay taxes to chiefs was linked to chiefdom-based citizenship and rights.98 This role in managing access to citizenship, land, legal and political representation, and social welfare has conferred chiefs with a strong local taxing authority, embedded in a reciprocal

94 The importance of these societies to taxation is described by Christensen (2012, pp. 70–71) who explains that government tax collectors are unable to do their job in certain areas, including Kailahun, unless they belong to the Poro society. This is necessary in order to be seen not as “strangers” but to be fully included in Mende society and seen as a “citizen” of Kailahun, which can reduce taxpayer resistance. It is also relevant for practical reasons, including mobility. For instance, when the Poro devil comes out in ceremonies, the uninitiated have to stay away or indoors.

95 KON50.2

96 KOI130

97 Examples of social welfare observed in my time in chiefdoms’ quarters, while also being confirmed by interviewees, including MAN110, MAN102.

98 Expressed widely including, for example, KAS49, KAS50, KON52, GBE44, KASFG1, GBEFG1.

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relationship with citizens (see e.g. Njoh, 2003).99 Chiefs’ authority remains important for the majority of the population, with PCs “the number one person” outside of Freetown,100 remaining “closely involved in almost every aspect of everyday governance in rural areas” (Fanthorpe, 2005, p. 28).

In line with their importance at the local level, citizens have more positive perspective of chiefs’ right to collect taxes relative to the state (Figure 28). Many citizens describing a willingness to pay because of chiefs’ proximity to and engagement with people (Figure 29),101 with citizens “more answerable to local authorities [chiefs]… than council”.102 As noted by a local government official, “People believe PCs, [and] have high respect for them”, leading to “high cooperation by people.”103 Accordingly, a central government official noted that, “in this country [PCs] are very powerful... more than the councils”.104

99 Nevertheless, chiefs’ tax authority should not be romanticized. For instance, it is notable that the non- response rate is significantly higher when asking about trust in the PC, which is in line with field observations of a reticence to speak poorly “on the record” of the PC in certain areas. This implies that while some of the taxing authority of chiefs may be based in more positive perceptions of the fiscal contract between states and citizens, some of their authority is also based in their coercive power, stemming from their cultural authority as well as their power to distribute citizenship and land rights. While citizens often describe a willingness to make contributions to their chiefs, the distinction between voluntary and compulsory contributions is often unclear (see e.g. van den Boogaard et al., 2019; Wiemers, 2017). Koter (2013, p. 193) likewise describes how the relationship between local leaders and their dependents in weak states can be “based both on reciprocity and on some degree of exploitation”.

100 KAI181.3

101 MONFG2

102 KAI96.1

103 KOI34.2

104 FRE3.1

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Figure 28: Right to tax: The state versus the chieftaincy

Please tell me whether you agree or disagree that the following actors always have the right to collect taxes from citizens. 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Central government (N 866) Local government (N 883) Paramount chief (N 923) Section chief (N 926)

Strongly disagree Disagree Neither agree nor disagree Agree Strongly agree

Figure 29: Proportion of citizens that engaged with public authorities in the past year105

100

60 Percent 40

0 Central government representative Local government ofﬁcial Ward Development Committee representative Paramount chief Paramount chief representative Subordinate chief

4.1.2 Working with the grain of local political realities

Local governments thus “depend on chiefs for part of their governing capacity, making them more willing to make concessions, in the form of mediated tax collection and revenue sharing. Recognising that councils “cannot reduce their [chiefs’] power”, they know that they “need to work with chiefs, or they [chiefs] will become stubborn and defiant.”106 Though “the statute gives the authority [to collect] to the DC”, some councils have accepted less than total

105 “Can you tell me whether you’ve done any of the following in the past year? Had any interaction with [actor], for instance, in attending a meeting, asking a question, paying a tax, or obtaining a document or approval.”

106 KOI241

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authority,107 resulting in what some have described as “a win-win situation.”108 As described by the Director of Fambul Tok, one of the NGOs that facilitated the agreements, “The law says that the DC should get 100 percent [of revenues]. But this is not practical. The DC is not able to collect 10 percent, so why not get 60 percent [giving 40 percent to chiefs]?... [It’s] technically illegal, but it works.”109 Similarly, a central government official that oversees local governments, stated, “Forget about what the law will be saying, this is about relationships…[it’s] not necessary that [the] MoUs are in line with [the] law.”110 He saw the arrangement as ultimately “a really positive thing”, allowing for greater state collection and revenues, while seeing the disadvantage—sharing revenues with chiefs—as an unfortunate but necessary “cost of doing business.”111

The importance of accepting the reality of incomplete state control and the necessity of making concessions to chiefs is evident through within- and across-case analysis. Critically, where local governments were less willing to concede revenues, the agreements have been less effective and sustainable. Ultimately, though political leadership need be sufficiently unconstrained by chiefs so as to be able to take back some control over revenues, in the context of Sierra Leone they ironically have to pander to them to some degree, given that the DCs ultimately still depend on chiefdom authorities.

In Kailahun, for example, the shift between a failed agreement in 2017 and a negotiated agreement in 2018 can in part be explained by a change of local leadership that reflected

107 KOI261

108 KOI127. A local government official describes the compromise thusly, “they [chiefs] have been collecting for so long—we can’t just come in and…say, we’re collecting this now. So, we say, okay, we’re collecting, but we give you half [of revenues]” (KOI261). Others described the concessions as “show[ing] that you appreciate them [chiefs]” (FRE3.3).

109 FRE111.1

110 FRE3.4. He also stated that, “There is something in black and white—a regulation passed in Parliament—it has not been adhered to… what has been adhered to is what me and you agreed on” (FRE3.3).

111 FRE3.3 He also noted that, “If that is the only way we can get the PCs and the local councils to work as a team, for me I’m indifferent” to the cost and informality.

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greater willingness to make concessions to PCs and, unsurprisingly, a greater willingness of PCs to cooperate. While Bonapha, the DCC from 2012–2017, had been committed to working with the chiefs, he was ultimately unable to win sufficient support from the chiefs. While Bonapha asserted control, he failed to implement the 2017 agreement as he was too independent from chiefs. A lawyer with multiple post-graduate degrees and someone with a self-described “informed background” and a strong belief in the “modern” institutions of government, Bonapha already felt like he was conceding what was rightfully the DC’s by facilitating an agreement to share 40 percent of district revenues with chiefs.112 He was initially sceptical and reluctant to concede, though he explained, “I compromise[d] my stance… I cannot follow [the] law by the letter…[There] will always be impasses if you follow the law, so I chose to be reconciliatory, to shift [the] goal posts.”113

The PCs, however, wanted a greater percentage of revenues to be given directly to them as a “bonus” for supervising collection. This “bonus” lacked transparency, with no limitations of how the revenue could be used.114 Bonapha, with the support of civil society mediators, could not agree to this.115 These bonuses were not included in the 2017 agreement—which the chiefs subsequently did not implement.116 Chiefs explained that they did not want to help the council because they felt excluded and disrespected, and would therefore undermine the process.117 The PCs saw the DCC as “a small boy” and they “felt that he shouldn’t dictate to

112 As he described, “I compromise my stance because… whilst it is true that you would use your informed background to influence development, you also use the local lens to be able to interact with people…. Other have not succeeded in this because they are using the statute [e.g. going by the law, which says that councils should collect revenues]” ( KAI183).

113 KAI183

114 KON263

115 FRE111.1, KAI183.1, KAI183.2

116 KAI89.2

117 LUA197. This view that chiefs did not respect Bonapha was widely acknowledged, including by Bonapha himself (KAI183, LUA197, KAI89.4, by KAI268, KAI267).

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them”.118 They stopped cooperating as a way “to send a message to council”, blocking state revenue collectors from their chiefdom and failing to prevent people within their communities from evading taxes (for example, by cutting timber at night to avoid DC and Ministry tax collectors).119 Moreover, chiefs were widely seen as decisive in ensuring that Bonapha and the majority of district councillors were not re-elected in 2018. According to a third-term councillor that managed to keep his seat, “Because chiefs weren’t working hand in hand with the council, they talked to their people to tell them that the political system wasn’t working—chiefs influenced the local elections, had role in changing councillors.”120 Thus, he described the new council as the “chiefs’ own government”.121

The newly-elected DCC—elected with the support of chiefs—demonstrated a greater willingness to concede authority and revenues to chiefs. Sahr A.K. Lamin, the new DCC, explained, “I have recognition and respect for PCs in their own communities. This was missing previously… Above all, PCs have to be respected. Chiefs are for life, I’m just for a term.”122 Renewing negotiations with the chiefs, Lamin ceded a quarter of all district revenues directly to PCs and treasury clerks as their bonuses, or their “special quota” for “supervising”—or simply allowing—tax collection in their chiefdoms.123 With these financial incentives, chiefs began to cooperate and enforce the agreement, checking up on collectors to ensure revenue was coming in because, as the local Finance Officer claims, “these chiefs need the money, so they’re not relenting now.”124 Moreover, while the new agreement gave

118 KAI179.

119 LUA197

120 KAI267

121 KAI267

122 Kai266

123 KAI179

124 KAI268 Notably, other describe that chiefs also perceived the new council as more transparent and trustworthy. Greater communication was opened between the two parties, with quarterly meetings to discuss the amounts of revenue collection and to fairly split the money (KAI89.4).

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the DC control over 70 percent of revenues, 50 percent of these are earmarked to be spent in the chiefdoms where they are collected, with chiefs deciding what development projects will be undertaken.125 Evidently, this limits the fungibility of local government revenues and, correspondingly, the DC’s autonomy and decision making over questions of development and redistribution. Nevertheless, it was seen as a necessary concession in order to ensure chiefdom cooperation.126

Similarly, a greater willingness of the DCC in Koinadugu to make concessions to chiefs in 2018 compared to the previous year made the agreement more effective. The Koinadugu DC went from conceding 40 percent of revenues to chiefdom administrations in 2017 to 50 percent in 2018, with a further commitment that the 50 percent of revenues going to the DC will be reinvested back in chiefdoms through development projects.127 Making these concessions was described as necessary to the agreement being accepted, with it necessary for the DCC to show “greater respect for PCs”, to “see” them not as rivals, but as partners,”128 and to put his ego aside to ensure chiefs that “we’re servants of chiefs”129. Illustrating the importance of these concessions, in the chiefdoms that have not yet signed the agreement or are not cooperating with the DC, part of chiefly reticence is reportedly related to a desire for greater revenues. Indeed, as the Deputy Chairman describes, giving the chiefs 50 percent is a “concession for council—especially because development is the responsibility of the council”, though some chiefs want even more, demanding 60 percent for themselves.130

125 KAI174, KAI266

126 For example, the PC of Kamara explained his refusal to pay property tax by questioning, “Why should I pay? What are you [the local council] doing for us?” (cited in van den Boogaard et al., 2019).

127 KOI260

128 KOI129

129 KOI130

130 KOI258

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Meanwhile, the 10 percent “bonus” given to PCs in Kono was said to be what initially “cleared competition”.131 Indeed, observers noted that Kono chiefs initially agreed to the MoU for the

“personal gains for PCs, no more.”132 Highlighting the importance of revenues for chiefs, the CA noted that previous arrangements had been working, with chiefs cooperating

because they know that at the end of the day, they are having a percentage…it has been somehow easier for us… to go to the chiefdoms and collect revenues… But in districts where the district council is collecting revenue and the chiefdom is not getting anything, everyday there will be problems.133

However, the agreement quickly fell apart, with some chiefs feeling “that too much was given to the council”.134 At the same time, some chiefs reported being unsatisfied with the requirement that they submit a request to the DC, justifying how they would use the money, in order to have their funds released.135 Accordingly, the chiefs stopped cooperating with the DC. While the DC continued to assert control, moving ahead with tax collection independently of the chiefs, it is unlikely that it will have much success, given the continued dynamics of dependence on chiefs.

These cases highlight the importance of recognising politics as they are, which, in this case, involves giving sufficient revenues to chiefs. To some degree, the need for revenues drove chiefs’ willingness to accept deals. In coming to agreements, many observers claimed that chiefs were primarily focused on gaining revenue, rather than superseding the authority of the DC. Indeed, Kailahun DCC Bonapha concluded that “power was not their [chiefs’] interest, only money.”136

131 KON69.1, KON263

132 KON50.2b

133 KON207

134 KON265. It is possible that this resulted from the Kono PCs learning of the larger concession that PCs received in Kailahun.

135 KON60.2, KON607

136 KAI183

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4.2 Balance of power in favour of local governments

In addition to the willingness to accept a lack of full control, the effectiveness of agreements was strengthened by a changing balance of power in favour of local governments. As noted, one of the central issues in the conflict between chiefs and local governments has centred around the question of who the local sovereign is—who is the “highest political authority” at the local level. This struggle manifests through competition between the DO, the central government representative in the district and the “boss” of chiefs, and the DCC. Local government officials widely saw the government’s reintroduction of DOs in 2008 as creating confusion over who is the top government authority at the local level, creating “tension with councils over who is in charge.”137 Indeed, the Director of Fambul Tok described the conflict and breakdown of negotiations as an “a problem of ego” between the DCC and the DO, the representative of chiefs—a struggle to determine who is the “first gentleman” in the district.138 Critically, in the two districts where a negotiated settlement was reached, it was only after the central government reinforced and reaffirmed the authority of the local government that agreements were possible. In these districts, the central government decreased chiefs’ political autonomy in relation to the state, reinforcing that they are “enveloped” by the state (Ray, 1996), rather than parallel or superior to it. By contrast, where the central government has not played this reaffirming role, negotiations have been less effective and sustainable.

In Kailahun, for example, a key difference between the failed agreement of 2017 and the successful agreement of 2018 was that the confusion over who is the highest local authority had been settled by the newly elected SLPP administration. In 2017, the CCAC claimed that chiefs could not cooperate with the initial agreement because they did not agree that the DC was the “highest political authority”,139 while a chiefdom speaker explained the relationship remained “sour” after the initial MoU because the DCC “parade[d] himself as the first

137 FRE2, KOI260, FRE3.1, KAI189.1

138 FRE111.1, FRE111.3

139 KAI174

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gentleman in the district”.140 Similarly, the DCC argued that with the initial agreement the

“central government did not do much” to reinforce the authority of the council.141

With the new administration in 2018, however, this dynamic changed in some parts of the country. Indeed, while it is widely considered that the previous APC had been intent on centralising power,142 the SLPP government made initial steps indicating support for decentralisation.143 Critically, on his first visit to Kailahun district, the president visited the DCC first—rather than the DO, as previous presidents had done. This relatively small and symbolic move proved critical in shifting the dynamic of the relationship. Through the simple act of a visit, “State House has already made it [who is in charge] more clear.”144 The DCC describes that, now the “relationship with [the] DO is cordial—before the idea of supremacy [over authority] was there. He now respects that I am the central authority. Before, he talked like he was the ‘first gentleman’…[and] undermined the council.”145

Likewise, in Koinadugu, support from the central government was described as decisive to reinforcing the authority of the council and giving force to the agreement. As described by a Fambul Tok representative in the district, the Minister “is the boss of the DCs and the PCs— she has the moral weight to enforce [the agreement]. In some areas, the previous Minister

140 LUA197

141 KAI183

142 E.g. KOI259, FRE10, FRE3.2

143 The former DCC of Kailahun is now the Director of the Decentralisation Secretariat. Perhaps coloured by his failed experience in Kailahun, but with political support from the president, the Decentralisation Secretariat has committed to revising the LGA and revenue acts to give greater clarity about local authority divisions, empowering DCs and give them greater independence by making “fiscal decentralisation complete”, clearly giving “revenue functions to councils”, devolving the remaining functions to council, improving conditions for council employees, fixing issues with intragovernmental transfers, and reviving development block grants to council. The Director noted that while making clear that chiefs should be key partners in development—though under the authority of DCs (KAI183.2).

144 KAI266

145 KAI266

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was part of the problem [as he created confusion over who was in charge at the local level].”146 With the Minister “wholeheartedly supportive”,147 the power of the DC was reinforced, making the agreement possible. As described by the DCC, now “chiefs cooperate because they see that councils are here to stay.”148

By contrast, in Kono district, where an agreement has failed to be implemented, the central government has not played a similar role in reaffirming the local government’s supremacy.149 In fact, it was the Senior DO (SDO), the central government representative in the district, that played a major role in undermining the MoU and fomenting chiefs to not cooperate with it. Indeed, after he was appointed, the SDO took a “familiarisation” tour of all 14 chiefdoms, meeting with chiefs, hosting public meetings, and even going on radio to go “against the DC”,150 telling people that the “DC did not have the right to collect [taxes]”.151 He waged a “misinformation campaign”, convincing chiefs that he was right by holding up a 2002 policy, which had been nullified by the 2004 LGA.152 The SDO was against the MoU because he saw it as giving away revenues that belong to chiefs, so he made an effort to reverse it, telling chiefs not to cooperate and not to pay the local tax precept.153 Likewise, the CCAC decried the agreement as “not a good thing”, and something that will weaken the

146 KOI129

147 KOI260

148 KOI260

149 It is possible, though unconfirmed, that the state has failed to play such a role in Kono because it is a swing district, where the government relies on chiefs as electoral brokers to a greater extent than elsewhere in the country.

150 KON264

151 KON263

152 KON263

153 KON50.2b, KON265

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chiefdom administration.154 While KoCEPO, the NGO involved in the initial negotiations, got involved in an attempt to counter the misinformation spread by the SDO,155 it was likewise true that some chiefs took what he said seriously, “as he’s their boss”, representing the central government.156 Accordingly, chiefs in Kono district retained autonomy, making them less likely to cooperate with the local government, ultimately leading to a competitive stalemate.

5 Conclusion

While the Sierra Leonean state has a long history of making concessions to chiefs and coexisting with their informal taxing authority, in recent years local governments have attempted to assert control over formal local revenues controlled by chiefs. They have wanted to do so because of the revenue pressures they face, which threaten their governing legitimacy, and because of the threat chiefs pose to local sovereignty and governing authority. Not all local governments, however, have been able to assert control. Analysis of three sub-national case studies show that state control was predicated on a combination of increasing pressure to regain control of local revenues from the actors upon which local governments rely, facilitation and additional pressure from civil society actors, and leadership that was relatively independent from chiefs for their authority. Together, this enabled local governments to have a degree of governing authority independent of chiefs, with fewer constraints on their governing capacity to take control over revenues.

While these cases show that while certain conditions may be necessary for the state to assert control, they are insufficient to explain when state control will be effective. Indeed, the case studies make clear that taking full control over revenues or authority is challenging without a decisive shift in local governance constraints. Ultimately, local governments still depend on chiefs administratively and were thus only able to take back a mediated form of state

154 KON50.2b

155 KON263

156 KON264

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control. Rather than taking back all formal revenues from chiefs, local governments engaged in negotiations with them with the goal of sharing revenues with them. Given the continued strength of chiefs at the local level, negotiated settlements and hybrid arrangements have only been effective where local government leaders have accepted and worked with local political realities, rather than trying to change them. The hybrid revenue collection and sharing arrangements that result reflect what Fregonese (2012, p. 658) describes as “cross- contamination” where “the state and non-state actor become difficult to distinguish and, instead, new entities are produced” (see also Meagher, 2012; Roitman, 2005). Moreover, we see that the balance of power between the local governments and chiefs—bolstered by the central government’s reinforcement of local government authority—strengthened the effectiveness of the agreements. Having thus considered how and when the state coexists with and asserts control over divergent IRG, the next section considers state strategies towards convergent IRG. How do our theoretical expectations of state engagement with IRG change when IRG converges, rather than diverges, with modern state institutions and objectives?

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Part III: Variation in formal–informal relationships: Case studies of convergent IRG

In low-income countries, convergent IRG is common given weak state service provision. Where there are fiscal and governance capacity constraints, individual citizens, households, and businesses often play an outsized role in the financing and delivery of security, primary health services, road maintenance, sanitation, and education. IRG may be in line with broad state developmental goals, supplementing poor state service provision and filling a gap in sectors where the state does not play an active role or in rural and “hard-to-reach” areas where state presence is limited. In this way, informal taxing actors act as co-financers and co-providers of central “state” activities. In the next two chapters, I explore how and why state strategies of engagement with convergent IRG vary. Chapter 7 considers a prototypical example of tacit state coexistence with convergent IRG—a supplementary formal–informal relationship. As with divergent IRG (Chapter 5), I show that state coexistence emerges where the state depends on informal taxing actors for some degree of its governing authority. Also aligned with the analysis of divergent IRG (Chapter 6), Chapter 8 then explores when the state is able to break free of this dependence in order to take control of convergent IRG—an assertive formal–informal relationship—illustrating that mediated outcomes of control may be more likely than total control in practice given the state’s underlying fiscal and capacity constraints. Together, these chapters trace and explain shifts in state strategies and shed light on the apparent puzzle of why states coexist and work with IRG, contrary to our expectations.

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Chapter 7: Supplementary formal-informal outcomes: State dependence and the co-provision of public goods

Got we nay yu gɛt fɔ tot, no sidɔm i lɛdɔm na pɔtɔpɔtɔ.1

Krio proverb

1 Literally meaning “Don’t let the goat you have to carry on your back sit down and wallow in the mud,” or “Take responsibility for your own patch.”

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Following a fiscal crisis in the 1970s, Mobutu Sese Seko infamously encouraged Zairiean state agents to “to steal cleverly, in a nice way” (“yibana mayele”) in order to self-fund the salaries the ailing state had stopped paying (Gould, 1980, p. xiii). This prominent state encouragement of IRG led state agents to justify illegal extraction to taxpayers through reference to Article 15, a fictitious constitutional clause that instructed state authorities to “fend for themselves” or “débrouillez-vous pour vivre” (see e.g. Baudoin, 2018; Kallé & Empire Bakuba, 1985; Nkuku & Titeca, 2018; Titeca & Nkuku, 2018).2 While this represents a quite extreme example of explicit state coexistence with IRG, more tacit state coexistence with IRG is prevalent across low-income countries. In contexts of weak state capacity and fiscal constraints, convergent IRG reflects a form of co-production, where citizens “augment or contribute to the actions of public agencies and invoke conjoint behaviour” (Joshi & Moore, 2004, p. 47; see also Pammer, 1992), reflecting what Post et al. (2017, p. 955) describe as the “supplemented state” model of hybrid service delivery.3 This co-provision of public goods and services may be led by state or non-state actors. For example, Ferme (1998, p. 564) describes how in the years prior to the outbreak of civil war, employees of the Sierra Leonean Public Works Department financed road maintenance by levying informal taxes on motorists at a checkpoint on the road.

What explains the state’s acceptance of IRG? In a classic model of statehood, the financing and delivery of essential public goods, like education, health, water, and security, is the responsibility of the state. In theory, the state should move to contain IRG, even where IRG converges with state interests and does not threaten state institutions. However, the state often coexists with convergent IRG in practice, effectively ceding some of its responsibility

2 As explained by Kisangani (2016a, p. 76), Article 15 refers to a “fictitious clause in the 1960 constitution of the [unrecognised] seceded [state of] Sud-Kasaï” .

3 While the co-production literature often looks at the role of citizens’ time, actions, knowledge, and participation in the delivery and shaping of public goods, it less commonly considers the role of citizens and non-state actors in financing the goods (Ahlbrandt Jr and Sumka 1983; Brudney 1985; Brudney and England 1983; Ferris 1984; Joshi and Moore 2004; Levine and Fisher 1984; Parks et al. 1981; Rich 1981; Sundeed 1985; Warren, Rosentraub, and Harlow 1984). By explicitly assessing the role of financing, focusing on co-provision rather than strictly on co-production, I offer new insights into the relationship between formal and informal institutions and the conditions under which controlling and coexistent outcomes may emerge.

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for financing and delivering essential public goods. While often assumed to be conflict with each other, under certain conditions formal and informal actors can coexist, working together—if not always in a unified or coordinated manner. Indeed, informal taxing actors may supplement the state and reinforce state authority—at least in the short-run. I refer to this outcome of coexistence as a supplementary relationship between the state and convergent IRG.

This outcome can be understood through the state’s governing constraints, with it depending on informal financing to deliver essential goods that are central to its governing legitimacy (Table 9). This dependence may emerge as a result of fiscal or capacity constraints, with informal taxing actors supporting the provision of local public goods and development outcomes in line with state objectives. The convergent nature of IRG means that informal taxing actors pose little threat to the state, as a result of a lack of desire or possibility for the informal actor to take a more autonomous or competitive role in service provision or governance. Accordingly, the incentive for the state to take over IRG is further tempered.

Table 9: Supplementary informal–informal relationship

Formal/ informal Formal/ informal objectives objectives diverge converge

State Competitive Formalized controls on informal actor on informal State Concessionary Supplementary coexists Increasing dependence of the state dependenceIncreasing of the state

In Mobutu’s Zaïre, now the DRC, the central state depended on “street-level bureaucrats” (Lipsky, 1980) and administrators to reinforce its authority and ensure stability and control over the population, though unable to pay the salaries of public servants. By the 1970s, an economic crisis that made it rare for state administrators to receive their salaries or “frais de fonctionnement” (spending budgets) (Kisangani, 2016a, p. 76). In this context of fiscal constraint, the state permitted and even encouraged state agents to levy informal taxes in

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order to supplement state salaries. Counterintuitively, this reinforced state authority: because state agents relied upon the veneer of state authority (manifested through uniforms and identity badges) to extract from citizens, they were more likely to continue to reinforce the authority that enabled their ability to extract. While this helped the state maintain control and stability in the short-term, in the long-run it undermined the strength of its institutions, which continue to be weakened by illegal extraction justified by “Article 15”, with “each position in the state administration provid[ing] not only a wage, but also an opportunity for appropriation” (De Herdt et al., 2015, p. 49; see also De Herdt & Titeca, 2016; Titeca & De Herdt, 2011).

This example reflects a broader phenomenon common in weak institutional contexts: the state is unable to finance core public goods on its own or even with assistance from international donors. This leaves significant gaps for IRG to fill, both in supplementing state activities, infrastructure, and salaries, and in independently financing activities, infrastructures, and salaries in areas where the state is totally absent from service provision. In these contexts, where the state is unable to sufficiently fund public goods provision, there is often an unspoken understanding that, regardless of the law, decentralised IRG is necessary to help fund essential public goods, state activities, and the salaries of state employees. For example, in explaining the prevalence of IRG in northern Sierra Leone, a DO explained that “the services were lacking, that was why other service providers stepped in.”4 The state coexists with this IRG, not or not only because of an inability to control it. Rather, the state depends on IRG to deliver core public goods that are often central to political promises and the state’s governing legitimacy. As illustrated by the example of Zaïre, supplementary formal–informal relationships need not be productive for the state in the long-term, though they may be part of a state’s short-term strategy to reinforce its authority.

Reflecting this pattern in Sierra Leone, though education is a core duty of the state, public education is financed through both the formal government budget and informal contributions, taxes, and fees. This is a broader trend across low-income countries. Indeed,

4 KOI241

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“The issue in many countries is not an insufficient national effort on education spending but that a large part of that effort is by households” (UNESCO, 2015a, pp. 260–261). Government and international actors rely on the fact that citizens in low-income countries “are known to make voluntary contributions, consistently to the promotion of education, in kind and in money but not accounted for in official statistics” (Bartels, 1983, p. 57). In Sierra Leone, despite being officially opposed to informal actors and taxes in this sector, the state tacitly coexists with IRG to support education as a result of its fundamental dependence on non- state taxing actors to deliver education across the country, as well as its confidence that these actors do not seek to challenge the role of the state in public education. The state’s dependence on external donors who are normatively committed to universal fee-free education means that the state is unable to simply formalise IRG by taking over the collection and regulation of informal fees that citizens already pay. Because of the nature of its dual dependence on IRG and external donors, the financing of public education in Sierra Leone remains informal and decentralised, with negative outcomes for efficiency and equity. However, as IRG helps the state to deliver a core public good, it counterintuitively reinforces state authority in the short-term.

This case study is prototypical of broader trends of weak state engagement with IRG that supports essential public goods, including security, health care, sanitation, and water. It is a particularly illustrative example as the rights-based normative framework around universal free education is well-entrenched, having been central to post-World War Two international liberalism. This leaves the modern weak state, dependent on both IRG and international donors, in a precarious position, professing anti-corruption (e.g. anti-IRG) policies from one side of the mouth and tacitly accepting and relying on IRG for public goods provision from the other. This reflects a broader predicament of weak and “mediated” states that depend on multiple actors for their governing authority.

In this chapter I first describe the role of IRG in the provision of public primary education in Sierra Leone, detailing how informal financing supplements state service provision. I then consider the relationship between the state and informal taxing actors, showing that although the state officially sees these informal taxes as “illegal”, it coexists with them in

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practice. I show that this tacit coexistence can be explained by three key factors. First, the state relies on non-state actors to finance and deliver development outcomes upon which its governing legitimacy depends. At the same time, and critically, the authority of the state is not threatened by informal taxing actors in this space, given the relative lack of autonomy of the informal taxing actors. In effect, these actors do not challenge the authority or legitimacy of the state, instead serving to supplement state efforts, thereby reinforcing its authority. Finally, the state’s tacit coexistence, rather than sanction of IRG, can be understood through the state’s dependence on international donors that are committed to the norm of free universal education. Essentially, the state has to formally accept the principle of fee-free education, despite the reality that its budget cannot support such an outcome through formal channels.

1 Informal financing of public primary education in Sierra Leone

In contemporary Sierra Leone, public education is delivered by multiple actors in a hybrid model that has evolved since the nineteenth century, encompassing government, community, and private financing (Figure 30). Fifty-one percent of primary schools receive government financing, though these schools may be managed by the government, religious orders, private actors, or communities.5 Receiving government assistance means that the government pays for teachers’ salaries and provides a subsidy for each pupil (GoRSL MEST, 2012, p. 1; see also Bennell, 2004); critically, all government-assisted primary schools are prohibited from charging school fees, in line with commitments to free universal primary education (GoRSL, 2004c, sec. II, par. 3). Forty percent of primary schools, including those founded by communities, missions, or other actors, receive no government assistance, despite being designated as “public” by the government (GoRSL MEST, 2018b).6 Of this

5 Mission schools making up the largest number of schools and reaching the largest number of students (GoRSL MEST, 2018b). Community-managed schools are those that were started and built by communities, though now receive government funding.

6 These include schools that are owned by government and missions, as well as “community schools” that are built by and financed by communities without the support of government.

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group, 71 percent are not approved (i.e. not licensed or regulated) by the government, 16 percent have applied for and are pending government approval, and 13 percent are approved but still not receiving government funding (GoRSL MEST, 2018b). Lack of approval implies that schools “are not subject to quality control” or able to receive financial support from the government (Universalia, 2018, p. 54; see also GoRSL MEST, 2012).7 These unfunded schools are often the sole option for education in “up country” regions where public options are scarce or harder to access. As a result, I consider them as part of the “public” system of education, given that they fill a necessary gap in expanding the reach of education in the country. Finally, 9 percent of primary schools are categorised as “private.” These schools do not receive government funding and thus charge fees.8 As this category of schools falls outside of the “public” education system, I do not consider them, or the fees they charge, within my analysis.9

7 Efforts to bring unapproved schools nationwide under government control are underway, though as described by the government (GoRSL MEST, 2012, p. 7), “such has been the rate of growth in the number of schools started by communities that the GOSL is finding the absorption of them challenging”. For example, the post-Ebola Presidential Recovery Plan aimed to approve 500 schools by 2017 (GoRSL, 2016a), while the 2014- 2018 Education Sector Plan aimed to approve 1444 community schools by 2016 (GoRSL MEST, 2014). However, by 2017, only 81 new schools were approved, while another 371 schools had applied but were still awaiting a decision from the government (GoRSL MEST, 2017).

8 Though private schools are not directly subject to government policies on free education, the Education Act specifies that private schools “shall not frustrate the right to basic education […] by charging fees that are, in the opinion of the Minister, unreasonable” (GoRSL, 2004c, sec. II, par.3). However, as only 37 percent of private schools (with no government funding) are approved (GoRSL MEST, 2018b), it is unclear how the government could enforce this stipulation.

9 While both community-funded schools and private schools depend on local user fees to operate, private schools are often seen as a way of opting out of public education (e.g. Catterall, 1988; D. van de Walle, 1995), in contrast to community-funded schools, which want to be incorporated in the government system. At the same time, community-funded schools are often the only choice available, thus filling a gap left by the state and effectively serving as forms of supplementary finance to fund failing or absent public education. Indeed, 73 percent of private schools are located in Western area, where there are ample other schooling options available (GoRSL MEST, 2018b). In some areas private schools may also be the only option available. However, I do not consider them as part of the supplementary informal system, given the challenges of determining the reasons why people send their children to private school (i.e. because there is no public option or because it is perceived as a better option). For these reasons, I follow the government’s designation of private and public schools, even though “public” does not signify receiving government funding.

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Figure 30: Types of school funding (N 7002)

Private funding

Community funding

Public funding

Data source: (GoRSL MEST, 2018b)

To support this hybrid system of public education delivery in Sierra Leone, informal funding by parents and communities is essential. Public education is financed through a patchwork of the formal government budget and a system of informal taxes and fees, with the state effectively depending on households and non-state actors in some areas, at both government-assisted and community-financed schools. Households contribute to the financing of primary public education in a variety of ways, described below, with contributions organised and collected through PTAs, SMCs, mothers’ clubs, or school administrations, often with the enforcement backing of the local chief.10 Formal and informal contributions are roughly equal, with government funding per primary student estimated at USD 24,11 and informal contributions, including from labour, estimated at USD 25 (Figure

10 Sanctions are determined on a community basis, with variation in the severity of punishment and enforcement, though with the most common form of punishment being having the child “driven from school” (38 percent of survey respondents who reported making informal payments to access education (N 577) and who were asked about the likelihood of punishment for not paying the community teachers tax).

11 Government funding estimate is initial government funding per primary student in constant USD for 2017 in constant USD (UIS, n.d.). This figure excludes international transfers to government for education, when foreign donors provide education sector budget support or other support integrated in the government budget. Indicating that international funding is significant in addition to this government and community-based funding, the Global Partnership for Education estimates that the benchmark annual cost per child per year is USD 457 (in 2012 dollars) in a developing country (Global Partnership for Education, 2017; Universalia, 2018).

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31).12 While imperfect, this estimate illustrates the importance of informal financing in delivering “free” universal primary public education in Sierra Leone. To put these amounts in perspective, the most common formal tax paid, the local poll tax, is only USD 0.67 per adult annually, thus highlighting that informal contributions are a significant expense at an individual level and that informal contributions are effectively making up for limited formal tax efforts.

Figure 31: Estimated informal versus government annual expenditure per student for primary public education

Government funding

Informal school charges

Informal labour contributions Informal community teacher tax

Data source: (Author survey data (2017), Tooley & Longfield, 2013; UIS, n.d.)

Demonstrating their widespread prevalence, only 5 percent of respondents made no informal payments to access “free” public primary education (Figure 32). The state officially views such fees as antithetical to free universal education, though, taxpayers described it as

12 Informal school charges are estimated as the mean fee (SLL 49, 556 (USD 6.63)) paid across 322 government- assisted schools (Tooley & Longfield, 2013, p. 24). Annual informal labour contributions are estimated as the mean number of days contributed by survey respondents (11 days), with an estimated daily wage of SLL 10,000 (USD 1.34) in rural areas. Annual informal taxes for community teacher salaries are estimated as the mean payment (SLL 25,000 (USD 3.34) by survey respondents). This is a low estimate, as it does not account for the community-based costs of building and maintaining schools even though, as will be described, community schools are particularly prevalent in rural and remote areas. It does not take into account the “hidden costs” of education, including uniforms, transport, food, and supplies, which represent significant additional household burdens (e.g. Foko et al., 2012; Read, 2015; UNESCO, 2018).

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necessary that “we tax ourselves” to look after their community and educational needs.13 For a detailed breakdown of how IRG supplements the public school system, see Appendix 7.

Figure 32: Percent of households making informal payments for public primary school in the past year, by type of contribution

0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 Percent of respondents

Informal school fees Contributions for school improvements Contirbutions for school materials Labour for construction/ maintenance Community teachers tax Informal fees to teachers

Data source: Author’s survey (2017) 2 Tacit state coexistence with IRG to support the provision of education

Despite its prevalence and the correlation between a lack of government funding and IRG (see Appendix 7), the state officially opposes IRG that supports education. The state has consistently supported the ideal of universal free primary education, meaning the absence of formal school fees and state control of informal ones.14 The Education Act makes clear that “community schools”—that is, those that are built, managed, and financed by communities without government assistance or regulation—and the informal fees or contributions for primary public education are illegal (GoRSL, 2004c). The state describes unapproved and community schools—that is, those funded entirely by communities through IRG without the

13 KAS 141

14 There have been historical exceptions to this, with, for example, President Momoh (1985–1992) made a speech declaring that education is a privilege not a right, reinforcing the payment of school fees as a manifestation of the extreme patrimonial redistribution that ultimately led to the collapse of the state (Richards 1996, 36)

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support of the state—as “operating illegally” and as representing “a troubling and dangerous development” (GoRSL MEST, 2012, p. 10). When discussing the establishment of new schools without the support of the government, the state describes itself as “losing control” in a situation that requires “urgent action” (GoRSL MEST, 2012, p. 18).

Likewise, IRG within government-funded schools is officially condemned by the state. When queried by the press about informal contributions within primary schools, a state representative “condemned the act of illegal charges and cautioned school authorities involved in such illegal practice” (Bo District Deputy Director of Education cited in Kamara, 2016). Official state documents, including posters funded by donors, refer to informal fees as “bribes” that should not be paid (see e.g. Photo 4). Even where official government documents acknowledge that “schools continue to charge levies for various activities, including payment of community teachers [teachers whose salaries are funded through IRG] not included on the MEST [Ministry of Education, Science and Technology] payroll” (GoRSL MEST, 2018a, p. 26), the government has condemned informal fees as “increasing [the] cost of education” and contributing to the exclusion of children from education (GoRSL MEST, 2018a, pp. 26, 28).

Photo 4: State and donor perspective of informal taxes

Source: Author photo, Kono DC office, 26 February 2019

While the state’s official position is clear, in practice state representatives—ranging from “street-level bureaucrats” (Lipsky, 1980) and administrators to policymakers and former Cabinet members—hold more pragmatic positions on IRG for education. Illustratively, local government officials in Sierra Leone described informal payments as “illegal” but “very

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necessary in our communities” to meet the needs of the people.15 Government officials variously described IRG as “normal”, “help[ing] communities to be self-reliant”, and improving the communities “because it takes development where government cannot reach—especially [with respect to] the erection of community schools and the paying of teachers”.16 For his part, a World Bank consultant explained that “you might even accuse me of being a bit sort of ambivalent or even tolerant of corruption” and “illegal fees”.17

This pragmatic coexistence is officially reflected in various ways. For instance, the official government school census counts community-financed and unapproved schools and includes them when reporting the number of new schools built, reflecting a form of peaceful complementarity—and, perhaps, a desire to take credit for the work of community actors. Official reports and projections acknowledge that families with children in unapproved schools must pay informally for teachers’ salaries, and that additional informal fees are charged at approved, government-assisted schools (GoRSL MEST, 2018a, pp. 26, 28). In some instances, reliance on non-state actors has been formalised as part of government strategy. For example, the government introduced a twice-weekly national school feeding programme as part of the post-Ebola “President’s Recovery Priorities”, though in many places relied on communities to implement the programme, counting on communities to form groups of parents to organise cooking and to supply vegetables and rice.18 Though the state is officially trying to control IRG in the education sector, state officials and some state actions reflect tacit coexistence with it.

15 KOI242, also expressed by KOI241, KAI245.

16 KOI242.

17 FRE10

18 FRE246.

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3 Why does the state coexist with IRG?

Given the official condemnation of informal payments, why has the government unofficially accepted and coexisted with them in practice? Primarily, the state depends on informal financing and informal taxing actors to deliver essential public goods that are central to its governing legitimacy. At the same time, informal taxing actors do not pose a threat to state institutions. Though they operate outside of state institutions, they do not question the authority of the state to deliver education or challenge the state’s underlying regulatory framework. Indeed, unapproved community schools and community teachers are actively trying to formalise, wanting to be recognised by the government in order to receive funding. Finally, the state’s tacit coexistence with IRG—rather than explicit sanction of informal fees or formalisation of fees through the state—can be understood through its dependence on international donors and donors’ normative commitment to universal free education.

3.1 State dependence on IRG for public goods provision

Fundamentally, the Sierra Leonean state depends on informal public finance to deliver essential public goods to a broader population than the state could achieve on its own. To a significant extent, this is because the government struggles to effectively tax the income and assets of wealthier individuals and groups, thereby collecting insufficient revenue to fully finance public services. As such, the state depends on non-state taxing actors to deliver the public good of education, with the government effectively accepting the collection of supplementary funds locally in order to provide higher levels of service (Figure 33)—with distributional consequences.

Figure 33: Co-provision of public education

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Government-funded education • Poor quality schools • Absent/ overcrowded classrooms • High pupil-teacher ratios • Underpaid and Co-provisioned public unmotivated teachers education • School improvements • School expansions/ community-run schools • Community teachers supplementing government teachers • Government teachers closer IRG to a living wage • Contributions for general running costs, school improvements, community teachers' salaries, salary supplements for government teachers

The state has been consistently unable to finance education independently, even with the support of donors. Since World War Two and decolonisation across sub-Saharan Africa, national and international leaders and a growing epistemic community of education-focused development partners have called for universal compulsory education as a basic human right. Financing this ambitious goal has been a perennial struggle for the Sierra Leonean state. Sierra Leone has persistently underspent on education relative to what would be needed to provide universal primary education, despite both repeated state commitments to this goal and the devotion of a relatively large share of the government budget to education (Figure 34). The result is that informal fees to finance education have remained necessary and repeated attempts to abolish informal fees have failed, with fees quickly re- materialising as a result of the disconnect between overarching policy goals and fiscal realities.

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Figure 34: Government expenditure on education, 2000- 201719

0 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020

Target, as percent of GDP Target, as percent of total government expenditure Percent of GDP Percent of total government expenditure

Data source: (UIS, n.d.)

Public financing of education became “extremely difficult” following independence, exacerbated by a declining economy and an increasingly authoritarian government under Siaka Stevens (Paracka, 2003, p. 201). Facing major fiscal shortfalls, the Stevens administration scaled down the goal of universal education to a target of having 78 percent of seven year old children enter primary schools by 1970 (Stuart et al., 1976),20 while relying on school fees and the partial private funding of religious institutions to make up the gap (Ketkar, 1977, pp. 307–308). By the launch of the global “Education for All” movement in 1990, it was clear that the government would not be able to finance universal public education without unprecedented levels of foreign aid (Bartels, 1983).

19 Government expenditure on education includes expenditure funded by transfers from international sources to the government. The High Level Group on Education for All proposes spending targets on education between 4 to 6 percent of GNP, and between 15 and 20 percent of total government expenditures (UNESCO, 2006, 2007). By comparison, in 2012 North American and Western European countries spent a median of 6.0 of GNP and 12.5 percent of government expenditures on education (UNESCO, 2015b, p. 242).

20 The Stevens and subsequent Momoh administrations oversaw a largescale deterioration in public services and infrastructure. Keen (2005a, p. 27) describes, for instance, that from 1986–1987, the state spent more on debt serving than on its combined budget for health, education and other services (citing Bank of Sierra Leone, 1988, p. Table 14).

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Foreign funding, however, was scarce and the financing problem worsened considerably during the civil war from 1991 to 2002, which was itself partly caused by youth disenfranchisement and anger at poor public services, including the education system (Keen, 2002; Paintin, 2008; Richards, 1996; Wessells, 2005). The war increased overall institutional and infrastructural needs, displacing populations of teachers and students, devastating school infrastructure, and “weaken[ing] institutional capacity to manage the system” (World Bank, 2007a, p. 15; see also Rago, 2007; F. Thompson, 2010). Nevertheless, with the assistance of development partners, the post-war period saw concerted efforts at reconstruction, with education named as a national priority. Notwithstanding many institutional and financial constraints in 1999 the government abolished primary tuition fees, previously set at SLL 1500 (USD 0.96) per year,21 and enshrined within law a policy of six years of free primary education and three years of free secondary education (Bennell et al., 2004; E. Collier, 2016, p. 44; GoRSL, 2004c). With the promise of free education and the cessation of violence, primary and secondary enrolment rates more than doubled between 2001 and 2011, reflecting a spike in enrolment of over-aged students who were unable to attend school during the conflict (World Bank, 2007a), placing additional strain on the education system (Figure 35).22

Figure 35: Gross enrolment (left) and gross enrolment ratio (right), 1970 - 201723

21 USD exchange rate based on annual market average for 1998. The political motives behind this were clear, as the Kabbah administration sought to gain popular support in the post-war elections (Kandeh, 2003, p. 201).

22 Ample evidence shows that elimination of school fees leads to often drastic growth in gross enrolment (Al- Samarrai & Zaman, 2007; Bold et al., 2013; Deininger, 2003; Grogan, 2009; Lucas & Mbiti, 2012; Morgan et al., 2012; Nishimura et al., 2008; World Bank, 2018b).

23 Gross enrolment is defined as the number of students enrolled in a given level of education, regardless of age. Gross enrolment ratio (GER) is defined as the number of students enrolled in a given level of education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the official school-age population corresponding to the same level (UIS, n.d.). The GER can be over 100 percent as it includes students who may be older or younger than the official age group. At the end of the Sierra Leonean civil, the GER rose above 100 percent because of the late entry into school of individuals who had missed out on schooling during the conflict.

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End of civil war End of civil war 1,500,000 120

100 1,000,000

500,000 60 Gross enrolment, primary Gross enrolment, Gross enrolment ratio, primary (%) ratio, primary Gross enrolment

40 0 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Data source: (UIS, n.d.)

This created additional challenges for education delivery. While enrolment rapidly expanded, overall expenditures on education did not increase proportionately.24 This underfunding, coupled with the official ban on formal fees, pressured schools to find alternative ways of financing basic education. The fiscal situation worsened with the global financial crisis of 2008, leading to a decrease in aid and new austerity measures to control public sector spending (Jesse Griffiths & Todoulos, 2014; UNESCO, 2015b, pp. 250–251).

Nevertheless, the government reaffirmed its commitment to free universal primary education—though cutting expenditures on primary education from 10.28 to 7.49 percent of government expenditures (from 1.33 to 1.21 percent of GDP) inevitably meant that “fee- free” schooling did not materialise in practice (UIS, n.d.).25 The Ebola crisis of 2014 to 2016 put the government in further economic strain, impacting the education sector in particular as a result of donor funding being redirected to emergency humanitarian needs (GoRSL MEST, 2017; IMF, 2016; Universalia, 2018). At the same time, the global collapse in the price of iron ore, a key export commodity, led to a significant drop in GDP (Figure 36). The so- called “twin crisis” led to the depreciation of the Leone and a significant decrease in

24 The government was constrained by inadequate domestic revenues, while it could not simply expand a public deficit. For one, it had limited options for taking on debt, while international grants and loans came with conditions of reduced public sector spending (UNESCO, 2015b, p. 200; see also Verger et al., 2013).

25 Government expenditures are inclusive of transfers from international sources.

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government education expenditures in real terms, from 15 to 12 percent of government expenditures from 2014 to 2016 (UIS, n.d.).26

Figure 36: Sierra Leonean GDP, 1970-201727

Start of war End of war GFC Twin crisis 12

Constant LCU (trillions) LCU Constant 3

0 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Data source: (UIS, n.d.)

Donor funding recovered after 2016 in nominal terms (Universalia, 2018, p. 29); moreover, even with a slow economic recovery, government expenditures on education increased to 20 percent of government expenditure by 2017, reflecting refocused policy attention on education in the post-Ebola period.28 Despite this renewed attention, the high projected costs to meet such goals, continued increases in enrolment, and downward trends in global aid make clear that financing will continue to be a problem (UNESCO, 2015b, p. 296; Wils, 2015). Most critically for the government, donor funding of education is expected to decrease globally in real terms (UNESCO, 2015b, 2017a). The proportion of total global aid devoted to

26 Considering primary education alone, over the same period, government expenditures fell 1.15 to 1.09 percent of GDP and 6.5 to 4.45 percent of total government expenditures. Government expenditures are inclusive of transfers from international sources. The government pre-primary student budget, exclusive of on- budget international transfers for education, dropped to USD 24 by 2017, from a high of USD 38 in 2012 (UIS, n.d.).

27 “GFC” refers to global financial crisis; “Twin crisis” refers to the Ebola and financial crises.

28 In 2018, the newly-elected SLPP government focused on education as a key electoral promise, with commitments to remove all fees for pre-primary, primary and secondary education over five years, to waive fees for public examinations, to introduce free tuition for teacher education, to expand access to teacher training campuses, and to increase education expenditures to 20 percent of the budget.

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education fell from 10 to 7 percent from 2009 to 2015 (UNESCO, 2017a, p. 272), while many donor countries have reported future reductions in their levels of aid to education (UNESCO, 2015b, p. 207).

In the context of these public finance challenges, the state remains reliant on non-state actors for both the delivery and financing of primary public education. Consecutive governments have ostensibly tried but failed to ban IRG for education.29 With government-financed universal education a perennially “unattainable goal for Sierra Leone” (E. Collier, 2016, p. 15), the role of IRG has always been crucial in supplementing government efforts. The state relies on IRG to co-finance education in the case of state-provisioned schools and state- funded teachers and to fill gaps of education provision where the state has failed to provide education at all. The fact that the state counts community-built and -financed schools in its progress reports that are directed at donors implies that the state is benefitting from increases in numbers of schools and increasing enrolment figures, even when it does not fully finance these outcomes.

The centrality of education to its governing legitimacy increases the incentives of the state to coexist with IRG. Indeed, citizens view education as a core function of the state, central to its governing legitimacy. The vast majority of citizens explained that building schools and paying teachers is the responsibility of the state (Figure 37).30 When asked what they expect the state and the chieftaincy to do for citizens, 92 percent of respondents said that they expect the state to support the provision of education, while only 24 percent said the same for the chieftaincy. IRG thus not only supports the provision of public education; it also

29 While this failure to ban IRG is certainly related to the state’s financial crisis, some argue that state provision of free education is “a major instrument of patrimonial favour” (Richards, 1996, p. 23). That is, education is framed as a privilege, rather than a right—as President Momoh declared in the pre-civil war era—with the state’s payment of school fees part of the state’s “patrimonial redistribution” (Richards, 1996, p. 36).

30 Ninety-three percent of survey respondents believe that the central government should provide education, while the vast majority of respondents believe that it is the government’s responsibility to build schools and pay for teachers

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reinforces the state’s governing authority. By helping the state to deliver public goods in “hard-to-reach” areas, it also helps the state to fulfil political promises to constituencies.

Figure 37: Actors responsible for providing education31

Who is responsible for Who is responsible for building schools? paying teachers?

Central government Central government

Local government Local government

International actor/ NGO

Chieftaincy

Private actor/ company

Community association Chieftaincy

Other Other

0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100 Percent Percent

Data source: Author survey data 3.2 Relative lack of autonomy of informal taxing actors

Even where it depends on informal financing to reach development goals, the state may think twice about coexisting with IRG if it poses a threat to the state and its authority. Indeed, local actors may reject the state system of public education, particularly if they view it as replacing traditional education systems. In Sierra Leone, as primary education was left in the hands of chiefs until independence, it may be possible that traditional institutions want to retain control over educational outcomes in order to shape key messages and reinforce their local authority. At the same time, as the state system is a product of the antecedent religious and colonial educational institutions—designed with the explicit aims of religious conversion and subjugation—local rejection of the state system is plausible. In practice, however,

31 Respondents were asked, “Who do you think is primarily responsible for providing the following services/goods, or is responsible for providing the service/good in other areas if the service/good does not exist in this area?” Enumerators read aloud the different options available and respondents selected one response.

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informal taxing actors do not threaten the state—reflecting their lack of autonomy from the state—for three key reasons: (1) the modern system coexists with rather than substitutes for traditional forms of education; (2) resistance to the modern system is virtually non- existent on account of efforts to decolonise and institutionalise public education; and (3) possible alternative actors lack sustainable modes of self-financing, making greater autonomy unrealistic. Instead of threatening state authority, it may actually reinforce it. Indeed, despite contributing substantially through non-state channels to fund public education, the vast majority of citizens do not question the authority or responsibility of the state to lead education.

3.2.1 Coexistence of traditional and modern systems of education

Local resistance to state-based education may be more likely if local actors see it as replacing desirable education alternatives. In Sierra Leone, there is a long history of traditional education through cultural hunting or secret societies, which are deeply interwoven in cultural customs, politics, and religious beliefs (Chapter 3). In addition to the skills and morals passed through family, peers, and community members (e.g. Windham, 1968), so- called “bush schools” of secret societies oversee initiation rites that represent “the transition from childhood into adulthood”, spanning multiple ethnic groups, though without having a single central authority (K. H. B. Keefer, 2015, p. 118; see also E. Collier, 2016; Murphy, 1980; Fulton, 1972).

These systems of traditional education, however, have been weakened over years of “neglect and modernisation” (Y. Kanu, 2007, p. 66).32 While in pre-colonial times, these societies “were compulsory at the lowest level for both boys and girls, and were therefore a universal system of education” for those communities where they were customary (Coleson, 1955, p. 169; Corry, 1807, pp. 134, 137), education through traditional societies is no longer

32 While total assimilation of the “natives” was not the primary aim, as it was for French colonial education in West Africa, British efforts to provide “gradual means of developing a higher form of civilisation” (British Foreign Office, 1920, p. 8) occurred through the denigration of traditional beliefs and the of dismantling indigenous forms of education (Y. Kanu, 2007, p. 66).

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universal. Moreover, though they retain considerable influence in many parts of the country, these institutions coexist with the state system and are rarely seen as substitutes to “modern” education. Traditional systems of education are seen as a complement to state- based education, providing the moral guidance that is thought to be necessary to be a good community member, instilling individuals with the “[s]ocial customs, religious beliefs, cultural norms and civic duties” that will prepare them for “the conditions of traditional life” (E. Collier, 2016, p. 4). By contrast, state-based education is seen as necessary to succeed in “modern” life. Reflecting this complementarity, chiefs—who according to some traditions must be initiated within the secret society in order to be eligible to rule—are often significant supporters of public schools and the “modern” state system of education.

There are major exceptions to this coexistence. At times, the government has attempted to prevent certain communities from engaging in some secret society activities. However, this opposition has largely emerged when traditional societies go against international norms, as with female genital mutilation, which is traditionally part of the ritualised initiation ceremony, or when the societies otherwise serve as an obstacle to the international norm of universal education, as when initiation rites occur during the school year, resulting in increased absenteeism.33 Despite these conflicts, supporters of traditional education do not see it as a substitute for state-based education, but rather as a complement serving an alternative function to the state system.

3.2.2 Decolonisation and institutionalisation of the modern system

Resistance to state-based education may likewise be more likely if local actors see it as inconsistent with local values or as a tool of control. This was clearly the case with the antecedent religious and colonial systems of education that shaped the existing hybrid system. This includes the Islamic and Christian education systems, both of which had their central goal as conversion, rather than individual enlightenment or broader economic development (Ayandele, 1971; Bright et al., 1979; Butscher, 2000; E. Collier, 2016; E. H.

33 KAS36.1

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Frankema, 2012; Fyfe, 2013; Halstead, 2004; Hilgendorf, 2003; K. H. B. Keefer, 2015; Skinner, 1976, 1997; Stock, 1899; Sumner, 1963; Walls, 1970). Moreover, Christian missionary schools were deeply intertwined with the expansion of colonial power and subjugation, with education effectively handed to Christian missions as a means “to control social change” within the colony (GoRSL MEST, 2007, p. 5; see also Ayandele, 1971; Fyfe, 2013; Groves, 1948; Corby, 1990).34 The colonial system of education grew out of these missions, and was used as a “systematic and measurable tool for economic exploitation, reduction of local resistance to white rule, transformation of indigenous outlooks, and [means to meet] the limited needs of the colonial civil services” (Y. Kanu, 2007, p. 66; see also Ajayi et al., 1996; Cockerton, 2013; Corby, 1990; Kuster, 1994; Mogomba & Nyagga, 1981; Nkulu, 2005; Pai, 2013; Resnick, 1968; Sifuna & Sawamura, 2010; Sumner, 1963; Taiwo, 1980).35

While the modern system emerged out of colonial roots, it has become more closely aligned with local values, histories, and perspectives. In the movement towards independence, local voices increasingly criticised the inequities of the colonial system and of the Eurocentric nature of colonial education. Calls for “Africanisation” of public institutions of learning were widespread, in line with anti-colonial movements across the continent (Cockerton, 2013, p. 390; see also E. Collier, 2016; A. Datta, 1984; Nkulu, 2005). In the post-independence period, ongoing efforts at decolonisation included rewriting history books and promoting teaching in local languages (see e.g. Dalby, 1981; GoRSL, 1991, 1995; Kamanda, 2002; UNESCO, 1953). As a result of local movements to decolonise education, resistance to the modern system is tempered; moreover, where continued criticism exists, calls for reform focus on improving the existing system, rather than demolishing it.

34 The evangelical aims of early colonizers cannot be understated. The “Province of Freedom”—as described by abolitionist Granville Sharp (cited in Wadström, 1794, p. 338)—was envisioned as a haven from the slave trade, with the idea that “its Christian character was to facilitate the evangelisation of Africa, both by creating a Christian presence and by serving as a springboard for missionaries to the interior” (Walls 1970, 108; see also Coke 1812, 51; Fyfe 2013, 1355; S. A. Walker 1847, 2–3, 274).

35 Nevertheless, this period of education is often romanticized in the contemporary period on account of Sierra Leone being the only country in West Africa to have an institution of higher learning from 1827 to 1948 (see e.g. GoRSL MEST, 2012, p. 1; Okello, 2018; Paracka, 2003; United Nations in Sierra Leone, 2014).

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Fundamentally, the state education system effectively serves as a gatekeeper to the modern economy. For instance, standardised exams administered by the state education system are required for tertiary education and many employment opportunities in the formal economy.36 The importance of these exams illustrates the institutionalisation of the modern system of education since the post-World War Two era. Without a viable local alternative or resistance to the state system, the state education system has been institutionalised and embraced by national and local actors.

3.2.3 Unsustainability of community financing

Local institutions furthermore do not threaten the state due to insufficient and unsustainable community financing of schools and teachers. Indeed, the only viable long-term option for community schools and community teachers is to be taken over by the government as communities struggle to adequately finance them. In areas without a government-assisted primary school, there is no illusion that the community will develop its own education system to compete with that of the state system. Rather than serving as a threat to the state, informal institutions and actors repeatedly reported that they would be better off if the state took them over.37

The salaries of community teachers are low in objective terms as well as relative to the salaries of teachers on payroll. The language used to describe payments to community teachers is indicative of their meagreness, being variously described as a “smɔl tin” (small thing)38, a “token”39, and “sop mɔni” (soap money).40 At best, a community teacher explained,

36 This includes the standardized exams to receive the National Primary School Certificate, the Basic Education Certificate, and the West African Senior School Certificate. These exams are designed and administered by the West African Examination Council, a regional body covering former Anglophone colonies in West Africa that was founded prior to the wave of decolonisation of British colonies.

37 Expressed, for example, by MON21.1, KAS145.

38 LUAFG1

39 GBAFG1, MONFG2

40 LUA190

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“we only manage without [a government] salary”.41 Based on data collected from school administrators, I estimate a mean monthly salary of USD 9–15 per teacher, with the high estimate representing less than 15 percent of a government teacher’s salary.42 Moreover, in agriculturally-dependent communities, it is common that community contributions will be lower during rainy season when money is more difficult to come by, implying lumpy and unpredictable incomes.43 With such low salaries, it is unsurprising that community teachers often rely on other income, particularly through farming. In some areas, community teachers explained that they were only able to work three days a week so that they could farm on their days off.44 The only viable long-term option for community teachers is to be taken onto government payroll; unsurprisingly, interviewed community teachers were desperate for this outcome.45

Meanwhile, the costs of running community schools imply significant challenges for sustainable financing. The government claims that “almost all” community schools “end up as ‘government-assisted’… schools” (GoRSL MEST, 2012, p. 10), while all of the community schools I visited are aspiring to be included in the government system. For instance, a town chief in Mongo chiefdom was longing to have the local community school approved by the government in order to start receiving financing.46 Taking these challenges into account,

41 UPP87

42 Evidently impossibly low, this implies that volunteer teachers in this area rely on farming income as well as other types of support from family and other community members while they wait to find paid employment. Government teacher’s salary estimated at SLL 750,000 (USD 100.34) (Bah, 2018). The low estimate is based on directly reported salaries from community teachers at 12 schools. The high estimate is calculated based on data from 19 schools on the amount paid by households on a per pupil basis, school enrolment figures, and the number of community teachers, assuming that 75 percent of students pay or that a quarter of revenues are diverted to school administrators or others involved in the collection.

43 MONFG2

44 SUL28. Meanwhile, Bennell (2004) reports that in community schools, community teachers are only able to work 2-3 hours each day due to the need to work on their farms.

45 KAM226, KAS145

46 MON21.1

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focus group participants in one community reinforced their desire to receive more help from the government, with one participant wanting more support from “Papa government” and another exclaiming “let them support us!”.47 Despite being modest, government support of schools and salaries reduces the financial burden of parents.48 When the state does not play this role, parents are left no effective option other than to supplement the state, as opting out of state institutions altogether is not viable. As a result, there is no challenge to the system despite its obvious failings; instead, community schools and teachers are waiting to be approved by the government and thus subsumed within its imperfect system.

As a result, the state maintains regulatory control of the co-produced good, through the power to approve schools developed and managed by communities and to add teachers to the government payroll when they have passed the associated qualifying exams.49 This reinforces state power: by serving as gatekeeper to the public system—with the authority to approve certified teachers or to let them wait, despite being certified—the state reinforces its authority. State officials become patrons, with jobs distributed according to a patrimonial logic (René Blum et al., 2019, p. 281) . Accordingly, the authority of the state is reinforced, even where it is weak or seems altogether absent.

3.3 State dependence on donors and the normative unacceptability of IRG for education

The state is financially dependent on IRG to deliver education, which reinforces its governing legitimacy, while informal taxing actors in this sector do not pose a threat to the state’s authority. However, this alone is insufficient to explain why the state does not explicitly sanction informal fees or formalise IRG by increasing formal fees associated with education. If individuals and communities are already paying for the provision of education through

47 LUAFG3

48 De Herdt and Titeca (2016, p. 481) highlight a similar finding in the DRC.

49 Many community teachers have received their qualifications but are simply waiting to be taken on state payroll. The same is true for community schools, which despite meeting official regulations, may wait years to be approved.

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informal channels, why doesn’t the state simply formalise this financing by regulating and taking control of IRG? State coexistence with IRG must be understood not only in the context of the state’s financial dependence on IRG to deliver education and reinforce its governing authority, but also its dependence on external donors for its governing authority and donors’ normative commitment to universal free education.50

Modern weak states overwhelmingly depend on international donors to finance core state functions, with external financing serving to bolster states’ governing legitimacy.51 In the early post-colonial era, Siaka Stevens described the state as “a dependent independence government” (cited in Jalloh, 2018, p. 84). Countries receiving more than 10 percent of gross national income are considered high-aid countries, reflecting aid dependency (Bräutigam & Knack, 2004, p. 257; Glennie & Prizzon, 2012). Since the end of the civil war in 2002, Sierra Leone’s aid dependency rate has been on average almost twice that at 19 percent (Figure 38).52 After the civil war, “Sierra Leone was totally dependent on the donor community for its very survival”, with infrastructure and public institutions barely functioning and more than 80 percent of GDP coming from international aid (Kanyako, 2016, p. 27; see also B. Baker & May, 2006). On-budget grants, loans, and funds freed from debt relief alone

50 This does not discount the role that Sierra Leonean politicians and civil servants have played as “active agents in the mise en dépendance of their societies” (Bayart, 1993, pp. 21–24, see also 2000).

51 By contrast, in the example in the introduction, Mobutu, running a kleptocracy that the West viewed as an important bulwark against the spread of Soviet influence in Africa (Edgerton, 2002; Gbadolite, 2011; Kisangani, 2016b, p. 538; Schatzberg, 1991; Young & Turner, 2013, p. 389), had greater leeway to explicitly condone and encourage—rather than tacitly accepting—IRG because of its relative independence from donors. Today, however, the Congo is less explicit about condoning IRG, though the state is still reliant on users of public services to fund those services and “compensate for the disappearing income paid on the basis of normal tax revenue” (Titeca & De Herdt, 2019). With a budget of US$ 4 billion to finance a government for 90 million inhabitants in a territory the size of western Europe (Titeca & De Herdt, 2019) and a political inability to more seriously tax elites or resource companies, this is the governing strategy it has chosen. Like the majority of modern weak states, it has to be responsive to donor priorities and normative commitments. This includes the international community’s framing of universal free public goods provision as fundamental human rights, with any associated fees framed as corruption.

52 While the rise of China as a major donor of unconditional aid is of relevance in Sierra Leone, the proportion of aid from China relative to “traditional” bilateral and multilateral donors remains small, while focusing primarily on infrastructure projects (GoRSL, n.d.).

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accounted for an average of 38 percent of total government revenue from 2002 to 2015 (Figure 39), while this aid represented only a small fraction of what was provided through off-budget channels.53 Nevertheless, the high degree of budget support ensures “a high level of donor influence”, with the use of budget support serving as “a focal point for policy dialogue between the Government of Sierra Leone…and budget support donors”, including the African Development Bank, DFID, the EU, and the World Bank (René Blum et al., 2019, p. 282). Indeed, Tavakoli (2012, p. 11) describes how following the civil war, donors “shaped the cornerstone of the government’s budget” through the budget support they provided.

As a result, “Development partners have consistently been influential in Sierra Leone” (René Blum et al., 2019, p. 281). In interviews, government officials were well-attuned to donor desires and often quick to point out that government policies were tied to donor pressure, even where they felt that those policies may not be feasible given the context. Accordingly, the state officially prohibits IRG in part as a response to donor pressure and in part to proactively align with international norms and commitments to “fee-free” education.

Figure 38: Net official development assistance as proportion of gross national income 54

20 Percent of Percent GNI 10

0 1960 1980 2000 2020

Average, low income Sierra Leone countries High aid designation

Data source: (OECD, n.d.-a; World Bank, n.d.b)

53 In 2008, off-budget aid is estimated to account for more than 80 percent of all aid (Eurodad, 2008).

54 Net ODA consists of disbursements of loans made on concessional terms (net of repayments of principal) and grants by official agencies of the members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, by multilateral

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Figure 39: Grants as a proportion of government revenue, 2002–201555

End of civil war Debt relief GFC Twin crisis 100

Percent of government revenue of Percent government 20

0 2000 2005 2010 2015

Data source: (ICTD/UNU-WIDER, 2018)

This donor influence is central to understanding state coexistence with IRG. The state must deliver education to support its domestic legitimacy, though it must also appease donors, who support the ideal of universal free education. This ideal is a central normative commitment of international donors, with free education accepted as a fundamental human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages” (UNGA, 1948, p. 71).56 Any fees for accessing education have come to be viewed as undermining these fundamental rights (e.g. Hercot et al., 2011; Meessen et al., 2009; Meessen, Hercot, et al., 2011; WHO, 2010). Supporting this rights-based framework, the US Congress passed a law in 2000 that requires the American Executive Director of the World Bank “to oppose any loan, grant, strategy or policy of such institution that would require user fees or service charges on poor people for primary education or primary healthcare… in connection with such institution’s financing programs” (An Act Making Appropriations for Foreign

institutions, and by non-DAC countries to promote economic development and welfare. It includes loans with a grant element of a t least 25 percent (calculated at a rate discount of 10 percent).

55 “GFC” refers to global financial crisis; “twin crisis” refers to the Ebola and financial crises; spike in grants in 2006 and 2007 coincides with the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative

56 While this non-binding resolution is deliberately ambiguous about the corresponding duties of governments (Morsink, 1999, pp. 229–230), this resolution represents the starting point of an assumed duty to provide education.

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Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2001, and for Other Purposes, 2000, p. 1900).

State dependence on international actors requires that the it align with international norms around education, which, since the rise of the post-World War Two international order, have been centred within a broader human rights framework. Official policy must align with the donor goals of universal free education for all, even if such a proposal is unrealistic. This dynamic is not unique to Sierra Leone: Governments in sub-Saharan Africa have widely abolished user fees in education and health care, as a result of a combination of both international and domestic pressure (e.g. Meessen et al., 2009; M. A. Thomas, 2015). While Sierra Leonean leaders may genuinely support education as a human right and the idea that it is central to economic development, they simultaneously recognise the need—given the political constraints against raising additional formal tax revenues and the lack of capacity to effectively deliver decentralised services—to rely on IRG to support more universal, if not free, education.

Describing the parallel challenge of delivering universal free health care, Meessen, Gilson and Tibouti (2011, p. ii3) show that “an often neglected dimension in the user fee debate is how a government should compensate health facilities when it decides to ban user fees” (see also Hercot et al., 2011; Meessen et al., 2009; Meessen, Hercot, et al., 2011; Nimpagaritse & Bertone, 2011). The same dilemma exists in the financing of education: formal user fees may be abolished, but if nothing replaces those revenues, quality of service provision will suffer and informal levies will emerge (see e.g. De Souza & Wainaina, 2009; Haambote & Oxenham, 2009). While donors have pushed for universal public services, they have not committed to funding the full costs of those services, while the state has not raised sufficient domestic revenue to do so.57 As a result, “[i]n the absence of an alternative source

57 The British Parliamentary Under-Secretary State for the Colonies described in 1965, “The moment you get fully representative government—one man, one vote—any political party, any government is going to be under terrific pressure to spread education universally, but very, very thin. And nothing eats money more rapidly than universal free primary education. And yet you may say, it’s the inalienable right of every child to have it” (White, 1965, p. 268). Thomas (2015) describes how donors and development partners push for universal service provision and the expansion of the basket of goods provided by low-income countries to match that of

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of financing, abolition [of user fees] does not mean that the poor receive [services] free of charge” (M. A. Thomas, 2015, p. 162; see also M. Lewis, 2007; Meessen, Hercot, et al., 2011). Understanding this, the former Deputy Minister of Education in Sierra Leone decried government promises of universal free education as unrealistic, explaining that without incremental changes implemented over many years, the burden of paying for “universal free education” will continue to rest on communities.58 To donors, however, incrementalism suggests a failure of a universalist policy. Thus, the government continues to align its official statements with the norms of universal free education. Openly accepting informal forms of financing public education would mean going against the international norm of free “Education for All”, which could mean losing international financing, both within and beyond the education sector. As described by a World Bank consultant in Sierra Leone, this “says something about the influence of donors, particularly the World Bank”.59 He explained, “a lot of these policies are being… accepted by the government from donors, without [donors] actually understanding how some of these [local] networks [of politics and informal financing] work”.60

The dual dependence on both IRG and international donors thus helps to explain the disconnect between official state policy against IRG and actual practices of coexistence with it. Supported by international donors, the state’s official opposition to IRG is in line with international norms around free education as a human right; in practice, however, reliant on IRG to fund public goods, it simultaneously coexists with IRG. State condemnations of informal actors in this context are fundamentally performative and oriented toward international development partners, rather than domestic actors. As described by the World Bank consultant, acting in a way that “entices donors”—that is, prohibiting informal fees—

liberal democracies, though without providing sufficient revenues—thus effectively setting governments up to fail in their formalisation efforts.

58 FRE246

59 FRE10

60 FRE10

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can be thought of as a type of “negotiating strategy” to secure funding.61 State officials “sit in Freetown and say [that these payments are] illegal fees… and make some kind of politically- inspired statement of how [they] are going to…remove user fees”, though without being able to live up to their political promises.62 As a result, “the state has basically… abdicated its responsibility” to provide services for all by offloading the responsibility on communities.63

4 Conclusion

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the state is not always in conflict with IRG. Moreover, some forms of IRG do not pose an obvious threat to state authority but may actually reinforce it by bolstering the state’s governing legitimacy. In Sierra Leone, individuals, households, and communities informally co-finance public education with the state. In contrast to official state policy, the state tacitly coexists with informal taxing actors as it depends on them to deliver public goods while likewise depending on international donors who oppose IRG. According to the World Bank consultant, the state’s governing constraints and dependence on IRG make it difficult to say that illegal school fees “should be restricted [according] to a very formal, bureaucratic, Western behavioural conception of how services should be delivered”.64 At the same time, however, dependence on donors means that they cannot explicitly coexist with IRG.

This supplementary system of informal taxation parallels the financing of other basic public goods in weak institutional contexts, including health care, water provision, and security. Reflecting broader trends, this case study also highlights the near impossibility of efforts to ban or formalise IRG without underlying fiscal reforms or changes to the sources of the

61 FRE10

62 FRE10

63 FRE10

64 FRE10

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state’s governing authority.65 Low-income governments repeatedly make declarations supporting universal fee-free services, including education and health care, but without broader underlying changes to their fiscal capacity or the nature of their governing authority, informal taxing actors continue to co-produce these public services. In the face of domestic and international pressure to deliver universal education, many states “have declared the abolition of schools and [the introduction of] free universal primary education—repeatedly. Such declarations need to be made repeatedly because they fall short in practice” (M. A. Thomas, 2015, p. 82).

In Sierra Leone, the state’s governing capacity and authority depends not just on the electorate but on chiefs as power brokers, informal taxing actors involved in the provision of public goods, and international donors who may set the normative framework shaping official state policy. When a state’s governing constraints against controlling IRG lessen, it may be in a position to take greater control over IRG, allowing the formal–informal relationship to shift from a supplementary to an assertive one. In the case of education financing in Sierra Leone, it is possible that we are currently seeing such a shift. The government of Julius Maada Bio, which came to power in 2018, has prioritised free universal primary education in line with the Sustainable Development Goal of every country providing free, quality education for every child by 2030 (UNGA, 2015). In line with donor perceptions of the unacceptability of IRG, Bio’s government has worked to enforce bans of informal fees for education. Preliminary anecdotal evidence suggests that the fiscal framework of Bio’s education plan has led to a reduction in IRG for education in some areas of the country.

How has the Bio administration been able to move closer to the target of universal free primary education without relying on informal financing? Unlike previous administrations, the Bio government has greater independent governing capacity and fewer of the governing constraints that lead states to coexist with IRG. Part of this governing capacity results from greater support that it has enjoyed from donors, including with respect to education

65 This pattern is clear with respect to convergent IRG, as well as for divergent IRG. As described in Chapter 6, though the Sierra Leonean state tried to take over informal revenues from chiefs, the state’s continued dependence on them remained, leaving the state to continue making concessions to them.

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financing. With a political platform that prioritised education, health, and gender equity within his political platform, in many ways, Bio is in many ways a “donor darling”, warmly welcomed and praised in international fora and adept at charming donors (e.g. Bio, 2019a, 2019b; Hitchen, 2018). In addition, he has made strong and explicit commitments to anti- corruption;66 as described by a local government official, “Bio doesn’t play with corruption— if you make a mistake, you get a red card right away. A yellow card doesn’t exist… that is why Western powers support him.”67 In line with this, he has been able to ensure donor commitments to expand education services, despite a global trend of decreased donor aid for education.68

Perhaps more critically, the government has taken unprecedented steps to raise domestic revenues so that the state does not have to tacitly rely on IRG. The state has undertaken structural reforms of the tax administration, resulting in unprecedented increases in tax revenues. Indeed, political support for taxation has been very strong, with domestic revenue mobilisation prioritised on the president’s agenda only after national security.69 The IMF (2019b), for instance, notes that the state “aims to create fiscal space for priority spending [including its flagship programme, the Free Quality School Education programme] by strengthening revenue mobilisation, containing current spending and improving the efficiency of public investment.” In the first two quarters of 2019, revenue collection increased by 24 percent from the same period in 2018 and was already 78 percent of the

66 This was displayed for instance, by the nationally-broadcast Anti-Corruption Commission trials that were initiated soon after he came into office.

67 KAI89.5

68 To win donor support, Bio even pledged three months of his salary to his education initiative, while also getting his Chief Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Minister of Basic Primary and Secondary Education to do the same, and the Finance Minister to donate two months of salary (Okello, 2018). While symbolic, this move can be interpreted as a desire to woo international actors, with the recognition that he cannot achieve his electoral promises without donor and international financing.

69 FRE256.3

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total revenue collect in 2017.70 It is on track to raise domestic revenue to 16.5 percent of GDP by 2022 due to a range of tax policy and administration reforms, including reviewing tax exemptions and waivers, information sharing within government agencies, strengthened PFM policies, stricter enforcement of revenue laws, and automation of tax processes (IMF, 2019a). In part as a result of increased fiscal flexibility, the state almost doubled the share of the budget allocated to free education (Hitchen, 2018), in line with the Education Commission’s (Global Partnership for Education, 2016) target of reserving 20 percent of the government budget for education (see e.g. Bio, 2019b; GoRSL Statehouse, 2018a, 2018b). This commitment to domestic revenue mobilisation and education expenditure has, in turn, reinforced donor confidence and ensured their continued support for the government’s flagship “Free Quality School Education” programme (see e.g. Global Partnership for Education, 2019).

Nevertheless, deeper changes need to be made to address systemic issues such as the process of approving unregulated schools, absorbing qualified teachers into the payroll, and ensuring a sufficient supply of qualified teachers to ensure that communities do not have to rely on untrained and unfunded community teachers. If domestic revenue mobilisation and donor aid is insufficient to meet the ambitious target of universal fee-free education, IRG will continue to supplement the public education system. With sustained political commitment and real structural changes to the fiscal system, however, government control of IRG may be successful.71 The next chapter considers the shift from the state coexisting with convergent IRG to asserting control over it, exploring in greater detail the conditions enabling a shift between the two types of relationships and the variation in state strategies of coexistence and control.

70 Personal correspondence with researcher within the National Revenue Authority, 20 November

2019.

71 In any case, “to bring in a new system, it will take time” (KAI267).

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Chapter 8: Assertive formal–informal outcomes: State power and shifting norms around informal labour taxes

Na tu han de krɔb bak.1

West African proverb of Kono origin

1 Literally, “It takes two hands to scrub a back.”

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Harambee, meaning “pull together” in Swahili, is a Kenyan tradition of community “self-help” projects, involving the mobilisation of local resources and labour to support community development. While indigenous forms of community mobilization existed, harambee is largely associated with the post-independence government of Jomo Kenyatta, who encouraged it as a form of self-reliance, deliberately “harken[ing] back to precolonial communal cooperation” (Moskowitz, 2017, p. 42). Engaging in widespread formalisation, the state centralized what had previously been informally-managed “self-help” activities, playing a role in organising, regulating, and enforcing “locally-driven” self-help activities (Berman et al., 2009; Government of Kenya, 1964, p. 113; Handley, 2020, pp. 153–158; Moskowitz, 2017; Ngau, 1987). The previous chapter illustrated that the state may often coexist with convergent IRG rather than control it. However, as this example shows, the state does assert control over informal forms of taxation in some cases, as state theory would expect. This chapter thus explores when the state takes control of convergent IRG, resulting in an assertive formal–informal relationship.

The state is able to assert control over IRG when it has greater independent governing capacity—that is, where it depends less on informal taxing actors for its governing capacity and authority (Table 10). The state’s governing capacity is, however, likewise shaped by its relationship with other key actors upon which it depends for its authority. Thus, the ability to assert control reflects the balance of the state’s multiple dependencies. Assertion of control may reflect greater independence from informal taxing actors—resulting, for example, from a strong mandate to take control of IRG following an election or during a crisis situation— or relatively more pressure from other actors, including voters and donors, that want the state to take control over IRG. For instance, voters may demand that the state reduce the burden of informal taxes or donors may demand that the state control the influence of undemocratic informal taxing actors. The balance of these governing constraints shapes both the state’s capacity and desire to take control over IRG. The importance of these governing constraints reflects the reality that states—particularly in weak institutional contexts—depend for their governing authority on multiple actors: the electorate, domestic power brokers, informal taxing actors, and external donors.

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Table 10: Necessary condition for an assertive outcome

Formal/ informal Formal/ informal objectives objectives diverge converge

State Competitive Assertive controls on informal actor on informal State Concessionary Supplementary coexists Increasing dependence of the state dependenceIncreasing of the state

In Kenya, for example, the state enjoyed a relative degree of independent governing capacity, fuelled by the strength of the post-colonial Kenyatta government and the powerful coercive and bureaucratic apparatus inherited from the British. Indeed, some argue that some post- colonial governments represented “overdeveloped” states, having inherited large state apparatuses with strong coercive and administrative powers (Alavi, 1972).2 While the Kenyan state was thus able and willing to take control over IRG, however, its engagement with harambee presents another puzzle: If the state is able to assert control, why does it not always assert a full monopoly on taxation? What explains why it may work with informal taxing actors, rather than prohibiting them altogether?

Informality is often conceived of as “a symbol of underdevelopment, a nuisance to be swept away and kept out of sight in the modernising path of the national economy” (Kanbur, 2014, p. 5).3 We thus expect that if the state has the capacity to do so, it will prohibit IRG. Extending state power should involve doing away with competing taxing actors (e.g. Tilly, 1990/1993; S. van de Walle & Scott, 2011), rather than coordinating and encouraging them, as the Kenyan

2 State power was enhanced in some post-colonial states that labelled themselves as socialist, including Kenya. In such contexts, the veneer of socialist ideology, with its emphasis on central planning, served to reinforce state power and grant ruling regimes considerable autonomy, whether or not the state stayed true to socialist ideology (see e.g. Fitch & Oppenheimer, 1966; Saul, 1974; Shivji, 1973).

3 This idea—what Kanbur refers to as the “administrative mindset of informality”—emerges out of colonial ideas of a “dual economy” wherein “those activities that fell under the purview of colonial rule and regulations” were formal and “those activities that were beyond the legal and administrative reach of the colonial government” were informal” (Kanbur, 2014, p. 5).

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government did. This mindset is prevalent among international donors and development partners, who have predominately focused on outlawing IRG. Clearly, however, the state does not always conform to these “ideals” of state control and authority, even where it has greater governing capacity. As seen in post-independence Kenya, the state may take control over IRG by working with informal taxing actors in different ways, rather than making them illegal.

This variation in the nature of state strategies of control can be explained by the relative degree of governing capacity it has and the extent to which IRG is acceptable to the state and to the actors upon which its governing authority depends (Figure 40, see Chapter 4).4 First, as with divergent IRG, state strategies of control over convergent IRG exist on a spectrum from total state control to mediated state control to state coexistence. These different degrees of control reflect the extent of state control (e.g. the extent to which it holds a monopoly on taxation) and are shaped by the degree of its independent governing capacity. Second, the relative legitimacy of IRG shapes whether the state will work with informal taxing actors or whether it will make them illegal.

Where the state is able to assert some degree of control and IRG is relatively more acceptable, the state will be more likely to work with it (hybridisation, Figure 40: B2) or take it over (formalisation, Figure 40: C2), depending on the degree of its independent governing capacity. The Kenyan government’s takeover of communal self-help activities through the formalisation of harambee reflects the latter outcome: the state not only had relative independent governing capacity, but IRG was also relatively acceptable, framed by the state in terms of post-colonial ideologies that emphasised the need for “self-reliance”. Indeed, post-colonial leaders encouraged self-help in the face of “very high expectations triggered by independence” (Ngau, 1987, p. 526), the fiscal limitations of the post-independence government, and particularly of subnational governments (Hamer, 1981; Moskowitz, 2017)

4 To some degree, the nature of the acceptability of IRG may influence the independent governing capacity of the state. That is, where IRG is relatively acceptable, the state may have greater autonomy to take over IRG; by contrast, where it is unacceptable, the state may depend more on informal taxing actors to control activities, even where the state has an interest in the outcomes.

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and the objective of “national self-sufficiency” (Cowen, 1986). President Jomo Kenyatta embraced the spirit of self-reliance, with his government declaring that “Self-help schemes will be planned and controlled to ensure that they are consistent with our national development plan and the manpower and the recurrent cost implications of these schemes are reasonable” (Government of Kenya, 1965, p. 36). Accordingly, the state asserted its authority, formalising IRG in an effort to take advantage of informal efforts, though with centralised control, that, at least theoretically, was designed to prevent duplication and waste.5 By contrast, where IRG is relatively unacceptable, the state will be more likely to limit its negative effects through state oversight (supervision, Figure 40: B1) or to prohibit it completely (prohibition, Figure 40: C1). Where, as a result of its governing constraints and dependence on informal taxing actors, it is unable to assert control, the state will tacitly coexist with IRG when it is relatively unacceptable IRG (Figure 40: A1) and explicitly sanction it when it is relatively acceptable IRG (Figure 40: A2).

5 Regulation of IRG was seen as necessary in light of contemporaneous mainstream ideas of centralized economic development, calling for old social institutions to be replaced by modern ones (see e.g. United Nations, 1951, p. 15). In line with this technocratic development doctrine, the Kenyan government embraced centralized “comprehensive national planning” in order “to introduce rational or technical knowledge in all decision making in order to guide the process of economic development” (Ngau, 1987, p. 525; see e.g. Government of Kenya, 1965, p. 8).

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Figure 40: Variation of state strategies (convergent IRG): Independent state governing capacity and the acceptability of IRG

(C1) (C2) Control: Control: Prohibition Formalization

(B1) (B2) Mediated Mediated control: control: Supervision Formal hybridization

(A1) (A2) Coexistence: Coexistence: Explicit Increasing independent Increasing capacity governing Tacit acceptance sanction

Increasing acceptability of IRG

In this chapter, I consider variation in state coexistence with and control over informal labour taxes in Sierra Leone, likewise exploring variation in how the state takes control over IRG when it does so. Informal labour taxes have been prevalent in Sierra Leone at least since the colonial era, though have not been included in analyses of individual tax burdens, effective tax revenues, and state budgets.6 As argued by van Waijenburg (2018, p. 40),

6 Considering unpaid labour as a form of IRG raises the question of whether such labour is truly coerced or representing a voluntary participation in a civic duty. In line with the discussion in Chapter 2, the line between voluntarism and coercion is difficult to define with respect to IRG and perhaps particularly with respect to unpaid and “communal” labour (see e.g. Beard & Dasgupta, 2006). In the colonial period, the coercive nature of forced unpaid labour is clearer, with ample documentation of repressive forms of enforcement. However, participation in the post-independence and contemporary forms are harder to qualify, likely being defined by both a desire to contribute to a communal good and a fear of the repercussions of not doing so. On the one hand, a strong tradition of voluntarism and collectivity and the ethic of communal labour and obligations have endured in the political imagination of and about African populations (see e.g. Dodworth, 2018). While such rhetoric risks representing a romanticized ideal of “the African” as inherently communally-oriented, research indicates that unpaid labour may be embraced by individuals who may not only be civically-minded (Werbner, 2004, p. 2), but that also see such activities as intertwined with local forms of reciprocal social welfare and channels of political engagement and accountability (Brown, 2013; Brown & Prince, 2015; Dodworth, 2018; Jennings, 2007; Mercer & Green, 2013; Prince, 2015). On the other hand, these activities are managed through state and non-state enforcement mechanisms, including fines, imprisonment, threat of military force, or social pressures. I do not ignore this complexity; however, as I am concerned with the effective burden of producing public goods and maintaining governance authority, the nature of voluntarism and coercion is less relevant to my discussion.

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analyses of tax systems “have largely ignored the contributions from a widely used but invisible source of state revenue: that of labor contributions.” These informal taxes—what Tiquet (2018, p. 138) refers to as “sweat taxes”—may either be legally required but excluded from government budgets or may exist entirely outside the state legal system. 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, contributing to funding public goods and serving to expand state authority in Sierra Leone, as throughout former colonies.

There is a long history of unpaid labour in Sierra Leone and an equally long history of the state using informal labour taxes to reinforce its authority and achieve its development objectives. The nature of state engagement, however, has varied over time. I consider how the state has engaged with informal labour taxes from the colonial period to the present day, mapping considerable variation and fluidity in the nature of these strategies. This allows me to explain how and why the state’s relationship with informal labour taxes has shifted over time, demonstrating considerable fluidity in the types of relationships, with the state moving back and forth between control and coexistence—that is, between supplementary and assertive relationships. This fluidity allows me to compare cases and identify necessary conditions for the state to assert control over IRG. At the same time, I take advantage of variation in when the state works with IRG and when it prohibits it, illuminating the importance of shifting norms of legitimacy around informal labour taxes in explaining the nature of state engagement.

First, I consider the colonial state’s control over informal labour taxes, which can be explained by its relative lack of governing constraints. I trace changes in the nature of the state’s assertive relationship with informal labour taxes, showing that the state chose to prohibit informal labour taxes when they were viewed as relatively illegitimate and chose to formalise them when they were viewed as relatively legitimate and acceptable.

Section two then explains that, in contrast to colonial control, the post-independence state coexisted with informal labour taxes in supplementary relationships as it lacked the independent governing capacity to assert control over them, while it relied on them to

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deliver key development outcomes. However, it encouraged informal labour taxes, rather than tacitly coexisting with them, as they aligned with dominant narratives around “self- reliance” and “self-help”. Post-colonial states embraced and justified informal labour taxes as supporting independence movements in the face of fiscal constraints. Later shifts in international development theory and praxis led international development partners to view informal labour taxes not only as more benign than cash-based informal taxes, but as necessary for key development indicators that are seen as positive ends in themselves, including ownership, participation, and sustainability.

Finally, section three illustrates that the state has been able to take greater control of informal labour taxes where the state has greater independent governing capacity. The state has taken a mediated form of control over informal labour taxes in the security sector through hybrid partnerships with chiefs, while formalising informal labour taxes for town- cleaning and public sanitation exercises. Rather than prohibiting IRG, the state has worked with or formalised it largely as IRG is seen as relatively acceptable in these cases. This is particularly the case given the salience of national security and public sanitation following the Ebola epidemic. In sum, variation in state strategies can be explained through a combination the state’s relative independent governing capacity and the nature of its governing constraints, as well as the relative acceptability of IRG to the state and the actors upon which its governing authority depends.

1 Colonial state control over informal labour taxes: From formalisation to prohibition and back again

Colonial reliance on unpaid labour emerged in part from a revenue imperative. Colonisers’ home populations enjoyed the spoils of empire but did not want to fund them. Instead, colonial administrations were to be self-financing (Epstein, 1959; Hardy, 1988; Mendy, 2003; Reinsch, 1912). Accordingly, maximising net revenue was a primary objective of colonial regimes. In part, they achieved this by minimising costs of administration (namely, through indirect rule) and reducing costs of expenditures on public works programmes (E. Frankema, 2011). Together with chronic labour shortages and the general population’s initial lack of desire to engage in wage labour, this revenue imperative led colonial states to

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make regular use of mandated unpaid labour from subjugated populations (Bernault, 2007; Hynd, 2015; Jumare, 1998; Phillips, 1989; van Waijenburg, 2018).7 Across British Africa, this unpaid labour was critical to public works projects, particularly railways and road construction; to extending the reach and authority of the colonial state; and to building the foundations of its economic power (Akurang-Parry, 2000; Archibong & Obikili, 2019; Fall, 2002; Kunkel, 2018; Okia, 2008, 2012; van Waijenburg, 2018).8 The colonial state moved back and forth between formalising and prohibiting informal labour taxes, largely as a result of shifting international norms around the relative acceptability of mandatory unpaid labour (Figure 41).

Figure 41: Colonial state strategies of control of IRG

(A1) Control: (B1) Control: Prohibition: Formalization: Colonial state prohibition of unpaid Early colonial state direct and indirect labour in line with ILO Convention on control over unpaid labour for public Forced Labour (1930) works projects

(A2) Control: (B2) Control: Prohibition: Formalization: Colonial state prohibition of unpaid Colonial formalization of “communal” labour to chiefs (late 1950s) labour Increasing independent Increasing capacity governing

Increasing acceptability of IRG

7 The introduction of taxes—labour or otherwise—is widely documented as an effective colonial strategy to encourage people to engage in wage labour (e.g. Burton, 2008; Government of Uganda, 1937, p. 4; Hailey, 1938, p. 546; Jamal, 1978, p. 421; Redding, 2000; Trevor, 1936). For his part, Lugard, the architect of indirect rule in British Africa, argued that direct taxation supported the abolition of forced labour and slavery for public works as it could finance wage labour (Lugard, 1922, pp. 230–233). At the same time, taxation represented the colonial projects of “governability” – that is, transforming the colonial subject into the “governable person” (Bush and Maltby 2004; see also Burton 2008; Redding 2000; Trevor 1936).

8 Across British Africa, this took a variety of forms at the local level, including forced cultivation of export crops to be sold at a given price, labour taxes or mandatory unpaid labour service for local public works projects, and conscription for large public works projects, which involved taking labourers away from their places of residence for extended periods of time (Akurang-Parry, 2000; Aldrich, 1996, pp. 56–57; Archibong & Obikili, 2019; Ball, 2005; Fall, 1989, 1993; Hailey, 1938; Hynd, 2015; Keese, 2014; Northrup, 1988; Tiquet, 2018; van Waijenburg, 2018).

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1.1 Formalisation of informal labour taxes

The early colonial state in Sierra Leone made explicit use of informal labour taxes to support public works projects and extend the reach of the colonial state (Figure 41: B1). It directly led such operations in the colony, while indirectly making use of informal labour taxes, unaccounted for within public budgets, through chiefs in the protectorate. The use of unpaid labour is ironic in Sierra Leone given that it was founded as part of an abolitionist campaign, as the “Province of Freedom” for former and freed slaves.9 Nevertheless, the British state controlled informal labour taxes in Sierra Leone, benefitting from them directly and indirectly through chiefly intermediaries. As with local administration more generally, in the Protectorate (the modern day provinces) the colonial state gave the responsibility for enforcing unpaid labour to traditional leaders, who were encouraged through both positive and negative incentives, including revenue sharing, fines, and threats of dethroning (van Waijenburg, 2018, p. 46). In the colony (roughly, modern day Freetown and its environs)— where the state did not rely on chiefly intermediaries—it was commonplace for the state to use unpaid labour for the construction and repair of government buildings (e.g. League of Nations, 1928, p. 1958).

The colonial state was able to maintain this control because of the relative independence of its governing capacity, determined by three key factors. First, the coercive nature of imperial power allowed the colonial state considerable governing autonomy (see e.g. Etheridge, 1967; Killingray, 1986).10 Second, indirect rule allowed the state to effectively buy the support of chiefs in the Protectorate. The colonial state relied on chiefs to organise unpaid labour for public works projects (as well as to maintain control, run local administrations, and levy

9 A greater irony is that slavery was still practiced in the country and explicitly sanctioned by the colonial state well after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 (see e.g. Anonymous, 1812; Arkley, 1965; Fyfe, 1962, pp. 129– 132, 251; Grace, 1975; Tomkins, 2007).

10 Killingray (1986, p. 435) notes that while “colonial rule was not sustained solely by coercion”, it played a part, with demonstrations of European power “convinc[ing] many Africans of the invincible might of the colonial state”. Nevertheless, colonial authority was not entirely based in coercion; rather it was grounded in some mix of “coercion, collaboration, confidence, and competence” (Kirk-Greene, 1980, p. 38; see also Fanon, 1963; Ranger, 1980, p. 350; R. Smyth, 1983, 1984).

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formal taxes) and in return chiefs enjoyed considerable autonomy, including over their own informal taxes (see Chapter 5). Third, part of the state’s governing capacity was made possible by the relative acceptability of informal labour taxes at this time among colonial and world powers. Use of unpaid and forced labour was common among colonial powers and central to the extension and affirmation of colonial power, making up a significant part of colonial revenues and supporting colonial economies across Europe’s African colonies and more broadly (Akurang-Parry, 2000; Archibong & Obikili, 2019; Ball, 2005; Goudal, 1929; Hailey, 1938; Kunkel, 2018; Northrup, 1988; van Waijenburg, 2018).

1.2 Prohibition of informal labour taxes

Shifting international norms following the First World War and a growing international labour movement presented challenges to early colonial states’ open reliance on unpaid labour, which the international community increasingly viewed as illiberal and illegitimate. There was a growing domestic labour movement in the United Kingdom that criticised British actions abroad and highlighted the hypocrisies of its ruling strategy, while settled abolitionists and missionaries in Sierra Leone likewise put pressure on the administration for reform. Meanwhile, the newly established International Labour Organisation (ILO) pushed for universal labour standards, including the abolishment of slavery and forced labour.11

Despite its relative power in Sierra Leone and globally, Britain was likewise sensitive to these pressures on account of its desire to position itself as a global leader of progressive values, with its colonising and “civilising” logic predicated at least in part on abolishing the international slave trade (F. Cooper, 1996; Fall, 2002; Hopkins, 1973; van Waijenburg, 2018).12 Accordingly, the British rapidly ratified and adopted the ILO regulations, at least

11 The 1930 Forced Labour Convention required ILO members to “suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms within the shortest possible period” (ILO, 1930), defining forced labour as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily” (ILO, 1930, p. Art 2(1)).

12 Indeed, it acted as a vocal leader in the battle against the remnants of slavery in the 1920s (e.g. Keese, 2014, p. 387)— though with notable exceptions in its colonies.

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ostensibly outlawing this form of IRG (Figure 41: A1). The shift from colonial formalisation of informal labour taxes to their prohibition can thus be explained by a normative shift in how the international community viewed informal labour taxes.

1.3 Formalisation of “communal” labour

This policy shift, however, was largely in name only.13 Though the colonial state no longer directly controlled informal labour taxes,14 it formalised and institutionalised informal labour taxes levied by chiefs, benefitting from them through their contributions to public works projects, particularly the national road network (Figure 41: B2). Rather than enforcing their prohibition, the colonial state reframed informal labour taxes in a way that was more acceptable to the international community.

As the administration had left unpaid labour in the hands of chiefs through indirect rule, it was relatively easy to reframe informal labour taxes as “communal” labour rather than unpaid labour. Framing them as “customary” duties or as contributing to the “communal” interest exempted them from the ILO Convention, which made exceptions for communal labour that was of “direct interest” to the community (ILO, 1930, p. Art.2 (2e)). Increasingly sensitive to the protection of cultural heritage in the face of the third wave of decolonisation, the ILO and international community accepted “traditional” activities as legitimate, showing

13 The new international regulations mattered little in practice more broadly, as colonial governments found ways around the new rules. Colonial states worked around these rules by taking advantage of legal exceptions that permitted unpaid labour during loosely-defined “emergency” situations, by army recruits for public works projects, and by convict labour (ILO, 1930, p. Art.2(2); Maul, 2007; Hynd, 2015; Akurang-Parry, 2000; Keese, 2014; van Waijenburg, 2018; Archibong & Obikili, 2019; Tiquet, 2018; Fall, 1989, 1993; Government of Nigeria, 1903; Government of Ghana, 1894; Northrup, 1988; Ball, 2005; Hailey, 1938; Freund, 1981; Spencer, 1980; K. Datta, 1988; Vickery, 1989; Byfield et al., 2015; Dumett, 1985; Ash, 2006; F. Cooper, 1996; Echenberg & Filipovich, 1986; Abiodun, 2013; Salau, 2015; R. G. Thomas, 1973). This latter strategy saw harsher enforcement of vagrancy laws in order to increase the convict population, resulting in a dark irony wherein individuals that did not comply with labour taxes were arrested for “petty crimes” against the colonial regime or their Native Authorities (i.e. chiefdom authorities), subsequently being made to work for the state through convict gang labour (Archibong & Obikili, 2019, p. 7; see also Ekechi, 1989; Hynd, 2015). In Sierra Leone, vagrancy laws included punishments of imprisonment “with or without hard labour” (GoSL, 1934, p. par. 10).

14 For instance, by using unpaid labour for the maintenance of government buildings (League of Nations, 1928, p. 1958).

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a willingness to make exceptions to “universal” labour standards. There is some reason to think that the British administration was sensitive to calls to respect tradition; as described by Dunn (1973, p. 170), during the inter-war period, “the administration’s moral sensitivity to traditional legitimacy was in a particularly inflamed condition”. As a result, “traditional labour” was “much cherished by the British”, who argued that “the abolition of labour practices in the local context was… contrary to ‘native customs’” (Keese, 2014, p. 384).15

Evidently, however, defining “tradition” or communal interest is not straightforward, making it relatively easy for the British administration to take advantage of this legal loophole. Indeed, the colonial reframing of “customary” duties and “tradition” was accepted despite there being little evidence that the types of labour organised by chiefs under colonial rule actually related to “traditional” obligations to chiefs.16 Though pre-colonial labour tribute systems existed in some areas (Hailey, 1938, pp. 575–576, 619; Law, 1978) and communal labour existed in pre-colonial agricultural systems elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa (Iliffe, 1979, p. 14), the idea of self-help and communal labour was deliberately forged in the missionary era and through colonialism (Dodworth, 2018; Kunkel, 2018). Indeed, across British colonial Africa, “ ‘[s]elf-help’ became a euphemistic way of repurposing longstanding colonial labor practices” (Moskowitz, 2017, p. 40).”

Regardless, the administration effectively sanctioned and institutionalised “communal labour” within domestic ordinances. It passed laws that ostensibly regulated communal labour beginning in 1902 (see e.g. GoSL, 1932; D. J. Harris, 2014, p. 25),17 which served to institutionalise, rather than regulate or abolish it (Kunkel, 2018; Tiquet, 2018).18 Thus the

15 Notably, the colonial state also accepted forms of “domestic slavery”, defending it as “mild” and part of native custom (Peters, 2011; I. Rashid, 1998).

16 For a broader discussion of the construction of “tradition” in colonial Africa see (Ranger, 1983).

17 For example, chiefs were to limit communal labour to an annual maximum allowed number of days, as elsewhere in British Africa (e.g. Goudal, 1929, p. 625); however, as elsewhere, monitoring was limited in practice (Kunkel, 2018).

18 As discussed in Chapter 5, these domestic laws served as state sanction of unpaid labour, backing chiefs with newly-created Native Treasuries and Native Courts that served as “coercive resources” for revenue extraction.

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state continued to benefit from “communal” labour, particularly as it supported road construction and maintenance. Institutionalising how it would benefit from informal labour taxes, the colonial administration bifurcated the road system, redefining certain roads (trade roads) as the state’s responsibility and others (variously known as political, native, local, or feeder roads) as the “local” responsibility. Labour for the construction and maintenance of “local” roads could be framed as communal labour for a local interest and could thus legally rely on unpaid labour (Wiemers, 2017; van Waijenburg, 2018; League of Nations, 1927, p. 213).19 Despite the colonial state reporting to the League of Nations in 1928 that they hoped to soon pay wages for road construction in the Protectorate in accordance with regulations against forced labour (League of Nations, 1928, p. 1958), it continued to rely on informal labour, in part because the international community viewed “communal” labour as legitimate.

1.4 Prohibition of informal labour taxes to chiefs

It was only when widespread protests against chiefly exploitation threatened stability that the colonial state banned forced labour by chiefs (Figure 41: A2). Periodic protests against chiefs and chiefly misrule began after the First World War, climaxing between November 1955 and March 1956 with tens of thousands of individuals revolting against their chiefs in unprecedented shows of defiance (Lange, 2009, p. 103). Protests centred on chiefly exploitation through informal taxes, including the widespread use of forced labour on chiefs farms [sic], unpaid and often unfed; levies not allowed in law …; beating up and manhandling complainants; fining people out of court and retaining the fines; keeping back a substantial part of community development grants [from the state]; and straightforward embezzlement (M. Dorman, 1957 cited in Lange (2009: 104); see also GoSL, 1955b, 1956).

A commission of inquiry into the unrest blamed in part the normalisation of chiefly exploitation through colonial ordinances and recommended that “the rights of the Chiefs and Government to forced labour be abrogated” (GoSL, 1956; see also Grace, 1975, p. 237). At

This allowed for chiefs to levy both convergent and divergent forms of IRG—for example, with ample opportunity for chiefs to exploit the use of workers for personal benefits, namely the cultivation of chiefs’ own fields (e.g. D. J. Harris, 2014, p. 25; Tiquet, 2018; Zucarelli, 1973, pp. 227–228).

19 Local rulers often received remuneration to incentivize their role in organisation and enforcement.

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the same time, with a growing labour movement in colonists’ home countries (Maul, 2007), there was increasing international pressure to strengthen the ban on forced labour and to remove some of the legal loopholes that colonial states had exploited (Abiodun, 2013; Akurang-Parry, 2000; Alemika, 1993; Ash, 2006; Falola, 2009; ILO, 1957; Salau, 2015; R. G. Thomas, 1973). Accordingly, by the mid-1950s, the framing of unpaid labour as legitimate because of its “traditional” nature became less tenable. As a result, the government officially banned unpaid labour by the late 1950s, even under the “communal” guise.

2 Independent state coexistence with informal labour taxes: Narratives of self-reliance and self-help

Despite the prohibition of unpaid labour instituted in the late 1950s (Figure 42: A), communal labour remains prevalent today. Accounting only for communal labour for the brushing, construction, and maintenance of roads and town-cleaning, survey data indicate that these informal labour taxes amount to an average effective annual household tax of USD 54 (SLL 400,000)20—a significant effective sum where 44 percent of households in Eastern province and 51 percent of households in Northern province have an average annual household income of less than USD 650 (SLL 5,000,000) (GoRSL SSL & World Bank, 2019).21 This informal contribution is underestimated considerably, as it only considers labour, rather than in-kind contributions to communal labour projects,22 it does not consider all

20 Based on an average of 40 household days for these activities and assuming an average daily rural wage of SLL 10,000 for unskilled labour. For reference, “forced labour for general public purposes” in British East Africa was limited to 60 days per year, while “forced labour for local public purposes” (i.e. through traditional authorities) was generally limited to 24 days per year (Goudal, 1929, pp. 625–626).

21 Despite being common and often considered part of one’s normal civic responsibilities, resentment of communal work certainly exists, with, for instance, widely documented anger at chiefs who were accused of exploiting these civic responsibilities in the years leading up to the war (see e.g. TRC, 2004). As described by a storyteller in Wunde chiefdom, “Hostility came into this world a long time ago: I was inside my mother’s belly, and they had already assigned me to mandatory chiefdom work” (cited in Ferme, 1998, p. 555).

22 In-kind contributions most commonly included rice or other food cooked for the workers, but also other in- kind goods, like batteries for the megaphone of the town crier who announces the road-brushing.

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forms of informal labour taxes,23 and it does not overcome the reality of gendered understandings of labour.24

Illustrating continuity from colonial practices of accepting communal labour, the independent state has also coexisted with but explicitly sanctioned some forms of informal labour taxes. Critically, the legitimacy of informal labour taxes shifted as they were reframed as necessary to support the post-independence “self-reliance” movement and in line with developmental ideology that saw “self-help” as promoting “local ownership” (Figure 42: E). The newly-independent administration of Sierra Leone, which came to power in 1961, was unable to enforce laws prohibiting unpaid labour, while having insufficient independent governing capacity to control or coordinate informal labour taxes.25 Nevertheless, it depended on the developmental outputs of self-reliance, though was unable to formalise or institutionalise these informal resources. At the same time, “voluntary local effort” was legitimised through narratives of “self-reliance” and “self-help”, leading the state to explicitly sanction informal labour taxes(Figure 42: B).This mentality persists today, with a local government official explaining that informal labour contributions should be encouraged

23 As described in Chapter 3, other forms of unpaid labour are common, for example, to support local public good such as schools and public health centres. At the same time, labour for community development projects is not counted, as these projects are not always to support “state” goods.

24 For example, labour days were most commonly reported to refer to the jobs of male youths in engaging in road-brushing, though it is likewise common for women to cook for the workers. While respondents often reported in-kind contributions of “rice”, it is not always clear that they considered the harvesting and cooking of the rice as part of the “communal labour” exercise.

25 This was not the case everywhere across the continent. Indeed, some newly independent post-colonial states enjoyed relatively strong independent governing authority, allowing for formalisation and institutionalised informal labour taxes as part of post-independence development schemes. As described in the introduction, the relatively strong Kenyan government took control over informal labour taxes, coordinating and enforcing these efforts. This governing autonomy does not imply that the state did not rely on IRG: indeed, the Kenyan state depended heavily on IRG for local development outcomes, with harambee contributions accounting for 40 percent of capital development in rural areas by the mid-1970s (Ngau, 1987, p. 526). Nevertheless, the strength of the post-colonial socialist state made centralized control of self-help activities possible. Similarly, in Tanzania, ujamaa involved state enforcement of regular, often weekly msaragambo (compulsory community or “volunteer” work) (Hunter, 2015a, pp. 192–194, 2015b; Jennings, 2003; Schneider, 2006),while in Ghana, the government of Kwame Nkrumah relied consistently on “labour brigades” to fund public works projects (Ahlman, 2012; Hodge, 1964).

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given the government’s lack of reach in rural areas, making IRG “very necessary in our communities” to support desirable development goals.26 Later shifts in development theory and praxis embraced informal labour taxes as a means of achieving local participation and ownership over development, reinforcing explicit state coexistence and encouragement of them.

Figure 42: Postcolonial state strategies of coexistence with IRG

(A) Control: (B) Control: Prohibition: Formalization: Colonial prohibition of unpaid labour Colonial formalization of “communal” (late 1950s) labour

(E): Coexistence: Explicit sanction: State encouragement of IRG in line with narratives of post-colonial “self- reliance” and developmentalist

Increasing independent Increasing capacity governing “participation” and “ownership”

Increasing acceptability of IRG

2.1 Informal labour taxes and post-colonial narratives of self- reliance

The newly-independent state coexisted with some forms of communal labour as a means to achieve development goals and reinforce its authority (see e.g. Dottridge, 2005; Keese, 2014).27 While post-colonial leaders did not simply reproduce repressive colonial forms of labour organisation, the use of unpaid labour “was a temptation for many governments which, after the transfer of power, had to struggle with budgets that seriously curtailed the modernisation plans modelled on the development projects of the former colonial states”

26 KOI242. Similar positive views expressed across central and government officials, including, for example, KOI243, KAI181.3, KAI189.3, KOI241.

27 At the same time, the use of forced unpaid labour (e.g. slavery) continued (Arkley, 2012; Grace, 1975; Mokuwa et al., 2011). For instance, I observed the ongoing use of “domestic slaves” in one chiefdom, with the chief indenturing at least one individual who was unable to pay a fine.

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(Keese, 2014, p. 403). Indeed, across newly independent states, systems of unpaid labour were widely embraced by nationalist leaders, who attempted to foster a sentiment of self- reliance to break from colonial dependencies, though ironically using similar cost-saving measures of colonial states.

To complement state institutions for building and maintaining roads (namely, the Sierra Leone Roads Authority), for example, the state continued to rely on communal labour to maintain feeder roads, which make up 37 percent of the public road network (World Food Programme, 2015). In the post-independence period, the state maintained the bifurcated road network established by the colonial state, effectively offloading responsibility for road construction and maintenance onto local communities. It was only in 1992 that the state officially took responsibility of the rehabilitation and maintenance of rural “feeder” and “chiefdom” roads (GoRSL, 1992), later devolving this responsibility to DCs following the civil war (GoRSL, 2004a, 2004b, 2010c, 2010b; SLRA Act No. 2 of 1992, 1992). However, insufficient government revenues are devoted to maintenance of these roads, despite their rehabilitation being set as a critical post-war development priority (e.g. Casaburi et al., 2013; GoRSL, 2011b; GoRSL ASSL, 2014; GoRSL MAFFS, 2011; Pushak & Foster, 2011).

This coexistence with informal labour taxes has persisted, with the state today remaining unable to maintain roads without the informal contributions of rural communities. For example, for a two-year period from 2010 to 2011, the government spent only USD 4376 nationwide on both feeder and trunk roads.28 This was supplemented by a significant amount of money from donors—almost USD 10.9 million (GoRSL ASSL, 2014)—though donor-funded projects have focused on (re)construction projects, rather than regular maintenance, while focusing less—if at all—on the roads that were historically designated as chiefs’ responsibility. As a result, the state implicitly continues to rely on communal labour organised by chiefs in order to maintain the road network, though government documents

28 This is an overestimate of the amount spent as it includes both feeder and trunk roads, which the Sierra Leone Roads Authority does not disaggregate within its financial statements (GoRSL ASSL, 2014, p. 17).

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do not acknowledge the supplementary role that this informal labour plays.29 As described in Chapter 3, such contributions are common requirements in 92 percent of surveyed areas, with households reporting on average 18 days of annual labour for road and public works construction and maintenance. In urban areas, unions of okada (commercial motorbike taxi) and taxi drivers collect “union dues” that goes towards road maintenance,30 while I observed groups of youth in urban areas collected money from cars on the road in order to fund repairs of roads.

This coexistence and explicit sanction of IRG was partly enabled by a reframing of informal labour taxes not as exploitative, but as embodying the self-reliance necessary for independence movements to succeed. This involved reframing informal labour taxes from being part of the exploitative authority of chiefs to being central to the independence movement. Leaders encouraged self-help as a way for independent countries to be self- sufficient (Cowen, 1986). At the same time there was a need for “a new unifying ideology to replace that of anti-colonialism”, with a desire to move away from Western values, including that of capitalism (Ngau, 1987, p. 536; see also Friedland & Rosberg, 1964; Mohiddin, 1969). Informal labour taxes were therefore framed as anti-colonial and anti-capitalist “self-help”.

Perhaps most famously, in Tanzania Julius Nyerere promoted ujamaa (community socialism) and kujitegemea (self-reliance) as anti-colonial, nation-building values. He legitimated unpaid labour by framing it as a return to pre-colonial values of respect, communal property, and communal work (Hunter, 2008; Lal, 2012; Nyerere, 1968a, pp. 334– 340). As he declared, “In traditional African society everybody was a worker” (Nyerere, 1968b, p. 4), suggesting that “we can work together voluntarily for our own benefit” (Nyerere, 1968a, p. 347). In Sierra Leone, the state accepted and even encouraged informal labour taxes, promoting unpaid “communal labour” organised and enforced through chiefs as a means to foster a spirit of self-reliance given its developmental dependence on IRG in

29 Where local councils receive funding for feeder road rehabilitation, chiefs may receive funding through the local councils to fund this work, though individuals providing local labour are not paid more than a stipend.

30 FRE119, who reported paying SLL 2000 (USD 0.27) a week in union dues.

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practice.31 The first head of the independent state, Sir Milton Margai, emphasised this in his independence speech, calling upon citizens

to give the Government your active help and support… there is much that can be done by yourselves to meet your own needs, and I shall continue to support and encourage voluntary local effort, whether it is directed to the building of a road, a bridge, a school or a community centre, a sports field, a water supply, or any other communal requirement (cited in Alie, 1990, p. 280).

Such expectations of self-reliance only grew in the 1960s and 1970s, fuelled by financial crises, growth of public indebtedness, and the retrenchment of public expenditure and services under the one-party rule of Siaka Stevens. Upon taking power in 1985, President Momoh, called upon his countrymen—from his ministers to “students, teachers, labourers, taxi and poda poda drivers and, even [to] the ordinary man in the village”—to “design a strategy of self-reliance” to support the nation-building project of the country (cited in Alie, 1990, p. 292). The breakdown of government functions and state control during the civil war reinforced the need for “self-help” as a means for public life to function. As Fanthorpe et al. (2011, p. 5) explain,

Rural people have become used over generations to surviving with little or no government assistance and that isolation has helped to dampen demand for services. A local culture of ‘self-help’ remains strong…[with] an entrenched assumption in rural areas that welfare and services are as likely to come from benevolent patrons as from public institutions.

These narratives of self-help and self-reliance were normalised in the areas of research, with focus group participants in one community explaining that “we tax ourselves” and take “collective responsibility” in “mending our own problems”. Others similarly described, “we mobilise ourselves”32 and we work together “to help ourselves”.33 This explanation was often framed as a way of demonstrating to the state a willingness to take action, which was widely

31 This idea of self-reliance has a long history in Sierra Leone, with even colonial state encouraging self-reliance amongst the domestic population. For example, in the early nineteenth century the settled communities of “recaptives”—Africans rescued from the slave trade between Africa and the Americas—“were forced to evolve their own institutions in the face of reduced government expenditure”, becoming the “masters of their own destiny” through reliance on communal labour, benefit societies and extra-legal government (Alie, 1990, pp. 73–74).

32 GBEFG1

33 MONFG1

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seen by community members as necessary to receive state support. Both the state and informal taxing actors emphasise the legitimacy of the types of unpaid labour upon which they rely. A DO, the central government representative and “supervisor” of chiefs at the local level, explained that the government’s acceptance of communal labour

depends on the amount and type of [informal] payment. If it is for capital projects, it is illegal because the burden will be too high when we have government to undertake such projects. But if the [informal] payment is for small projects like [road] brushing, digging water wells, cleaning the township, etc., that payment is legal and people should be practicing it.34

Moreover, state coexistence is often still justified on the basis of informal labour taxes being “traditional” duties—despite the colonial influence on these “traditions”. Indeed, a DO described the illegality of IRG and informal labour taxes as depending “on the prevailing customs and traditions of the people”, noting that “if the peopled accepted it, then it was legal but if they see it is a burden, then it is illegal [and] it should not be allowed”.35

2.2 Informal labour taxes and developmentalist narratives of “self- help”

In addition to this sanction of unpaid labour in line with anti-colonial and anti-capitalist ideology, the state has also explicitly sanctioned and encouraged informal labour taxes to support NGO-financed projects (Figure 42: E). For example, state agreements with development partners and NGO project proposals, overseen by the state, stipulate that recipient communities must provide “local materials and labour” in order to receive projects (see e.g. GoRSL, 2008, 2009b, 2009c; M. Mitchell, 1995).36 Community leaders and taxpayers

34 KAI181.3. Further illustrating the importance of how IRG is perceived, a community teacher explained how he benefits from unpaid labour, though making sure to emphasize that it was not “child labour”, which would be illegitimate: “When we [community teachers] want to plant groundnut, we can [each] take 5 pupils so that they can go and help […] during school hours…We only ask if they are willing. And we don’t coerce them if they are not willing. Because we always hear from the radio the government announcing about ‘no child labour” (UPP87)

35 KAI181.3

36 For example, in Kasunko chiefdom, an international NGO funded the expansion of a public clinic but required community members to contribute labour and local materials for the construction, which was organized

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universally reported that contributing local materials (e.g. sand, stones, water) and labour are conditions of receiving development projects, believing that they would not receive development projects without doing so.37 As described by a chiefdom speaker, “we have to work by ourselves in order to show the government that we’re here doing work.”38 This requirement was confirmed by all government officials and NGO representatives that were interviewed on the topic.39

This coexistence with and explicit sanction of IRG can be understood in line with shifting norms within developmental theory and practice. In the 1950s and 1960s, bilateral donors, transnational institutions, and international organisations increasingly championed self- help and required local mobilization as a prerequisite of grants and loans (Moskowitz, 2017). For example, in 1963, an American commission under the administration of John F. Kennedy declared that “self-help should be demanded of the recipients of American aid” (Mahajani, 1965, p. 657). In the 1990s, following the rethinking of the strict conditionality and structural adjustment that characterised development ideology in the 1980s and 1990s (P. Collier, 1999; Dunning, 2004; W. R. Easterly, 2006; Stokke, 1995; World Bank, 1998, 2005b, 2005a), development ideology and praxis shifted towards a “partnership” model, emphasising the importance of participation and local ownership in order to foster “mutual accountability” (OECD, 2005, 2011; World Bank and the IMF, 2005; for a review of this shift see Mosse, 2005;

through chiefs. This was described by taxpayers as “the tax for the project” (cited in van den Boogaard et al., 2019, p. 15).

37 Widely reported by government officials, taxpayers, and chiefdom representatives (for example, KAI173). While there is no data on how many communities received such NGO projects, in the past year, 15 percent of respondents in Koinadugu, Kailahun, and Kono districts reported making a contribution of labour —on average 11 household days annually, with some making additional cash or in-kind contributions—to a community development project, of which almost a fifth were organized by NGOs or international agencies and a further 8 percent were organized by the government.

38 MAN102

39 For example, KAI173 explained that when the DC “does development” it “expects the people to provide labour and local materials.”

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Pender, 2006).40 In line with this, the epistemic community of international development practitioners began to view local contributions and participation in development projects as integral to the effectiveness and sustainability of programmes. Some international actors also saw self-help as aligned with neoliberal logics that prioritize the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of projects (see e.g. Boesten et al., 2011).

Accordingly, development partners are generally supportive of cooperative “collective action” for the provision of public goods (e.g. Alesina et al., 1999; Glennerster et al., 2013; Miguel & Gugerty, 2005), in line with legitimised discourses of “self-help”, “community-led” development, and local “ownership” (e.g. Boesten et al., 2011; Brown, 2013; Brown & Prince, 2015; Dodworth, 2018; Hunter, 2008; Jennings, 2003; Schneider, 2006; Singh & Sachs, 2013). For example, a representative of Fambul Tok, a local NGO, explained that “self-help will make council development more reflective of community needs”; accordingly, the NGO has started to encourage self-help and informal “resource mobilisation” in communities.41 The state has likewise accepted and sanctioned the use of unpaid labour for NGO-financed development projects, embedding developmentalist rhetoric within their own policy statements. For example, the use of local materials—gathered by local community members—and local labour is framed by the state as necessary and as a key component of “ensur[ing] community ownership” (GoRSL MoHS, 2018, p. 22). This reflects the state’s dependence on NGOs and external actors to deliver essential public goods infrastructure,42 along with its sensitivity to developmentalist narratives that frame informal labour taxes as legitimate.

40 This is largely in line with the early co-production literature, which has variously seen co-production as a vehicle for developing “more responsible citizens; more responsive political processes; increased use of neighbourhood groups; a humanistic political process; and more effective service delivery” (Ferris, 1984, p. 331; see also Bjur & Siegel, 1977; Lopez-Lee, 1982; Rich, 1979; Rosentraub & Sharp, 1981; G. P. Whitaker, 1980).

41 KOI129

42 Despite playing a role in overseeing and monitoring NGOs through the Development Assistance Coordination Office in the MoFED, oversight and accountability is limited (see e.g. Open Government Partnership, 2016), with the state having relatively little power in the relationship with NGOs in practice.

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In this way, development partners have come to view—and often romanticise—communal labour as a positive indicator of local participation and collective action, though, as will be further discussed in Part IV of this thesis, without always paying sufficient attention to the equity implications of offloading development financing needs onto end users. Indeed, the very idea of self-reliance has been idealised, with interviewees often attaching moralism to those that are “self-reliant” and self-sustaining”.43

3 Independent state control over informal labour taxes: Hybridisation and formalisation

In two distinct sectors—national security and public sanitation—the independent Sierra Leonean state has moved from coexisting with informal labour taxes to taking some degree of control of them. In both cases, the shift from coexistence to control can be explained by the state’s relative independent governing capacity, due in part to pressure on the state to take control of IRG. In the case of formalisation, the state has greater governing capacity, while in the case of hybridisation, the state engages in a mediated form of control as a result of its continued dependence on IRG (Figure 43). At the same time, the relative acceptability of IRG in these cases helps to explain why state control does not engage in prohibition, but instead works with informal taxing actors in different ways.

Figure 43: State strategies of control over IRG

43 For instance, the DCC of Koinadugu lamented that individuals had lost some of the “self-reliance” he witnessed during the civil war, relating how when Makeni was under siege, people began growing cassava to survive (KOI260).

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(B) Control: Formalization: State takeover of cleaning exercises under the NPRC (1995) and SLPP (2018)

(C): Mediated control: Hybridization: State institutional partnerships for security/ Ebola management Increasing independent Increasing capacity governing

Increasing acceptability of IRG

3.1 Hybridisation of informal labour taxes for security provision

The state has taken a mediated degree of control over informal labour taxes for state security provision through an institutionalised hybrid partnership with chiefs, formalising the role of IRG and the authority of informal taxing actors (Figure 43: C). During election periods, the state relies on chiefdom-mobilised labour to ensure peace and stability, formally sanctioning their role through the Chiefdom Security Committee as part of the Office of National Security’s decentralised structure (I. Bangura, 2019).44 In addition to election periods, community security mobilisation and patrols during the Ebola epidemic were critical in eventually stemming the flow of infection (see e.g. I. Bangura, 2019; Manguvo & Mafuvadze, 2015; Richards et al., 2015; Richards, 2016; Van der Windt & Voors, forthcoming; A. Wilkinson et al., 2017).45 Though in some areas chiefs received rather substantial

44 FRE269. KOI130. Similarly, the Sierra Leone Police formed Local Police Partnership Boards in part to provide a channel of interaction between state police and community members and in part “to promote community security” (I. Bangura, 2019). For another example of a hybrid security institution, see (Cleaver et al., 2013). In Sierra Leone, a similar hybridized outcome exists in the provision of justice, with responsibilities clearly divided between state magistrate courts and “NA [Native Administration] courts”, with the latter relying on financing through a combination of state transfers, formal fees set through chiefdom bylaws, and informal fees and contributions.

45 Frankfurter et al. (2018) question whether the measures taken by chiefs were more effective, or simply “significantly more draconian.” Nevertheless, Appendix 8 shows that taxpayers view chiefly contributions to stopping the epidemic as important. This is in line with interviewees who explained that chiefdom efforts were

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international support,46 they also relied on communal labour and contributions to support local security and movement controls, with interviewees explaining that much of the effort was “self-funded, through… the people [of the provinces]… and the Freetown ‘diaspora’”.47 Illustrating its reliance on informal labour contributions, the state had local actors support the National Ebola Task Force, with chiefs directing chiefdom and community actors for activities such as surveillance, social mobilisation, and basic contact tracing (Photo 5).

Photo 5: State-sanctioned community-based Ebola task force identification card48

Source: Author photo, Koinadugu district, 2017

The state’s institutional partnerships with informal taxing actors for the provision of local security has been made possible by the state’s relative independent governing authority in the area of security. The primary role of the state in providing security is not questioned

effective because they were draconian, with “stringent measures” viewed as necessary to prevent the spread of the disease (KOI130).

46 Indeed Frankfurter et al.(2018) note that in one chiefdom in Kono district, “the paramount chief was given access to enormous financial resources, an additional salary, and a fleet of vehicles to manage response efforts; and motorbikes, jobs and other resources were subsequently distributed through patronage networks.”

47 KOI130. Freetown diaspora refers to the so-called “sons of the soil” residing in Freetown. As described by Richards (2016, p. 145), the Ebola response relied on community governance structures for the “co-production of material and social solutions”. Similarly in Liberia, Pailey (2017, p. 648) shows how during the epidemic private activities and resources were converted for public service delivery, arguing that non-state actors “effectively broadcasted public authority at meso- and micro-levels previously assumed to be the exclusive domain of government and international institutions”.

48 Note that “tax force” and “task force” are colloquially used interchangeably in some dialects of Krio, semantically not related to taks (tax).

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(Figure 44).49 While the state works with chiefs and other local actors, this hybridisation does not emerge out of a need for governing authority so much as from the state’s capacity constraints and desire to take advantage of local information networks. The state is clearly unable to take control over these local networks and informal institutions altogether given its limited reach in many parts of the country and its continued reliance on chiefs for information about and control over local populations and territories (Chapters 5 and 6). Accordingly, the state asserts a mediated form of state control, characterised by greater independent governing capacity than outcomes of state coexistence, but less than outcomes of formalisation.

Figure 44: Perceptions of responsibility of security provision50

.4 for providing security for providing

Actor primarily responsible Actor primarily .2

0 Government Chieftaincy A community group

While a degree of independent governing capacity makes control possible, it does not explain why the state works with informal taxing actors to provide security, rather than trying to ban their activities. In part, these hybrid partnerships can be explained by the salience of the public good it supports. Using informal labour taxes and other informal contributions to support peace and stability during elections or other national crises is seen by the government and external supporters as an acceptable and effective strategy. Non-state actors have long played an important role in complementing state security delivery. For example, civil defence forces organised during the civil war had varying degrees of direct

49 Moreover, when given an open-ended question as to what they expect the state and the chieftaincy, respectively, to do for citizens, 14 percent of respondents said they expect the state to provide security, while only 5 percent said the same for the chieftaincy.

50 Respondents were asked, “Who do you think is primarily responsible for providing security?”

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cooperation with the state. In some areas during the war, the government relied heavily on these informally-financed forces, eventually undertaking an “effort to recruit, train and arm the Kamajoisia [civil defence forces originating with Mande hunters] all over” the conflict- affected southern and eastern regions (Gberie, 2005, p. 86; see also Muana, 1997). This recognition of the historical contributions of local actors to national security is well-accepted in Sierra Leone, making it more viable for the state to institutionalise hybrid partnerships that leverage these contributions. Likewise, with Ebola framed as a matter of national security, there was widespread international support for the state’s use of local organisation and mobilisation in the fight against the epidemic (see e.g. I. Bangura, 2019; Manguvo & Mafuvadze, 2015; Richards et al., 2015; Richards, 2016; A. Wilkinson et al., 2017), though without explicitly recognising the free labour associated with these exercises.

3.2 Formalisation of town-cleaning exercises

The state has taken more direct control over IRG through the formalisation of unpaid labour for town-cleaning exercises (Figure 43: D). As described in Chapter 3, labour contributions for “town-cleaning” are common, organised and enforced by chiefs and youth associations at the local level, frequently on a monthly basis. While this has been a longstanding practice dating back to the colonial era, on two occasions the state took control of town-cleaning exercises, coordinating activities and backing enforcement with the power of the state. First, the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC)—the military junta that ruled from 1992 to 1996—instituted a monthly cleaning day in Freetown and other cities and towns across the country, enforced by “young soldiers [who] patrolled the streets in the morning[,] requiring citizens to collect litter and clean the area in front of their homes” (Opala, 1994, p. 196). Described initially as “extremely popular” (Opala, 1994, p. 196) and “highly successful” (Gberie, 2005, p. 75), the clean-up campaign soon became more repressive.51 After return to

51 For instance, Gberie (2005, p. 75) describes how an NPRC minister “severely beat up a clergyman in Bo and insulted an archbishop because the unfortunate churchmen did not show enough enthusiasm for the mass cleaning campaign.”

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civilian government in 1996 and as the civil war encroached on Freetown, which had previously been isolated from the main fighting, the clean-up campaigns dissolved.

The state retook control over town-cleaning exercises in 2018 under the newly elected SLPP government of Julius Maada Bio. Bio, who was a key member and short-term leader of the NPRC and the country, reintroduced national cleaning exercises, scheduled for the first Saturday of every month, through an executive order (Sierra Network Radio, 2018). Citizens are expected to clean their private and communal spaces, including community roads, gutters, and markets (Sierra Network Radio, 2018).52 As with similar practices elsewhere, including Congolese salongo and Rwandan umuganda, public transport does not operate, and shops must remain closed. In urban areas, the work is coordinated by state-sanctioned zonal coordinators, supported by local chiefs or headmen, monitoring teams, and volunteer youth who collect trash from “transit points”, to be then collected by trucks and taken to a dumping ground.53 Freetown and local councils across the country introduced bylaws to enforce the exercise, with further backing from the national state. Indeed, the national army and police enforce the activity, with 500 armed forces officers stationed across Freetown on the first day “to ensure that everyone is playing a role” (Melrose Kargbo cited in Sierra Network Radio, 2018), with non-compliant individuals liable to be fined or risk getting “in trouble with the police” (BBC, 2019).54 Movement and economic activity is prohibited;

52 This is not dissimilar to laws elsewhere, including in Canada, where municipal bylaws mandate that homeowners must shovel the snow on public sidewalks in front of their houses. However, in Canada at least, these duties are often linked to property ownership (with fines linked to the title of the property, rather than on its resident), rather than citizenship or residence (Johnson, 2016), while they do not include broader restriction of movement.

53 The state considers this the “national service” of the youth, rewarding them with a small stipend, but no payment (Melrose Kargbo cited in Sierra Network Radio, 2018). This highlights the importance of understanding local terminology. In this context, a stipend refers to a small token of gratitude, but would be considerably less than a wage payment; for instance, it might refer to a meal or a drink for the coordinating youth labourers. In some areas of the country, including Kailahun, youth groups are reported to receive a stipend from the local government for their participation in monthly town-cleaning (KAI90).

54 While enforced by the army, the exercise is not necessarily repressive, but involves some degree of state coercion and voluntarism on the part of citizens. As described above, pure voluntarism is complicated to assign

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anyone outside of their home is punished unless they are contributing to town-cleaning (Telegraph, 2019).

The state’s takeover of informal labour taxes for national cleaning exercises can in part be in part understood through the state’s increase in independent governing authority, both during the NPRC regime and the more recent SLPP administration.55 In the case of the NPRC, the military junta at least initially had significant backing by the population, giving it a mandate to rule and mobilise support for national cleaning exercises. After 30 years of dictatorship and kleptocratic rule under Siaka Stevens, by some accounts the NPRC were “welcomed as liberators” (Bio, 2019b), with a considerable popular mandate behind them. By reducing petrol and rice shortages, framing themselves as anti-corruption crusaders, and gaining the support of disenfranchised youth, the “NPRC was instantly popular”, with 27- year-old leader Valentine Strasser striking “an almost cult figure”, described by the press as a “redeemer”, with the coup described as a “Glorious Revolution” (Gberie, 2005, p. 71; see also Opala, 1994; Richards, 1996, pp. 9–10; Zack-Williams & Riley, 1993, p. 94). Public opinion remained “staunchly pro-NPRC” even as the “euphoria generated by the 29 April coup… waned” in response to military setbacks; reports of the junta’s involvement in corruption, looting, and illegal diamond mining; and extrajudicial executions (Opala, 1994, p. 196).

In 2018, the SLPP administration came to power with a “New Directions” agenda and a considerable mandate for change. In the politically-divided country, it is rare for government

to individuals. Regardless, I focus not on intention to participate, but on the degree of participation and its relation to the state.

55 The necessity of this independent governing authority is evident when considering other successful cases of state takeovers of informal labour taxes, including the longstanding practices of mandatory cleaning (umuganda) enforced by the autocratic government of Rwanda. The Rwandan state mandates community work on Saturdays for all citizens between 18 and 65 years of age, with enforcement by local policing units (NAR & Interpeace, 2016; Purdeková, 2011; Uwimbabazi, 2012). This practice has been used by the government to help achieve development targets (Linek, 2018), with proof of participation serving as “proof of good standing” as a citizen that is necessary to access many government services (Linek, 2018; Purdeková, 2011; Sommers, 2012). At the same time, social enforcement plays a role. As the practice involves households publicly committing to contributions, “[f]ailure to deliver dishonors a person and is considered a disloyalty, which is a very serious offense in conflict-ridden Rwanda” (Linek, 2018, p. 8).

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policies to be supported across regions, though early reports suggest that the cleaning exercise is “highly respected” and enforced even in APC-dominated regions.56 This mandate, however, does not just come from the electorate and informal patronage networks, but also from the international community. Having led the transition to democracy under the NPRC,57 received a liberal Western education in peace studies in the United States,58 and prioritised education, health, and gender equity within his political platform, Bio was warmly welcomed by donors (e.g. Bio, 2019a, 2019b; Hitchen, 2018). At the same time, pressure from domestic and international actors to address the issue of public sanitation had become particularly salient following the Ebola epidemic and previous cholera outbreaks. This pressure from actors upon whom the state relied for its governing authority increased state willingness to take control over IRG.

While this independent governing capacity helps us to explain how it was possible for the state to take greater control over IRG, it does not explain why it does so in the manner that it did. Why did the state not simply prohibit informal labour taxes and use state revenues to fund public sanitation efforts? From one perspective, this may seem like a logical choice: where states have greater power, they should want to increase formal institutionalisation. This is particularly likely in the case of the NPRC and Bio administrations, given their ostensible prioritisation of decreasing corruption and informal revenue extraction. One of the NPRC’s explicit justification for the coup was to end informal extraction and the corrupt rule of the APC administration (Gberie, 2005, p. 72; Keen, 2005a, p. 100; Opala, 1994, p. 195;

56 Personal correspondence, key informant based in Freetown, 20 September 2019; key informant based in Makeni, 23 September 2019.

57 This despite his initial unwillingness to do so, campaigning instead for “peace before elections”. It was only when he was “inundated with national and international pressure” that Bio complied and endorsed the scheduled timetable for the 1996 election (I. Bangura, 2019; Kandeh, 1996; Keen, 2005a, pp. 154–155; see also Amnesty International, 1996). Some argue that Bio’s reluctance to allow elections was influenced by the wartime profits available to him (Keen, 2005a, p. 155).

58 As a reward for ceding to calls for “elections before peace”, he received a generous “retirement package”, which included immunity from prosecution for “any act, matter or thing done” during or after the April 1992 coup (Amnesty International, 1996, pp. 3–4), as well as an educational scholarship offered by the UN’s Department of Humanitarian Affairs (Christensen, 2012; Keen, 2005a, pp. 157, 198).

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Richards, 1996, pp. 9–10; Zack-Williams & Riley, 1993, p. 92,95),59 while the SLPP government focused explicitly on enforcing anti-corruption laws (Bio, 2019a, e.g. 2019b; Umaru Fofana, 2018; Hitchen, 2018; VoA, 2018) and reducing informal payments for public services. Indeed, tackling corruption was a key tenet of the SLPP’s election manifesto, with Bio referring to the level of corruption in the country as “a national security issue” (Bio cited in Hitchen, 2018; see also Umaru Fofana, 2018).

Not all types of IRG, however, are viewed as corrupt or illegitimate, with ideas around their acceptability shifting over time. Indeed, the state’s role in institutionalising, rather than banning, informal labour taxes is explained by the relative acceptability of informal labour taxes in these contexts. In the case of the NPRC, the administration’s takeover of informal labour taxes was made possible by the fact that IRG to support public sanitation and nation- building was relatively acceptable to the domestic population, upon which its governing capacity depended. The NPRC clean-up campaign appealed to domestic audiences by engaging youth and making a visible show of government action—something that had been sorely lacking in the previous regime. Accordingly, the campaign was seen as a “morale- boosting” measure (Opala, 1994), widely seen as acceptable by the population and especially by youth. It was so acceptable, in fact, that aside from the clean-up campaign organised and enforced by the junta, youths supportive of the regime formed into neighbourhood organisations that undertook a massive urban beautification project, involving cleaning public spaces and repairing public infrastructure, as well as producing patriotic art. As described by Opala (1994, p. 197), they “set about patching streets, cleaning gutters, and painting curbs and median strips on a massive scale” throughout Freetown, paying for paint and supplies by “set[ting] up road blocks and ask[ing] motorists to contribute.” He notes that,

What is remarkable is that the youth’s actions were entirely spontaneous. The NPRC, taken by surprise, hurriedly set up a National Social Mobilisation Secretariat (NASMOS) to coordinate the youth organisations, but the young people continued to work almost entirely unsupervised and to raise funds on their own (Opala, 1994, p. 197).

59 While an anti-corruption drive was indeed instituted by the NPRC, after taking power, its “claim to be leading a crusade against APC corruption soon began to look highly dubious” (Keen, 2005a, p. 101; see also Gberie, 2005, pp. 73–79; Kandeh, 1996; C.M. Fyle, 1994).

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Setting the groundwork for the SLPP takeover, informal labour taxes were similarly viewed as acceptable by both donors and domestic constituents for three key reasons. First, informal labour taxes for public sanitation projects fit neatly within donor narratives of local ownership, sustainability, and the virtues of collective action. In line with these narratives, the state has explicitly framed the clean-up campaign in terms of people taking “ownership and responsibility” of social and health issues. As stated by Melrose Kargbo, Deputy Minister of Works and Public Assets, the government “expect[s] people to take responsibility and ownership of the process because of the love of mama Salone” (Sierra Network Radio, 2018). In turn, donors—including the UNDP, UNICEF, and the Chinese government—have widely supported the national cleaning exercise, providing garbage trucks as well as protective gear for the labourers (People’s Daily, 2018; Sierra Network Radio, 2018; State House Media and Communications Unit, 2019). As elsewhere, donors have accepted and encouraged the use of unpaid labour to achieve development goals,60 even where such programmes include repressive enforcement mechanisms and serve as a “top-down instrument to enforce government policies and programs” (Linek, 2018; see also Bugingo & Interayamahanga, 2010; Chemouni, 2014; Ingelaere, 2014; Purdeková, 2011).

The use of unpaid labour is moreover acceptable to donors, development partners, and the state in line with neoliberalist ideals of “leaner, meaner” governance (Meagher, 2012). As explained by Boesten et al. (2011, p. 42), focusing on cost-effectiveness aligns with “a contemporary neo-liberal logic which seeks to keep state spending on social services low through decentralisation and privatisation.” Indeed, international actors in Sierra Leone generally support revenue austerity (e.g. IMF, 2019a, pp. 10–11, 17). In line with pressures to keep spending on public services low, the state has emphasised that the national cleaning exercise comes with “no cost on government” (Kargbo in Sierra Network Radio, 2018). The effective cost is on individuals. Conservatively—only accounting for the “coordinating” volunteers in Freetown and not the labour of regular citizens—I estimate that the effective revenue saved by the government annually, referred to as the budgetary “shadow price” of

60 The sixth Sustainable Development Goals is to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” (United Nations, 2015c).

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in-kind labour (van Waijenburg, 2018, p. 45), is SLL 381.6 million (USD 49,479).61 This is significant given that the annual budget for the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) in 2018 included only SLL 81 million (USD 10,500) that could—at least theoretically—be reserved for sanitation exercises (GoRSL MoFED, 2018).62

Finally, the issue of sanitation had become particularly salient in Freetown, making it more acceptable for the state to take more “extreme” measures to address it. Indeed, following the devastation of the Ebola epidemic, public sanitation became a more relevant issue for donors and voters alike. Public sanitation went from being seen as a “privilege” to a basic right (see e.g. Anzilotti, 2019) and a global public good with transnational health, security, and economic implications (e.g. Kalra et al., 2014). The massive human and economic toll of the Ebola epidemic (see e.g. CDC, n.d.; Davis, 2015; UNDG 2015, 2015) likewise incited fears of other epidemics, particularly in the city’s informal settlements where sanitation is poor and disease can spread quickly.63 The government explicitly frames the issue as addressing these health risks—what Deputy Minister Kargbo described as “the health situation” (Kargbo in Sierra Network Radio, 2018), discussing the spread of infectious diseases, especially cholera and malaria (BBC, 2019; Telegraph, 2019). With this framing, the initiative has been largely praised by donors and voters alike (e.g. AFP, 2018; K. Kanu, 2018; Konneh, 2019; Sierra Network Radio, 2018). As described by a youth volunteer, “I don’t think any peaceful Sierra

61 Note that this only accounts for the labour of those serving coordinating roles in Freetown alone. Estimates account for 60 zonal coordinators (10 per zone) and 1000 youth coordinating volunteers (Sierra Network Radio, 2018). Wages are estimated based on average wages for unskilled workers in Freetown (SLL 30,000) for youth volunteers and zonal coordinators. Note that the Ministry of Youth has also volunteered 800 youth for service; these youth are on ministry payroll, though it is not clear that this extra duty is covered by their salary. Exchange rate is the annual average for 2018.

62 Exchange rate is the annual average for 2018. In 2018 the budget for the entire MoHS in 2018 was SLL 107 billion (USD 13.874 million), though the vast majority of this was spent on administrative and operating costs, primary, secondary, and tertiary health care services, the directorate of hospitals and laboratory, and support services (the procurement of drugs and medical supplies) (GoRSL MoFED, 2018).

63 These fears were compounded by the country’s 2012 cholera outbreak—the largest in the country’s reported history and the most deadly in close to two decades (World Health Organisation Global Task Force on Cholera Control 2013). Thus the cleaning exercise aims in part to reduce flooding and stagnant water that become breeding grounds for infectious and water-borne diseases such as cholera and malaria.

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Leonean will dislike this initiative to clean the country. Everyone knows that the main reason for this cleaning is to protect us against sickness because health comes first” (cited in BBC, 2019).

Accordingly, we can see that for the NPRC and the SLPP administrations, informal labour taxes were relatively acceptable, making it legitimate for the state to institutionalise their use, rather than banning them. We may expect that when the state gains relative independent governing capacity it will prohibit IRG, assert its legal authority, and strengthen formal fiscal institutions. What we see instead is the state taking over IRG and working with informal taxing actors, without prohibiting it. This is in stark contrast to the Bio administration’s view of informal taxes to support the provision of education (Chapter 7), with informal taxes for education seen as illegitimate.

4 Conclusion

This chapter highlights three key findings that deepen our understanding of formal–informal relationships around IRG. First, while international policy rhetoric tends to frame informality as universally detrimental, perceptions of IRG shift over time and across contexts. Notably, the epistemic community of international development practitioners remains uncomfortable with cash-based IRG to support universal education or health care, seeing it as a form of corruption, though views labour-based IRG as supporting positive means and ends to economic and political development. This serves as a reminder of the constructed nature of informality and the value in disentangling it from universalistic and moralistic rhetoric.

Second, weak states derive their governing authority from multiple sources. Chapters 5 and 6 illustrate the importance of local power brokers to governing authority, while Chapter 7 demonstrates how informal taxing actors that support essential public goods may play a supplementary role to state authority, while international donors may shape the nature of state engagement with IRG. As with Chapter 7, this chapter highlights the importance of external actors in supporting the government’s authority and in shaping government policy, particularly with respect to how the state responds to informal tax institutions. Exploring

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IRG thus helps us to not only “see the state” but to better understand the multiple sources of governing authority upon which modern weak states depend.

Third, despite assumptions that states should oppose IRG—and should therefore prohibit IRG and informal taxing actors when they have the capacity to do so—my findings show that such outcomes not inevitable. While Chapter 7 shows that the state need not be in conflict with convergent IRG, this chapter illustrates that the state may assert control over IRG where it has sufficient independent governing capacity. However, state control does not just mean prohibiting IRG. Even where the state can take control over IRG, it does not simply prohibit IRG in all cases as we would theoretically expect. Instead, state control over IRG reflects a range of strategies (namely, prohibition, formalisation, hybridisation, and supervision), shaped by its degree of independent governing authority and the acceptability of IRG to the state and the actors upon which its governing authority depends. This reflects the mediated nature of statehood in weak institutional contexts, with the state’s governing capacity and authority depending on multiple sources.

In line with the findings of the last three chapters, the state often works with IRG, with cases of formal–informal conflict and the prohibition of IRG being the exception rather than the rule. Where the state’s underlying governing constraints do not change, the state will be unable to effectively enforce prohibitions against informality; instead, it is more likely to tacitly coexist with IRG, forbearing the enforcement of laws against it. At the same time, where IRG is relatively legitimate, the state will be more likely to work with informal taxing actors rather than being them illegal. As with the previous chapters, my research suggests that such structural shifts are relatively rare, which may help us to understand the failure of prohibition campaigns and the seemingly perennial surface-level efforts of modern weak states to temper “unacceptable” informality.

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Part IV: IRG and statebuilding

The findings from the case studies of divergent and convergent IRG challenge common assumptions about how the state will engage with informal institutions. Rather than opposing IRG, states often coexist with informal taxing actors and, even where the state has greater independent governing authority, choose to work with informal taxing actors in different ways. Much of this apparent puzzle can be explained by the nature of the state’s governing strategy and its effective dependence on informal taxing actors for its capacity to govern—that is, to maintain control, win votes, and deliver essential public goods and services. Parts two and three make clear that in some cases IRG can complement state capacity and reinforce state authority. Strengthening the authority and capacity of leaders to rule, however, is not the same as state institution building. The following two chapters thus consider how IRG affects longer-term statebuilding.

I take the multifaceted concept of statebuilding to mean the strengthening of state institutional capacity.1 I define state institutional capacity according to the effectiveness of

1 This is in line with Huntington (1965, 1968)’s conceptualisation of institutionalisation, which is defined according to organisational adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence. As described by Huntington (1965, pp. 394, 399, 401, 403), an organisation or procedure is more institutionalised when it is more adaptable to change; more complex in structure; more independent of “outside influences” normatively, structurally, and financially ; and “more unified and coherent”. I thus differentiate other forms of statebuilding discussed throughout this thesis, including strategies for strengthening state control over its territory (e.g. patronage, patrimonialism, clientelism). While these represent strategies to reinforce the power and reach of state leaders, they are not necessarily related to institutional capacity and organizational competence.

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how governments function (Fukuyama, 2013),2 which is central to any state’s capacity “to get things done” (M. Centeno et al., 2017, p. 13), including the ability “to make and enforce rules, and to deliver services” (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 350).3 The state’s capacity to get things done is a multi-dimensional concept, influenced in part by how the state implements its mandate (Fukuyama, 2013), the relative autonomy of the state from societal interference (e.g. Fukuyama, 2004; Skocpol, 1985), and the organizational competence or quality of the bureaucracy (e.g. M. Centeno et al., 2017; Evans & Rauch, 1999; Fergusson et al., 2020; Hendrix, 2010).

Early analyses of informality often associated it with chaos, dysfunction, and disorder, antithetical to economic development (e.g. Boeke, 1942; J. Harris & Todaro, 1970; W. A. Lewis, 1954), democratisation (e.g. Lauth, 2000; Tsai, 2007a, p. 227), and statebuilding (e.g.

2 This is in line with what Mann (1984, pp. 188–189) refers to as infrastructural power—“the capacity of the state to actually penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions throughout the realm”– as opposed to despotic power—“the range of actions which the elite is empowered to undertake without routine, institutionalised negotiation with civil society groups”. An alternative approach to measuring state capacity is assessing what the state produces—that is, outputs and outcomes like health, education, and regulatory management (see e.g. Boardman, 2014; Rotberg, 2014). There are several limitations to such measures. First, outputs are not the result of state capacity alone given that “the public sector interacts with the environment around it and the society it is dealing with to produce results” (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 353; see also Migdal, 1988). This evidently makes it difficult to isolate the effect of the state’s role. As Atkinson (2005, p. 42) notes, it is difficulty to assign causality to any output, as the quality of an output is a measure of “the attributable incremental contribution of the service to the outcome”. Second, the quality of public sector outputs are “notoriously hard to measure” (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 356). Finally, measuring state outputs comes with normative judgments about what a state should deliver and there is no easy way to remove such judgments from a measurement exercise (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 356; Holt & Manning, 2014, p. 718). Different conceptualisations of state capacity include the monopoly on violence (Acemoglu et al., 2013; Weber, 1949a), legibility (D’Arcy & Nistotskaya, 2017; M. M. Lee, 2018; M. M. Lee & Zhang, 2016), and resources available to the state (Lindvall & Teorell, 2016; Soifer, 2008).

3 State capacity is critical to economic, human, and political development, though state capacity does not necessarily lead to state performance or effectiveness. Rather, it depends how state capacity is deployed by political leaders, which is determined by how the state interacts with “a set of inheritances, policy priorities, and political action” (M. Centeno et al., 2017, p. 26). Thus, stronger state capacity does not inherently lead to positive developmental outcomes; instead, it is assumed to be a necessary but insufficient factor. Likewise, the desirability of development is not assumed, with recognition that “development” has winners and losers, particularly in terms of cultural and environmental assets (Escobar, 1995; Ferguson, 1994; J. N. Pieterse, 2000; Rahnema & Bawtree, 1997).

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Bayart et al., 1999; Chabal & Daloz, 1999). In short, informality was posited as contradictory to the modern state, fated to disappear with modernisation, economic development, and statebuilding. This perspective has now largely been discredited, with the recognition that informality “has not been eradicated by economic development, statebuilding, globalisation, or the spread of democracy” (Radnitz, 2011, p. 367; see also Farrell, 2009; Ganev, 2007; Hertog, 2010; Tsai, 2007a). Nevertheless, there remains a tendency, particularly among policymakers and the international financial institutions, to view informality as undermining state capacity. This is particularly true for IRG, given that a state monopoly on taxation is seen as central to state authority. Indeed, classic theories of the state assume that IRG undermines state institutionalisation.

I probe this assumption in the following chapters, considering three pathways through which IRG may affect state institutional capacity: namely, through state legitimacy, revenues, and structures (Figure 45). First, IRG may influence state legitimacy through its impacts on public goods, accountability, trust, and equity outcomes. Second, IRG may affect the revenues available to the state by substituting for formal taxation, in turn limiting the state’s capacity to govern and provide public goods. Finally, IRG may affect the nature of state structures, by influencing what the state does and how it does it. Exploring each pathway in turn, Chapter 9 considers the relationship between IRG and state legitimacy, while Chapter 10 then considers the implications of IRG for state revenues and structures.

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Figure 45: Pathways between formal–informal relationships and state institutional capacity

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Chapter 9: Informal revenue generation and state legitimacy

Di wata we yu tek fɔ was, nɔto ɔl de go pan yu.1

West African proverb of Kono origin

1 Literally, “Not all the water you take to wash goes on you”, or “You don’t get credit for everything you do.”

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State legitimacy has well-documented positive effects on states’ capacity to govern (e.g. Almond & Verba, 1963; Easton, 1965; Englebert, 2000, 2002; Fukuyama, 1995; Lipset, 1959; D. C. North, 1981; Weber, 1984). As “a political order’s worthiness to be recognised” (Baynes, 2001), legitimacy allows governments to rely on citizens’ voluntary—or quasi-voluntary— compliance with state policies, with the effect of decreasing the costs of policy implementation and improving the efficiency of public goods provision (e.g. Beetham, 1991; Connolly, 1984; Gilley, 2009; Levi, 2006; Levi & Sacks, 2009; Lipset, 1984; McLoughlin, 2015; Tyler, 2006; Weber, 1968, pp. 212–216). State legitimacy thus affects state institutionalisation directly as well as indirectly through its impact on quasi-voluntary tax compliance (Figure 46). Indeed, legitimacy affects the “soft power” of the state to collect taxes in a quasi-voluntary manner, in turn enabling the state to deliver public goods and to run an effective state administration. There are reinforcing effects—positive or negative— between state capacity and state legitimacy. Improved state legitimacy improves quasi- voluntary tax compliance, allowing governments to collect revenue more easily, thereby increasing state capacity. Stronger state capacity to deliver public services or professionalised government can further strengthen state legitimacy. Of course, these reinforcing effects can also go in the opposite direction: if state legitimacy weakens, government revenue collection becomes more difficult, with the potential to weaken state capacity, with subsequently negative impacts on state legitimacy. Negative feedback loops may prove difficult to break free: if state capacity is low, the state may not be able to meet citizen expectations about what it should deliver, making it challenging to increase state legitimacy.2

2 Citizen expectations “might be based on what [citizens] think the state can deliver, learned through past performance, or what they think it ought to deliver, infused by ideology and belief” (McLoughlin, 2015, pp. 353, FN 5; OECD, 2011). These expectations may shift over time. Once institutional capacity has increased it is plausible to consider that expectations of the state and what it should provide may likewise increase, making it more challenging for states to maintain strong legitimacy over time (McLoughlin, 2015; M. A. Thomas, 2015, pp. 30–34). For example, research in Nepal, Rwanda, and South Sudan shows that expectations about state service delivery can quickly shift from concerns over access to concerns over quality and cost (Ndaruhutse, 2012). Similarly, evidence from Colombia indicates that where service provision expanded citizens’ level of satisfaction diminished, partly as a result of shifting citizen attention from areas where state performance had improved to other areas where it remained less effective (Guerrero, 2011). Likewise, Thomas (2015, p. 32) shows that citizen expectations of government in liberal democracies changed enormously over time, with the

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Figure 46: State legitimacy and state institutional capacity

Intuitively, IRG should negatively affect state legitimacy if formal and informal taxes are substitutes. From this perspective, taxpayers may view paying informal tax as obviating their duty to pay general taxes to the government.3 For example, a focus group participant in the Kailahun district of Sierra Leone explained that people in his community are “less willing to pay local tax when they are paying on their own [for services that are not being provided by the government]” (cited in van den Boogaard et al., 2019, p. 20). Another focus group participant in Northern province exclaimed, “Why do we pay [tax]? I pay my own [informal] school fees and buy medicine at the clinic [despite the free health care initiative].”4

twentieth century seeing “explosive growth in government functions throughout the industrialized world”, driven in part by expanded citizen perspectives of the responsibility of the state. As McLoughlin (2015) explains “an initial flurry of trust-generating effects [as a result of improved state capacity and service delivery] faded over time as citizens came to take service delivery for granted.”

3 Alternatively, informal tax payments may be viewed as conscious citizen exit from the state (Hirschman, 1970) or a form of political resistance (Scott, 1987). As proposed by Olken and Singhal (2011, p. 25), “If local governments are corrupt, residents may prefer to make payments toward public projects in a form that cannot be expropriated”. This is supported by a broader literature on bribery that shows that corruption on the whole detracts from tax morale (e.g. Chariye, 2016; Jahnke, 2015; Picur & Riahi-Belkaoui, 2006).

4 Focus group participant, KASFG4. Even some chiefs seemed to support this view. For example, when discussing whether they would support government property tax collection, a sub-chief in Sulima chiefdom

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These perspectives are reflected in literature on non-state service provision.5 For instance, Matthews (1997, p. 50) made the case that in the post-Cold War era states lost autonomy and power, “including political, social, and security roles at the core of sovereignty” to NGOs and private markets, while Obiyan (2005) asked, “Will the state die as NGOs thrive?” These concerns stemmed from a fear that citizens would start to rely on non-state actors to provide basic services rather than demanding services from their own governments (Edwards & Hulme, 1996; Holzner, 2010, p. 243; T. Moss et al., 2006; OECD, 2008b, p. 7) and empirical evidence that governments redirect spending to other activities when they are financed through alternative means (Torpey-Saboe, 2015).

Some recent research gives credence to these fears. For example, Bodea and Le Bas (2016, p. 215) show that “[w]here individuals have access to community-provided goods, which may substitute for effective state services provision, they are less likely to adopt pro-compliance norms”. Ali et al. (2014) finds that frequent protection payments to non-state actors reduces the likelihood of having a tax compliant attitude. Similarly, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (2011, p. 83) cautions that service provision through non-state actors “can undermine strengthening of government systems”, with reliance on non-state actors a potential risk to statebuilding activities. This belief in the substitution of non-state and state service provision is so commonplace that there have been cases of governments asking foreign actors to stop providing public goods because they felt that their legitimacy was undermined by the non-state actors’ visible role in providing those goods (Ciorciari & Krasner, 2018).

Despite these intuitive findings, IRG need not always detract from state legitimacy. Indeed, IRG may positively contribute to state legitimacy by visibly improving the quality of public goods if citizens attribute those improvements to the state. Building on evidence that generally efficient public goods provision strengthens state legitimacy (Easton, 1965;

explained, “We [levy our own taxes to] lodge district officials for free when they’re in town, why should we pay property tax [to the district government]?”

5 This literature often focuses on the effects of state retrenchment and the rise of two-tiered social service systems, which rose in importance in the 1980s and 90s.

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Fukuyama, 2015; Rotberg, 2003), a growing body of research suggests that non-state service provision may complement broader statebuilding objectives by improving citizen perceptions of the state (e.g. Dietrich et al., 2018; Dietrich & Winters, 2015), enhancing state capacity (Cammett & MacLean, 2014a, p. 4), and strengthening tax morale and state legitimacy (Sacks, 2012a, 2013)—or at least not undermining it (Baldwin & Winters, 2018).

Pursuing this thread, I find that the relationship between IRG and state legitimacy is more complex than conventionally assumed. In Sierra Leone, IRG does not always undermine state legitimacy. Indeed, some types of IRG have positive effects on tax morale, others have negative effects, and others have no apparent effect on tax morale.

First, convergent IRG—that is, IRG that does not threaten state institutions—can play a complementary role to the state and strengthen state legitimacy through its impact on public goods provision, trust in the state, and government accountability. However, these positive effects only emerge where the state plays some role in service provision. This role need not be a direct one—where the state is weak, but present, citizens appear to attribute positive outcomes to the state, with subsequent positive implications for state legitimacy. For example, where the state has provided a public hospital, but communities effectively pay for nurses’ salaries through IRG, citizens may still hold positive views of the state.

By contrast, where the state is altogether absent in service provision, these positive attribution effects through public goods provision disappear, with overall negative impacts on state legitimacy. This supports the notion that public goods provision alone does not translate to state legitimacy but instead requires citizens to attribute that public goods provision to the state (Schmelzle & Stollenwerk, 2018). In Sierra Leone, the effect of IRG on state legitimacy thus in some ways depends on the role of the state in public goods provision, with my data highlighting a difference between a weak, but present state, which has positive effects for state legitimacy, and an absent state, which appears to appear to undermine state legitimacy.

Finally, some types of IRG appear to simply coexist with the state, with no significant impact on how citizens perceive state authority. In Sierra Leone, divergent IRG—that is, IRG that

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threatens modern state institutions—has no effect on state legitimacy, indicating that not all types of IRG substitute for the state. In this case, taxpayers may not view formal and informal taxes as substitutes; rather, IRG may serve as an alternative to a largely absent formal state without representing a rejection of that state, or may serve to “fund different types of public goods” that the government is not able or eager to fund (Olken & Singhal, 2011, p. 25).

These findings suggest the need for the state to play a role in service delivery and indicate that it may effectively do so through hybrid partnerships with informal taxing actors. In weak institutional contexts, the state may work with informal taxing actors to overcome capacity constraints, with potentially positive impacts on state institutionalisation. Building on this insight, I then consider how the nature of state engagement with IRG may undermine these positive effects, highlighting especially the risks of reinforcing unaccountable informal institutions and institutionalising inequality.

Previous chapters shed some light on how IRG may reinforce state authority in unexpected ways. In this chapter, I test the relationship between IRG and state legitimacy through quantitative analysis of attitudinal data. I first describe the empirical specification used and then explore the key results and detail the causal mechanisms that help explain the variation in different types of IRG. Section 3 explores the key findings in greater depth, while section 4 then considers the potential risks for state legitimacy of how the state engages with IRG.

1 IRG and state legitimacy

A key challenge in testing the impact of IRG on state legitimacy is measuring the latter concept (see e.g. Beetham, 1991; Guerrero, 2011; McLoughlin, 2015). Measurement issues include different conceptual understandings of “legitimacy” among individuals (Beetham, 1991, p. 13); the reality that a behavioural measure (e.g. tax compliance) does not necessarily correlate to beliefs of legitimacy, as individuals may comply with taxation out of fear or other “rational” reasons (Schaar, 1984); and the risk of being unable to differentiate individuals’ support for the regime in power and acceptance of state institutions more broadly (Guerrero, 2011). Tax morale—that is, attitudes among taxpayers towards paying taxes—avoids some of the issues in measuring state legitimacy as it better reflects taxpayer perceptions of the

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right and acceptance of the state to govern than behavioural measures and is removed from ideas of the regime in power.6 Where willingness to pay taxes is high, we can infer that individuals accept the right of the state to collect taxes and govern. Accordingly, I take tax morale as a key indicator of state legitimacy, with high tax morale indicating strong state legitimacy. If IRG appears to undermine willingness to pay taxes, this likely indicates a broader decline in state legitimacy. Conversely, if IRG strengthens willingness to pay taxes, this likely indicates an increase in state legitimacy.

As my goal is to capture state legitimacy rather than perceptions of government performance or taxpayer behaviour, it is most appropriate to use a comparatively unconditional measure of tax morale that “seeks to capture the extent to which taxpayers believe governments always have the right to collect taxes, largely irrespective of government behaviour” (Prichard, forthcoming).7 This is more likely to measure “broader acceptance of government authority”, rather than an assessment, for example, of short-term government performance or the quality of reciprocal benefits received (Prichard, forthcoming). Therefore, I define the dependent variable, tax morale, as an individual’s expressed attitude towards the right of

6 Tax morale broadly captures taxpayers’ nonpecuniary motivations for tax compliance (Luttmer & Singhal, 2014, p. 15; see also R. Cummings et al., 2005; Fjeldstad & Heggstad, 2012), understanding motivations outside of other contributing factors such as the perceptions of the likelihood of punishment, the severity of deterrent measures, or the costs of compliance.

7 This measure contrasts with comparatively conditional ones, which seek “to capture the extent to which taxpayers believe that governments have the right to collect taxes, conditional on whether or not they provide meaningful benefits in return” (Prichard, forthcoming). A comparatively conditional question may ask, for example, whether “[p]eople should refuse to pay taxes until they get better services from [government]” (Prichard, forthcoming). Highlighting the importance of differentiating between conditional and unconditional measures of tax morale, not all measures morale captured in my survey are positively correlated (Appendix 9a). For example, a measure of whether evading taxes is “wrong and punishable/wrong but understandable/not wrong at all” is significantly negatively correlated with my primary measure of tax morale, in line with the idea that it is a conditional measure of tax morale. This aligns with my qualitative data and understanding that people understand this question as conditional—not on government performance, but on their standard of living/level of hardship.

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government to levy taxes.8 Within the survey, respondents were asked the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “The National Revenue Authority (NRA)/central government always has the right to collect taxes from citizens.” The measure ranges from one to five, with a higher value indicating stronger agreement.

I include measures of different types of IRG to capture their potentially diverse impacts on taxpayers’ perceptions of the state’s right to collect taxes.9 These categories correspond to variation between divergence and convergence with state institutional interests (Chapter 3). Differentiating between divergent and convergent IRG allows me to test whether the former may be substitutive of state taxation, while the latter may be complementary. If this is the case, we would expect divergent IRG to negatively impact state legitimacy, while convergent IRG would have a positive effect. Moreover, I distinguish between the types of public goods that convergent IRG supports, specifically focusing on the role of the state in service delivery (a breakdown of these categories is reported in Appendix 9b). I differentiate between convergent state IRG, for which the state contributes physical infrastructure and/or the regulatory or oversight structure, and convergent community IRG, for which the state has no role in the service delivery. This distinction allows me to test the hypothesis that IRG may influence tax morale not only through the provision of public goods, but through citizens’ believing that the state plays an important role in the provision of those goods. Convergent state IRG represents public goods provision for which the state is weak, but present. For example, the state may have built a local clinic, though doctors and nurses may collect informal payments to cover the salaries they have not received from

8 While this measure is thus a reasonable proxy for state legitimacy, it does not address the reality that tax morale may also be shaped to a large degree by other factors that are more proximate relative to broader perceptions of state legitimacy, including horizontal equity and the fairness of tax administration.

9 These measures are limited for a few key reasons. First, some of the most prevalent taxes cannot be tested because they are (virtually) universal, including informal contributions for communal labour and town- cleaning. Second, another common form of IRG—to support the provision of education—is not included as my data does not differentiate whether the IRG is supporting a state-provisioned or community-provisioned school. Third, as I do not have longitudinal data, my capacity to isolate causal effects is limited. Nevertheless, my data allow me to consider the effects of a smaller number of taxes, on the assumption that what people pay is relatively consistent over time, with responses today thus indicative of the influence of IRG on broader attitudes towards the state.

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government. Similarly, the state may have built a local market, though the community may be responsible for its maintenance or rehabilitation. By contrast, convergent community IRG represents public goods provision for which the state is altogether absent. Though the state should have a role in providing access to water, communities are often left on their own to manage water resources, while taking the initiative to fund other local development projects rather than waiting for the state to step in. As my survey data does not include the value of payments for all types of IRG, I use a simple binary measure of whether households contributed at least one informal payment to divergent IRG, convergent state IRG, and convergent community IRG (Table 11).10

Table 11: IRG categories

Category of IRG Types of payments included within category Divergent IRG Informal taxes to support chiefdom institutions, user fees for chiefdom conflict resolution Convergent state Informal taxes to access or support state health facilities and markets 11 IRG

10 I tested alternative measures of the different types of IRG, including the number of public goods for which IRG is paid and the number of IRG payments made. I found the same results for the convergent IRG for state goods and divergent IRG, though effects of IRG with the former measure are not significant with the addition of controls and, with the latter measure, are not significant at all. Results for these logistic regressions are reported in Appendix 9g. I am thus confident that I did not lose substantial statistical information by dichotomizing these variables and accordingly present the results for the binary independent variables for simplicity of exposition. Certainly, a measure of the value of payments made or the value of payments made in relation to income would provide deeper elucidation of the relationship between IRG and perceptions of state legitimacy. My survey data, however, does not include the value of payments made for all types of IRG given the cost associated with administering a more detailed survey. Nevertheless, my qualitative and ethnographic data make clear that there is not wide variation in the amounts that people pay for the most commonly paid informal taxes and fees. Through focus group discussions, participant observation, and a review of chiefdom bylaws, I know that the amounts paid for different types of informal contributions are comparable across chiefdoms, fitting within a narrow range. As informal payments are often set by local fiat or agreed at the communal level, there is not significant variation within villages based on the ability to pay; rather, these are overwhelmingly flat fees. Of course, this does not address the issue that regressive payments may have different effects for individuals and households of different income levels.

11 IRG for education is not included in either convergent category because of the difficulty of distinguishing whether a school is provided by the state or the community. As noted in Chapter 7, community-funded schools make up an estimated 40 percent of “public” primary schools nationwide.

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Convergent Informal taxes to access or support communal water sources and grain drying floors, community IRG contributions to community development projects12

To test the relationship between IRG and tax morale, I include four key control variables that the literature shows to influence tax morale. Further information on the logic of including these variables as well as details about the composition of the measures is found in Appendix 9c. First, the extent to which taxpayers have trust in the government and believe that it will act in their interest can affect willingness to pay taxes (e.g. Alm et al., 2006; Alm & Torgler, 2006; Daude et al., 2012; Fauvelle-Aymar, 1999; Kirchler et al., 2008; Kouamé, 2019; Martinez-Vazquez & Torgler, 2009; Slemrod, 2003; Tayler, 2006; Torgler, 2004a, 2004b,

2005b, 2005b, 2005a; Torgler & Murphy, 2004; Torgler & Schneider, 2007).13 I include two composite measures of citizens’ trust in the government, capturing both the central and local government levels. These indices range from one to five, with a higher number representing higher trust.

Second, the degree to which taxpayers believe that the government spends tax revenues on public goods that benefit the taxpayer—sometimes referred to as a reciprocal fiscal exchange—can influence tax morale (e.g. Ali et al., 2014; Alm et al., 1993; Barone & Mocetti, 2011; Bodea & Le Bas, 2016; Flores-Macías, 2016; Levi et al., 2009; Luttmer & Singhal, 2014; Ortega et al., 2016; Schmelzle & Stollenwerk, 2018). Indeed, there is evidence that public services matter to individuals’ willingness to pay tax, with 92 percent of survey respondents agreeing that improved public goods and services would make them more willing to pay tax. At the same time, when asked to speculate about the main reasons that others evade taxes, the most prevalent response, with 44 percent agreeing, was “the poor services they receive from government”. Accordingly, I focus on perceptions of the quality of public services using a measure of citizens’ satisfaction with public goods. This composite satisfaction variable

12 I have excluded communal labour and self-help activities from the analysis, as these informal taxes are paid universally (Chapter 3).

13 Summarizing the literature, Chan et al. (2018) find that while vertical trust— that is, the vertical integration between citizens and the state or other organizations— matters to tax morale, horizontal trust (i.e. generalized trust) is not linked to tax morale.

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ranges from 1 to 5, with a higher value denoting greater satisfaction with the public services that the taxpayer accessed.

Third, taxpayers may be more willing to pay taxes if they perceive the government to be accountable, allowing input into decision making (e.g. Alm, McClelland, et al., 1992; Casal et al., 2016; Lamberton et al., 2014; Pommerehne & Weck-Hannemann, 1996; Prichard, 2015, pp. 65–67; Sjoberg et al., 2019; Torgler, 2005a). I include a measure of perceived voice in decision making ranging from zero to five, with a higher value denoting greater perceptions of government accountability.

Fourth, evidence suggests that perceptions of fairness within a tax system—including in particular the belief that others are paying their fair share of taxes—influences tax morale and state legitimacy (e.g. Del Carpio, 2014; Feld & Frey, 2002; Fjeldstad, 2004; Fjeldstad & Rakner, 2003; Lieberman, 2003; McKerchar & Evans, 2009; Sigala et al., 1999; Tyler, 2001, 2006). I thus include a measure of the perceptions of the perceived equity of the tax system ranging from one to five, with a higher score reflecting greater perceptions of fairness.

Subsequently, I include additional control variables that the literature has suggested may be important in shaping tax morale, though none are critical to the key area of inquiry. These include gender, level of education, age, religion, income, experience of conflict, and salience of national identity. These variables may influence the norms and values that correspond to moral obligations to pay, at either or both the individual and societal level (e.g. Besley et al., 2015; Blumenthal et al., 2001; Konrad & Qari, 2012; Kountouris & Remoundou, 2013; Scholz & Pinney, 1995; Wenzel, 2004). The logic behind including these variables and an explanation of the measures used is provided in Appendix 9d, while the tests below confirm that the choice of control variables does not alter the core results. Finally, I account for geographic fixed effects to capture unobserved differences across chiefdoms and districts.14

14 Regional fixed effects for districts and chiefdoms are captured separately in Appendix 9e.

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2 Results

To test the relationship between IRG and tax morale using taxpayer survey data from eastern and northern Sierra Leone and logistic regressions, I use the following equation

Pr ([ = 1) = ]1 + ]2 X+ ]3 Y+ ]4 Z + b + ^

where [ is the variable for tax morale; X is a vector of variables capturing three different types of IRG; Y is a vector of other covariates found to be important in the literature, including trust in government, perceptions of the fairness of the tax system, and perceptions of the reciprocal fiscal social contact; Z refers to individual- and household-level controls; b

describes the random effects of intercepts at the district and chiefdom levels; and ^ is the error term.15 The logistic model expresses the probability as a sum of a linear function of the explanatory variables, regional fixed effects, and random effect deviations.

I estimate four ordered logits, focusing first on the effect of the different categories of IRG and progressively adding in key control variables, additional control variables, and geographic fixed effects. Results from each model are similar, with all key significant results holding in each specification (Table 12). Because of the difficulties of directly interpreting logistic parameters, I focus my discussion on the predicted probabilities of citizen perceptions of the government’s right to collect taxes for the results of interest for the model presented in column 4.

Table 12: Ordered logistic regressions (1) (2) (3) (4) VARIABLES Tax_morale Tax_morale Tax_morale Tax_morale

Convergent_state 0.989*** 0.386** 0.395** 0.378** (0.148) (0.181) (0.189) (0.191) Convergent_community -0.698*** -0.420** -0.478** -0.591*** (0.157) (0.191) (0.199) (0.217) Divergent_chief 0.990*** 0.289 0.207 0.333 (0.155) (0.193) (0.203) (0.223) Trust_central 0.0201 0.0212 0.0554 (0.123) (0.133) (0.137) Trust_local 0.299** 0.291** 0.301** (0.117) (0.126) (0.134)

15 Appendix 9f summarizes descriptive statistics for the variables of interest.

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Public_goods_satisfaction 0.434*** 0.247** 0.264*** (0.0885) (0.0965) (0.0978) Voice 2.018*** 1.758*** 1.740*** (0.133) (0.139) (0.141) Fairness 0.115** 0.0489 0.0663 (0.0579) (0.0607) (0.0677) Female -0.165 -0.158 (0.184) (0.186) Religion 0.366* 0.446** (0.188) (0.220) Education 0.0231 0.0297 (0.0531) (0.0546) Income 1.706*** 1.758*** (0.223) (0.227) Conflict_experience -1.273*** -1.201*** (0.386) (0.399) Identity_salience -0.0507 -0.0444 (0.0740) (0.0745) /cut1 -1.111*** 2.905*** 1.545** 1.778** (0.148) (0.442) (0.656) (0.782) /cut2 -0.717*** 3.565*** 2.323*** 2.568*** (0.144) (0.452) (0.660) (0.787) /cut3 -0.615*** 3.742*** 2.541*** 2.790*** (0.143) (0.455) (0.663) (0.790) /cut4 0.290** 5.425*** 4.405*** 4.678*** (0.141) (0.488) (0.684) (0.809)

Observations 788 713 709 709

Standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

Taking into account control variables and regional fixed effects (column 4) and consistent with other versions of the model (columns 1 through 3), the results clearly show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, IRG does not always undermine state legitimacy. Indeed, some types of IRG have positive effects on tax morale, others have negative effects, and others still have no apparent effect on tax morale at all.16 These results call into question common assumptions that IRG undermines state legitimacy and broader statebuilding objectives. Indeed, it suggests that the relationship between IRG and state legitimacy is more complex, with certain types of IRG strengthening tax morale, others undermining it, and others coexisting with it. Helmke and Levitsky (2004) seminally outlined the possibility of complementary or accommodating informal institutions, though their formulation

16 Indicating a reliable model, key control variables conform to predictions with trust in local government, satisfaction with public goods, and accountability associated with stronger tax morale (see Appendix 9c). Secondary control variables are likewise in line with predictions (see Appendix 9d).

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predicates these outcomes on the existence of effective formal institutions. In the case of Sierra Leone, where formal institutions are largely ineffective, we see that informal tax and service delivery institutions may nevertheless exist in a complementary fashion to the state, without necessarily substituting for or competing with it. However, the results show that the relationship is complicated and predicated on the nature of IRG, highlighting the importance of disaggregating different types of informal payments and their effects on the state and its authority.

How do the results correspond to the hypothesis that divergent IRG is substitutive of formal taxation, while convergent IRG is complementary to it? First, while divergent IRG is expected to have a negative effect on state legitimacy, the results indicate no significant effect on tax morale. This indicates that, while divergent IRG may have other implications for state institutions and statebuilding, in Sierra Leone it does not directly substitute for formal taxation or authority. Divergent IRG has non-substitutive effects on state legitimacy. Instead, it exists parallel to state taxation without threatening the state’s right to collect tax.

Second, while we expect that convergent IRG may complement state legitimacy, the results indicate that this is not always the case. Instead, what matters is the role of the state in the provision of public goods financed through IRG. Convergent state IRG is robustly associated with strong tax morale, with individuals making any such payment 5 percent more likely to report a strong acceptance of the state’s right to collect tax (a shift from 0.48 to 0.53) (Figure 47). By contrast, convergent community IRG is negatively associated with tax morale, with individuals paying any informal tax for community goods 7 percent less likely to report a strong acceptance of the state’s right to collect tax (a shift from 0.55 to 0.48).17

Figure 47: Predicted probabilities of strong acceptance of the state’s right to tax

17 There is some concern of an endogenous relationship between tax morale and the payment of IRG for community goods. Indeed, individuals with lower tax morale may be more likely to seek out and invest in community-level substitutes for state goods. While acknowledging this theoretical possibility, I do not believe it affects the substance of my inferences largely as the causal direction from tax morale to community goods is less compelling in the context of low-income countries. Indeed, community-based self-help and development activities predate state presence in these areas (see e.g. Bodea and Le Bas 2016).

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Predictive Margins with 95% CIs Predictive Margins with 95% CIs 0.6 .6

.55 .55

.5 .5

Pr(Strongly agree that to state right tax) has agree Pr(Strongly .45 that to state right tax) has agree Pr(Strongly .45 0 1 0 1 Convergent IRG, state-provisioned goods Convergent IRG, community-provisioned goods

How can we explain the variation in outcomes between convergent IRG that supports state- provisioned versus community-provisioned public goods? I consider the causal mechanisms that are likely to shape the relationship between IRG and tax morale. This is particularly important given that, once I add for controls, the overall effects of IRG on tax morale are considerably smaller than when controls are not included. This may indicate that part of impact of IRG on tax morale operates through the control variables, leading us to underestimate the effects of IRG in the final model. I therefore consider the relationships between convergent IRG and four key variables that are likely to mediate the relationship between IRG and state legitimacy: satisfaction with public goods, perceptions of state accountability, trust in the state, and perceptions of the fairness of the tax system (Figure 48, Table 13).

Figure 48: IRG and state legitimacy: Causal mechanisms

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Table 13: Regressions: pathways

(1) (2) (3) (4) VARIABLES Public goods Voice Trust_local Fairness satisfaction

Convergent_state 0.166** 0.341*** 0.116 0.00858 (0.0715) (0.0549) (0.0891) (0.109) Convergent_community -0.0143 -0.201*** -0.160* 0.0821 (0.0729) (0.0576) (0.0915) (0.110)

Observations 834 751 807 814 R-squared 0.102 0.325 0.049 0.040 Controls not displayed: x x x Gender Religion Level of education Income Experience of conflict Identity salience Standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

First, convergent IRG may help to finance valued public goods, which if partly attributed to government, leads to higher taxpayer willingness to pay taxes to government. On the one hand, if public goods are being provided by actors outside the state, taxpayers may lose confidence in the state’s competence and authority. On the other hand, if informal taxes contribute to the delivery of valued public goods, taxpayers may view the state as “doing its job” and therefore competent—even if it does not in control the revenues. If informal taxing actors achieve positive outcomes in a way that complements the state’s objectives, it may not matter that the state itself does not control the revenues. Indeed, the state may be able to take credit from the work of informal actors, or otherwise benefit from the “warm glow” of their benevolent authority, with the informal taxing actor serving as a proxy for the state (see e.g. Sacks, 2012a).

This attribution to the state appears only to be the case for convergent state IRG and not for IRG supporting public goods provided independently by communities. For convergent IRG for state goods—where the state is weak, but present—IRG has a positive effect in part by improving the quality of public goods. Put differently, part of the positive association we see between this type of IRG and tax morale can be explained by greater satisfaction with public

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goods.18 By contrast, we see no significant mediating effect of public goods satisfaction for IRG for community goods. Where citizens contribute more to convergent IRG for community goods, in which the state is uninvolved, reported satisfaction with public services is lower, which, in turn, contributes to lower tax morale. This highlights the difference between IRG that supplements state goods and that funds goods that the state has failed to provide entirely.

Second, where IRG contributes to state provisioned goods it increases perceptions of accountability and voice of citizens, in turn enhancing their acceptance of state authority. Where no such role is perceived—where the state is absent, as with convergent community IRG—the mediating accountability effects are negative. In other words, where people make informal payments to access services that the state should be providing, but does not, their perceptions of state accountability worsens.

Third, IRG may influence trust in the state by influencing citizen perceptions of the predatory nature of the state or the state’s capacity to control informal extractive actors. While I find no relationship between convergent state and trust in government, there is a negative relationship with respect to convergent community IRG. Where the state is perceived to be absent—as with IRG for community goods—trust in local government is lower, with subsequent negative effects on tax morale.

Fourth, IRG may reasonably affect citizen perceptions of the fairness and equity of the tax system. If people believe they are paying more than they should for services and governance, they may have the perception that the system is unfair. Existing evidence shows that IRG is often regressive (Olken & Singhal, 2011; van den Boogaard et al., 2019; M. Walker, 2017). At the same time, offloading state functions onto non-state actors has implications for the distribution and quality of public goods and services: where citizens are directly responsible for funding local public goods, richer areas will have access to more and better public goods. If outcomes are seen as inequitable, citizens’ legitimating beliefs about the state may be

18 This implies that the positive effects of convergent IRG for state goods is underestimated, representing a lower-bound estimate.

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negatively affected, as they may view the state as absconding its responsibility as an arbiter of fairness and a redistributor of wealth. However, I find no clear association between IRG and citizen perceptions of equity.

3 The state, public service delivery, and public authority

The empirical results indicate significantly different relationships between state legitimacy and convergent IRG for state and community goods and divergent IRG. Indeed, some types of IRG have positive effects on tax morale, others have negative effects, and others still have no apparent effect on tax morale at all. This finding contradicts assumptions that IRG will always undermine state legitimacy, while the variation in outcomes has significant implications for the role of the state in public service delivery and in relation to other public authorities. I consider these implications, first with respect to the differences we see between convergent IRG for state versus community goods and then with respect to the null effects between divergent IRG and state legitimacy.

3.1 Weak versus absent state authority

My data supports the notion that IRG can complement the state.19 However, there is an important nuance: whether IRG supports public goods that are provisioned by the state or by local communities independently. The different results between convergent state and community IRG indicates that citizen perceptions of state legitimacy differ based on the state’s role in service provision. Where the state is weak, but present, citizens appear to credit the state for providing an enabling framework for public goods provision. By contrast, where the state is altogether absent in service delivery, it receives no such credit. This is supported by previous studies that suggest that it is state presence—rather than the quality of public goods—that may be decisive in shaping citizen perceptions and stimulating greater trust in government and strengthened state legitimacy. For example, Stel et al. (2012) suggest that it is the relationships formed at the point of service delivery that are of relevance

19 This is in line with evidence that non-state service provision may complement the state and its authority (Cammett & MacLean, 2014b; Sacks, 2012b).

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for citizens’ perceptions of the state (see also M. Robinson, 2008; Tsai, 2011).20 By allowing space for engagement with government agencies and representatives, state goods funded through IRG may present “opportunities to build bridges between the state and social groups” (McLoughlin, 2015, p. 349; Stel et al., 2012).

Further, Sacks (2011) finds that citizens’ assessment of government performance depends not on objective measures of service delivery but instead on perceptions of how well the government was “trying to improve services and goods”.21 In Sierra Leone, we can infer that where the state is present, it is at least seen as trying to provide the service. What matters is perceived effort, alongside outcomes. Even where it does not provide public goods independently, the state may provide the initial infrastructure or play a role in oversight, regulation, and/or facilitation, which McLoughlin (2015) shows is sufficient to strengthen state legitimacy. Where the state plays a role as a facilitator, regulator, or overseer, the power of the state may be reinforced even where it seems absent (De Herdt & Titeca, 2016; see also Lund, 2006, p. 689; Trefon, 2009). In these contexts, citizens may not question the right or the appropriateness of the state’s role in service delivery; rather, “[b]y continuously referring to the state regulatory framework, and by directing their actions towards the state, the role of the state… [is] further entrenched” (De Herdt & Titeca, 2016, p. 482). For example, considering the role of NGOs in service provision, Sacks (2012a, p. 3) finds that non-state provision of services strengthens, rather than undermines, citizens’ legitimating beliefs about the state when “citizens view their government as essential to leveraging and

20 In China, Tsai (2011) finds that local state bureaucrats view collaboration with community actors in service delivery as a means of soliciting citizens’ trust in them. In turn, some officials believed that this would strengthen citizen compliance with state policy. Further, Bodea and Le Bas (2016, p. 235) show that “state contact need not be benevolent in order to change individual orientations toward the state”, with state extortion linked to societal acceptance of state authority (for theoretical foundations see Tilly, 1985).

21 Similarly, Hern (2019) finds that “how well the government does at delivering services does not affect citizens’ political engagement as much as the perception that government tried to do so… [q]uality of service provision was less important than attempts at service delivery.”

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managing these external resources”, with citizens crediting the state for development outcomes.22

In Sierra Leone, there is some evidence that citizens expect the state to provide the enabling framework for the provision of public goods provision, rather than expecting the state to provide those goods independently. When asked to name the most important role of the local government, 14 percent of respondents answered that it was to advocate for and represent the local area to NGOs and INGOs, lobbying for development projects, while a further 33 percent responded that it should be playing this lobbying role to receive central government support. Meanwhile, only 17 percent responded that its main role was to provide services or development. In line with this, a local government CA described that the council “use[s] tax revenues not to provide development, but to lobby for development”,23 while another local government official explained that the council “uses tax revenues as seed money… to attract more money”—that is, committing relatively small amounts of money to development projects to show development partners that the government is committed to ensuring the sustainability of projects funded mostly through aid.24 If citizens view the government as a facilitator for NGOs or donors to provide public goods, it is plausible that they hold a similar view toward informal/non-state financers of public goods provision. In Sierra Leone, the state may be seen as providing the facilitating and regulatory framework that allows for the public goods outcomes. This indicates that while the role of informal actors in the provision of local public goods and governance is indispensable, the state remains relevant. Indeed, IRG that supports state-provisioned goods seems to complement the state and strengthen state legitimacy. Citizens may still view the state as fulfilling its broader responsibility, even if it is not central in delivering services directly (Mandefro et al., 2012; Stel et al., 2012). Taken together: willingness to pay taxes to the state may be strengthened if citizens believe

22 Basically, “citizens who believe that donors and non-state actors are helping their country by delivering essential goods and services are more likely to be willing to defer to the tax department” (Sacks, 2012a, p. 22).

23 KOI127

24 KOI130, similarly expressed by KOI34.2

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that the state has played some role to deliver or enable those services, even if it has received supplementary support directly from citizens and non-state actors.

3.2 Parallel traditional authority Divergent IRG has no significant effect on tax morale, implying that the strength of the chieftaincy in Sierra Leone and its role in IRG does not undermine state legitimacy. This is contrary to the assumptions of international donors and policymakers in Sierra Leone that have often assumed a zero-sum relationship between traditional and modern political institutions (see Chapters 5 and 6). Rather, my data suggest that chiefs in Sierra Leone may in some ways coexist with the state as a parallel public authority, without necessarily undermining how citizens view the state. This is supported by evidence that individuals have nested identities (e.g. Herb & Kaplan, 1999) with fidelity to one authority, institution, or culture not implying a rejection of another. Indeed, the majority (73 percent) of survey respondents feel that both their ethnic and national identities are salient (Figure 49). This contrasts with ideas that traditional authority reinforces cultural, ethnic or subnational identities that threaten a broader imagined community (Lechler & McNamee, 2018; Logan, 2013, p. 371; Mamdani, 1996; Williams, 2010).

Figure 49: Salience of nested identities

0 20 40 60 80 100 Salience of ethnic verus national identity

I feel only [ethnic identity] I feel more [ethnic identity] than Sierra Leonean I feel equally Sierra Leonean I feel more Sierra Leonean and [ethnic identity] than [ethnic identity] I feel only Sierra Leonean

Challenging the displacement model of modernisation, the modern and traditional can coexist. As Huntington (1971) argues, “modernity supplements but does not supplant tradition […] Modern society is not simply modern; it is modern and traditional” (see also

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Gulliver, 1969; Gusfield, 1967; Rudolph, 1965; C. S. Whitaker, 1967). Indeed, my case studies show that the modern Sierra Leonean state has long coexisted with IRG by chiefs (Chapter 5), while even where it asserts control over chiefs’ role in IRG, it has done so to gain control over formal tax revenues that chiefs informally control, rather than other informal taxes levied by chiefs (Chapter 6).

This reflects broader historical narratives in Sierra Leone. Chiefs have always been central to the idea and development of statehood in Sierra Leone as “they were among the leaders of the nationalist movement; they comprise the key element in the SLPP coalition which [led] Sierra Leone towards Independence; and they maintained myriad socioeconomic links with the new educated elite which [inherited] central power from the British” (Barrows, 1976, pp. 244–245). Even though indirect rule institutionalised chiefs as subordinate to the state,25 the reality is that the modern state in Sierra Leone would not exist without chiefs and without the forms of IRG that support state authority (Chapters 5 and 7). As Sklar (1993, p. 90) describes, “many thrones lend their support to the power of the modern state, which they also help to legitimate.”

While tax morale is stronger for the chieftaincy than it is for the state (Figure 50), the relationship between tax morale to the chieftaincy and the state is not zero-sum. Rather, tax morale for the state, PC, and section chief are significantly positively correlated (Figure 51). In this way, “[m]odern and traditional traits can fuse, interpenetrate, or coexist—without systematic conflict” (Barrows, 1976, p. 33). At the same time, my evidence suggests that citizens expect different things from the chieftaincy and the state, implying that the state and chiefs are not competing for governing authority (Figure 52).

Figure 50: Mean tax morale for the state and non-state actors26

25 Lugard (1922, p. 203), the architect of indirect rule, notes that while chiefs and state bureaucrats should “be complementary to each other”, “the chief himself must understand that he has no right to place and power unless he renders his proper services to the State”.

26 Respondents were asked, “Do you agree or disagree that the following actors always have the right to collect taxes from citizens?”

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Central government/ NRA

Local government

Paramount chief

Section chief

Community leaders/ elders

Community associations

Religious organizations

Local NGOs

International NGOs

Agree Disagree Strongly agree Strongly disagree

Neither agree nor disgagree

Figure 51: Regression lines, tax morale for the state and the chieftaincy

5 5

4 4

3 3 Tax state morale, Tax state morale, 2 2

1 1 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Tax morale, paramount chief Tax morale, section chief

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Figure 52: Top five citizen expectations from the chieftaincy (left) and the state (right)27

1 1

.8 .8

.6 .6

.4 .4

.2 .2

0 0 Dispute settlement Protection of land Education Water Guarding of cultural Roads traditions Water Health care Public sanitation Public sanitation

This is in line with a growing body of evidence that traditional political authority can coexist with or complement the state, rather than compete with and undermine it (e.g. Henn, 2018; Van der Windt et al., 2018).28 Several studies find that trust in traditional authorities and the government are postiively correlated (Chlouba, 2019; Logan, 2009), while positive changes in respondents’ valuation of traditional leaders lead to positive changes in support for the state (Van der Windt et al., 2018). Others note how the local legitimacy of traditional authorities can boost state legitimacy; for instance, the incorporation of traditional leadership in the post-colonial Bostwanian state proved crucial for securing the state’s legitimacy and ensuring rural support for government programs (Gulbrandsen, 2012). Moreover, Englebert (2002) shows how the legitimacy of traditional authorities can boost statebuilding more broadly.

27 Respondents were asked, “What do you expect the state/ chieftaincy to do for individuals (citizens)?” Survey options were not read aloud to respondents, who were told to describe all expectations that mattered to them, which were subsequently coded. 28 For instance, evidence suggests that traditional political institutions may complement state service provision (Baldwin, 2013, 2015; Honig, Forthcoming; Murtazashvili, 2016), facilitate democratic, accountability, and governance processes (Baldwin, 2015; Baldwin & Holzinger, 2019; Chiweza, 2006; Eggen, 2011; Logan, 2013; Oomen, 2005; Osabu-Kle, 2000).

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4 Possibilities and risks of state engagement with IRG

My evidence suggests that different types of IRG have different implications for state legitimacy and, equally, that the nature of state engagement in public goods provision affects citizen views of the state. At face value, this implies that state engagement with IRG, perhaps through formalised hybrid arrangements, may be an effective strategy for public service delivery, with positive effects for state legitimacy. Indeed, formal-informal hybrid revenue collection and service delivery strategies reflect the reality that “the capacity to regulate and control is not neatly stored within the state” (Lund, 2006, p. 679), with the possibility of fostering sustainable cooperation and knowledge-sharing between formal and informal institutions (see e.g. Cleaver, 2001). Hybridity may allow for greater innovation, flexibility, and organisational adaptability than may be possible when working through weak state institutions alone. For example, in south Somalia, the government has partnered with informal taxing actors (clans), allowing for the construction of a relatively large number of public goods, ranging from road renovations to the building of public schools and health care centres, delivered in a short time period with high taxpayer satisfaction (van den Boogaard & Santoro, forthcoming). Given the limited capacity of the state and federal governments, it is unlikely this could have been achieved through more conventional approaches. This hybrid model built on the strength and legitimacy of community-based leaders to make the state more effective than it would be on its own, while, critically, strengthening citizen trust in the local government and strengthening tax morale (van den Boogaard & Santoro, forthcoming). Working with the grain of existing local institutions may thus be an effective “second-best governance strategies (Grindle, 2004), with positive effect for public goods outcomes, as well as state legitimacy.

Accordingly, IRG may stimulate state legitimacy where it contributes to state-provisioned goods by supporting state performance and allowing it to break free of negative reinforcing cycles between legitimacy and capacity (Figure 53)—without requiring the state to play an independent role. Levi (1988) explains that when quasi-voluntary tax compliance breaks down—as a result, for example, of weak institutional capacity resulting in failure to provide valued services—it may be exceptionally difficult to rebuild in the absence of a major event

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that allows for a renegotiation of the terms of the fiscal social contract.29 This creates a chicken-and-egg dilemma: the state requires institutional capacity to strengthen its legitimacy, and requires legitimacy to increase its institutional capacity. Where IRG can be used strategically to support weak public goods, it may effectively help the state achieve a minimum level of state legitimacy in order to overcome the negative cycle. This is supported by evidence that in low-capacity contexts there may be a threshold effect for achieving state legitimacy—that is, “a foundational level of services may first need to be established before subsequent improvements are likely to affect citizens’ belief in the rightfulness of the state” (McLoughlin, 2015, p. 348; see also Stel et al., 2012). However, there are additional risks to state engagement with IRG that may influence citizen perceptions of its legitimacy, including the risks that if it works with informal taxing actors, the state will (1) reinforce unaccountable informal institutions, (2) distort the efficiencies of local organisation, and (3) institutionalise inequality.

29 Quasi-voluntary compliance refers to the situation wherein citizens comply with taxation even in the absence of a rational, coercion-based calculus that dictates that they would do so. Distinct from ideology, quasi- voluntary compliance still rests on the reasonable threat of coercion and on the existence of conditions for compliance (Levi, 1988).

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Figure 53: IRG as stimulating the reinforcing links between state capacity and state legitimacy

IRG to support public goods provision by the state

Stronger state Improved institutional service delivery capacity

Increased tax Stronger state revenue legitimacy

Increased quasi-voluntary tax compliance

4.1 Risk of reinforcing unaccountable informal institutions

State engagement with IRG may build on and incorporate accountability mechanisms within traditional or informal taxing institutions where they exist.30 However, there is no guarantee that informal taxing actors will be accountable to taxpayers, with little evidence that weak states will be able to ensure greater accountability amongst such actors. Accordingly, working with informal taxing actors poses the risk of reinforcing the position and power of unaccountable informal institutions. In Sierra Leone, for instance, chiefs are not democratically-elected, while colonial institutionalisation of chiefs’ authority—independent of local legitimacy—made chiefs much less accountable than pre-colonial leaders (e.g. Abraham, 2003; Goody, 1979). While there is evidence that chiefs remain accountable to subjects through non-electoral channels (van den Boogaard, 2018) and while citizen perceptions of their accountability are higher than for the state, they still remain negative in absolute terms (Figure 54).

30 For instance, in Afghanistan, Brick (2008) shows that customary organisations are effective at providing order and public goods “not only because they can extract and redistribute resources from villagers, but because they are constrained in their ability do so” through “the separation of village powers and local checks and balances.”

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Figure 54: Accountability: How easy or difficult is it to voice discontent about policies or actions that you are unhappy with when they are taken by the following actors?

Central government

Member of parliament

Local council

Local government councillor

Ward development committee

Paramount chief

Section chief

Town chief

Tribal authority/ chiefdom councillor

Easy Difficult Very easy Very difficult Neither difficult nor easy As my evidence suggests that citizens attribute outcomes to the state where it is present, there is potential for state cooperation with informal taxing actors to backfire and negatively affect citizen perceptions of the state. This is particularly true where the state has insufficient capacity or will to enforce greater accountability, with hybrid arrangements “requir[ing] greater capacity… and present[ing] greater risk of harm if performed badly” (Batley & McLoughlin, 2009). My research suggests that the state is unwilling to introduce more stringent accountability mechanisms on chiefs on account of the state’s political reliance on them (Chapter 5). Despite attempts to introduce PFM and auditing requirements for chiefdom authorities, there is no evidence that such requirements will be enforced as a result of the state’s continued dependence on chiefs for its governing authority.31 Accordingly, institutionalised hybrid arrangements between state and informal institutions “risk distorting the normal democratic process that is supposed to legitimize public action” (De Herdt & Olivier de Sardan, 2015, p. 11).32

31 MAN105, KON265, KAI181.1

32 Frankfurter et al. (2018, p. 535), for instance, suggest that by directing their resources and efforts through PCs during the Ebola crisis, the international aid community “set back the goals of decentralisation and rural democratisation by scaffolding a public health response onto… a patrimonial system of governance, while in the process shoring up despotic rule as the price of a more ‘efficient’ Ebola response.”

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At the same time, state cooperation with informal taxing actors may be seen to legitimise unaccountable forms of revenue-raising. For example, state formalisation of unpaid labour is often at odds with the inclusive and empowerment focus of the community-driven development approaches that tend to justify it (e.g. Marsland, 2006). From one perspective, the state encourages unpaid labour to promote collective action, participation, and accountability; from another, state sanction of unpaid or communal labour represents the “legitimisation of coercion” (Okia, 2012). For example, when Mobutu introduced salongo (compulsory unpaid civic work) in Zaïre, it “echoed the despised colonial practice of corvée labour” (Hoffmann et al., 2016, p. 1444), not least because it was often exploited by customary authorities (Fairhead, 1992).

Being more closely associated with unpopular IRG poses risks for the state and its legitimacy. Nevertheless, there is nothing to suggest that if the state had full control over taxation and service delivery it would be more accountable. Indeed, I heard widespread reports of corrupt and coercive local tax collection (see also Christensen, 2012, pp. 69–73), while citizens have more positive perceptions of the accountability, trustworthiness, and representativeness of chiefs as well as other non-state and community-based actors relative to the state (Figure 55, Figure 56, see also van den Boogaard, Prichard, and Jibao 2019). Indeed, even if informal taxing actors are perceived as unaccountable, they may still be perceived as more accountable than the state, implying that the state may still find benefit in partnering with them.

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Central government/ NRA Local government Paramount chief Section chief Community leaders/ elders Community associations Religious organizations Local NGOs International NGOs

They would just take all the money

They would do a good job but cut a little money They would do a bad job and cut most of the money

They would do a great job and spend all the money appropriately They would do neither a good nor bad job and would cut some of the money Figure 56: Representation: “How much trust or mistrust do you have that the following groups/individuals act in the interest of ordinary people like you?”

Central government

National Revenue Authority

Local government

Ward development committee

Paramount chief

Section chief

Community leaders/ elders

Community associations

Religious organizations

Local NGOs

International NGOs

Some trust No trust at all A lot of trust Not very much trust Neither trust nor mistrust

4.2 Risk of distorting the efficiencies of local organisation

Where the state works with informal taxing actors, there is the possibility that hybridity distorts the efficiencies and benefits of informal institutions rather than creating positive synergies. For example, the Kenyan state centralised state oversight over harambee (self- help) activities, introducing stringent policies, regulations, and a layer of bureaucracy and administration. Centralised control over compulsory harambee activities distorted the original purpose of community contributions, divorcing the civic meaning and cultural values from its material ends, reinforcing political and regional inequities, creating

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duplication and waste, and undermining local decision making, management, and control of development projects (Ngau, 1987, p. 523). As described by Ngau (1987, p. 524), the “fundamental tensions between bureaucratic structures and planning controls on the one hand and spontaneous, informal local self-help efforts on the other skewed Harambee away from local needs and stifled local initiative.” Accordingly, state oversight over IRG in Kenya led to strict regulatory and construction standards that increased the cost of local activities, resulting in “delays and idleness in projects” (Ngau, 1987, pp. 532–533). Similarly in Tanzania, the self-reliance movement part of the ujamaa village programme was seen to be distorted “by the dead-hand of the bureaucracy” (Saul, 1974, p. 364; see also Mapolu, 1972). Simply put, it is not clear that state engagement with IRG—particularly where state regulatory capacity is weak—can always improve outcomes without distorting the original character and intent of informal taxing institutions, including the flexibility, autonomy, and local participation they often represent.33

4.3 Risk of institutionalising inequality

State revenues reflect and shape “the balance between accumulation and redistribution that gives states their social character” (Bräutigam, 2008, p. 1). How states react to IRG likewise affects this balance and the overall “social character” of the state. State engagement with IRG risks reinforcing inequities, while detracting from the state’s role in redistribution. As unequal or exclusionary access to public goods can be detrimental to citizen views of state authority (Dix et al., 2012), state engagement with IRG may have long-term implications for state legitimacy.

First, state cooperation with IRG risks institutionalising inequality that is embedded within informal institutions. Evidence suggests that IRG is regressive (Chapter 3), while, as IRG is embedded within local institutions, it may likewise be embedded within the entrenched inequalities of those institutions (e.g. Cleaver et al., 2013; McCarthy, 2018; Ngau, 1987).

33 This lesson is reflected in research exploring non-state provision of public goods, which highlights that “it can be very harmful for low-capacity states to seek to regulate all NSP [non-state service provision] or to draw it into clumsy contracts” (Batley & McLoughlin, 2009, p. 35).

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Where personalised relationships determine who is able to access public goods and where the enforcement of IRG is uneven or arbitrary, state engagement with IRG may reinforce inequities, with broader implications for state legitimacy may be affected (Stel et al., 2012). For example, Moskowitz (2017, p. 53) notes that harambee in Kenya “perpetuated existing regional inequalities and heightened intra-community inequality, as local leaders sidelined marginalized members of society, particularly women and the poor.” In Sierra Leone, there is considerable variation in how IRG is enforced across the country. While in some communities there was greater leniency for those unable to make IRG payments, other communities reported driving children from school for not paying for community teachers’ salaries or banishing individuals from the community for not contributing to the maintenance of communal water sources. Meanwhile, not everyone participates in communal labour for the state-controlled national cleaning exercises, reflecting the colonial practice of not compelling elites to take part in mandatory forced labour (see e.g. Tiquet, 2018, p. 146). Where the state works with IRG, it thus risks empowering inequitable institutions, as well as being associated with inequitable outcomes.

Second, by offloading revenue collection and service delivery responsibilities to citizens, whether tacitly or through institutionalised partnerships—essentially, where citizens “do the state’s work”34—the state forgoes its redistributive role.35 As a result, the degree and quality of access to public goods depend on the relative wealth of a particular community, with access to essential goods dependent on ability to pay.36 This implies uneven

34 As described by a Congolese citizen, “the state doesn’t do anything for us. Roads are a mess, teachers can’t live with their pay, health care is reserved for the upper class, public transport is a nightmare… Instead of the state taking care of the people, we cater to civil servants and do the state’s work” (cited in Trefon, 2009, p. 9).

35 This reflects ideas of post-welfare state politics—most famously explored through Foucault’s concept of neoliberal governmentality—where the state essentially outsources the responsibility for its populations’ welfare, reflecting what Trefon (2009) refers to as the privatisation of public services.

36 Evidence suggests that inequitable outcomes likewise result where public goods are funded through philanthropy. For example, Cansunar (2019) shows that in Ottoman Istanbul, elites focused contributions in areas where they had connections.

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distributional effects within countries.37 For example, in industrialised contexts, research has shown that voluntary contributions to parent-teacher associations reinforce inequities in education across districts (e.g. Bice & Hoyt, 2000; Brunner & Sonstelie, 2006; Winerip, 2003). In Kenya, harambee effectively served

as a counter-welfare program, since the more privileged were more capable of creating and participating in self-help programs. These communities could raise greater amounts of money, they could draw on the skills of their better-educated populations, and they were more likely to possess links to political elites (Moskowitz, 2017, p. 53; see also Winans & Haugerud, 1977).

In Sierra Leone, the former Deputy Minister of Education described that “communities are very poor” so “having them support education requires empowering them [i.e. giving them a way to make an income]”; “if a family cannot afford a meal a day, it is too difficult to rely on them for [financing] education”.38 Put simply, insofar as public goods are funded locally and directly by users, the fiscal system is far less equitable—it fundamentally represents “a decision by the state not to assume responsibility for the provision of public welfare” (Handley, 2020, p. 157). 39 Where the state abdicates its redistributive role by relying on IRG to fund public goods provision, it accepts and reinforces the reality of inequitable tax burdens and unequal access to quality public goods.

5 Conclusion

My findings challenge conventional assumptions about IRG and the state. First, they highlight the importance of not lumping all things “informal” together. Informal actors and institutions may have very different implications for state legitimacy depending on their effects on public

37 Stratified equity outcomes are exacerbated by the reality that the wealthiest are able to opt out of public goods provision in its entirety, moving instead to the private market (see e.g. Bearse et al., 2000; Catterall, 1988; Fink et al., 2019; D. van de Walle, 1995).

38 FRE246

39 There is ample evidence linking user fees and privatisation to inequities of access in both low-income and highly industrialized contexts (e.g. Allard, 2014; MacLean, 2017; MacLean & Brass, 2015; G. D. Wood, 1997). Of course, this does not suggest that the alternative—formal taxation—is necessarily more equitable or less arbitrary, particularly where services are funded through user fees at the local level.

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goods outcomes, accountability, trust in the state, and perceptions of the fairness of the tax system. Second, the evidence shows that IRG is not necessarily a detriment to state legitimacy. Instead, IRG may detract from state legitimacy, coexist with it, and sometimes even strengthen state legitimacy. Critically, positive effects only emerge when the state is present, if weak, in public goods provision. Where the state is completely absent, such positive outcomes evaporate. Accordingly, it is not just the nature of IRG that affects state legitimacy, but the nature of state engagement with IRG and public goods provision. This suggests that it may be beneficial for the state to engage in hybrid arrangements with informal taxing actors and public service providers in order to fill gaps in state capacity and boost state legitimacy through positive attribution effects. Nevertheless, engaging with IRG holds risks, particularly with respect to reinforcing unaccountable informal institutions, distorting the efficiencies of informal institutions, and institutionalising inequity. Building on these lessons of how IRG affects state legitimacy, the next chapter considers the other pathways through which IRG may affect state institutionalisation—namely, through its impacts on state revenues and state structures.

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Chapter 10: Informal revenue generation, state revenues, and state structures

wεt.1 i lε nכb i Bifo

Krio proverb

1 Literally, “Let it get wet rather than burnt”, or “choose the lesser of two evils”.

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The previous chapter found that IRG does not always undermine state legitimacy and that some forms of state engagement with IRG may serve to strengthen state legitimacy and institutionalisation. I now turn to considering the impact of IRG on state revenues and structures, considering whether IRG “can contribute to the development of more effective formal structures, or whether they ‘crowd out’ such development” (Helmke & Levitsky, 2004, p. 730). Theory expects that IRG detracts from state revenues and undermines state structures and, thus, overall state institutional capacity. As institutional capacity can have feedback loops through its impact on state legitimacy and quasi-voluntary tax compliance (Chapter 9), this implies sustained and multiplying negative effects. However, my research suggests that the negative effects of IRG on state institutionalisation is not a foregone conclusion. Rather than being antithetical to modern statebuilding, IRG does not necessarily undermine state revenues and institutions, with the potential to positively contribute to statebuilding.

First, I show that the extent of revenue losses on account of IRG may be relatively minimal, as a result of the incompatibility of some informal revenues with formal public finance and weak state capacity and will to collect revenues. As a result of this weak capacity, in some contexts, formal–informal hybrid arrangements can increase state revenue, suggesting benefits to statebuilding of working with informal tax institutions. Second, I explore the impacts of IRG on state structures, showing that IRG may not always undermine state institutions but rather that state engagement with IRG may actually have positive implications for state institutionalisation. IRG can work with, rather than against, state regulations and institutions. Moreover, it can allow the state to expand its competencies in new areas, while contributing to an alternative and potentially more productive horizontal, partnership-based model of statebuilding. Nevertheless, relying on IRG may prevent the state from addressing or reforming the governing constraints that limit an expansion of formal taxation and more independent governing capacity, with the risk of institutionalising a “lean” model of statehood and reinforcing a narrow conception of the responsibilities of states and the rights of citizens. This has long-term implications for the nature of state structures and the “type” of state that emerges from engagement with or reliance on IRG.

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1 IRG and state revenues

Raising revenue is the most basic task of the state and “may play the central role in building and sustaining the power of states” (Bräutigam, 2008, p. 1 emphasis in original). State revenues are both an important indicator of state institutionalisation and underpin future institutional growth. The state’s capacity “to mobilize and extract financial resources is the core of state capacity and the foundation for the state’s ability to realize its other capacities” (Wang & Angang, 2001, p. 27), including security, basic needs, and the fostering of economic development.2 Moreover, increased revenue can have positive institutional spillovers. For example, an increased role of state taxation may require the state to develop stronger enforcement mechanisms through judicial institutions and stronger data collection capacity through statistical institutions.

IRG may affect state institutional capacity through its impact on state revenues, either directly or indirectly through its impact on state structures and state legitimacy (Figure 57). Considering just the direct effects, theory expects that IRG will detract from revenues, real or potential. Informal taxing actors may take over sources of current or potential revenue from the state, may establish parallel systems of taxation and service delivery that effectively steer current or potential taxpayers away from state options where they exist, or otherwise represent revenue “leakages” for the state. IRG may substitute for formal taxation: If taxpayers are contributing through informal channels to fund public goods, they may view informal tax payments as obviating their duty to pay formal taxes to the government. For instance, a taxpayer may ask, “Why should I pay tax to the government if I am funding public services independently, or already making a range of payments that look a lot like tax?” While theory thus anticipates that IRG will detract from state revenues—and thus the potential positive externalities of that revenue—it is necessary to consider whether this is

2 This assumes that the state uses revenue effectively to underpin future institutional capacity, though, of course, this may not be the case.

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empirically true. That is, if informal taxing actors stopped collecting IRG, would the state would gain more revenue?

Figure 57: State revenue and state institutional capacity

There are at least two contexts where it is most likely that the state will gain revenue through the elimination of IRG. First, where divergent informal taxing actors—including rebel groups or proto-state authorities—have taken control of revenues in a sub-national territory, taking back control over the territory gives the state access to greater revenue potential. For example, if Al-Shabaab were effectively subdued in Somalia, the Somali government would have a greater chance of taking control over the checkpoints and ports that currently serve as major sources of informal tax revenue for Al-Shabaab.

Second, in other contexts where divergent informal taxing actors compete with the state for revenues, even small revenue gains from the prohibition of IRG would be beneficial to state institutional capacity. This is especially true for sub-national governments. For example, in Sierra Leone, over time the central government has effectively ceded local formal revenues to chiefs at the expense of local governments. As these local revenues are small relative to the state budget, the state has been willing to use them as bargaining chips to ensure the support of chiefs. However, these losses are consequential for local governments, who have

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few other revenue options, with implications for local state institutional capacity. These revenues ultimately reflect part of the Faustian bargain of coexisting with IRG: though informal taxing actors may reinforce state authority in the short-term, these concessions have undermined local governments, fiscal decentralisation, and local state institutionalisation (Chapter 5). Accordingly, this has resulted in views that the “centre is against decentralisation”.3 As summarised by MacLean and Hoon (2014, p. 3), “[i]n weak African states governed by neopatrimonial patronage networks, there is a constant tug-of- war between local authorities and central patrons” (see also Hoon, 2014). Thus, even if revenue losses are small, my research suggests that the tensions between central and local government present challenges to effective state institutionalisation. Moreover, even if revenue potential is small, gaining control over some local revenues would be beneficial for local, if not national, state institutionalisation.

However, there are two key considerations that limit the potential revenues being directed to the state—namely, the extent to which the state is truly “losing” potential revenues through IRG and the extent to which it has sufficient capacity to collect them. While IRG can undermine state revenue, these effects are often more theoretical than practical. In reality, it is unlikely that the state could or would collect these revenues on account of the limited revenue potential available to the state and the state’s limited capacity and will to collect the revenues that do exist. For instance, in the above examples—of the Somali government recouping revenues from Al-Shabaab and local governments in Sierra Leone taking control of revenues previously controlled by chiefs—increased state revenues are predicated on the capacity of the state to raise revenues on its own. These capacity limitations are underpinned by the reality that taking control over IRG in weak institutional contexts is difficult, with my evidence suggesting that mediated, rather than complete, control over IRG is the most likely scenario given the governing constraints of weak states. This implies that even where the state asserts some control over IRG, it may not gain control over all revenues (as with hybrid tax collection and revenue sharing, Chapter 6) or any revenues at all (as where it has only an oversight role over IRG). Accordingly, the negative effects of IRG on state institutionalisation

3 FRE113

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through its effects on state revenues may be limited in practice. At the same time, given weak state capacity, hybrid arrangements for tax collection and service delivery may be particularly beneficial—not only for public goods outcomes, but for actually helping the state to raise revenues. In this way, working with informal taxing actors may paradoxically be an effective strategy for increasing state institutional capacity.

1.1 Limited revenue potential

The impact of revenue losses from IRG should not be overstated for two key reasons: (1) some forms of IRG, including informal labour taxes, are incompatible with state institutions and (2) other forms of IRG are not substitutes for formal taxation, but simply raise revenues in parallel to the state. First, some types of informal revenues—including those collected in labour and in-kind—are not monetizable and are thus incompatible with formal public finance institutions. Labour payments make up a considerable share of the contributions that individuals make to support public goods provision in Sierra Leone (Chapter 3), implying that the state is unable to recoup the largest part of IRG. For example, when the Sierra Leonean state took over communal labour for national cleaning exercises, it gained effective revenue—minimising what it would have had to spend on sanitation workers—though without increasing revenues available in state budgets (Chapter 8). While governments sometimes collect in-kind and labour taxes (e.g. Bloomberg News, 2016; Burdekin & Langdana, 1993; R. S. Cooper, 1976; Faith, 2013), these assets are evidently inefficient for the state. They are not fungible or convertible, while being variable, hard to monitor, and “invisible” within state budgets (van Waijenburg, 2018, p. 44). Accordingly, they are incompatible with an effective, accountable, and sustainable formal revenue generation strategy. The shadow revenues gained through informal labour taxes and in-kind contributions do not receive public scrutiny, limiting the impact on civil society engagement and accountability processes, and do not undergo the PFM requirements of public budgeting processes, thus limiting potential for positive expansion of internal state accountability. As a result, these non-cash revenues are unlikely to have other positive effects on state administration and institutions.

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Second, some types of informal revenues, including those embedded in cultural and traditional institutions, are non-substitutable—that is, even if the informal taxing actor stopped collecting them, there is no reason to think that the state would start doing so or that people would pay. Divergent IRG to support chiefdom administrations can operate parallel to, rather than in competition with, the state (Chapter 9); if the state banned the informal taxes collected by chiefs—such as hospitality payments or settlers’ fees—it would neither want nor be able to take them over. In such instances, IRG does not imply state revenue losses. Indeed, IRG may simply serve to “fund different types of public goods” that the government is not able or eager to engage with (Olken & Singhal, 2011, p. 25). In line with this, the state does not always view IRG as a threat to its own revenue generation. As described by a ward councillor, “Informal taxation can be good, if well-coordinated. Informal taxation should not distract government from collecting other taxes” (cited in van den Boogaard et al., 2019). Rather than necessarily opposing or substituting for each other, formal and informal institutions may simply coexist. Accordingly, the state will not gain any revenues by banning divergent IRG, unless it embraces new state functions.

1.2 Limited state capacity and will to tax

Even where informal revenues are viable for the state, states often lack the capacity to collect potential revenues for three key reasons: (1) the high cost of collection in remote areas makes revenue generation inefficient, (2) states may lack the legitimacy and authority to collect revenues in some areas without the assistance of informal taxing actors, and (3) the nature of states governing constraints, including a political disincentive to raise taxes, makes the state unlikely to collect revenues even where it can do so efficiently and independently. First, for many informal revenues, the cost of collection is prohibitively high. Indeed, the nature of tax collection at the local level may render it an inefficient revenue source from the state’s perspective, representing what Scott (2017, p. 135) describes as “fiscally sterile” sources of revenue for the state.4 Indeed, local government officials consistently reported

4 The uncertain cost effectiveness of local revenue-raising is symptomatic of broader dilemmas of decentralisation. In practice, it has been a perennial issue to assign local governments sufficient sources of efficient revenue (Bahl & Bird, 2008; Bird, 2011; Devarajan et al., 2009; Jibao & Prichard, 2013; Smoke, 2013),

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that collecting some types of revenues are simply “not worth it” for them to collect given, in particular, the costs of transportation and fuel, exacerbated by large distances to cover and poor road conditions. For example, a MoFED representative noted, that “the costs of collection in rural areas is problematic. For some taxes (like market dues), it costs more to pay the collector, to pay for fuel, to print demand notices [...] than they collect.”5 In Koinadugu, the largest and most remote district in the country, the CA noted that the cost of fuel alone was often more than they would collect in taxes.6 In one case district, for example, the local government had only 5 revenue collectors covering 14 chiefdoms across 5641 sparsely populated square kilometres—with only 2 motorbikes, in an area without public transportation options.7 In Koinadugu district, meanwhile, the local government simply does not try to collect its largest potential source of revenues, property tax, outside of the district capital, with a government official explaining, “We can’t collect because of a lack of presence. We can’t afford to have collectors there.”8

With this high cost and inefficiency of cost collection, state collection of many forms of IRG is simply impractical. This is true, for instance, of informal user fees charged to maintain local public goods such as water wells or crop drying floors. For example, while local water well management committees are effective in collecting small monthly user fees, commonly SLL 2000 (USD 0.27), amounting to on average about 52 USD a month for one water well.9 It is not clear that the state would be able to efficiently collect those user fees or to effectively

though the assumed inherent value of decentralisation (and pressure to decentralise from international actors) continues to push the state in this direction. Indeed, since the 1980s decentralisation has been a central component of orthodox development policy agendas throughout sub-Saharan Africa, prioritized by international donors based on the idea that bringing government services closer to the people will strengthen governance and development.

5 FRE1.b, supported by local government officials across the three case districts, including KOI34.1, KOI34.2

6 KOI127

7 KON69.1 Population density is 90 per square kilometre (GoRSL SSL, 2016).

8 KOI261, also KOI34.2

9 KOI243

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allocate other, more progressive forms of tax revenues to fund the maintenance costs of water wells. Similarly, other forms of IRG, including community-built and -financed schools, have emerged out of long history of state weakness (Chapter 7). Without a substantial increase in state capacity to deliver decentralised services, the logic and necessity of IRG persists. In some ways, therefore, IRG represents a de facto decentralisation of tax collection, more consistent with limited local resources and the high costs of collection in remote areas.10

At the same time, without the local legitimacy enjoyed by some informal actors, state tax collection may require more coercive (e.g. cost-intensive), rather than quasi-voluntary, methods of enforcement, significantly diminishing the cost effectiveness of tax collection (Levi, 1988). As described in Chapter 9, tax morale is higher for chiefs than for the state, while citizens have more positive perceptions of the accountability, trustworthiness, and representativeness of chiefs and informal taxing actors relative to the central and local government.11 Where IRG is underpinned by conscious citizen exit from the state (Hirschman, 1970) or a form of political resistance (Scott, 1985, 1987), it is unlikely that the state would simply be able to collect tax if informal taxing actors were eliminated. As proposed by Olken and Singhal (2011, p. 25), “If local governments are corrupt, residents may prefer to make payments toward public projects in a form that cannot be expropriated”. Without a change in citizen perceptions of the state’s trustworthiness, therefore, citizens may continue to “exit” or resist state taxation.

10 Similarly, Olken and Singhal (2011) argue that the most persuasive explanation for the pervasiveness of IRG is an “optimal tax” story, in which in some contexts informal taxation may be the most efficient means of collecting revenue. However, they focus on the information advantage of local informal taxing actors—allowing them to have better information about local incomes that may not be verifiable by courts—rather than the cost of collection per se.

11 In other contexts, informal actors are less constrained by concerns of legitimacy and quasi-voluntary compliance and instead have greater capacity to tax through repression. For example Al-Shabaab collects tax more efficiently than the Somali state and, notably, is able to collect direct (i.e. income) tax—something the Somali state, as with many low-income countries, struggles to do (Ahmad, 2017, pp. 100–102; UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, 2018). It is able to do so largely because taxation is “often induced with the threat (or promise) of violence” (Maruf, 2018; UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, 2018, p. par. 83).

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Second, regardless of the prohibitive cost of collection, in many areas it is unlikely that the state could collect revenues without informal taxing actors. As described in Chapter 6, the state depends on chiefs to collect local taxes, with chiefly cooperation necessary for the state to operate within their areas. Where informal tax institutions serve as effective gatekeepers to local revenue collection, it is incorrect to assume that if informal taxing actors were banned the state could simply gain new revenues. Instead, the dependence of the state on chiefs for tax collection points to the possible benefits of working with informal taxing institutions and accepting mediated forms of control through hybrid tax collection. Even if the state is ceding revenues, these are potential revenues only—ones that it cannot easily collect on its own. Indeed, many local government officials supported the idea of expanding hybrid tax collection with chiefs if only to make the cost of collection more efficient,12 while the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development wants to expand these hybrid “experiments” across the country.13 In Kono district, where they had just 5 district tax collectors, the Valuation Officer noted that “joint revenue mobilisation with chiefs makes a big difference….[The] five revenue collectors… are [now] supervisors of chiefdom revenue mobilisers. They [chiefdom revenue mobilisers] get 10 percent of collection, but it is much more effective.”14 Accordingly, while hybrid outcomes may be “second-best” options, they may nevertheless increase state revenue, while accepting some degree of informality in collection.

Third, even if the state could collect taxes efficiently and could do so independently, it is not clear that it would do so. To some degree, this reflects the nature of the state’s governing constraints that can lead it to coexist with IRG (Chapter 4). This includes constraints imposed by international donors against charging user fees for public goods such as education and health care (Chapter 7). Accordingly, even if IRG in these areas were prohibited, the state would be unable to simply substitute informal user fees for formal ones. At the same time,

12 Expressed, for example, by KOI34.2

13 FRE111,1, KOI129, KAI90, KAI89.1, KAI183, FRE7.3, FRE3.3, KAI183.2

14 KON69.1

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states face political constraints against increasing formal taxation, particularly on high-net- worth individuals. In Sierra Leone, this has often resulted in the state implicitly relying on local users to fund public goods and services (Chapter 7). Accordingly, while it is possible that the elimination of IRG will create a revenue imperative for the state—that is, put pressure on it to increase or broaden taxation in order to fund public goods previously financed through IRG—there is limited evidence to suggest that the state would do so in practice. While President Bio has recently focused on domestic revenue mobilisation in part as a way to fund universal free public education (Chapter 7), this is the exception, rather than the rule. More commonly, governments, under pressure from international donors, announce free universal education programmes, but fail to raise sufficient revenues to fund them, thus implicitly continuing to rely on IRG to fund public education (Chapter 7).

2 IRG and state structures

The shape and nature of state structures affects state institutional capacity. Where state structures expand, state institutional capacity will likewise expand. In turn, improvements to state structures may have positive institutional spillovers. For instance, structural changes such as meritocratisation and standardisation can have positive cross-institutional spillover effects, with potential positive impacts for state revenues (e.g. Bräutigam, 2008; Mick Moore, 2008; Mick Moore et al., 2018; Prichard, 2015; Tilly, 1990/1993). IRG may affect the nature of state structures, by influencing what the state does and how it does it, in turn with the potential to affect state revenues through institutional spillover effects (Figure 58). Most intuitively, where informal taxing actors engage in key state functions or have control over a sub-national territory, the state may opt to simply not engage in those functions or areas. Accordingly, theory predicts that IRG undermines state structures and anticipates that where IRG is eliminated, the state will take responsibility for a broader set of state functions.

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Figure 58: State structures and state institutional capacity

These negative effects, however, are not inevitable. IRG may not always undermine state structures and, indeed, state engagement with IRG may actually have positive implications for state institutionalisation. Nevertheless, relying on IRG may prevent the state from addressing or reforming the governing constraints that limit an expansion of formal taxation and more independent governing capacity, with the risk of institutionalising a “lean” model of statehood and reinforcing a narrow conception of the responsibilities of states and the rights of citizens.

2.1 IRG does not always undermine state structures

In considering the impacts of IRG on state structures, we need to consider whether it (1) disincentives state expansion and (2) undermines state institutions. First, where the state is absent in taxation and service delivery, with IRG filling gaps left by the state, IRG may have a negative effect on state structures if it disincentivizes the state from engaging in those functions or areas. I find evidence that IRG can create disincentives for the state to engage in these functions, particularly where it has a political disincentive to raise tax revenues that would allow it to expand its functions. In such instances, the state may divert resources away from areas that are “covered” by IRG institutions, reinforcing its developmental dependence

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on informal taxing actors. Working with a constrained budget—partly as a result of insufficient revenue opportunities provided through the fiscal decentralisation framework and partly by both the central and local government’s lack of political will to collect taxes from high-net-worth individuals and businesses—local governments have indicated a desire to redirect expenditure budgets away from community services that they know are being funded by IRG. For example, a local government official in Sierra Leonean indicated that his administration would stop providing water well management services in communities, because of his belief that informal water well management committees collect more revenues, more efficiently. He explained that an estimated SLL 1.2 billion (USD 156,256) is collected annually from 200 water well management committees in his district, which is more than what is transferred to the council by the central government for water well maintenance.15 Rather than expanding government capacity to raise revenues or deliver services, IRG may provide the state with excuses not to expand its capacity in these areas. This reshapes the contours of state structures and functions, while making it more difficult to strengthen or expand those functions. Several studies indicate that public spending crowds out private contributions to the related activities (e.g. Bice & Hoyt, 2000), though the converse may thus be true: the prevalence of IRG can likewise crowd out public spending.

This possibility of IRG disincentivizing state expansion, however, assumes that the state would have the capacity to take over the role of IRG in these areas. Evidence from Sierra Leone suggests that this is not always the case: local government budgets for water wells, for instance, are insufficient to cover the entire district, often only allowing for repairs to a handful of water systems each year. The remaining water wells and boreholes—thousands across a district—are left to communities to maintain. Accordingly, as the state cannot play a realistic role in service provision, we cannot assume that water well management committees are undermining state institutions. Accordingly, IRG cannot be said to be undermining the state, but merely filling gaps left by the state.16

15 KOI243

16 This is supported by research that shows that demand for public goods from informal institutions increases where the state is unable to provide them (e.g. Logan, 2013). The need to be realistic about the capacity of the

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Second, where informal taxing actors undermine state regulations or revenue collection, IRG negatively affects state structures and institutional capacity. Informal taxing actors may actively prevent states from engaging in certain areas. For example, Bodea and Le Bas (2016, p. 217) posit that community forms of service provision “serve as effective bulwarks against state penetration” into an area. This is most obvious in the case of chiefs blocking local governments from collecting taxes in their chiefdoms (Chapter 6) or more extreme versions of divergent IRG, including cases where the state is in open conflict with the informal taxing actor (e.g. the Somalian state and Al-Shabaab).17 The concessionary form of state coexistence with IRG described in Chapter 6 reflects a Faustian bargain: coexistence reinforces state authority in the short-term, though the long-run effects on the institutionalisation of state structures is negative, resulting in the persistent weakness of local governments.

It is not always the case, however, that IRG undermines state institutions. For example, IRG for education in Sierra Leone supports state authority by reinforcing its regulatory functions (Chapter 7). Regardless of whether IRG is for “state” or “community” schools, it supports the broader state system. Community teachers do not undermine the system; rather, they want to be recognised by the system, thereby reinforcing the state’s role in the delivery of education. De Herdt and Titeca (2016, p. 482) describe a similar situation in the DRC, where “none of the actors [question] the role of the state in the education sector. By continuously referring to the state regulatory framework, and by directing their actions towards the state, the role of the state in the education sector [is] further entrenched.” Accordingly, there is

state to take over from informal taxing actors is moreover reflected in the case of Ghana, where local governments took over taxation from chiefs without sufficient capacity to do so. Unlike in Sierra Leone, the post-independence state in Ghana effectively controlled the informal taxing authority of chiefs and imbued local administrations with tax authority. However, as Rathbone (Rathbone, 2000, p. 55), “Inefficient and corrupt as the old Native Authority system under Indirect Rule might have been, it had been a functioning system; its replacement provided to be almost certainly as corrupt and inefficient, and definitely more costly than sincere reformers had hoped. In many Local Council areas it was reported that ‘local government administration… has completely broken down.’”

17 Charnysh (2019) finds that heterogeneous communities are less likely to informally cooperate to provide local public goods thus increasing their demand for the state to do so, with long-term positive effects on state capacity.

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evidence that “informal institutions sustain or reinforce—as opposed to undermine or distort—formal ones” (Helmke & Levitsky, 2004, p. 734).

At the same time, informal taxing actors do not always prevent an expansion of the state’s presence; rather, my research indicates that local actors may welcome future state expansion. For example, community IRG may be a stopgap measure where the state has failed to penetrate, though, in Sierra Leone, citizens continuously highlighted a desire for greater state presence and expansion. For instance, community schools desperately want to be taken over by the state and community teachers beg to be on state payroll (Chapter 7), while taxpayers paying informal water providers in Freetown made clear to me that they would prefer to pay the state. Indeed, in Sierra Leone, citizen expectations of the state remain high, indicating strong citizen beliefs that the state should be more involved in public service provision (Figure 59).

Figure 59: Citizen expectations of the state18

0 Education Water Roads Health care Public sanitation Markets Electricity Employment Housing Infrastructure Security Cash grants to needy Loans Guarantee of freedom Protection of private property Protection of equality Freedom to participate in political processes

Data source: Author survey data

18 Respondents were asked, “What do you expect the state to do for individuals (citizens)?” Options were not read aloud, but coded according to respondents’ answers, which were multiple. Enumerators emphasized that this was not a question about expectations about the government in power, but a question about the general expectations of the state in the abstract. Figure does not include answers provided by less than 2 percent of respondents.

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2.2 IRG as facilitating alternative models of statebuilding

Where the state engages with informal taxing actors, rather than ceding power to them completely or ineffectively trying to control or eliminate them, IRG can complement weak state capacity, through two key mechanisms: (1) allowing the state to expand its competencies and (2) contributing to alternative and potentially more productive models of statebuilding. In contrast to ideas that a state monopoly on taxation is constitutive of state power, hybrid arrangements may positively contribute to statebuilding. First, by working with informal taxing actors, the state may develop new competencies, even where state institutions are too weak to take over from or formalise IRG. For example, greater state control of IRG may bolster state oversight and accountability capacities. As described in Chapter 8, a local government in eastern Sierra Leone has begun to regulate informal water well management committees and the informal user fees they levy. Without taking control over informal revenues, the state may still gain greater capacity in oversight and monitoring, while strengthening engagement with local communities.

Second, where state engagement involves institutionalised cooperation with informal taxing actors, it can represent alternative models of statehood and statebuilding, described variously as a “partnership” or “horizontal” model of the state. There is value in conceptualising statebuilding as more than the development of state structures and “vertical” statebuilding—what Paris and Sisk (2009, p. 1) refer to as “the construction or strengthening of legitimate governmental institutions”—instead thinking about statebuilding in terms of horizontal linkages and the state’s capacity to work with other societal actors and institutions. This reflects the reality in weak institutional contexts of “rules, controls and in particular their legitimisation, resist[ing] situation either ‘state’ or ‘society’” (Lund, 2006, p. 689).

In contrast to conventional Western notions of statebuilding that see the goal of statebuilding as exactly that—strengthening the state and its sovereign governing authority and institutional capacity—research suggests that statebuilding strategies that build on productive informal organisations may be more effective and sustainable (see e.g. Brick, 2008; Luckham, 2006), while recognising the importance of non-state forces in building and

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shaping the state (e.g. Migdal et al., 1994). As described in Chapter 7, community-financed schools in Sierra Leone are, in a sense, a “feeder” system for the expansion of the public system. That is, communities build infrastructure and the state eventually takes them over. When the state is able to take over community schools, moving from coexistence to control, it gains a larger reach than its actual service delivery capacity would otherwise allow. This implies not just that the community schools fill a gap left by a failing formal system, but that they build into a longer-term logic of state institutionalisation, in which initiative comes from the informal, with the formal sector then absorbing and expanding these efforts. This reflects Migdal’s (2001b) state-in-society model, with such hybrid outcomes reflecting one of the possible outcomes of interaction between state and social forces, wherein the state incorporates and appropriates existing social forces, though, in the process, is also transformed by them.

Historically, the role of international institutions in shaping the goals of statebuilding and the nature of local institutions has limited the viability of alternative models of statebuilding (see e.g. David Chandler, 2007, p. 71), though this suggests that IRG can contribute to an alternative model of statebuilding. Rather than simply trying to recreate institutions “in the self-image of the Western liberal state” (Cramer, 2006, p. 257), an alternative model of statebuilding may imbue state institutions and functions with a post-colonial—and potentially decolonised—hybrid or multi-layered identity (e.g. Bhabha, 1985).

2.3 Risk of institutionalising a “lean” model of statehood

Where the state effectively outsources revenue generation to non-state actors, it risks institutionalising a “lean” model of statehood, limiting the state’s willingness to expand its functions and responsibilities in the future. As Meagher (2012, p. 1097) asks, are hybrid arrangements “a quest for more effective and legitimate forms of order or… a shift to leaner, meaner models of governance designed to cut costs and increase unaccountable forms of control?” My research provides some support for the idea that state collaboration with IRG is a means of delivering services and imposing order “on the cheap”, without necessarily ensuring sustainable or effective systems (Boesten et al., 2011). In turn, offloading the costs

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of governance and service delivery unduly puts pressure on individuals while reducing pressure on the state to address structural and systemic institutional deficiencies.

Indeed, part of the logic of outsourcing key governance functions to informal institutions or making use of IRG is to reduce costs. In the case of Sierra Leone’s use of unpaid labour (Chapter 8), the state gains effective revenue by not, for example, paying for maintenance of feeder roads or public sanitation. Rather than building state structures capable of funding and delivering regular garbage collection, Sierra Leone relies on unpaid labour. Similarly, when Mobutu introduced salongo—compulsory unpaid civic work—in Zaïre, he justified it in part “to compensate for dwindling government resources” (Hoffmann et al., 2016, p. 1444; see also Callaghy, 1984, pp. 299–303). These strategies fit neatly with discourses of ownership, participation, and sustainability, as well as with neoliberal governance models that prioritise cost-saving measures (see e.g. Boesten et al., 2011; Brown & Prince, 2015). In some ways, they reflect a prioritisation of keeping state spending low, without investing in sustainable and effective systems of revenue collection and service delivery (Boesten et al., 2011). Indeed, the government could finance these services more equitably by increasing taxes on the wealthy. Yet the state is hindered in doing so by its political constraints; rather than address these constraints, it is easier to instead rely on locally organised taxation, offloading key state responsibilities onto the country’s poorest.19

Moreover, state engagement with IRG has implications for the nature of redistribution and citizenship rights. Coexistence or formalisation of unpaid labour and requirements of community participation in order to receive development projects institutionalises ideas about who deserves development. Where the state requires communities to make informal contributions in order to receive basic services (Chapter 8), it is effectively defining what makes a “worthy” or “deserving” beneficiary.20 When the state requires self-help and local

19 As Scott (2017, p. 130) describes, tax collectors are “interested, above all, in the ease and efficiency of appropriation”.

20 Illustrating how these notions are embedded within the pressures felt by weak states, Thomas (2015, p. 189) explains that, “Many Americans would not eagerly agree to subsidize poor governments indefinitely. They are willing to help the ‘deserving poor’—those who are impoverished through no fault of their own. However, many

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revenue mobilization for development project, it reinforces a model of citizenship and rights wherein the state only helps those who first help themselves (Handley, 2020, pp. 153–158; Moskowitz, 2017). Similarly, McCarthy (2018) finds that the government in Myanmar justifies the withholding of state aid from “communities said to lack commitment to the ‘democratic’ virtue of ‘self-reliance’”. These conditions on aid distribution imply that unless people contribute informally, they do not deserve to have basic rights—a view that was normalised within the communities under study. Indeed, community members commonly explained that they paid informal taxes and engaged in self-help in order to show the government that they were worthy of receiving state support. In Sierra Leone, access to state resources may require surmounting an additional obstacle: for example, in a community in Gbense chiefdom, an unapproved junior secondary school was added to a primary school without additional facilities or support. According to community members, the “Government says it will support [the school] if students do well”.21 This belief that access to state resources depends on self-help contributions as well as student performance represents a troubling development, with students in the most marginalised areas of the country, without even minimum state support, are expected to prove their worthiness for what is described as a universal public good. As McCarthy (2018) argues, in this model of service delivery, “’Rights’ become contingent upon competition for worthiness with other poor communities, creating a zero-sum game that exacerbates inequality and encourages the exclusion of minorities.”

In Sierra Leone, this redefinition of rights moreover plays into and reinforces stereotypes of welfare recipients and African subjects as “lazy”, while introducing qualifications for the rights of citizenship. Reflecting similar views, the mayor of Freetown has declared that the contributions for the national cleaning campaign are necessary to “remind” citizens “of the importance of having a clean environment” (BBC, 2019). This statement implies that people are uninformed, and unwilling to take responsibility for themselves, without acknowledging the structural obstacles that prevent individuals from maintaining a clean environment (e.g.

believe that hard work and prudence overcome poverty and so tend to find persistent poverty suspect. They worry that someone who is poor for too long is attempting to take advantage of the hard work of others.”

21 GBEFG3

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regular garbage collection and access to basic sanitation). This theme of needing to educate populations on the benefits of self-reliance has been consistent throughout modern history. For example, in Zaïre the logic of compulsory unpaid civic work was in part “to instil a sense of civic education” (Hoffmann et al., 2016, p. 1444; see also Callaghy, 1984, pp. 299–303).

That IRG enables a “leaner” model of government has implications for the quality and coverage of services, as well as for the type of state that emerges. Indeed, by limiting areas of state responsibility, “outsourcing” models limit the state’s potential to expand its capacity in those areas in the long-run. This reflects a wider trend of reliance, in both low- and high- income countries, on voluntarism and even crowd-funding to fulfil state responsibilities (e.g. Bice & Hoyt, 2000; Brunner & Sonstelie, 1997; Davies, 2015; Hong & Ryi, 2019; C. H. Lee et al., 2016), raising questions about the long-term impacts for the nature, not just the strength, of state structures.

3 Conclusion

Rather than IRG necessarily conflicting with the state, Parts II and III show how the state may coexist with IRG and how IRG may complement the state and reinforce its authority. Chapter 9 demonstrates that IRG does not always detract from state legitimacy and can actually strengthen it. Similarly, this exploration of the impacts of IRG on state institutionalisation through state revenues and state structures shows that IRG does not inherently detract from state institutional capacity. While state coexistence with IRG can undermine long-term institutionalisation and while state control is often infeasible in weak institutional contexts, formal–informal hybrid arrangements for tax collection and service delivery can strengthen state revenues and expand state structures. This has implications for how we think about the relationship between informality and statebuilding, reinforcing that the informal is not antithetical to the modern state, but often deeply intertwined with state institutions and statebuilding strategies. The following, final chapter summarises the key findings of this thesis and considers their implications for both state theory and for policymakers. What can and should domestic and international policymakers do in the face of prevalent, multifaceted IRG?

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Part V: Conclusions

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Chapter 11: Informal revenue generation and the state: Theoretical and policy significance

tel.1 di pan taya כf כn yu arata, it yu We

Krio proverb

1 Literally, “When you eat a rat, you should eat the tail as well” or “Finish what you begin.”

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The modern state is commonly conceived of “as singular, supreme rule-maker” and “the dominant and single centre of authority” (Migdal & Schlichte, 2005, p. 16). Among the constitutive elements of statehood, taxation is central. Even where other elements of statehood have been chipped away by privatisation, internationalisation, and supra- nationalisation, “nation-states continue to cling to tax revenues and the monopoly of the use of force” as the persistent defining elements of statehood (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014, p. 15).

In contrast to this idealised conception of the state, my research shows that modern statehood and authority are not so clear-cut, with governance often “pluralized” and sovereignty “fragmented” or “overlapping” (Benda-Beckmann et al., 2009; Randeria, 2007). Authority and legitimacy are not inherent to or uniquely held by the state. Instead, modern authority is spread across a plurality of power centres “within and adjacent to, and partially intertwined with the state” (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014, p. 16). This is described variously as “polycephaly” (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 1997a), “twilight institutions” (Lund, 2007), “heterarchy” (Bellagamba & Klute, 2008), and “mediated statehood” (Menkhaus, 2006b). While the fragmented nature of state sovereignty is most visible and obvious in weak institutional contexts, it is not unique to areas of “limited statehood” (Risse, 2011). States everywhere are “complex, dynamic, ambivalent institutions” with “fabrics [that] are interwoven and layered with heterogeneous practices and representations” (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014, p. 30). Irrespective of whether they are in the Global North or the Global South and irrespective of their institutional strength, “all practices in all modern states display both permanent and multi-faceted disparities between the official [Weberian] model [of statehood], which state actors are supposed to follow, and actual behaviour” (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014, p. 18; see also Olivier de Sardan, 2010).

Informal institutions are not a deviation; instead, informality can be understood as shaping the practical norms and contours of power and authority. These different “modes of governance” (Olivier de Sardan, 2011) shape the nature of “real” governance, revenue- raising, and service delivery, with the state engaging with a multiplicity of actors through overlapping and complex relations (Eckert et al., 2012; Hagmann & Péclard, 2010). This

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reflects Migdal’s (2001b) state-in-society model, with the state incorporating and appropriating existing social forces and, in the process, being transformed by them.

Understanding informal institutions is thus not tangential but critical to interpreting state power and authority in practice. Like fiscal sociologists, I argue that state power is best understood by how the state is financed, what functions it prioritises, and how it redistributes wealth in society. Rather than analysing idealised forms of statehood, however, I embrace an informal fiscal sociological approach, viewing the state through the real public budget—formal and informal—and the formal and informal institutions that shape fiscal and statehood outcomes. This informal fiscal lens allows me to explore key issues of statehood— for instance, the sources and dynamics of power upon which state authority depends and the practical norms that shape governance and public goods financing.

By extending my analysis beyond formal systems of governance and public finance, I provide a necessary corrective to existing narratives of statebuilding, which are overwhelmingly focused on formal, national-level processes.2 Turning my attention to the informal processes, institutions, and actors that are at the heart of statebuilding illuminates the relationship between tax and the state in contexts where formal direct taxation affects a small percentage of taxpayers. Using the lens of informal revenue generation, my research thus offers novel empirical insight into the state and the construction and contestation of modern statehood at the local level.

1 Informal revenue generation

Political science has historically suffered from a statist bias and a tendency to assume that there is only one kind of state. On the whole, analysts inadequately consider authority and institutions outside of the state, as well as informal institutions embedded within or adjacent to formal state institutions. My research shows the consequences of this bias. If we only observe and record formal state institutions, we miss the significance of IRG and its underlying politics. As described in Chapter 1, only a small share of people in low-income

2 I thus build on the seminal contribution of Boone (1998, 2003).

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countries pay formal, direct taxes to the state. However, IRG and informal taxing institutions are prevalent in these countries, with major impacts on individual tax burdens, public service delivery, and the nature of societal redistribution.

First, understanding IRG is necessary to appreciate the real fiscal burdens facing individuals, households, and businesses. Indeed, in northern and eastern Sierra Leone, IRG is almost universal: individuals must pay to access essential public goods, including education, water, and health care; contribute to decentralised development projects through local elites, community groups, or NGOs; provide regular labour contributions for community development and cleaning; and fund chiefdom administrations, including paying for salaries, hosting guests, and showing support for the local chief. Without considering these informal contributions, we would assume that these individuals do not pay taxes. This common oversight has implications for how we assess individuals’ taxability and for how we understand their political and citizenship rights. Indeed, much recent attention on taxation in low-income countries has focused on broadening the tax base, based on the intuitive idea that when people pay taxes, they are more likely to hold their governments to account and governments are more likely to be responsive. The reality of informal tax burdens, however, shows that individuals already help fund public goods, though often without fostering corresponding channels of government accountability. The informal nature of a significant portion of public finance in low-income countries should give pause to those who assume there is an innate link between taxation and accountability, while also raising questions about the logic of expanding taxation to individuals who may already bear a high, though invisible, burden of financing public life.

Second, IRG is essential to public goods delivery in weak institutional contexts. The coproduction and co-provision of public goods through IRG underpins the mechanics of modern statehood. For example, taxpayers directly fund almost half of all expenditures for education in Sierra Leone, supplementing state service provision and filling gaps where the state is unable or unwilling to reach (Chapter 7). The same is true for other essential public goods, including security, water provision, health care, and public sanitation. Without IRG, these public goods would be of poorer quality and much less available.

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Finally, IRG has significant, negative implications for equity and redistribution. A government’s commitment to equity is often assessed based on fiscal incidence analysis— that is, a determination of who benefits from government transfers and who ultimately bears the burden of taxes in the economy (Martinez-Vazquez, 2008; Musgrave, 1959; Pechman, 1985).3 Where tax policy and analysis does not consider actual individual contributions to financing public life, however, these equity heuristics tell us little about a state’s social character. Instead, we need to capture both formal and informal individual tax burdens, the ways in which public goods are financed and distributed in practice, the nature of informal tax enforcement and exemptions, and the processes of accessing essential public goods. Fundamentally, we cannot understand the nature of societal accumulation and redistribution—the very character of modern statehood—without understanding IRG. In Sierra Leone, the state’s coexistence with and dependence on IRG amounts to the state offloading financial responsibility for public goods provision onto citizens. The overall tax system is thus regressive, with inequitable distribution of goods and services across the country.

2 IRG and the state: Sierra Leone and beyond

Without understanding informal fiscal institutional dynamics, we are unable to understand the centres of power shaping governance, politics, and development in practice. Indeed, formal institutions often tell us little about the nature of power and authority in states, with power and wealth instead “produced and transmitted” through informal relationships and networks (Alley, 2010). Accordingly, “[w]e need to understand who is in control, with regard to a function or a territory, what rules apply where, what resources are available to the government, what demands are made on them, and what strategies the government uses to hold power” (M. A. Thomas, 2015, p. 173). By exploring the state’s complete fiscal history— both formal and informal—and how it relates to informal institutions and actors, we come

3 For example, through fiscal incidence analysis Lustig (2018) considers the size and composition of government spending and how it is financed, as well as the progressivity of all taxes and government spending combined (see also Barr, 2012; Lindert, 2004).

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closer to understanding the state’s priorities, governing constraints, and the politics underpinning modern statehood and statebuilding.

I thus highlight a central irony: in order to fully understand the state, we need to look beyond it. Looking beyond formal institutions does not imply that informality only exists outside the state; rather, “it is also firmly entrenched in state mechanisms themselves” (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014, p. 19; see also Olivier de Sardan, 2014; Bierschenk, 2014). My research makes the case for moving beyond strict statist frameworks, while recognising that the state still matters. While there is a need to “relativize the role of the state in regulation and public service delivery”, the state remains a “strong, although not exclusive” actor in these fields (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014, p. 16).

With this analytic approach, my research draws attention to how and why the state engages differently with IRG in different contexts. Fundamentally, I show that the relationship between the state and informal taxing actors is not necessarily zero-sum, based only in competition and conflict. How the state engages with IRG is not determined solely by a desire to gain a monopoly on taxation and authority. Instead, IRG may be part of the state’s governing strategy, determined by the nature of its governing constraints. The upshot is that states may seek to sustain informal processes and outcomes, even where we expect that they should desire a monopoly on taxation and authority. This counterintuitive finding has significant policy implications as it calls into question how development partners respond to—and should respond to—informal institutions and revenue generation.

Where the state depends on informal taxing actors for its governing capacity and authority, it will be more willing to concede revenues and control through IRG. However, the degree of dependence is affected by the state’s dependence on other domestic and international actors for its governing capacity and authority. While the state may depend on informal taxing actors, what matters is the relative importance of that dependence in the greater context of the societal forces upon which it depends for its authority. The balance between the state’s multiple dependencies reflect the nature of its governing constraints, shaping how it engages with IRG by influencing both its capacity and desire to take control over informal revenues and taxing actors.

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My findings on how the state engages with IRG provide an important counterpoint to statist analyses that assume that the state has and will always want a monopoly on taxation and the provision of public goods (see e.g. Przeworski et al., 1999).4 By showing that the relationship between formal and informal institutions is nuanced, dependent on the nature of a state’s governing authority and the mediated nature of statehood in polycephalous societies, I shed new light on the underpinnings of modern statehood and highlight how informality is deeply intertwined with formal institutions. These dynamics are true of both divergent and convergent IRG—that is, IRG that threatens Weberian models of statehood and those that do not challenge “modern” statist frameworks.

2.1 Divergent IRG and the state

The nature of state engagement with divergent IRG varies first based on the nature of state dependence on informal taxing actors, reflecting the difference between a concessionary and a competitive formal–informal outcome. Thus, we see that where the state is most reliant on traditional authorities for political outcomes, the state makes the greatest informal revenue concessions to chiefs (Chapter 5). In post-2001 Afghanistan, the state similarly accepted the informal taxing authority of Afghan strongmen, despite extensive international efforts to build a modern, liberal state. Indeed, strongmen continue to “possess the means to govern through their coercive capacities, their ability to extract revenues and their social linkages to important civilian groups” (Kasfir et al., 2017, p. 259; see also Mukhopadhyay, 2014, pp. 50–51), while in many ways the state has accepted their authority to do so within restricted areas of the country. As in Sierra Leone, the state has relied on non-state actors and tolerated IRG because of its reliance on these actors to maintain control and reinforce the state’s authority. Indeed, it may be argued that the post-2001 Afghan state held together as a result of the state’s acceptance of and explicit concessions to the independent governing authority and informal taxing capacity of regional strongmen (e.g. Mukhopadhyay, 2014; A. Rashid, 2008).

4 For useful counterpoints in the field of public goods provision see e.g. Cammett and MacLean (2014b) and Cansunar (2019).

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By contrast, where the state’s governing authority depends to a greater degree on external actors that want informality to be controlled, the state attempts to take control over IRG (Chapter 6). This dynamic played out in Sierra Leone recently at the local level. With leadership changes at the local level, concerted support from an NGO, and pressure from the World Bank through the Decentralisation Secretariat, local governments attempted to take back control over revenues that should be under the state’s control. The effectiveness of these attempts at state control reflect the relative autonomy of informal taxing actors. Where informal taxing actors were less autonomous, the local government reached a negotiated settlement that allowed it to take back control of some formal tax revenues; where informal taxing actors were more autonomous, state attempts to take control failed, leading to a competitive formal–informal stalemate. Despite these attempts at regaining control over tax revenues, however, local governments continue to depend on chiefs for administrative and tax collection purposes. Accordingly, even with pressure from the central government and donors on local governments to assert control over IRG, local governments asserted only a mediated form of control. Rather than attempting to prohibit chiefs’ role in tax collection, they engaged in extra-legal negotiations and created hybrid formal–informal tax collection agreements as a second-best governance strategy.

As noted, the state’s governing constraints in Sierra Leone make it unlikely for it to effectively assert full control over IRG. However, this is not the case everywhere. In contexts where the state depends less on informal taxing actors, it is less willing to tolerate mediated governance. For example, the relationship between chiefs and the state in Sierra Leone contrasts sharply with the relationship between the state and chiefs in other postcolonial states, including Ghana. While there was immediate conflict between the newly-independent Ghanaian state and Ashanti chiefs, who saw themselves as “the rightful rulers” (Apter, 1968), the post-colonial government quickly subdued chiefs and reinforced state authority at the local level. Kwame Nkrumah’s administration “set out its opposition to chieftaincy at an early stage”, committing to “the complete ending of chiefly authority” (Rathbone, 2000, p. 53).5

5 This was partly based in ideology—the idea that chiefs had been colonial stooges, while being out of line with nationalists’ calls for political equality and democracy (Baldwin, 2016, p. 3)—and partly representing the state’s efforts to beat chiefs in the “struggle for rural control” (Rathbone, 2000, p. 53). Soon after independence,

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Accordingly, while chiefs had enjoyed considerable autonomy during the colonial era, the independent government “used all [its] powers to undermine the authority of chieftaincy” (Rathbone, 2000, p. 46), effectively subordinating traditional authority by redefining its power and geographic boundaries and reinforcing the state’s capacity to depose chiefs at its will (Rathbone, 2000; Ray, 1996).

Critically, this led to the state taking away chiefs’ direct access to the revenue sources they had previously controlled—including rents, concession royalties, and local imposts—and that had enabled their considerable authority relative to the state during the later colonial period (Rathbone, 2000, pp. 55, 63).6 Instead, local governments began to collect these taxes and revenues, with the state controlling the distribution of subsequent revenue allocations to chiefs (Rathbone, 2000, p. 55). Chiefs in Ghana were rendered fiscally subordinate to the state. Even after the nationalist government of Nkrumah lost power, subsequent governments, friendlier to chiefs, did not return these revenues to them. These revenues, as well as authority at the local level, “were now definitely nationalised” (Rathbone, 2000, p. 63). As a result, and in contrast to Sierra Leone, the state did not depend on chiefs to levy taxes, while chiefs cooperated with the state in order to secure their own continued governing capacity. Accordingly, the state enjoyed greater independent governing capacity at the local level, resulting in stronger control over IRG by chiefs.

2.2 Convergent IRG and the state

As with divergent IRG, the nature of state engagement with convergent IRG varies based on the degree of state dependence on informal taxing actors. Modern weak states depend on informal taxing actors to co-produce essential public goods that are central to the state’s

the state soon softened this stance. It limited chiefs’ power and intervened more “heavy handedly” in traditional institutions than the colonial authority had (Rathbone, 2000, p. 62), though it also gave them an official role in the government through the House of Chiefs, effectively institutionalising their subordination within the state’s hierarchy. As described by Rathbone (2000, p. 62), “Rather than crushing chieftaincy, the CPP [Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party] had instead domesticated it.”

6 At the same time, the Ghanaian state used the threat of deposition to subdue chiefs. As declared by the Minister of Local Government only give months after independence, “what the Chiefs forget is the fact that a Chief is a Chief partly because the Government recognises him as such” (cited in Rathbone, 2000, p. 62).

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governing authority. Both international donors and domestic audiences have increasingly broad expectations about the basket of goods that the state should provide. With a limited fiscal window and political constraints against expanding progressive taxation, the state has little choice but to coexist with some forms of IRG and delegate key state functions to private actors (Chapter 7, see also Blundo & Le Meur, 2009; Hibou, 2004; Olivier de Sardan, 2014; Tendler, 1997). By contrast, where the state depends more on actors that disapprove of IRG, whether external donors or the domestic electorate, it is more likely to be able to take some control over IRG. Thus, the Sierra Leonean state was able to take greater control over informal labour taxes at critical political junctures, including a military coup and an electoral change with the support of international donors (Chapter 8). Nevertheless, where it has a greater degree of governing authority, it has been more common for the Sierra Leonean state to engage in hybrid arrangements with informal taxing actors through formal–informal hybrid partnerships, as when it works with chiefs to deliver security during election periods and crises. This reflects its continued dependence on informal taxing actors and its insufficient governing capacity to take them over completely.

The state’s approach to convergent IRG further depends on the normative acceptability of IRG in a given context. State coexistence may vary from tacit acceptance to explicit consent, while state control may vary from state supervision to hybridisation to formalisation to prohibition. Whether or not IRG is “acceptable” defines how the state reacts in either case. For instance, since the advent of rights-based frameworks that define education and the movement for free universal education, informal taxes for education have been widely seen by the international community as amoral and illegitimate (Chapter 7). With its dependence on international donors, the Sierra Leonean state cannot explicitly endorse informal taxes for education, but it also does not have the capacity to prohibit them. This leads the state, through frontline bureaucrats, to tacitly acknowledge and coexist with informal education taxes across the country, despite formal policy prohibiting such taxes and fees.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, IRG is not always seen as wrong or illegitimate (Chapter 8). In the post-colonial period, for instance, IRG was seen to support anti-colonial ideology and a spirit of self-reliance. By the 1990s, the epistemic community of international

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development practitioners had likewise embraced informal labour taxes as a means of supporting participation in and local ownership over local development projects. Thus, when the state was able to gain control over informal labour taxes, it did not prohibit them, but instead subsumed and institutionalised them. By contrast, where the state has independent governing capacity and IRG is relatively acceptable, it is more likely to prohibit IRG altogether. For example, McCarthy (2018) describes how the relatively independent government of Myanmar went from formalising to prohibiting informal and forced labour taxes as a direct result of pressure from the international community (see also Horsey, 2011). Though the 1990s were characterised by a “climate of impunity” within the authoritarian regime, by the 2000s “a shifting political and legal environment” led the regime to be more conscious of international condemnation, particularly from the ILO, as well as wary of domestic unrest (McCarthy, 2018). In contrast to the legitimisation of informal labour taxes in other contexts, including Sierra Leone, forced labour remains widely seen as illegitimate, with strong states that care about international norms having little choice but to prohibit them.

3 IRG and statebuilding

There is a “tendency to associate ‘informal’ with ‘unstructured’ and ‘chaotic’” (Guha- Khasnobis et al., 2006b, p. 1). Based on this understanding of informality, IRG is viewed as inherently detrimental to the state, undermining its institutions and long-term strength. From a different perspective, however, IRG is often romanticised as indicative of positive collective action and self-reliance or as a means of circumnavigating corrupt state institutions.7 In Sierra Leone, the state and development partners embody both of these

7 This is largely in line with the co-production literature, which has variously seen co-production as a vehicle for developing “more responsible citizens; more responsive political processes; increased use of neighbourhood groups; a humanistic political process; and more effective service delivery” (Ferris, 1984, p. 331; see also Bjur & Siegel, 1977; Lopez-Lee, 1982; Rich, 1979; Rosentraub & Sharp, 1981; G. P. Whitaker, 1980). At the same time, some observers recognise that state involvement in financing and supplying public goods is a modern concept and not an inherent necessity of state authority. Indeed, most pre-modern states collected taxes to finance wars and sustain armies, not to provide education or health care (Besley & Persson,

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perspectives. Some forms of IRG are considered illegitimate and corrupt, while others are perceived as contributing positively to community-based or participatory development.8 The reality falls somewhere between these two extremes. While some informal taxing actors “may employ practices that strengthen the image of the state, others may employ those that weaken the image” (Migdal & Schlichte, 2005, p. 19) or “crowd out” more effective state structures (Helmke & Levitsky, 2004). IRG may reinforce state authority by helping to provide essential public goods, enabling government control, and delivering political and electoral outcomes (Chapters 5, 7). However, while the state’s coexistence with IRG may reinforce its authority in the short-run, the long-term implications for state institutional capacity are more complex.

I consider three pathways through which IRG can influence state institutionalisation: its effects on state legitimacy, revenues, and structures. First, in contrast to conventional wisdom, IRG does not always detract from state legitimacy. Rather, some types of IRG have positive effects on state legitimacy, some have negative effects, and others simply exist in parallel to the state without affecting state legitimacy (Chapter 9). Critically, positive effects only emerge when the state is present, if weak, in public goods provision. Where the state is completely absent, these positive outcomes evaporate. Accordingly, it is not just the nature of IRG that affects state legitimacy, but the nature of state engagement with IRG and public goods provision.

Second, in some contexts, IRG certainly detracts from state revenue, with negative implications for state institutionalisation. For example, where the Sierra Leonean central

2008; J. Brewer, 1989; Dincecco, 2011). Instead, it was often the economic or religious elite that invested in public goods provision (Barry & Jones, 1994; Demsetz, 1992; Kuran, 2001; McChesney, 1986).

8 Reflecting the latter perspective, for example, an elder described community financing of education as a means of “mending our own problems”, while community schools are often described as a desirable and sustainable option to reach “the unreached” (Glassman et al., 2007) and “more relevant to local needs, adaptable, cost-effective and student-centric than government schools” (UNESCO, 2015a, pp. 93–94; see also DeStefano et al., 2007). MONFG3. Elsewhere in Sierra Leone, unapproved private schools are “seen as something to be celebrated… Overall, the private contribution to education suggests a fusion of civil society and market working together for the public good…[it] is entitled to nurture and encouragement, rather than sanction and censure” (Tooley & Longfield, 2013, p. 70).

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state made revenue concessions to chiefs, it reinforced its political authority but undermined local government revenues and institutionalisation. Nevertheless, the negative effects of IRG are often more theoretical than practical, with the potential revenues and state capacity to collect them effectively limited. As a result, the negative effects of IRG on state institutionalisation through its effect on state revenues are often correspondingly limited (Chapter 10).

Finally, contrary to expectations, IRG does not always undermine structures and, indeed, state engagement with IRG may actually have positive implications for state institutionalisation. This may be true where IRG allows the state to expand the nature and depth of its functions and competencies. Moreover, IRG can contribute to alternative and potentially more productive models of statebuilding. My research suggests that, rather than top-down models of statebuilding, statebuilding occurs through horizontal networks and bottom-up processes that are deeply intertwined with informality.

These findings suggest that in weak institutional contexts, hybrid formal–informal taxing and service delivery arrangements may be part of an effective statebuilding strategy, with IRG filling gaps in state capacity. At the same time, where states have limited independent taxing capacity, hybrid arrangements may be beneficial for raising state revenues, even if they involve conceding a portion of those revenues to hybrid authorities. In contrast to ideas that state control is also more constitutive of state power, hybrid arrangements may positively contribute to statebuilding. Nevertheless, these strategies hold risks for the nature of the state that emerges, particularly with respect to institutionalising unaccountable informal institutions and inequality. Relying on or working with IRG may prevent the state from addressing or reforming the governing constraints that limit an expansion of formal taxation and more independent governing capacity, with the risk of institutionalising a “lean” model of statehood that offloads state responsibilities of service provision and redistribution onto citizens and reinforces a narrow conception of the responsibilities of states and the rights of citizens.

While the implications of IRG for state institutionalisation are therefore more nuanced than common perspectives assume, it is clear that IRG institutions are central to modern

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statebuilding. While modernisation theory foresaw rationalised bureaucratic authority emerging conjunction with modernity (e.g. Huntington, 1968; Lerner, 1958), informality is deeply intertwined with modernity. Rather than “the (passé) presumption that ‘modernity’ would replace ‘tradition’ and that rationalized, rule-bound governance would eradicate particularistic bonds” (Radnitz, 2011, p. 40), my research shows that IRG and patrimonial networks are intimately tied to statebuilding in Sierra Leone. Informality does not simply disappear with modernisation; instead, it is a deeply modern phenomenon, underpinning the state and its authority. States may use informal taxing actors to bolster state authority and expansion, while IRG can support statebuilding processes.

4 Policy implications

Despite nuanced academic perspectives, international donors and development partners still tend to see informality as something to be controlled, eliminated, or otherwise “formalised”. Indeed, formalisation is often seen as a piece of the “civilising mission” of modernisation and developmentalism.9 As stated by a representative of the Sierra Leone MoFED, “There are lots of informal taxation at the local level [sic] [..][we] need to bring them into the formal setting”.10 Yet, government attempts to formalise or prohibit IRG rarely succeed. For one, government officials noted that formalisation would require massive—and potentially unrealistic—state investment and time, in the form of enforcing prohibitions of IRG or expanding state reach to displace informal taxing actors.11 As argued by the DO of Koinadugu district, “It is very difficult to eradicate informal tax because government cannot reach everyone.”12

9 This civilising logic is rooted in both colonialism and modernisation theory. As Cavalcanti (2007, p. 89) notes, “development today has become a kind of missionary vocation in which the bearers of knowledge and techniques are understood to be superior, and then embrace the cause of changing the way of life of populations who think and live in a different fashion.”

10 Research dissemination seminar, Freetown, 21 February 2018.

11 KOI242, also expressed at research dissemination seminar, Freetown, 21 February 2018.

12 KOI241

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In weak institutional contexts, the state’s governing constraints make state control over IRG unlikely. In these contexts, even where the state gains some independent governing authority from an informal taxing actor, it is rare that this dependency severs entirely. Without structural changes that enhance the degree of state governing autonomy and diminish the political constraints against raising tax revenues, the state is more likely to share forms of mediated authority with informal taxing actors through formal–informal hybrid outcomes or state coexistence with IRG. For example, in the case study of state control over divergent IRG, the Sierra Leonean state attempted to take control over informal revenues from chiefs but ended up institutionalising concessions to them through revenue agreements because the underlying structures and relationship of dependence had not fundamentally changed (Chapter 6). Likewise, in considering state control over convergent IRG, the government of Sierra Leone repeatedly banned informal taxes on education over the course of almost six decades, though without any effect on its tax collection efforts—and subsequently with no effect on the reality of IRG supplementing state financing of education (Chapter 7). This pattern is commonly reflected across low-income countries, particularly with respect to IRG for education and health services. Governments repeatedly make announcements about universal “fee-free” education and health care programmes. Without sufficient formal revenue-raising, however, informal fees are inevitably reintroduced at the local level in order to sustain service delivery. The pattern is summarised by Thomas (2015, p. 159),

A declaration of a policy of UPE [universal primary education] leads to a surge in school enrollments that overwhelms the government’s capacity to deliver… Fees creep back into the picture unofficially or under other names…In a few years, the government declares a policy of universal primary education—again.

State intentions and formal legal changes with respect to IRG are insufficient to implement state control in practice because they do not address the underlying structures of power and dependence upon which the state’s governing authority relies. Without structural changes in the underlying relationships and balances of power, state coexistence with IRG is the more likely status quo, with any attempts for the state to take control resulting in halfway or hybrid measures or to fail altogether.

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Reforms are thus unlikely to succeed without restructuring the underlying dynamics of power. Where the state depends on informal taxing actors for some degree of their governing authority and capacity, it is unlikely to take meaningful steps to try to limit informality. Where development partners do not sufficiently appreciate the role of these informal taxing actors in governance strategies, they tend to support incentive-incompatible statebuilding strategies. For instance, the tendency to equate informal institutions with disorder has led to “policy disasters as the state sought to provide ‘structures’ where none was presumed to exist before” (Guha-Khasnobis et al., 2006b, p. 1). Without understanding these underlying power dynamics, reforms will “produce new laws, systems, and processes that make governments look better”, but go unimplemented in practice (Andrews, 2013, p. 215). Rather than assuming a tabula rasa, states should “tread lightly on existing arrangements” or be stymied in their efforts (Radnitz, 2011, p. 368).13

What alternative options exist for modern policy makers and state builders? In line with ideas of “second-best” governance approaches (Grindle, 2004), I propose three alternative strategies that recognise both the limitations facing local governments and the reality that the informal is not always negative: limiting the most negative impacts of convergent and divergent IRG, working with the grain of existing informal institutions, and strengthening citizen perceptions of the state’s legitimate authority.14 Underlying these suggestions is a focus on context-specificity. My research makes clear that what matters for potential reform and state intervention is, unsurprisingly, the underlying power and institutional dynamics. Understanding these contextual power dynamics, as well as the nature of IRG, which may vary across spectrums of predation and consent, voluntarism and coercion, is vital in assessing reform strategies.

13 The need to address underlying structures is well illustrated by an ICG (2012, p. i) report addressing corruption in Burundi: “The solution is not to ‘get the talk right’, to ‘get the institutions right’, and to ‘get the legal framework right’; it is to change the power relations that undermine good governance.”

14 These ideas build on Prichard and van den Boogaard (forthcoming).

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4.1 Focusing on incentives and structural power dynamics

States and development partners should aim to curb divergent IRG as much as politically possible, recognising that this form of revenue collection represents burdens that are often, though not universally, associated with predation and a lack of accountability. In extreme cases, IRG may represent extortion by state or non-state actors, with damaging implications for state legitimacy. Where the state has sufficient capacity or external backing, it should use both positive and negative incentives to minimise divergent extraction by non-state actors. For example, my research suggests that at least some of the taxes levied by chiefs are a result of insufficient salaries from the central government (Chapters 5 and 6). Paying or expanding these salaries may provide the institutional structure and backing to support more “formalised” redistributive mechanisms. Formalisation is possible where it recognises and accommodates vested interests; indeed, informal taxes are widely seen as a result of insufficient funding from government.15 Informal tax revenues were described by chiefdom

officials as funding salaries and “small allowances” to chiefdom administration,16 with one section chief explaining that it was “through his community” that he was able to live without a salary.17 As put by a CCAC, “Where do you get money, when you are not paid…?”18 Making chiefs less dependent on informal sources of revenues by giving them sufficient transfers to run their administration could reduce the amounts extracted from individuals (Ferraz & Finan, 2009; Gagliarducci & Nannicini, 2013).19

15 Widely expressed in interviews, for example, KOI130, KON209; FRE3.1 KOI260, KOI341, KAI93.

16 MAN103

17 FRE118

18 KOI126

19 For a review of the anti-corruption literature that focuses on how incentive structures foster behavioural changes see e.g. (Bardhan, 2006; Bertrand et al., 2007; Fisman & Svensson, 2007; Fjeldstad & Tungodden, 2003; Foltz & Opoku-Agyemang, 2015; Klitgaard, 1988; Olivier de Sardan, 1996; Olken, 2007; Olken & Barron, 2009; Rose-Ackerman, 1999, 2006; Weingast, 2009, 2014).

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Incentive-compatible reforms may be particularly effective at fostering behavioural changes. However, recent evidence suggests that these effects may be tempered by, among others, how wages compare to income reference points, the extent to which higher wages are absorbed by higher ranking officials, redistributive social pressures, and the size of informal revenue available (Foltz & Opoku-Agyemang, 2015; Jakiela & Ozier, 2012; Sanchez de la Sierra & Titeca, 2016). For example, Khan et al. (2016) find that increased wage payments made informal payments less frequent, but larger, as larger payments were needed to incentivise informal collusion.

While incentive-conducive reform may help mitigate certain forms of divergent IRG, government “sticks” are also often needed. These may be particularly effective in establishing minimum standards of transparency and accountability of IRG. For example, the Sierra Leonean state has introduced PFM rules and training for traditional authorities, in an attempt to increase the accountability and efficiency of chiefdom revenues. At the same time, limiting the negative impacts of IRG may be possible through some of the forms of state oversight or supervision discussed in Chapters 8 and 10. As described by the CA of the Koinadugu DC, “our role now as councils is to give oversight and a supervisory role over these facilities and structures set up in the form of committees. This is how we want to go and the way to go while we move along.”20 He moreover argued that while these payments may be considered informal, “the lines between formal and informal taxes are getting thinner” within communities through the creation of such mechanisms of oversight.21 In policy discussions, government officials suggested such models of oversight for IRG that supports public goods like water wells, public toilets, and community schools. As described by the DO of Kailahun district, monitoring informal tax was the only foreseeable way to improve their experience of it: “the only thing to be done is to monitor the process… we can’t remove informal tax or informal collection from the chiefs”.22 Showing support from the

20 Research dissemination seminar, Freetown, 21 February 2018.

21 Research dissemination seminar, Freetown, 21 February 2018.

22 KAI181.3

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national government, a MoFED representative stated, “If we coordinate the activities of these facilities [including water well management committees], with time some of the burden will be taken off from government [as the services are being maintained by community contributions].”23 Fundamentally, policymakers emphasised the importance of ensuring the “accountability and transparency” of these contributions, such that they contribute to ensuring effective use of funds, reduced duplication and broader improvements in budgeting and budget transparency.24 IRG should be “regularised so that money does not end in the pockets of few people”.25

Of course, limiting divergent IRG is complicated by the reality that this revenue is embedded within institutions that represent important sources of income and patronage for state agents.26 Indeed, early evidence from Sierra Leone suggests that the state is unlikely to enforce the PFM act in practice (Chapter 5). Unsurprisingly, there is also resistance to reform (see also René Blum et al., 2019, p. 306), including evidence of state agents sabotaging reform efforts when they threaten their own access to informal revenues. For example, some local governments introduced a property tax software in order to limit face-to-face interaction between taxpayers and tax collectors.27 As described by an individual working on the reform initiative, the “system is very transparent, which is a political problem” as it is “not easy to

23 Research dissemination seminar, Freetown, 21 February 2018.

24 Research dissemination seminar, Freetown, 21 February 2018.

25 KOI243

26 Indeed, informal extractions often filter through the bureaucratic system to higher ranking officials (Baaz & Olsson, 2011; Nkuku, 2017; Nkuku & Titeca, 2018; Sanchez de la Sierra & Titeca, 2016). As outlined by Weber (1949b), “Every type of social order without exception, must, if one wishes to evaluate it, be examined with reference to the opportunities which it affords to certain types of persons to rise to positions of superiority through the operation of the various objective and subjective selective factors.”

27 This is a basic anti-corruption and professionalisation reform, designed to eliminate opportunities for corruption (see e.g. Mick Moore, 2008).

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do devious work [...] working in the system”.28 This prompted the sabotage of the software and the associated system: “instead of working with the system, people work outside the system”, as the relevant officials “don’t want to be transparent 100%”.29

Finally, the negative impacts of convergent IRG may be mitigated by simply focusing on the elimination of service fees. This is particularly true with respect to equity outcomes.30 As discussed in Chapter 7, low-income countries often face pressure from donors to remove formal fees for essential services like education and health care. However, without new fiscal or donor receipts to cover the costs of service delivery, informal fees creep into service delivery and the state becomes reliant on IRG for part of its governing legitimacy. Undertaking structural changes to domestic revenue mobilisation has been important as evidence suggests that when donors call for “universal” free public services, they do not commit to funding the full costs of those services—implying a need for increased government taxation.31 For development partners or states, filling the fiscal gap may go a long way in reducing the need for IRG, without reneging on normative commitments to fee- free service delivery.

4.2 Working with the grain of informal institutions

Rather than trying to displace or supervise IRG, the state may consider “working with the grain” of existing informal institutions (Booth, 2011a; Kelsall, 2011). Indeed, evidence suggests that “A policy that seeks to reform or recast informal institutions is more likely to succeed than one that seeks to eradicate them” (Radnitz, 2011, p. 368). This may be the most

28 BOM123

29 BOM123

30 For example, for the impact of the FHCI in Sierra Leone see (Witter et al., 2018).

31 For instance, Thomas (2015) describes how donors and development partners push for universal service provision and the expansion of the basket of goods provided by low-income countries to match that of liberal democracies, though without providing sufficient revenues—thus effectively setting governments up to fail in their formalisation efforts.

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realistic option in the short-run for states, despite the risks associated with hybridity (Chapters 9 and 10). As a starting point, this requires that the state acknowledge the magnitude of IRG and the significance of informal taxing institutions in order to determine if and how it can best work with them. Where policymakers accept the reality of IRG, they may be better able to respond to the underlying power dynamics. In practice, government representatives—and particularly “street-level bureaucrats”—commonly acknowledge and accept the reality of pervasive informality. For example, local government officials in Sierra Leone agreed that, as described by the Koinadugu DC Valuator, these informal payments are “illegal”, but “very necessary in our communities” to meet the needs of the people.32 Informal tax was described by governments officials as “normal”, “help[ing] communities to be self- reliant”, and improving the communities “because it takes development where government cannot reach—especially [with respect to] the erection of community schools and the paying of teachers”.33 While government officials wanted to eliminate IRG by displacing it and improving government services, they recognised that in the short and medium term, the government necessarily has to accommodate some forms of informal tax. As described by a government official in Koinadugu district, because informal taxes “cannot be avoided”, “government should create a structure and organise tax relations.”34

Development practitioners similarly recognise the important role of informal actors. As noted by Radnitz (2011, p. 368), “Theorists are still catching up with reality, as people adapt, learn, and defy the models of theorists and the hopes of well-intentioned practitioners.” For instance, in Myanmar, the World Bank negotiates with informal taxing armed authorities in order to gain access to civilians,35 while NGOs regularly identify and bargain with the “real” sources of power (e.g. O’Neill et al., 2011, p. 5). While international actors officially maintain

32 KOI242, supported by KOI241, KAI89.3

33 KOI242

34 KOI242, similarly expressed by KAI89.3

35 WAS233

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strict divisions between the formal and the informal; in practice they often work with informal power as required.

What gets measured is what matters. Better tracking and measurement of the ways that public goods are financed and the real tax burdens faced by individuals, households, and businesses could reap major benefits. For example, measuring education expenditure by source of funding (government versus households) would allow development partners to effectively draw attention to the equity implications of public goods financing (UNESCO, 2017b, p. 282). Better data collection, in context-specific and comparative cases, is an important baseline for innovative engagement with informal taxing actors. Regardless of the need for better data, my research highlights how hybrid strategies may be most effective. For instance, my research shows that hybrid outcomes will be most beneficial to the state where IRG does not detract from the state’s capacity to raise revenues, which is in turn most likely with convergent IRG and where citizens attribute some role—even an indirect one—in public goods provision to the state (Chapter 9). At the same time, hybrid outcomes may be the most impactful in areas where state institutions are weakest, as in fragile contexts or rural, hard-to-reach territories. In these regions, hybridity may be a useful way for the state to bridge capacity gaps, to build channels of engagement with citizens, and to address “last- mile” challenges of service delivery (Chandy et al., 2015; J. Wong, 2015).

4.3 Strengthening government’s legitimate authority

Beyond limiting the negative effects of IRG and working with its more benign forms, the state should also prioritise stronger connections with taxpayers to underpin greater popular support for state taxation over the medium term. For their part, Sierra Leonean policymakers emphasised that a long-term strategy for addressing IRG must focus on the underlying reasons for the prevalence of informality, including poor government service delivery and a lack of trust in government.36 As at least some forms of IRG are substitutes to

36 Research dissemination seminar, Freetown, 21 February 2018.

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formal taxes, this could indirectly displace IRG, while strengthening state institutional capacity in the long-run.

One way of supporting indirect displacement may be to strengthen the linkages between formal taxation and expenditures. Citizens and government officials in Sierra Leone often repeated the idea that citizens are willing to pay tax so as long as their tax monies are clearly linked to the provision of services.37 As emphasised by a MoFED representative, “People are not seeing what the [local] council is doing with their monies they pay as taxes, that’s the reason they’re apprehensive to pay [formal] taxes”.38 This linkage may be particularly effective in areas where IRG is an undesirable substitute. For example, individuals in eastern Freetown currently pay private and informal water pump operators for access to water, though they would prefer to pay the government for access to a communal water tank. As described by one community member, “People are willing to pay—it’s just a matter of convenience, access [that we lack].”39 If the state was able to effectively identify community needs, it could improve efficiency and accountability for individuals, without providing fee- free service. While economic arguments against hypothecated revenues are clear, there may still be a valid political argument for their use to improve taxpayer perceptions of formal taxes and tax compliance.

At the same time, the challenges of fiscal decentralisation and local tax collection (Chapter 3) mean that, to at least some extent, taxpayers’ expectations should be moderated. In 2015, for example, low-income and low-middle income countries collected on average USD 389 per capita per—barely more than USD 1 per capita per day and clearly overshadowed by the USD 16,200 per capita collected in higher income countries in the same year (Coplin & Nwafor, 2019). As bluntly put by a MoFED representative, “We need to tell citizens, ‘Even if you pay,

37 Research dissemination seminar, Freetown, 21 February 2018.

38 Research dissemination seminar, Freetown, 21 February 2018.

39 FREFG1

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don’t expect anything’”,40 while another government official state that “[receiving] services shouldn’t be an absolute condition for paying tax.”41 Accordingly, we may consider setting realistic expectations of modern low-income governments, given both their limited resources and the reality that expectations of what they should provide have massively expanded since the third wave of decolonisation and the spread of global liberalism (e.g. M. Centeno et al., 2017, p. 13; M. A. Thomas, 2015, p. 42). Indeed, with tax revenues comprising up to 8 percent of national income, developed countries in the 19th century were only able to fund basic functions—including police, courts, army, foreign affairs, and general administration—but not core services like education (Piketty, 2014). High-income countries only took on these broader responsibilities after tax collection began improving early in the twentieth century (Piketty, 2014). Recognising the fiscal limitations of low-income states cannot simply mean accepting less for citizens of these states; rather, it may be a necessary starting point for more transparent, accountable, and effective engagement with citizens. The state can be as predatory, unaccountable, and inequitable as informal institutions. Introducing formal taxes is only a net good if it increases access to public goods and greater channels of accountability.

Finally, in this context of low state capacity and weak fiscal decentralisation (Bahl & Bird, 2008; Bird, 2011; Devarajan et al., 2009; Jibao & Prichard, 2013), the state may look to IRG to help stimulate state legitimacy. Citizens may credit the state for playing an indirect role in service provision in conjunction with IRG (Chapters 9, 10). In this way, IRG may stimulate state legitimacy, by supporting state performance and allowing it to break free of negative reinforcing cycles between legitimacy and capacity. Indeed, research suggests that in low- capacity contexts there may be a threshold effect for state legitimacy—that is, “a foundational level of services may first need to be established before subsequent

40 FRE1

41 KOI127

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improvements are likely to affect citizens’ belief in the rightfulness of the state” (McLoughlin, 2015, p. 348; see also Stel et al., 2012).42

5 Future research directions

This research has significant implications for thinking about taxation and service delivery in weak institutional contexts. It deepens our understanding of the power relations and dynamics between the state and informal actors, while adding to the literature on how non- state, local, and informal processes can influence larger structures of governance, politics, development, and statebuilding. Fundamentally, it pushes beyond strict statist analyses, though with an understanding that the state remains critical to modern governance and political authority. Three research directions emerging from this dissertation are particularly promising.

First, the theoretical dynamics proposed in this thesis were built inductively using research from Sierra Leone. While I used secondary and comparative cases to shape these theoretical dynamics, the next step is to test the validity of the findings across diverse institutional contexts, including where state institutions are stronger, where traditional institutions are weaker, and/or where other non-state informal taxing actors (e.g. clans, rebel groups) are pervasive. At the same time, there is considerable potential to push beyond an explanation of the proximate factors shaping state strategies of engagement with IRG, moving towards more distant explanatory factors, including the origins of state capacity through sub-national and cross-country comparative analysis.

Second, having focused on the relationship between informal taxing institutions and the state, a promising area of future research may consider more deeply the relationship between informal taxing actors and taxpayers, including the variation in legitimating and accountability processes outside the statist framework. Under what conditions do informal tax institutions raise revenues more coercively or consensually, strengthen their fiscal social

42 For example, ongoing research hypotheses that an initial “show” of what may be received through taxation may be necessary to stimulate quasi-voluntary tax compliance (Bowers et al., 2019).

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contract with taxpayers, and respond to taxpayer demands for accountability, reciprocity, or transparency? To what extent can IRG stimulate links of accountability and responsiveness in the same way that a link is hypothesised between taxation and accountability?

Finally, extant research on IRG has tended to emphasise the importance of equity implications (Olken & Singhal, 2011; Paler et al., 2017; e.g. van den Boogaard et al., 2019). This dissertation has done the same (e.g. Chapter 10). Further research in this area may usefully deepen our understanding of the distributional effects of IRG, including regional inequities resulting from relying on contributions rather than government planning (see e.g. Cansunar, 2019; Reich, 2018). My research builds on a body of work showing that IRG is significant for the lives of millions of people around the world. Researchers and policymakers need to pay informal fiscal processes greater attention; this thesis is a first step in that direction.

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Appendices Appendix 2a: Typology of formal and informal revenue generation

Table 14: Typology of formal and informal revenue generation

Umbrella Payment type Required Revenues Enforced by Examples: Levied Examples: Levied by non- concept and defined enter the the state by state actor state actor by state law? formal legal government system? budget?

Formal Formal tax Yes Yes Yes Income tax, Tax whose collection is revenue property tax, poll delegated to a non-state generation tax actor (e.g. tax farming)

Formal user Yes Yes Yes Charges for public User fee whose collection is fee utilities, fees for delegated to a non-state public health actor care/education

IRG Informal tax No No No De facto Taxes to general budgets of compulsory non-state actors (i.e. requisition by chiefdoms, clans, rebel state actor for groups); Self-help activities community (e.g. road maintenance, development town-cleaning); De facto projects compulsory contributions for community development projects organized by non- state actors (i.e. church, community group, chief, local leader, non-state armed groups, NGOs)

Informal user No No No Supplementary Payment for service to non- fee fees for “free” state state actor (e.g. community services (e.g. fees tax for volunteer teachers to “fee-free” public required to access school, schools); Extra monthly user fee for water payment to state well maintenance); Extra service provider payment to non-state (e.g. doctor, nurse, service provider that is de teacher) that is de facto required to access facto required to public good (e.g. tip to water access public good well caretaker)

Extra payment No No No Extra payment to Extra payment to non-state to service state service service provider that is not provider provider that is required to access public not required to good (e.g. tip, extortion) access public good (e.g. tip, extortion)

Contribution No No No Non-compulsory Non-compulsory (donation/gift, contributions contributions (donations, etc.) (donations, gifts, gifts, etc.) for community etc.) for development projects community organized by non-state development actors (i.e. church/mosque, projects organized community group, chief, by state actors local leader, non-state armed groups, NGOs)

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Formal tax Yes No Yes State agents Local government property revenues that collecting formal tax collection/revenues do not reach taxes that are not unofficially ceded to state coffers remitted to chiefdom administration government budgets Appendix 2b: Taxes versus user fees

Figure 60: Tax revenues versus user fees, OECD countries, 1995-20161

30 5

4 20

10 central government central 2 state and local governments local state and Revenues as percent of GDP,as percent Revenues of GDP,as percent Revenues

0 1 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

Tax revenues, User fees, Tax revenues, User fee revenues, OECD average OECD average OECD average OECD average

Data source: (OECD, n.d.b)

1 Data is included for all countries and years for which data is available.

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Figure 61: Sub-national tax revenues versus user fees and charges, select low income countries2

Subnational revenues, Sierra Leone Subnational revenues, Uganda .1 .00006

.08

.00004

.06

Percent of Percent GDP .00002 .04 of Percent GDP

.02 2005 2010 2015 0 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Year Taxes User fees and charges Business fees and charges Taxes User fees and charges and market dues Business licenses Property related charges

Data source: (GoRSL MoFED, n.d.; Government of the Republic of Uganda, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, n.d.)

2 Countries selected based on data availability. Percent of GDP calculated using IMF WEO GDP series (International Monetary Fund (IMF), n.d.). For Sierra Leone data: Taxes include revenues from property tax and local tax revenues that have been remitted to local governments from chiefdom administrations; user fees and charges include “user fees and charges” and “other user fees and charges”. For Uganda data: Taxes include revenues from local service tax and local hotel tax. User fees and charges includes “user charges” and “other charges.”

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Appendix 2c: Data, positionality, and research outcomes3

A researcher’s identity affects research access and outcomes, while addressing identity and power dynamics is a well-established ethical norm.4 Researching a sensitive or “hard-to- research” topic adds concerns that the researcher may miss or misinterpret data as a result of their position in relation to the research subject and topic. Accordingly, good research design and execution considers positional power dynamics related to one’s real and perceived identity. As described by Foucault (1998, p. 93), “[Power] is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.”

In collecting and interpreting data for this project, I was conscious about how my identity as a white, educated woman from high-income country may have shaped the information shared with me. My identity may be associated with perceptions and misperceptions of my credibility, access to financial resources, access to networks of power and decision making, socioeconomic background, and academic elitism. For one, gender identity is a critical component to understanding one’s place in a social world (Ammann, 2019; Arendell, 1997; Bucerius, 2013; Kelly & Jackson, 2019; McBrien, 2019; Mies, 1991; Woods, 2019).5 Assessing

3 I explore some of these ideas in greater depth in (van den Boogaard, 2019).

4 The importance of positional awareness in qualitative research is widely acknowledged, including in seminal pieces from the fields of anthropology, critical theory, post-colonial studies, and feminist studies (e.g. Acker et al., 1999; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Denzin, 1992; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; England, 1994; Flax, 1989; S. Harding, 1991; Hertz, 1995; Jones et al., 1997; Kim, 1994; P. Moss, 1993; Nast, 1994) and more recent and multidisciplinary discussions of the complexity of positionality in fieldwork (Gold, 2002; MacLean, 2013; Meadow, 2013; Ortbals & Rincker, 2009; Shehata, 2006; M Smyth, 2001; Marie Smyth & Robinson, 2001; Thapar-Björkert & Henry, 2004; E. J. Wood, 2006). However, the opportunities and ethical challenges associated with identity and research are not fully addressed by the methodological literature of political science. As Ortbals and Rincker (2009, p. 288) argue, “the major themes of identity and research have not penetrated political science to the same extent as in other disciplines”, despite the relevance of identity to much research in political science, and particularly to “comparativists who go abroad and become outsiders in a social context distinct from their own”.

5 Power dynamics between researcher and researched are particularly relevant with respect to gender identity (e.g. Cook & Fonow, 1990; Reinharz, 1993; Reinharz & Davidman, 1992), given the underlying power structures that maintain gender hierarchies and given that all societies remain, to varying degrees, “stratified by gender”

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the impact of gender on my research is particularly relevant given that many of my data collection sites—including government bureaucracies and chiefdom administrations—are traditionally male-dominated spaces. At the same time, the intersectionality between perceptions and experiences of gender, race, religion, age, and citizenship are necessary to consider during the research planning, data collection, and data interpretation phases (Crenshaw, 1991; De Andrade, 2000; A. M. Hancock, 2007).

Perceptions and misperceptions of my identity and position present a risk to the integrity of my research outcomes. For one, in the context of research in rural, low-income, and relatively marginalized communities in Sierra Leone, there remained a distinct risk that research participants saw me as a vehicle through which to promote their interests, given common perceptions and misperceptions that I had greater channels of influence than people within the communities being researched. Research participants may thus have had an incentive to share certain untruths, with the hope that their concerns would be given attention on a broader stage. Indeed, during my fieldwork, I often had interviewees beg me to relay certain messages to “Freetown”—meaning the government—or to donors and NGOs, based on the perception that I have a greater platform from which to deliver their messages.

Others report how research subjects have power to shape research findings to their own advantage. This is perhaps an understandable consequence of being notoriously “over- researched” yet relatively under-served subjects. For example, in understanding how grievances against informal taxes may have been overstated as a catalyst to the Sierra Leonean civil war, Fanthorpe (2005, p. 40) draws attention to the reality that in the post-war period individuals fed researchers certain narratives in order to shape outcomes of post- conflict deliberations:

Donor-beneficiary engagement has generated its own forms of discourse and politics … post-war aid intervention has created a moral economy of needs assessment and benefit prioritization that rural people are desperate to influence to their advantage. This engagement encourages the use of grievance

(Arendell, 1997, p. 343). Gender identity may be both a limiting factor and an opportunity for female researchers (see e.g. van den Boogaard, 2019). For example, gender identity may impact research access within social settings wherein conventional gender hierarchies are pronounced or gender roles and interaction between genders is heavily regulated by social norms, to the advantage or disadvantage of the researcher (Arendell, 1997; Gatrell, 2006; Ortbals & Rincker, 2009; Pierce, 1995; M. Thompson, 2009).

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as a rhetorical device for calling attention to needs and claiming just desserts, especially where it connects to issues (e.g. “governance” and “conflict resolution”) of evident concern to NGOs and other foreign agencies. Taking such discourse out of context may therefore create a misleading impression of grassroots political currents and demand for governance reform. This is not to imply that local grievances are false, but rather to conclude that effective gauging of rural politics and sociality requires analysis of the broad spectrum of rural testimony, not just complaints against chiefs and elders.

Throughout my own fieldwork, I found similar patterns of individuals keenly attuned to the narratives, norms, and fears of donors and international actors. For example, chiefs that were quick to describe subjects working on their personal farms as “not being forced labour”, chiefs that described their tax enforcement strategies as being in line with “this human rights business”, and taxpayers that emphasized “a likelihood of a return to violence” if their needs were not met.6

To address these potential risks, I took several steps prior to, during, and after data collection in an attempt to be reflective of how my research outcomes may have been shaped by my identity and position.7 Most fundamentally, this involved striving for a more reflexive and self-critical approach to fieldwork (see e.g. Ortbals & Rincker, 2009; Sayer & Storper, 1997). For instance, I sought to be honest and critical of my own “social, historical, and cultural baggage” when conducting in-depth interviews and consciously self-aware of how my “personal understandings, beliefs, prejudice, and world view” could influence the responses of interviewees (Sankar & Gubrium, 1994, p. xiv). Overall, this required a reflective, intersectional evaluation of positionality.

Despite efforts at critical self-awareness and reflection on my position and the power dynamics of my research relationships, my own understanding of my identity and how I am perceived is necessarily limited, with my efforts unable to “fully express the complexities underpinning a research relationship” (Gold, 2002, p. 223, see also 2002; Arendell, 1997; Thapar-Björkert & Henry, 2004). I was thus also conscious of the position, incentives, and

6 Likewise, during his fieldwork soon after the civil conflict, Fanthorpe (Fanthorpe, 2005, p. 38) “was struck by the frequency with which talk of the possibility of renewed violence was used to draw my attention, as a foreigner, to current social problems”.

7 This is in line with In line with Arendell’s (1997, p. 365) suggestion that “subjecting our research to analytical scrutiny can move us towards greater understanding of the import of gender” and identity more broadly.

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political, professional, and personal identities of my research subjects (see e.g. Dowling, 2000; McDowell, 1992; Sundberg, 2003; Vanderbeck, 2005)—often with the assistance of my Sierra Leonean research assistants as cultural interlocutors. I triangulated my data by questioning different people about the same events, and, through critical discourse analysis, I evaluated the manner in which individuals communicated information to me. Indeed, the manner of expression of certain sentiments—or even the desire to manipulate the story—is itself a source of data (e.g. Berckmoes, 2013; Fujii, 2010). Further, by relying on multiple sources of data, I believe I was able to judge the general reliability and validity of narratives. Nevertheless, as an outsider, these efforts will always be imperfect.

Appendix 2d: Positionality and ethical considerations My identity and position have the potential to affect not just research access and outcomes but also the physical safety and psychological wellbeing of myself and my research subjects and participants. In particular, my identity as a foreign researcher and the relatively sensitive nature of the topic of my investigation present ethical risks that I took seriously in my data collection.8 First, given the potentially sensitive nature of topics within my study,9 I gave utmost concern to the security and confidentiality of research subjects and the data that they shared with me. This involved careful processes of collecting and storing data, including through the careful selection and training of enumerators and research assistants, the encryption and delinking of identifiable information of stored data, and the redaction of identifiable names on written material.10

At the same time, I was conscious of the ethical concerns around gaining informed consent when the research subject does not or cannot fully understand the study’s full impact (Bhutta, 2004; J. F. Cummings et al., 2006; Denny & Grady, 2007; Fitzgerald et al., 2002; Flory

8 For a good overview of responsibilities and dilemmas in conducting field research see e.g. (Fujii, 2012; Thomson, 2013).

9 Potentially sensitive topics include informal forms of revenue extraction, tax compliance, corruption, deviation from formal processes by state officials, and political tensions.

10 All research assistants, enumerators, and transcribers signed oaths of confidentiality prior to starting the work.

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& Emanuel, 2004; Gold, 2002; Hochhauser, 2005; Kelman, 1972; Krosin et al., 2006; MacLean, 2013; Molyneux et al., 2004; National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1979; National Research Council, 2003; Oduro et al., 2008; Thomson, 2013; E. J. Wood, 2006). For instance, I guarded the anonymity of certain research participants in the writing process, even where those individuals explicitly consented to having their name and professional position associated with their statements.11

Second, in conducting research in low income contexts, there are often misperceptions that the presence of a foreign researcher will lead to new development projects or other resources being shared with the community (Clark-Kazak, 2013). This presents a risk that research participants may exaggerate their socioeconomic poverty with the idea that the “needier” they seem, the more help they will get. I was aware of such possible risks to the data and tried to limit these effects through building trust with research subjects and communities and triangulating data through multiple sources. In addition to the potential risk to data validity, however, there is an ethical risk involved in unduly raising the expectations of research subjects. This is particularly true in many communities in Sierra Leone, where people often describe feeling “over-researched”, without seeing the benefit of that research. This is partly related to the slow cycles of the uptake of academic research and any subsequent policy reforms. Nevertheless, this reality requires clear disclosure of research purposes, as well as potential risks and the reality of limited benefits in the short term, to all research participants. Accordingly, I took seriously the process of informed consent both as a way of communicating risks as well as managing expectations.

Third, I took seriously the power dynamics of researchers and research participants and considered the responsibilities of researchers to share data collected with research

11 In most cases, I maintain anonymity of research participants out of concern for the risk it may have on research subjects, which—even when relatively low—outweighs the benefits of identifying particular individuals. Where I have quoted individuals by name, they have given their express consent and I have considered whether and how the citation may pose a risk to them professionally or personally.

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participants and to mitigate the risk of the research process being exploitative. As noted by Ahmad (2017, p. 218),

Scholars are usually the primary professional and monetary beneficiaries of their own research, as their work advances their academic careers. Even highly policy-relevant work may take many years to yield results, if any, for the host communities. For those of us who engage in field research, it is therefore a serious ethical responsibility to be mindful of what we take and what we invest back into the societies we study.

My efforts to correct this imbalance and invest back in the communities of study are an ongoing process.12 Nevertheless, I have begun the process by sharing preliminary data and results with local partners, policymakers, and research participants through a research dissemination workshop and meetings with research participants.

Appendix 2e: National case selection i. State capacity I expect IRG to be more prevalent where state institutional capacity is weak as a result of larger gaps left by the state and the relative importance of informal institutions to everyday processes.13 In measuring state institutional capacity, I follow Fukuyama (2013) in assessing the effectiveness of how governments function.14 This refers to the state’s “ability to make

12 For a discussion of the various ways that reciprocity may be achieved in the research relationship, including through sharing data and results, see e.g. (Chacko, 2004; Clark-Kazak, 2013; E. J. Wood, 2006).

13 In the words of Mahoney and Thelen (2009), weak institutional contexts may have an abundance of “soft spots” between rules and their enforcement.

14 An alternative approach to measuring state capacity is assessing what the state produces—that is, outputs and outcomes like health, education, and regulatory management (see e.g. Boardman, 2014; Rotberg, 2014). However, there are several limitations to such a measure. First, outputs are not the result of state capacity alone given that “the public sector interacts with the environment around it and the society it is dealing with to produce results” (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 353; see also Migdal, 1988). This evidently makes it difficult to isolate the effect of the state’s role. As Atkinson (2005, p. 42) notes it is difficulty to assign causality to any output, as the quality of an output is a measure of “the attributable incremental contribution of the service to the outcome”. Second, the quality of public sector outputs are “notoriously hard to measure” (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 356). Finally, measuring state outputs comes with normative judgments about what a state should deliver and there is no easy way to remove such judgments from a measurement exercise (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 356; Holt & Manning, 2014, p. 718).

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and enforce rules, and to deliver services” (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 350).15Across all measures of state functional capacity, Sierra Leone ranks consistently low. Recognising that state capacity can vary enormously across sub-national regions (e.g. Bersch et al., 2017)—and, equally, that the margins are essential to understanding the centre (Das & Poole, 2004)—I focus in particular on sub-national regions in Sierra Leone that are particularly weak in measures of state institutional capacity.16 My three case districts are all in the periphery of the country. For example, Kailahun is referred to locally by some as “the last corner of the world” (Christensen, 2012), while all three districts represent varying degrees of state weakness and absence. Historically, areas outside of Western area—encompassing Freetown (Western Area Urban (WAU) district) and Western Area Rural (WAR) district and representing much of the territory of the former colony—were marginalized by colonial power structures (Map 1). This marginalization from the centre was sustained post- independence, with the state remaining relatively weak outside of Freetown and the surrounding district. State institutional capacity thus remains weaker in the periphery— counted here as the provinces outside of Western area—with Koinadugu, Kailahun, and Kono representing exemplars of this weak state institutional capacity.

Map 1: Contemporary Sierra Leone: Centre (WAU and WAR) versus periphery

15 This is in line with what Mann (1984, pp. 188–189) refers to as infrastructural power—“the capacity of the state to actually penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions throughout the realm”– as opposed to despotic power—“the range of actions which the elite is empowered to undertake without routine, institutionalised negotiation with civil society groups”.

16 Indeed, Fukuyama (2013, pp. 354 and 364) advocates for disaggregated data in order to measure differences in capacity across the functions, levels of government, and regions.

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Source: (National Electoral Commission, Republic of Sierra Leone, 2016)

The most common measure of state capacity is the government’s capacity to extract taxes (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 353; Lieberman, 2002; cf. Persson, 2008, pp. 30–33). As argued by Wang and Hu (Wang & Angang, 2001, p. 27), “the state’s capacity to mobilize and extract financial resources is the core of state capacity and the foundation for the state’s ability to realize its other capacities”. There are a few key limitations of this measure. First, the rate of tax extraction is determined not only by capacity, but also policy choices around taxation types and rates. A state may tax below its capacity for a variety of political and policy reasons (Fukuyama, 2011, pp. 303–305, 2013, p. 353). Second, though tax determines the “state’s ability to realize its other capacities”, a given level of tax does not necessarily mean that revenues will be used efficiently or effectively (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 353). Greater tax revenues is not an inherent good; raising more revenue is “desirable only if governments translate additional public revenue into valuable goods and services that improve public welfare” (Mick Moore et al., 2018, p. 179). As described by Centeno et al. (2017, p. 26), state performance depends on how state capacity is deployed by political leaders and how it interacts with “a set of inheritances, policy priorities, and political action.” Third, it does not

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account for the role of natural resource rents. For many countries, these make up the vast majority of government revenues (Fukuyama, 2013, pp. 353–354; Ottervik, 2013, p. 10).

Despite these limitations, as one of the core functions of all states, tax extraction capacity remains a useful proxy for and empirical measure of state capacity more broadly. Additionally, recent improvements in tax data allow for a measure of tax collection capacity that controls for resource revenues and taxes from resource rents (Prichard, 2016).17 Taking tax revenues excluding resource revenues as a percentage of GDP as a proxy for state institutional capacity, Figure 62 demonstrates that Sierra Leone has weak state capacity relative to other low-income countries. Unsurprisingly, extractive capacity is particularly weak outside of the capital (Figure 63).

Figure 62: Tax to GDP ratios, 1980 to 201518

as a percent of GDP as a percent 5 Non-resource tax revenues Non-resource (excluding social contributions) social (excluding 0 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Low income countries High income countries (average) (average) Sierra Leone

Data source: (ICTD/UNU-WIDER, 2018)

17 The dataset used—the ICTD/ UNU-WIDER Government Revenue Dataset—covers 188 countries and a total of 3342 country-year observations during the period 1990–2010—almost 70 percent more observations for developing countries than the next leading dataset for the same period, with coverage of African countries being significantly improved (Prichard et al., 2018).

18 Income group following World Bank classification (World Bank, 2017). Tax data excluding resource tax revenues is the GRD variable “non-resource taxes excluding social contributions.” Observations only for which data is available. This includes, on average for the time series, 45 observations for high-income countries and 24 observations for low-income countries.

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Figure 63: Sub-national tax revenues as a proportion of total sub-national revenues, centre versus periphery, 2005 to 2017

.4 of total revenues .2 Tax as a proportion revenues

0 2005 2010 2015 2020

Average: Northern, Eastern, Average: Freetown and and Southern provinces Western Area Rural District

Data source: (GoRSL MoFED, n.d.)

An alternative measure of tax extraction capacity is the nature of taxation, given that it is more difficult to collect direct taxes (e.g. on income or wealth) than indirect taxes (e.g. on sales and international trade) (Fukuyama, 2013, p. 353). Considering direct tax revenues excluding resource revenues as a share of GDP as a secondary proxy for state institutional capacity, shows that Sierra Leone has on average weaker state capacity relative to other low- income countries (Figure 64). This measure of state capacity is also considerably lower outside of the state centre. At the sub-national level, property tax is the only tax that represents a tax on wealth.19 Considering state capacity through the proxy of the nature of taxation, we see that state capacity is again unsurprisingly weaker outside of Western area (Figure 65).

19 The only other tax is the local tax, which is a flat poll tax on all adults.

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Figure 64: Direct tax to GDP ratios, 1980 to 201520

of total tax revenue .2 and resource revenues) resource and (Excluding social contributions social (Excluding Direct tax revenue as a proportion tax Direct revenue

.1 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Low income countries High income countries (average) (average) Sierra Leone

Data source: (ICTD/UNU-WIDER, 2018)

Figure 65: Sub-national property tax revenues as a proportion of total sub-national revenues, centre versus periphery, 2005 to 2017

.2 of total sub-national revenues of total sub-national Property tax revenues as a proportion tax Property revenues 0 2005 2010 2015 2020

Average: Northern, Eastern, Average: Freetown and and Southern provinces Western Area Rural District

Data source: (GoRSL MoFED, n.d.)

In addition to tax extractive capacity, alternative measures of state capacity may include the effectiveness of other core state functions, such as statistical capacity (M. M. Lee & Zhang,

20 Direct tax is the GRD variable “Direct taxes excluding social contributions and resource revenues”, and includes taxes on income, profits, and capital gains; taxes on payroll and workforce; and property taxes. On average for the time series, there are 44 observations for high-income countries and 20 observations for low- income countries.

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2016).21 To measure statistical capacity, I use the Statistical Capacity Indicator database and the statistical capacity score, which assesses three dimensions of a country’s national statistical system: methodology, source data, and periodicity and timeliness (World Bank, n.d.a). With this alternative proxy for state capacity, Sierra Leone continues to rank on average below that of other low-income countries (Figure 66). While similar data does not exist at the sub-national level, there is ample evidence that local government statistical capacity is weaker in the provinces relative to the centre. Indeed, outside of Western area, local governments rely entirely on chiefs for the roster of eligible taxpayers, while property tax has not been viable in areas where chiefs have not cooperated with the local government for cadastral mapping. By contrast, in Freetown the local government does not rely on chiefs in the same way, while having greater success in mapping properties for tax and other purposes.

Figure 66: Statistical capacity scores, 2004 to 201822

100

Statistical capacity score capacity Statistical 20

0 2005 2010 2015 2020

Low income countries High income countries (average) (average) Sierra Leone

Data source: (World Bank, n.d.a)

21 This captures the state’s ability to make citizens “legible” (Scott, 1998a, 2009). As envisioned by Lee and Zhang (2016, p. 118) legibility implies that “the state possesses information about local practices” and “that this information is rendered in standardized forms […] that are understandable to state administrators”.

22 Data includes, on average for the time series, 8 observations for low-income countries and 30 for high- income countries.

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A final indicator of state capacity is the professionalization of the bureaucracy, which may be measured by the level of education of government officials. As described by Fukuyama (2013, p. 354), “in modern organizations we trust highly educated professionals with a much higher degree of discretion because we assume or hope that they will be guided by internal norms in cases where their behavior cannot be monitored from the outside”. Using the Worldwide Bureaucracy Indicators database, I employ a measure of the proportion of public servants that have a tertiary education. Though data is limited for Sierra Leone, for the year that statistics are available, the country ranks much lower in this measure of state capacity relative to other low-income countries (Figure 67). This is supported by reports from the Public Sector Reform Unit (PSRU). The head of the PSRU noted that in 2008 “89 percent of our workforce is either barely skilled, semi-skilled or totally unskilled” (World Bank, 2010, p. 85). Similar data is not available for local government employees outside of the centre, though it is commonly accepted that local government positions are much less favourably relative to central government positions and that positions in the provinces are the least desirable of all. Given this, it may be assumed that individuals with lower levels of education are typically those that fill local government positions in the periphery.

Figure 67: Proportion of public employees with a tertiary education, 2000 to 2015

.1 2000 2005 2010 2015

Individuals with tertiary education with Individuals as a share of public paid employees paid of public as a share Low income countries High income countries (average) (average) Sierra Leone

Data source: (World Bank, n.d.c)

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ii. State service delivery

I expect IRG to be most prevalent where state service delivery is weak, based on the idea that it may be filling a gap left by the state. Sierra Leone is an exemplar case of poor state service delivery across multiple measures: access to electricity, provision of health care services, provision of education, and access to clean drinking water. State service provision remains weaker in the provinces relative to Western area. While the colonial state marginalized the provinces relative to Western area, they neglected the Islamic northern regions of the country in particular. As a result of this sustained neglect of institution building and service provision, along with its relatively large surface area and challenging terrain, Koinadugu represents an extreme example of weak state service provision today.23 Access to all four service indicators are poorest in the periphery (outside of Western area) and are especially poor in Koinadugu district, as well as in Kono district with respect to education services.

First, I use access to electricity as an indicator of state presence and basic capacity to provide basic services.24 With this measure, Sierra Leone ranks considerably lower than other low- income countries: only 23 percent of the population had access to electricity in 2017 (World Bank, n.d.b) with access to electricity much worse in rural areas (Figure 68). Access in rural areas can be taken as a reasonable proxy for the provinces outside of Western area: indeed, while 74 percent of the population in the provinces is rural, only 3 percent is rural in Western area (GoRSL SSL, 2016, p. 33). With 82 percent of its population in rural areas, Koinadugu district represents an exemplar of limited state service provision in this regard, with rural populations only larger in two southern districts (Moyamba and Pujehun) (GoRSL SSL, 2016, p. 33).

23 As one anecdote of this sustained neglect, the capital of Koinadugu, Kabala, is nicknamed by some as “Kabalast” as a result of perceptions that it is the last district to receive state services and development.

24 Electricity is a public good that requires a major role of state coordination, while also being an indicator of the quality of other state services (e.g. health care, education).

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Figure 68: Access to electricity, cross-country comparison (left) and comparison between rural and urban areas in Sierra Leone (right)

100 100

80 80

60 60

40 40 Access Access to electricity, Percent of Percent population Access Access to electricity,

20 of population percent 20 0 1990 2000 2010 2020 0 2005 2010 2015 2020 Low income countries High income countries (average) (average) Sierra Leone Rural population Urban population

Data source: (World Bank, n.d.b)

Second, I take provision of health care as a further indicator of the quality of state service provision. Across different measures of the state’s role in health provision—for instance, in its capacity to train and pay physicians and to provide basic health care facilities—Sierra Leone ranks consistently lower than other low-income countries (Figure 69). State health care provision is much lower outside of Western area and is particularly poor in Northern province. Outside of Western area, individuals have much less access to government hospitals, while also having further to go to access a clinic where available (Figure 70).25 Again, Koinadugu district is an exemplar of poor state service provision, with the lowest level of government hospital usage, indicating limited availability of access, and the second largest mean distance necessary to travel to access a clinic (Figure 71).

25 Of eight public hospitals providing tertiary health care, 5 are in Western Area; of the 15 public hospitals providing secondary health care, 6 are in Western area (IOM, 2014, p. 11).

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Figure 69: Number of physicians (1960 to 2016) and number of hospital beds (1960 to 2015) per mille

4 10

2 5 per 1,000 people 1,000 per per 1,000 people) 1,000 per

Number of physicians Number 1 Number of hospital beds of hospital Number

0 0 1960 1980 2000 2020 1960 1980 2000 2020

Average, low income Average, high income Average, low income Average, high income countries countries countries countries Sierra Leone Sierra Leone

Data source: (World Bank, n.d.b)

Figure 70: Type of facility visited when household is in need (left) and mean distance to clinic by province (right)26

Outside of Western area

Western area

Mean distance to clinic (miles) to clinic distance Mean 1 0 .2 .4 .6 .8

Community health clinic Mission clinic Government hospital Pharmacy 0 Traditional healer Northern Southern Eastern Western

Data source: (GoRSL, 2011a)

26 Community health clinic includes community health center, community health post, and maternal and child health care post. Community health centres carry out health prevention measures, cures, and health promotion activities; community health posts have a similar function but have fewer facilities. Both offer primary health care only.

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Figure 71: Access to government hospitals (left) and clinics (right), by district

Kailahun Kailahun Kenema Kenema Kono Kono Bombali Bombali Kambia Kambia Koinadugu Koinadugu Port Loko Port Loko Tonkolili Tonkolili Bo Bo Bonthe Bonthe Moyamba Moyamba Pujehun Pujehun WARD WARD Freetown Freetown 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 Percent of population that visit a government 0 2 4 6 hospital when the household is in need Mean distance to clinic (miles)

Data source: (GoRSL, 2011a)

Third, I take the provision of education as a further indicator of the quality of state service provision. Looking at the role of the state in providing education, Sierra Leone again ranks below other low-income countries in terms of the proportion of teachers in primary education that are adequately trained (Figure 72). As with other indicators of the quality of state service provision, measures of the quality of education provision are worse outside of Western area, with Kono district representing an exemplar case (Figure 73). Considering the proportion of “public” schools that receive government funding, both Kono and Koinadugu districts stand out as exemplars of relative marginalization from government funding and support in terms of education (Figure 74).

Figure 72: Trained teachers as a proportion of total teachers, primary education

100

percent of total teachers percent 20 Trained education, primary in teachers 0 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020

Average, low income Average, high income countries countries Sierra Leone

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Data source: (World Bank, n.d.b)

Figure 73: Mean distance to school, by province and district

Pujehun Bonthe Kambia Kono Moyamba Koinadugu Outside of Western area Port Loko Bombalia Western Area Rural Freetown Kailahun Tonkolili Western area Bo Kenema

0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 0 .5 1 1.5 2 Mean distance to school (miles) Mean distance to school (miles)

Data source: (GoRSL, 2011a)

Figure 74: Proportion of schools receiving government assistance, by district

0 Bo Kono Bonthe PujehunKambiaKenema Tonkolili KailahunBombali Port Loko Moyamba Koinadugu

Western Area Rural

Western Area Urban (Freetown)

Data source: (Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE), Republic of Sierra Leone, 2018)

Finally, I consider access to clean drinking water as an indicator of the quality of state service provision. Sierra Leone ranks lower relative to other low-income countries, while populations outside of the largely urban areas in Western area have even lower access (Figure 75). Access to piped water is particularly low outside of Western area (Figure 76), with Koinadugu district having one of the lowest rates of access to piped water and the

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second highest rate of surface water being used as primary source of drinking water (Figure 77).27

Figure 75: Access to basic drinking water services, 2000 to 2015

100 100

80 80

60 60

40 40

basic drinking water services water drinking basic 20 Percent of population using at least using of Percent population

basic drinking water services water drinking basic 0 0

Percent of population using at least using of Percent population 2000 2005 2010 2015 2000 2005 2010 2015

Average, low income countries Sierra Leone Rural population Urban population

Data source: (World Bank, n.d.b)

Figure 76: Access to clean drinking water, centre versus periphery

Outside of Western area

Western area

0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5

Piped, private Piped, public tap Well, mechanical or dug (protected or unprotected) Spring or rain water Surface water

Data source: (GoRSL, 2011a)

27 Surface water refers to rivers, dams, lakes, ponds, canals, and irrigation canals, and is the least safe source of drinking water.

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Figure 77: Access to clean drinking water by district: piped water (left) and surface water (right) as primary source of drinking water

.8 .6

.6 .4

.4 surface water surface .2

Proportion of population, Proportion .2 of population, Proportion as primary source of drinking water of drinking source as primary water of drinking source as primary public or private piped water source water piped or private public

0 0 Bo Bo Kono Kono Bonthe Kambia PujehunTonkolili Kenema KenemaBontheTonkolili PujehunKambia Moyamba Port KoinaduguLoko BombaliaKailahun Freetown Freetown Kailahun Bombalia Port KoinaduguLoko Moyamba

Western Area Rural Western Area Rural

Data source: (GoRSL, 2011a) iii. Experience of conflict

I expect that IRG will be more prevalent in conflict-affected areas where the conflict has significantly affected the legitimacy of the state. As described by Pailey (2017, p. 653), “[i]n addition to reconfiguring identities, practices and relations between people conflict expands the boundaries of public authority spatially, vertically and horizontally to encompass a range of actors ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the post-war state.” Sierra Leone is a prototypical example of this mediated public authority, having experienced a civil conflict from 1991 to 2002 that devastated state institutions and fomented distrust of the state (see e.g. Keen, 2005b).

The conflict reached the capital only briefly near the end of the conflict, with rebels entering Freetown and the Western peninsula for relatively short periods. Accordingly, the effects in the capital were relatively limited (René Blum et al., 2019, pp. 275–276). By contrast, the effects of the conflict on institutions and civilians were particularly pronounced in the Eastern province and, within Eastern province, in Kailahun and Kono districts especially (Figure 78). This has, in part, caused continuing distrust of the state in these regions, as illustrated during the Ebola epidemic from 2014 to 2016 (e.g. Richards, 2016, p. 3; Annie Wilkinson & Leach, 2015). Widespread rumours about the state role’s in the epidemic— which fuelled resistance to medical strategies in eastern province in particular—were “a product of the experiences of structural violence” in these regions (Wigmore, 2015), fostered

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through a “context of a regional history and global economy that have cultivated inequalities” (Annie Wilkinson & Leach, 2015, p. 137).28

Figure 78: Distribution of violent events, by province (left) and by districts in Eastern province (right)

Eastern Kailahun

Northern Kenema

Southern Kono

Western Tonkolili

0 .1 .2 .3 .4 0 .1 .2 .3 .4

Battles/ explosions/ Violence against Battles/ explosions/ Violence against remote violence civilians remote violence civilians

Data source: (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, n.d.) iv. Alternative taxing actors

Finally, I expect IRG to be more prevalent where taxing authorities outside of the state are prevalent or relatively strong. Sierra Leone represents a prototypical case of state institutions without “a clear distinction between the official and unofficial spheres”, with “informal patrimonial networks” playing a significant role “in organizing the formal realm” (Christensen, 2012; see also Jörgel & Utas, 2007). Non-state actors—including community groups, chiefdom authorities, religious groups, and secret societies—play critical roles in providing public goods and security and in organizing economic and political networks (see e.g. Christensen, 2012). As in other post-colonial states, the “dispersal of state authority into patchworks of partial, horizontal sovereignties” characterizes the dominant mode of governance (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2006, p. 41).

28 Countless rumours spread about the state’s role in the epidemic, including ideas that the state was injecting people with Ebola to increase international aid and that the government (then ruled by the All People’s Congress, whose base of support is in the Northern province) released Ebola in the Southern and Eastern provinces, the stronghold of the opposition party, in order to eliminate political opposition (see e.g. Umara Fofana, 2014; Moriba, 2014; Nossiter, 2014; Wigmore, 2015, 2016).

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Moreover, relative to other post-colonial contexts, Sierra Leone has unusually strong “traditional” institutions and authorities, as consecutive post-independence governments did not engage in reform of traditional authority like elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa—for instance, as was the case in Ghana (see e.g. Rathbone, 1999).29 In Sierra Leone traditional leaders play a significant role in the collection of formal government taxes, while also maintaining informal taxing authority over their subjects. As a result of the legacies of colonial indirect rule, which relied on traditional authorities to rule the periphery, chiefs remain much stronger in the provinces relative to Western area. In part due to the strong role of non-state taxing actors, Sierra Leone is an ideal case within which to build a theory that can subsequently be replicated, contrasted or extended in cases with different systems of non-state authority, including weaker or alternative systems of chieftaincies, clans, rebel groups, or community groups.

29 Traditional leaders are defined here as “rulers who have power by virtue of their association with the customary mode of governing a place-based community”(Baldwin, 2016, p. 21). This recognises the complexity of the term “traditional”; indeed, traditional leaders are part of pre-colonial lineages of power, while others were instituted and propped up by colonial authorities (see e.g. Mamdani, 1996; Ranger, 1983). For good reviews of the literature on traditional leaders see Baldwin and Raffler (2019) and Holzinger, Kern, and Kromrey (2016). Rather than the nature of the genesis of the institution, “[i]t is the association with shared beliefs about customs that defines traditional leaders” (Baldwin, 2016, p. 21; Ranger, 1983, 1993). Throughout this thesis I use the terms traditional leader and chief interchangeably, as chief is the common English term for traditional leaders in Sierra Leone. Traditional leaders, however, capture a wide range of leaders with “innumerable different names” (Baldwin, 2016, p. 22; see also Herbst, 2000, p. 173).

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Appendix 2f: Sub-national case selection

Table 15: Exemplar cases for theory-building

Selection (1) Weak state capacity (2) Weak state service provision (3) Conflict- (4) Strength criteria affectedness of non-state taxing authorities Measures Weak Insufficient Weak Low bureaucratic Weak Poor Poor Weak Extreme Strong role of tax extraction statistical professionalization access to state state access conflict- chiefs in capacity from direct capacity electricity provision provision to clean affectedness formal and taxes on of health of drinking informal income care education water taxation and wealth Sierra X X X X X X X X X X Leone Koinadugu X X X X X X X X district Kailahun X X X X X X district Kono X X X X X X X district

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Appendix 2g: Data collection processes i. Taxpayer surveys I administered two original taxpayer surveys in order to capture the nature and dynamics of systems of local public finance in Sierra Leone. The first survey was conducted with 844 taxpayers in three districts in eastern and northern Sierra Leone. It was administered by a team of 6 field researchers from a range of ethnic backgrounds over the course of eight months in 2017 and 2018. Capturing the full range of payments related to financing local public goods is a comparatively complex and time-intensive process, which involved two repeat interviews with survey respondents, with surveys often lasting multiple hours in total.1 The vast majority (97 percent) of these interviews were conducted in Krio, the national lingua franca, though some were conducted in English, Kono, Kuranko, Limba, Mandingo, Mende, Temne, and Yalunka.2 The survey was conducted in the nine case study chiefdoms across 78 primary sampling units.3

Some of the inevitable effects of the power dynamics between principal investigator and research assistants was mitigated by virtue of having worked closely with my research assistants since 2012. The trust built over several years, as well as extensive training on

1 The first interview was completed with 939 individuals. The second interview was completed with 844 of the same individuals, reflecting an attrition rate of 10 percent.

2 The survey instrument was written in English given that most of the local languages in Sierra Leone have no accepted written script and are not taught in schools (GoRSL SSL and MoHS, 2008). Translation was thus an important part of the enumerator training (Iarossi, 2006, pp. 20, 160), with exercises in back translation (A-B to B-A) to ensure “conceptual equivalence” of survey questions across languages (Hunt et al., 1964; Warwick & Linninger, 1975). In this way, we attempted to ensure that the survey questions “mean the same thing to all respondents” while also meaning “the same things to respondents as well as to the researcher” (Fowler, 1992, p. 218).

3 As far as possible, random sampling was conducted with probability of selection proportionate to size. The resulting sample is representative at the chiefdom and district levels. Households within each primary sampling unit were systematically randomly selected according to a structured walking pattern, with the economically active head of household selected within each household, with female heads of household representing 40 per cent of the total sample. In line with other major household surveys conducted in Sierra Leone, we defined a household as a person or group of persons related or unrelated who make common cooking arrangements (Afrobarometer, 2011; GoRSL SSL, 2007).

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research methods, limited the risk of enumerators shirking responsibilities, influencing the answers of survey respondents, or otherwise introducing bias into the data (see e.g. MacLean, 2013; Randall et al., 2013). I travelled to almost all of the enumeration areas with the surveyors, monitoring their progress, holding daily debriefings to address challenges and to share observations, and to maintain open channels of communication. This process of monitoring was essential for identifying any data that may have been biased for any number of reasons—including the undue influence of surveyors or external observers, such as family members—and to exclude such observations from the analysis.

The design of the survey builds on knowledge gained by designing and implementing largescale, representative household surveys of informal taxation in Sierra Leone in 2013 (van den Boogaard et al., 2019) and in the DRC in 2015 (Paler et al., 2017). These two surveys were the first of their kind in the field of informal taxation. Additionally, the survey relied on extensive pre-implementation qualitative data collection in order to improve survey design and ensure the comprehensiveness of informal tax payments captured and the comprehensibility of survey questions to taxpayers in different subnational regions. Further, the survey was piloted in early 2017 to improve the clarity of questions, format, and measurement scales (Biemer & Lyberg, 2003; Creswell, 2003, pp. 157–158; Fowler, 1995, pp. 116–124; Iarossi, 2006, p. 175). Such in-depth understanding of local contexts and piloting of instruments is invaluable before implementing a survey of this kind, particularly as local understandings of terms like ‘tax’, ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ can be highly variable, and the lines between them fuzzy.

Despite such efforts, the survey includes inevitable imperfections, which likely underestimate the full incidence of informal payments on account of respondent recall bias. Evidence from the research in the DRC shows that relying on survey respondents to recall all payments they made in the previous year underestimated the incidence and amount of informal taxes paid by as much as 50 percent compared to data collection methods that allowed for weekly reporting of payments (Paler et al., 2017). Despite these imperfections, the data is more systematic and extensive than earlier studies and offers important new insights into local fiscal realities in Sierra Leone.

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The second survey was administered by 13 enumerators with over 2200 taxpayers in eight cities—the two largest urban centres in each of the four provinces in Sierra Leone—in July 2017.4 This survey was significantly shorter, capturing only taxpayer contributions to formal taxes, self-help and community development activities (road-brushing, town-cleaning, road and bridge maintenance, community development projects, community security groups, Ebola task forces), and informal user fees (to community teachers, water well management caretakers). The same implementation protocols were implemented as above. ii. Qualitative data To complement this survey data, I conducted extensive qualitative data collection, including over 300 in-depth interviews with chiefdom administration representatives (most importantly: paramount, section, town, and village chiefs; chiefdom administrative clerks; chiefdom speakers; chiefdom court clerks); government representatives (most importantly from within the Decentralization Secretariat, the MoFED and the MLGRD); community leaders (including youth leaders, elders, women’s leaders, and religious leaders); organizers of informal revenue raising (including government and volunteer (community) teachers, principals, SMC/ parent-teacher association/ community teachers’ association chairmen, and water well management caretakers); and taxpayers. Interviewees were selected intentionally with the aim of ensuring representativeness of perspectives and experiences. In order to build trust with interviewees and refine my interview protocols in line with research findings, many of these were repeat interviews over the course of three years. Additionally, I conducted over 50 focus group discussions with community leaders, chiefdom authorities, and taxpayers.

The majority of these interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with a research assistant present, even where the interviews were conducted in English and/or

4 Makeni and Kabala in Northern province, Koidu and Kailahun in Eastern province, Moyamba and Bo in Southern province, and Freetown and Waterloo in Western Area.

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Krio—or, perhaps more accurately, watawata Krio, or watered-down Krio5—which I speak and understand at a basic working proficiency. This strategy recognises that even where language is not a barrier to comprehension, there is often sociocultural meaning imbued within modes of expression, particularly in Krio, which features the prevalent use of proverbs and idiomatic expressions that are rich in cultural meaning. My research assistants thus not only assisted in the data collection, but also helped to interpret data and the manner of communication and expression, serving as an invaluable cultural interlocutor. By paying particular attention to meta-data—including silences, omissions, and body language—I navigated—however imperfectly—power dynamics and truth evasion within interviews (Fujii, 2010).

Interviews enabled me to better understand the structures underpinning informal taxes and the relationships and interactions between state and non-state forms of revenue collection. Focus group discussions with taxpayers and community leaders enabled me to better understand the organization of and community participation in various forms of informal revenue raising and financing of local public goods, as well as taxpayer perceptions of the fairness and accountability of state and non-state taxation. They were particularly valuable in verifying the dynamics of informal taxation, including the standard rates of payment, the frequency and distribution of payments, modes of administration, exemptions, and exceptions, and enforcement mechanisms.

Moreover, the recording and transcription of interviews and focus group discussions allowed me to engage in critical discourse analysis, which was particularly relevant for understanding how differences in terminology about different informal payments can imbue them with different meanings and levels of legitimacy (Weeden, 2010). Such an approach is particularly useful in understanding models of “real” governance; interpreting “the language of the dark” (Hugo, 1862) or “disguised speech” (Haas, 1969) is necessary to understanding illegal and sensitive activities. Indeed, we can learn much from argot in these contexts,

5 This recognises the distinction between the “older conservative dialect of the village Krios” and dialects of Krio that are spoken more broadly across the country, influenced by “second language” speakers and increased exposure to English (I. F. Hancock, 2017, p. 192; see also Kamarah & Jones, 2011, p. xxiii).

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including what individuals, both taxpayers and state agents, wish to hide from authority (see e.g. Haas, 1969; Lefkoqitz, 1991) and what has become so normalized as to no longer be seen to require hiding.

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Appendix 2h: List of interviews Unique ID Date Organization/ Position, where application District Chiefdom BOM122 16-May-17 Central government CCAC, Chairman of all CCACs Bombali BOM123 16-May-17 Revenue Development Former employee Bombali Foundation BOM124.1 16-May-17 Makeni City Council (CC) CA Bombali BOM124.2 1-Nov-17 Makeni CC CA Bombali BOM125 16-May-17 Makeni CC Revenue Supervisor Bombali BOM234 1-Nov-17 Makeni CC Deputy CA Bombali BOM235 1-Nov-17 Traders' Union Secretary General Bombali BOM236 6-Nov-17 Motor Drivers' Union Secretary General Bombali BOM239 6-Nov-17 Bombali Shebora Treasury Clerk Bombali Chiefdom BOM240 7-Nov-17 Tailors' Union Chairman Bombali FRE1.a 1-Dec-16 Local Government Acting Director/ Deputy Director WAU Finance Department (LGFD), MoFED

FRE1.b 1-Dec-16 LGFD, MoFED Representative WAU

FRE10 15-Dec-16 World Bank Consultant WAU FRE111.1 7-Apr-17 Fambul Tok Executive Director WAU FRE111.2 13-Jun-17 Fambul Tok Executive Director Kailahun FRE111.3 20-Feb-19 Fambul Tok Executive Director N/A FRE113 11-Apr-17 Revenue for Senior Advisor N/A Development/ African Property Tax Initiative FRE115 5-May-17 National Movement for Executive Director WAU Justice and Democracy FRE116 5-May-17 Justice Sector Coordinator WAU Coordination Office FRE117 6-May-17 OSIWA Economic Governance Officer WAU FRE118 6-May-17 WAU Section chief WAU FRE119 6-May-17 Freetown Taxi Drivers' Member WAU Union FRE120 8-May-17 Open Tax Initiative Executive Director WAU FRE121.a 12-May-17 Open Society Initiative Country Manager WAU for West Africa (OSIWA) FRE121.b 12-May-17 OSIWA Program Coordinator WAU FRE169 3-Jun-17 Oxford Policy Representative WAU Management FRE170 7-Jun-17 Adam Smith Representative WAU International FRE2 6-Dec-16 World Bank Economist WAU FRE245.2 8-Feb-18 MoFED Advisor WAU FRE246 21-Nov-18 MEST Former Deputy Minister N/A

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FRE247 28-Jul-17 NRA Senior collector WAU FRE248 29-Jul-17 Freetown CC Information, Education, and WAU Communications Officer

FRE249 26-Jul-17 Hastings chiefdom Paramount Chief WAR FRE250 21-Jul-17 Waterloo Village headman WAR FRE251 5-Aug-17 Freetown CC Councillor WAU FRE252 2-Aug-17 Freetown CC Finance Office Assistant WAU FRE253 3-Aug-17 NRA Regional Officer WAU FRE254 27-Jul-17 Waterloo CC Councillor WAR FRE255 27-Jul-17 Ecobank Manager WAR FRE256.1 30-Nov-16 MoFED Advisor WAU FRE256.3 20-Feb-19 NRA CG WAU FRE257 20-Feb-19 NEC Representative WAU FRE269 5-Mar-19 N/A Researcher WAU FRE270 7-Mar-19 European diplomatic Representative WAU corps FRE3.1 7-Dec-16 LGFD, MoFED Economist WAU

FRE3.2 13-Dec-16 LGFD, MoFED Representative WAU FRE3.3 4-May-17 LGFD, MoFED Representative WAU FRE3.4 7-Mar-19 LGFD, MoFED Representative WAU FRE4.1 8-Dec-16 Action Aid Representative WAU FRE4.2 5-May-17 Action Aid Representative WAU FRE6 14-Dec-16 Budget Advocacy Country coordinator WAU Network FRE7.1 14-Dec-16 Dec-Sec Representative WAU FRE7.2 7-Apr-17 Dec-Sec Representative WAU FRE7.3.a 6-Jun-17 Dec-Sec Representative WAU FRE7.3.b 6-Jun-17 Dec-Sec Representative WAU FRE8 14-Dec-16 OSIWA Program Coordinator WAU FRE9 14-Dec-16 NRA Research Director WAU FRE9.2 20-Feb-19 NRA Research Director WAU GBA72 10-Mar-17 Gbane chiefdom PC Kono GBA73 11-Mar-17 Gbane chiefdom Chiefdom court clerk Kono GBA74 11-Mar-17 Gbane chiefdom Chiefdom revenue collector Kono GBA75 11-Mar-17 Gbane chiefdom Chiefdom Speaker Kono GBA76 12-Mar-17 Gbane chiefdom Senior town chief Kono GBA77 12-Mar-17 Gbane chiefdom Section chief Kono GBA78 12-Mar-17 Gbane chiefdom Chiefdom Treasury Clerk Kono

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GBA79 12-Mar-17 Kono DC District councillor Kono GBE230 6-Dec-16 N/A Taxpayer Kono GBE44 1-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom PC Kono GBE45 1-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Chiefdom Treasury Clerk Kono GBE46 1-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Section chief Kono GBE47 1-Mar-17 School Government teacher Kono GBE48 1-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Chiefdom police officer Kono GBE49 2-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Chiefdom speaker Kono GBE53 3-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Deputy section chief Kono GBE54 3-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Revenue collector Kono GBE55 3-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Deputy chiefdom youth leader Kono GBE56 4-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Council revenue collector Kono GBE57 4-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Deputy section chief/ Acting section Kono chief GBE58.a 4-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Mammy Queen Kono GBE58.b 4-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Youth chairman Kono GBE59 4-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Town chief Kono GBE60 4-Mar-17 Gbense chiefdom Town chief Kono GBE71 9-Mar-17 Kono DC Councillor Kono KAI173 12-Jun-17 Kailahun DC DC Deputy chairman Kailahun KAI174.a 13-Jun-17 Central government CCAC Kailahun KAI174.b 13-Jun-17 Central government Assistant CCAC Kailahun KAI179.a 13-Jun-17 Fambul Tok Team Leader Kailahun KAI179.b 13-Jun-17 Fambul Tok Supervisor Kailahun KAI179.c 13-Jun-17 Fambul Tok Field staff Kailahun KAI181.1 14-Jun-17 Central government Acting DO Kailahun KAI181.2 16-Jun-17 Central government Acting DO Kailahun KAI181.3 24-Feb-18 Central government DO Kailahun KAI183 14-Jun-17 Kailahun DC DCC Kailahun KAI183.2 6-Mar-19 Dec-Sec Director N/A KAI266 28-Feb-19 Kailahun DC DCC Kailahun KAI267 28-Feb-19 Kailahun DC District councillor Kailahun KAI268 28-Feb-19 Kailahun DC Finance Officer Kailahun KAI89.1 23-Mar-17 Kailahun DC CA Kailahun KAI89.2 18-Jun-17 Kailahun DC CA Kailahun KAI89.3 24-Feb-18 Kailahun DC CA Kailahun KAI89.4 28-Feb-19 Kailahun DC CA Kailahun

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KAI89.5 28-Feb-19 Kailahun DC CA Kailahun KAI90 23-Mar-17 Kailahun DC Deputy CA Kailahun KAI93 24-Mar-17 Kailahun DC HR Officer Kailahun KAI96.1 27-Mar-17 Kailahun DC Valuation Officer Kailahun KAI96.2 24-Feb-18 Kailahun DC Valuation Officer Kailahun KAM114.1 6-Mar-17 Kamara chiefdom Chiefdom youth leader/ revenue Kono mobilizer

KAM114.2 27-Jun-17 Kamara chiefdom Chiefdom Youth Leader Kono KAM210 26-Jun-17 Ward Development Chairman Kono Committee (WDC) KAM211 26-Jun-17 Kamara chiefdom TA Kono KAM212 26-Jun-17 SMC Chairman Kono KAM213 26-Jun-17 Water well management Chairman Kono committee

KAM214 26-Jun-17 Osusu box Chairlady Kono KAM215 27-Jun-17 N/A Key informant, services Kono KAM216 27-Jun-17 N/A Key informant, general Kono KAM217 27-Jun-17 Kamara chiefdom TA/ Chiefdom historian Kono KAM218 28-Jun-17 Kamara chiefdom Section Chief Kono KAM219 28-Jun-17 SMC Chairman Kono

KAM220 28-Jun-17 N/A Key informant, services Kono KAM221 28-Jun-17 N/A Key informant, general Kono KAM222 28-Jun-17 WDC member Kono KAM223 28-Jun-17 Kamara chiefdom TA Kono KAM224 28-Jun-17 Kamara chiefdom Youth Leader Kono KAM225 29-Jun-17 Kamara chiefdom Town Youth Leader/ Assistant Section Kono Youth Leader

KAM226 29-Jun-17 School Community teacher Kono KAM227 29-Jun-17 Community teachers’ Chairman Kono association KAM228 29-Jun-17 Osusu box Chairlady Kono KAM61.1 5-Mar-17 Kamara chiefdom PC Kono KAM61.2 26-Jun-17 Kamara chiefdom PC Kono KAM62 5-Mar-17 Kamara chiefdom Chiefdom Speaker Kono KAM63.1 6-Mar-17 Kamara chiefdom Chiefdom Treasury Clerk Kono KAM63.2 27-Jun-17 Kamara chiefdom Chiefdom Treasury Clerk Kono KAM64 6-Mar-17 Kamara chiefdom Assistant Town Chief Kono

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KAM65 7-Mar-17 Kamara chiefdom Town Chief Kono KAM66 7-Mar-17 Kamara chiefdom Son of town chief Kono KAM67 8-Mar-17 Kamara chiefdom Town chief Kono KAM68.1 8-Mar-17 Kamara chiefdom Section chief Kono KAM68.2 29-Jun-17 Kamara chiefdom Section Chief Kono KAM70 9-Mar-17 Kono DC District councillor Kono KAS132 23-May-17 WDC Member Koinadugu

KAS134 23-May-17 N/A Key informant Koinadugu KAS135 24-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Chiefdom youth leader, Deputy youth Koinadugu leader at District Youth Council

KAS136 24-May-17 Koinadugu DC Councillor Koinadugu KAS137 25-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section chief Koinadugu KAS138 25-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Chiefdom Treasury Clerk Koinadugu KAS139 25-May-17 Community bank Chairman Koinadugu KAS140 25-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom TA Koinadugu KAS141.a 25-May-17 N/A Key informant (Central Ataya Base Koinadugu Treasury/ Executive)

KAS141.b 25-May-17 N/A Key informant (Central Ataya Base Koinadugu Chairman)

KAS142 26-May-17 School Deputy Headmistress Koinadugu KAS143 26-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Chiefdom Speaker Koinadugu KAS144.1 27-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section Chief Koinadugu KAS144.2 27-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section Chief Koinadugu KAS144.3 27-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section Chief Koinadugu KAS145 27-May-17 School Community teacher Koinadugu KAS146 28-May-17 SMC Chairman, Advisor to section chief Koinadugu KAS147 28-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section chief Koinadugu KAS148.a 28-May-17 Water well management Chairlady Koinadugu committee

KAS148.b 28-May-17 Water well management Secretary/ WDC member Koinadugu committee/ WDC

KAS149 28-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section youth chairman Koinadugu KAS150 28-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Town youth chairman Koinadugu

KAS151 29-May-17 SMC Secretary/ head teacher Koinadugu

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KAS152 29-May-17 Osusu group Community/ osusu box keeper Koinadugu KAS153 29-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Town Youth Chairman Koinadugu KAS154 29-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section chief Koinadugu KAS155 29-May-17 Water well management Chairman Koinadugu committee KAS156 30-May-17 SMC Chairman Koinadugu KAS157 30-May-17 School Head teacher Koinadugu KAS158 31-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section youth chairman Koinadugu KAS159 31-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section chief, also town chief Koinadugu KAS160 31-May-17 Osusu group Osusu box keeper Koinadugu KAS161 31-May-17 N/A Key informant Koinadugu KAS162 31-May-17 Water well Caretaker Koinadugu KAS163 31-May-17 N/A Key informant Koinadugu KAS164 31-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom TA Koinadugu KAS165 31-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section Chief Koinadugu KAS166 31-May-17 SMC Chairman Koinadugu KAS167 1-Jun-17 N/A Key informant Koinadugu KAS168 2-Jun-17 N/A Key informant Koinadugu KAS36.1 17-Feb-17 Koinadugu DC Councillor Koinadugu KAS36.2 23-May-17 Koinadugu DC Councillor Koinadugu KAS39.1 19-Feb-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section chief Koinadugu KAS39.2 24-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section chief Koinadugu KAS40.a 19-Feb-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section chief Koinadugu KAS40.b 19-Feb-17 Kasunko chiefdom Section chief assistant Koinadugu KAS42.1 19-Feb-17 Kasunko chiefdom PC Koinadugu KAS42.2 24-May-17 Kasunko chiefdom PC Koinadugu KOI126 19-May-17 Central government CCAC Koinadugu KOI127 20-May-17 Koinadugu DC CA Koinadugu KOI128.a 20-May-17 N/A Taxpayer/ Cattle herder Koinadugu KOI128.b 20-May-17 N/A Taxpayer/ Cattle herder Koinadugu KOI129 21-May-17 Fambul Tok National Director of Training Koinadugu KOI130 22-May-17 Koinadugu DC DCC Koinadugu KOI133 23-May-17 Koinadugu DC Revenue collector, Kasunko chiefdom Koinadugu KOI237 3-Nov-17 Wara Wara Yagala Treasury Clerk Koinadugu Chiefdom KOI238 3-Nov-17 Traders' Union Chairman Koinadugu and Falaba District KOI241 7-Feb-18 Central government DO Assistant Koinadugu KOI242 8-Feb-18 Koinadugu DC Valuator Koinadgu

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KOI243 8-Feb-18 Koinadugu DC CA Koinadugu KOI258 24-Feb-19 Koinadugu DC Deputy Chairman Koinadugu KOI259 25-Feb-19 Sengbe Chiefdom PC Koinadugu KOI260 25-Feb-19 Koinadugu DC DCC Koinadugu KOI261 25-Feb-19 Koinadugu DC Finance Officer Koinadugu KOI34.1 16-Feb-17 Koinadugu DC Valuator Koinadugu KOI34.2 22-May-17 Koinadugu DC Valuator Koinadugu KOI34.3 25-Feb-19 Koinadugu DC Former Valuation Officer Koinadugu KOI37 17-Feb-17 Koinadugu DC Deputy CA Koinadugu KOI38 17-Feb-17 Central government DO Koinadugu KON206 22-Jun-17 Kono DC Information, Education, and Kono Communications Officer

KON207 23-Jun-17 Kono DC CA Kono KON208 23-Jun-17 KoCEPO Head of Administration and Finance Kono KON262 26-Feb-19 Central government CCAC Kono KON263 26-Feb-19 Kono DC DCC Kono KON264 26-Feb-19 Kono DC Valuator Kono KON265 27-Feb-19 Kono DC DCA Kono KON43 28-Feb-17 NRA Revenue collection official Kono checkpoint KON50.2.a 24-Jun-17 Central government CCAC Kono (KON209) KON50.a 2-Mar-17 Central government CCAC Kono KON50.b 2-Mar-17 Central government Assistant CCAC Kono KON52 2-Mar-17 Central government Senior DO Kono KON69.1 9-Mar-17 Kono DC Valuator Kono KON69.2 22-Jun-17 Kono DC Valuator Kono LUA100 28-Mar-17 Luawa chiefdom Chiefdom court chairman Kailahun LUA171 11-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdom TA/ WDC Secretary General Kailahun

LUA172 11-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdom Senior Section Chief, Popular Kailahun Representative of the Council of Paramount Chiefs at District Security level

LUA175 13-Jun-17 School Acting Principal Kailahun

LUA176 13-Jun-17 School Community teacher Kailahun LUA177 13-Jun-17 Water well Caretaker Kailahun

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LUA178.a 13-Jun-17 Osusu group Chairman and cashier/treasury Kailahun

LUA178.b 13-Jun-17 Osusu group Secretary general Kailahun

LUA180 13-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdom TA Kailahun LUA182 14-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdom Chiefdom Youth Chairman Kailahun LUA184 16-Jun-17 Kailahun DC Councillor Kailahun LUA185 16-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdom Chiefdom historian Kailahun LUA186 16-Jun-17 N/A Key informant Kailahun LUA187 16-Jun-17 N/A Key informant Kailahun LUA188 17-Jun-17 Osusu Chairlady Kailahun LUA189 17-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdom TA Kailahun LUA190 17-Jun-17 SMC Chairman Kailahun LUA191 17-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdom Town Youth Chairman Kailahun LUA192 17-Jun-17 Water well management Caretaker Kailahun committee

LUA193 17-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdom Section chief Kailahun LUA194 17-Jun-17 N/A Key informant Kailahun LUA195 17-Jun-17 N/A Key informant Kailahun LUA197 19-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdm Chiefdom Speaker Kailahun LUA198 19-Jun-17 N/A Key informant Kailahun LUA199 20-Jun-17 N/A Key informant Kailahun LUA200 20-Jun-17 N/A Key informant Kailahun LUA201 20-Jun-17 Luawa Chiefdom Town Youth Chairman Kailahun LUA202 20-Jun-17 Luawa Chiefdom TA Kailahun LUA203 20-Jun-17 Osusu Osusu box keeper Kailahun LUA204 20-Jun-17 SMC Chairman Kailahun LUA205 20-Jun-17 Luawa Chiefdom Section chief Kailahun LUA91.1 23-Mar-17 Luawa Chiefdom Quarter youth chairman and water well Kailahun caretaker LUA91.2 13-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdom Quarter youth chairman and water well Kailahun caretaker LUA92.a 24-Mar-17 Kailahun DC Councillor Kailahun LUA92.b 24-Mar-17 Kailahun DC Councillor advisor Kailahun LUA94 26-Mar-17 Luawa Chiefdom PC/ MP Kailahun LUA95.1 27-Mar-17 Luawa Chiefdom Chiefdom Administrative Clerk Kailahun LUA95.2 12-Jun-17 Luawa Chiefdom Chiefdom Administrative Clerk Kailahun LUA95.3 28-Feb-19 Luawa Chiefdom Chiefdom Administrative Clerk Kailahun

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LUA97 27-Mar-17 Luawa Chiefdom Quarter chief Kailahun LUA98.1 28-Mar-17 Luawa Chiefdom Section chief Kailahun LUA98.2 13-Jun-17 Luawa chiefdom Section chief Kailahun LUA99.1 28-Mar-17 Luawa Chiefdom Chiefdom court clerk Kailahun LUA99.2 12-Jun-17 Luawa Chiefdom Chiefdom court clerk Kailahun MAN101 29-Mar-17 Mandu Chiefdom PC representative Kailahun MAN102 29-Mar-17 Mandu Chiefdom Chiefdom Speaker Kailahun MAN103 29-Mar-17 Mandu Chiefdom Chiefdom Treasury Clerk Kailahun MAN104 30-Mar-17 Mandu Chiefdom Acting Town Chief Kailahun MAN105 30-Mar-17 Central government Former MP Kailahun MAN106 30-Mar-17 Mandu Chiefdom Former (deposed) town chief Kailahun MAN107 30-Mar-17 Kailahun DC District councillor Kailahun MAN108 31-Mar-17 Mandu Chiefdom Female town chief Kailahun MAN109 31-Mar-17 Mandu Chiefdom Chiefdom court clerk Kailahun MAN110 31-Mar-17 Mandu Chiefdom Town speaker Kailahun MON11 9-Feb-17 School Teacher Koinadugu MON12 9-Feb-17 School Community teacher Koinadugu MON13 9-Feb-17 School Community teacher Koinadugu MON14 9-Feb-17 Secret society Uninitiated member Koinadugu MON15 9-Feb-17 Secret society Uninitiated member Koinadugu MON16 9-Feb-17 School Principal Koinadugu MON17 9-Feb-17 Mongo chiefdom Town chief Koinadugu MON18 9-Feb-17 Mongo chiefdom Chiefdom police officer Koinadugu MON19 10-Feb-17 Mongo chiefdom Chiefdom Administration Clerk Koinadugu MON20 10-Feb-17 Mongo chiefdom Section chief Koinadugu MON21.1 10-Feb-17 Mongo chiefdom Town chief Koinadugu MON21.2 11-Feb-17 Mongo chiefdom Town chief Koinadugu MON22 11-Feb-17 Mongo chiefdom Town chief Koinadugu MON23 11-Feb-17 Mongo chiefdom Section chief Koinadugu MON24 11-Feb-17 Mongo chiefdom Town chief Koinadugu MON25 12-Feb-17 Mongo chiefdom PC Koinadugu MON35 16-Feb-17 Koinadugu DC Councillor Koinadugu SUL131 22-May-17 Koinadugu DC Councillor Koinadugu SUL229 15-Feb-17 N/A Key informant, Koinadugu SUL26.a 13-Feb-17 Sulima chiefdom Section chief Koinadugu SUL26.b 13-Feb-17 Sulima chiefdom Town chief Koinadugu SUL26.c 13-Feb-17 Sulima chiefdom Youth chairman Koinadugu

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SUL27 13-Feb-17 Sulima chiefdom Town chief Koinadugu SUL28 13-Feb-17 School Community teacher Koinadugu SUL29 14-Feb-17 Sulima chiefdom Town chief Koinadugu SUL30.a 14-Feb-17 Sulima chiefdom Section chief Koinadugu SUL30.b 14-Feb-17 Sulima chiefdom Town chief Koinadugu SUL31 15-Feb-17 Sulima chiefdom Chiefdom speaker Koinadugu SUL32 15-Feb-17 Sulima chiefdom Town chief Koinadugu SUL33 15-Feb-17 Sulima chiefdom Youth advisor to chiefdom speaker Koinadugu UPP80 20-Mar-17 Upper Bambara chiefdom Section chief Kailahun UPP81 20-Mar-17 Upper Bambara chiefdom Chiefdom speaker Kailahun UPP82 21-Mar-17 Upper Bambara chiefdom Chiefdom Administrative Clerk Kailahun UPP83 21-Mar-17 Kailahun DC Councillor Kailahun UPP84 21-Mar-17 Upper Bambara chiefdom PC Kailahun UPP85.a 22-Mar-17 Upper Bambara chiefdom Youth chairman Kailahun UPP85.b 22-Mar-17 Upper Bambara chiefdom Mammy Queen Kailahun UPP86 22-Mar-17 Upper Bambara chiefdom Town chief representative Kailahun UPP87 22-Mar-17 School Community teacher Kailahun UPP88 22-Mar-17 Kailahun DC Councillor Kailahun WAS233 8-Mar-16 World Bank Senior official N/A

Appendix 2i: List of focus group discussions Date Unique ID Type of focus group participants District Chiefdom 06-May-17 FREFG1 Taxpayers WAU N/A 05-Aug-17 FREFG10 Business owners WAU N/A 21-Jul-17 FREFG3 Taxpayers WAR N/A 22-Jul-17 FREFG4 Taxpayers WAR N/A 25-Jul-17 FREFG5 Business owners WAR N/A 27-Jul-17 FREFG6 Taxpayers WAR N/A 29-Jul-17 FREFG7 Taxpayers WAU N/A

03-Aug-17 FREFG8 Taxpayers WAU N/A 03-Aug-17 FREFG9 Taxpayers WAU N/A 11-Mar-17 GBAFG1 Local leaders Kono Gbane 12-Mar-17 GBAFG2 Local leaders Kono Gbane 02-Mar-17 GBEFG1 Community leaders Kono Gbense 03-Mar-17 GBEFG2 Taxpayers Kono Gbense 03-Mar-17 GBEFG3 Local leaders Kono Gbense 02-Aug-17 KAIFG1 Local leaders Kailahun N/A

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July 29 2017 KAIFG2 Business owners Kailahun N/A July 29 2017 KAIFG3 Taxpayers Kailahun N/A 05-Mar-17 KAMFG1 Local leaders Kono Kamara 06-Mar-17 KAMFG2 Local leaders Kono Kamara 07-Mar-17 KAMFG3 Local leaders Kono Kamara 27-Jun-17 KAMFG4 Taxpayers Kono Kamara

29-Jun-17 KAMFG5 Taxpayers Kono Kamara

19-Feb-17 KASFG1 Local leaders Koinadugu Kasunko 25-May-17 KASFG2 Taxpayers Koinadugu Kasunko 28-May-17 KASFG3 Taxpayers Koinadugu Kasunko 29-May-17 KASFG4 Taxpayers Koinadugu Kasunko 30-May-17 KASFG5 Taxpayers Koinadugu Kasunko 30-May-17 KASFG6 Taxpayers Koinadugu Kasunko 31-May-17 KASFG7 Taxpayers Koinadugu Kasunko 25-Jul-17 KOIFG1 Community leaders Koinadugu N/A 25-Jul-17 KOIFG2 Business owners Koinadugu N/A 26-Jul-17 KOIFG3 Taxpayers Koinadugu N/A 22-Jul-17 KONFG1 Business owners Kono N/A 22-Jul-17 KONFG2 Taxpayers Kono N/A 27-Mar-17 LUAFG1 Local leaders Kailahun Luawa 12-Jun-17 LUAFG2 Taxpayers Kailahun Luawa 17-Jun-17 LUAFG3 Taxpayers Kailahun Luawa 20-Jun-17 LUAFG4 Taxpayers Kailahun Luawa 29-Mar-17 MANFG1 Local leaders Kailahun Mandu 31-Mar-17 MANFG2 Local leaders Kailahun Mandu 8-Feb-17 MONFG1 Community leaders Koinadugu Mongo 10-Feb-17 MONFG2 Community leaders Koinadugu Mongo 10-Feb-17 MONFG3 Local leaders Koinadugu Mongo 11-Feb-17 MONFG4 Local leaders Koinadugu Mongo 11-Feb-17 MONFG5 Local leaders Koinadugu Mongo 12-Feb-17 SULFG1 Local leaders Koinadugu Sulima 13-Feb-17 SULFG2 Community leaders Koinadugu Sulima 15-Feb-17 SULFG3 Local leaders Koinadugu Sulima 15-Feb-17 SULFG4 Community leaders Koinadugu Sulima 20-Mar-17 UPPFG1 Local leaders Kailahun Upper Bambara

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Appendix 3a: Divergent IRG in Sierra Leone

Table 16: IRG for chiefdom administrations1

Type of payment Percent of respondents that made the payment in the previous year Any informal payment to support chiefs or chiefdom administrations (N 715) 22 Direct contributions to the chief (labour on his farm, agricultural goods at harvest, cash contributions or “kola” payments) (N 714) 20 Existence such direct contributions to the chief in the community, whether or not respondent paid (N 714) 49 Informal payment for chiefdom hospitality/ support for “strangers” (N 748) 4 Fee to chief for conflict resolution services (741) 18 Appendix 3b: Convergent IRG in Sierra Leone

Table 17: IRG for state-provisioned goods Relevant taxing Type of payment Percent of actors respondents that made the payment in the previous year Any informal payment to access police services 20 Police Payment for police services (N844) 5 Informal contribution to police officer (e.g. meal, flashlight, cash) 7 (N844) Tip for police officer (N844) 13 Labour for maintenance of police post (N844) 0.1 Any informal tax for community security 0.2 Community Informal contribution to general community security fund/ group 0.8 organizations (N844) Contribution directly to patrol group (meal, flashlight, cash, etc.) 2.3 (especially youth (N844) groups), community Tip for member of the community security group (N844) 1.5 defence organizations, chiefs

Any informal payment to access/ support state health care services 38

1 Note that the sample size is smaller for these questions as the survey was erroneously administered in one chiefdom (Kasunko), with these responses excluded from the analysis.

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Primary health unit, informal payments to doctors or nurses 20 Medical staff, (N844) Primary health unit, labour for construction/ maintenance (N844) 21 community Hospital, informal payments to doctors or nurses (N844) 5 associations, chiefs Hospital, labour for construction/ maintenance (N844) 2 Market/ trade Any informal payment to use or maintain public markets 9 associations, market Tip for market cleaners (N844) 5 labourers/ cleaners, chiefs Labour for construction/ maintenance of public market (N844) 9

Table 18: IRG for education, provisioned through the state and communities Relevant taxing actors Type of payment Percent of respondents that made the payment in the previous year Any informal payment to access/ support public education 95 Parent-Teacher Informal payments for community (volunteer) teachers (N 840) 88 Associations/ SMCs Primary school, informal school fees (N844) 27 Primary school, informal contributions for school 22 improvements/ development (N844) Primary school, informal contributions for school materials (e.g. 15 Teachers/ schools desks) (N844) Primary school, labour for construction or maintenance of 23 administrators school property (N844) Primary school, other informal payments (N842) 1 Secondary school, informal contributions for school 14 improvements/ development (N844) Chiefs Secondary school, informal contributions for school materials 10 (e.g. desks) (N844) Secondary school, labour for construction or maintenance of 13 school property (N844)

Table 19: IRG for community-provisioned goods

Relevant taxing actors Type of payment Percent of respondents that made the payment in the previous year Any informal payment to access water or support water provision 64 Informal user fee or contribution for maintenance fund (N844) 39

403

Tip for guardian/ caretaker of water source (N844) 2 Water well Contribution for construction/ repairs of water well (N844) 26 management Labour for construction/ maintenance of water well (N844) 22 committees/ caretakers Chiefs Chiefs Any informal payment to access a dry floor or support dry floor 14 maintenance Community/ farmers’ User fee/ contribution for maintenance fund (N844) 4 associations Tip for guardian/ caretaker (N844) 0.5 Contribution for construction 7

Table 20: IRG through communal labour and community development projects

Relevant taxing actors Type of payment Percent of respondents that made the payment in the previous year Chiefs/ village Participation in town-cleaning in the past year (N 839) 96 headmen, youth groups Existence of town-cleaning in the community in the past year (N 99 839) Participation in road-brushing/ road maintenance in the past 72 year (N 839) Existence of road-brushing activities in the community in the 92 past year (N 839) Participation in communal labour (e.g. road/ bridge 64 construction) in the past year (N 836) Existence of communal labour (e.g. road/ bridge construction) in 86 the community in the past year (N 836) Contribution to community development project in the past 15 year, organized by any actor (N 780) Existence of community development project in the community 64 in the past year (N 780) Participation in other self-help activities (N 740) 9 Existence of other self-help activities in the community in the 54 past year (N 740)

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Appendix 7: Informal financing of public primary education in Sierra Leone i. Informal fees for the running costs of government-funded schools Government-assisted primary schools commonly rely on fees despite their illegality according to the 2004 Education Act (GoRSL, 2004c, p. sec.II, par.3) and subsequent commitments to universal free public primary education in 2010 and 2018.2 As government- assisted schools consistently receive insufficient per pupil subsidies from the government and as “the government is not responsible for [funding] water rates, electricity or telephone bills” (Nishimuko, 2009, pp. 154–155), these schools often have to rely on informal levies and fees to cover running costs.3 As described by UNESCO (2018),

When trying to make up for the revenue lost in school fees [by the universal free education programme introduced in 2010], the per pupil subsidy was set too low at USD 2.20. Schools’ operating costs were not adequately covered, and schools’ differing needs were not taken into account. Fees were [unofficially] hastily brought back in many parts of the country (see also Pôle de Dakar et al., 2013; UNESCO, 2015a, p. 88).

Nearly 28 percent of households that have a child in a public primary school reported paying fees to the school. These fees, charged directly by the school and considered mandatory for attendance, can include registration and admission fees, sports fees, computer fees, PTA, community teachers’ association (CTA) or SMC fees, report card fees, and graduation levies (Tooley & Longfield, 2013, p. 25; see also Nishimuko, 2009).4

2 The Education Act includes a caveat allowing that “the Minister may, at any time and for such period as he [sic] shall think fit direct that the prescribed fees shall be increased or reduced in any… government assisted school” (GoRSL, 2004c, sec. IX, par. 44).

3 As described by Civil Society Chairman in the Southern province, some school authorities “are illegally demanding monies” from parents rather than “strictly go[ing] by the Ministry of Education’s mandate about the payment of fees” (referenced in Kamara, 2016).

4 Focus group discussion, KAMFG2 At the same time, in some government-assisted mission schools, teachers are expected to make voluntary contributions (“tithes”) from their salaries for the schools to make up for not being able to charge student fees. SMC Chairman LUA 204. In certain schools this is the main source of revenue, while it is common for teachers to pass the cost to households by requesting payments from children to cover their tithing (Bennell, 2004, p. 3). Moreover, extra costs are also commonly charged for materials and assignments that should be free. For instance, the 2018 Citizen Perceptions Survey found that 59 percent of students paid for assignments in the previous year, with more than a third (34 percent) paying on a daily basis.

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ii. Contributions for improvements to government-funded schools

Households are also often required to contribute to improving government-financed school infrastructure. The need for school improvements is significant given poor-quality infrastructure and classroom crowding.5 By the end of 2010, 60 percent of classrooms in all primary schools nationwide were in need of repairs (GoRSL MEST, 2012). At the same time, access to electricity, water, and sanitation facilities is lacking in the majority of public schools, though with much lower rates of access in rural areas (Figure 79). For example, 25 percent of schools nationwide report having only a stream as a source of water, though this figure is as high as 36 percent in the relatively marginalised Northern province (GoRSL MEST, 2012).

Figure 79: Quality of school infrastructure, public primary schools, 2017

0 20 40 60 80 100 Percent of public primary schools

Proportion with Proportion with access access to electricity to basic drinking water Proportion with basic sanitation facilities

Data source: (UIS, n.d.)

The need for more space and improved basic infrastructure has led many schools and communities to informally fund classroom expansions and general school improvements. Of survey respondents that have a child in primary school, 27 percent made at least one

Fifty-nine percent paid for the printing of materials, with 27 percent paying on a daily basis (SABI Sierra Leone, 2018).

5 These infrastructure issues stem in part from the focus on expanding access rather than quality or sustainability in the rush to rebuild schools following the war. As Bennell (2004) describes, the standard construction design of two blocks of three classrooms each for primary schools was quickly insufficient for the rapid growth in enrolment seen in peacetime.

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contribution to school improvements.6 Community members often described this as a way to “help ourselves” or show that “we provide for ourselves”.7 These contributions take several forms. First, it is common for schools to include a “development levy” or “building levy” on a per term basis in order to have a maintenance fund for future improvements.8

While these extra charges are common, they are not legal.9

Second, students and parents are commonly expected to contribute time and labour for regular activities such as the sweeping of school compounds, cleaning toilets, and collecting water and firewood. Some communities organise every Friday or Saturday morning to clean the school, often for around 30 minutes; 10 in other areas cleaning happens the last Friday of the month,11 while brushing may happen on a seasonal basis.12 Sometimes, students are expected to clean the school compound by themselves.13 A teacher explained, “Since the school is integrated with the community, parents should be involved in some minor work for

6 25 percent made labour contributions to school building or cleaning projects, 24 percent made contributions for school improvements within the past year, and 15 percent made contributions for school materials (i.e. building materials or basic furnishings, including desks).

7 Focus group discussion, KAMFG3

8 For example, Nishimuko (2009, pp. 154–155) cites a teacher explaining that their “school normally collects Le100 every Wednesdays [sic] for cleaning, and when there is time to paint the school, parents normally give contribution”.

9 As described by the Secretary of the Conference of Principals in the Southern province, unless school improvements are approved and financed by government, informal fees for school improvements are “illegal charges”, which he worries people will refer to as “extortion”(cited in Kamara, 2016).

10 KAMFG3, KAS151

11 KAM212

12 GBEFG2

13 KAS141

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the school” (cited in Nishimuko, 2009, pp. 154–155), while community members in a focus group explained that the community “works to develop itself”.14

Finally, community members are commonly called on to support bigger building or improvement projects, providing labour, collecting local materials (i.e. sand, stones, and water), or providing food for labourers (Photo 6).15As explained by an SMC chairman,

If I discover that the school that was built for us was not well constructed, it is currently settling dust […] I normally do mobilise people with resources like cement and we get to work. We help them pave the floor, and when the chairs are damaged, we do help [them]. If there is no subsidy [from the government] we do help.16

In another town, an SMC Chairman described how when “heavy wind came and took off the roof of the school… we went to the people to tell them […] you know that government wouldn’t supply another one. We mobilised people in the town to supply the boards and […] nails.”17

Photo 6: Schoolchildren collecting local materials (sand) to contribute to school building project

Source: Author’s photo, Koinadugu district, 2017

While these contributions come predominately from parents, other community members— particularly elders and other leaders—also often contribute to school improvement projects,

14 GBAFG1

15 GBAFG1

16 LUA204

17 LUA190

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though they may not face sanctions for failing to do so, as kombra, or parents, are.18 As described by an SMC chairman in Northern province, in order to do moderate “upkeep” of the school, each household in the community must pay SLL 5000 (USD 0.67) and provide labour, whether or not you have children in the school.19 Another community in Kailahun district organised a Town Development Committee, which in part helped to support the local school and teachers. Rather than “self-taxing” the community, the committee levies informal taxes on people coming to trade in the town, over and above taxes levied by the DC, with the idea that “if someone is scrubbing your back you should also assist little by little”.20 As described by the SMC chairman,

The Section Chief … told us once that we cannot be here and depend on anything, even to maintain the roads we need shovels, we need pickaxe, and no one can do this thing for us except ourselves. And that there is no way we can [informally] tax people individually [n the community] but through this mechanism [of informally taxing traders] it would be a source for us to have money.21 iii. Contributions for community schools With limited or no government financing, communities have relied heavily on self-built, self- funded, and often unapproved “community schools”. Non-assisted schools, whether built by communities, NGOs, missions or other actors, make up the most schools in the Northern and Eastern provinces (GoRSL MEST, 2018b),22 while community-built and -funded schools (“community schools”) make up 19 and 14 percent of all schools in Northern and Eastern provinces, respectively (Figure 74). This reflects the reality that community schools are “generally located in the most educationally under-served and poorest areas” (Bennell, 2004, p. 1), as they serve to fill a gap left by state services. Their prevalence in the north and east reflects a long history of marginalisation of these regions, rooted in colonial power

18 Kombra refers to a woman who looks after children. Taxpayers often referred to school fees as the responsibility of the kombra, perhaps reflecting interhousehold gender divisions and roles.

19 KAS146

20 LUA204

21 LUA204

22 Considering only schools that are defined as publicly- or community-funded.

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structures and the path dependency in the earlier system that was sustained post- independence (E. Collier, 2016; Hawes, 1976; Pai, 2013).23 At the same time, needs are highest in these regions on account of being hardest hit by the civil war.24 The same patterns are reflected at the district level, with districts receiving the least government funding having the highest proportion of community schools (Figure 81).

Figure 80: Regional distribution of schools with government assistance (left) and community schools (right)

.6 .2

.15 .4

.2 .05

0 0

EASTERN EASTERN SOUTHERN WESTERN NORTHERN NORTHERN WESTERN SOUTHERN

Data source:(GoRSL MEST, 2018b)

23 The colonial focus on elite education came at the expense of broad-based educational development, including for the large areas previously dominated by Islamic institutions and converts, primarily in the Northern province (UNESCO, 2018).

24 Indeed, while over 80 percent of all primary schools across the country were completely destroyed or heavily damaged during the fighting, the Northern and Eastern provinces were the most conflict-affected and saw the highest proportion of abandoned schools during the latter part of the war (Bennell, 2004).

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Figure 81: District distribution of schools with government assistance (left) and community schools (right)

.8 .3

.6 .2

.1 .2

0 0 BO BO KONO KONO KAMBIA KENEMA BONTHE BOMBALI BOMBALI KAMBIA BONTHE KENEMA PUJEHUN TONKOLILI MOYAMBAKAILAHUN MOYAMBA TONKOLILIKAILAHUNPUJEHUN PORT LOKO KOINADUGU KOINADUGU PORT LOKO

WESTERN AREA URBAN WESTERN AREA RURAL WESTERN AREA RURALWESTERN AREA URBAN

Data source: (GoRSL MEST, 2018b)

Given the lack of government funding, a CTA chairman in a community school explained that he collects informal school charges to run the school, while it is communities themselves that organised the building of the school.25 As with improvements to government-assisted public schools, communities often contribute in order to build school infrastructure. Where they are lucky—or where their chief represents them well to development partners—they may receive support from NGOs to assist with building or learning materials, or from a relatively wealthy “son of the soil”, i.e. someone from the community now living in Freetown or abroad. For example, in Mongo chiefdom, a town chief showed how a community raised funds from community members and a benefactor in Freetown to “raise a school”, though they have not yet been able to receive approval from the government (Photo 7).26

25 KAM227. Note that CTAs do not represent “community teachers” (i.e. non-government teachers), instead representing all teachers in a particular community.

26 MON21.1

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Photo 7: JSS community school built by community in Mongo chiefdom

Source: Author’s photos, 2017, Koinadugu district, Northern province iv. Contributions for community teachers’ salaries

In the post-war period, the state faced major fiscal constraints as well as hiring caps on public servants as conditions of international financing. Consequently, though student enrolment increased massively after the end of the civil war, teachers were not hired at a commensurate rate (Bennell, 2004; Turrent, 2012; UNESCO, 2015b, pp. 250–251), resulting in a severe shortage of teachers on government payroll.27 Accordingly, many schools—including both government- and community-funded schools—rely on “community” teachers that are not on the government payroll (Universalia, 2018, p. 25).28 These are commonly secondary school graduates or drop-outs unable to find work or unable to secure funding for teacher training.

27 Recently, the World Bank has acknowledged that in Sierra Leone wage and hiring “ceilings were guided by macrofiscal rule-of-thumb estimates of how large a public service the country could afford, and not by a differentiated analysis of staffing need” (René Blum et al., 2019, p. 53). They thus recommend, using “ceilings cautiously, if at all, as part of a strategy for rebuilding public service capacity”, balancing “long-term affordability considerations with investments into public service renewal that are essential for government functions” (René Blum et al., 2019, p. 62)

28 The prevalence of community teachers reflects a broader trend of “volunteer” employees across the public service, including within the health system, police force, and customs forces. Indeed, René Blum et al. (2019, p. 282) emphasize that “on-payroll employment does not provide the entire picture”, with “a significant number of ‘volunteer’ nurse aids and teachers, informally recruited by clinics and schools outside and paid from nonsalary budgets or (formal and informal) user fees.” Likewise, van den Boogaard, Prichard and Jibao (2018) describe the importance of volunteer employees in regulatory and revenue collection functions with border posts in northern and southern Sierra Leone.

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My data shows significant prevalence of community teachers, while also illustrating the concentration of these teachers in the most remote and marginalised areas of the country.29 Indeed, in the three relatively rural and remote case districts in Northern and Eastern provinces, the prevalence of community teachers was almost universal, with 94 percent of individuals reporting living in a community reliant on community teachers, with little variation between regions. In Koinadugu district, a PC estimated that 80 percent of teachers in his chiefdom are community teachers.30 Qualitative data collected from 37 primary schools across 9 chiefdoms in the Eastern and Northern provinces further illustrates the reliance of schools on community teachers, with high community to government teacher ratios (Figure 82).

Figure 82: Number of community teachers per school for every government teacher31

10 Frequency

0 0 2 4 6 8 Number of community teachers per school for every 1 government teacher

Data source: Data derived from author interviews

29 Rural and community schools are particularly reliant on untrained teachers, in part reflecting the challenge of recruiting trained teachers to rural and remote areas (Amman & O’Donnell, 2011). Indeed, qualified teachers are concentrated in urban schools, with some rural districts having less than one-quarter of teachers qualified, with “most rural primary schools hav[ing] only one or two qualified teachers, one of whom is the head teacher who does not normally teach” (Bennell, 2004, p. 6).

30 MON25

31 Proportion is underestimated as it necessarily excludes two observations for which there are 6 and 9 community teachers, respectively, and no government teachers.

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For community teachers to survive, “communities tax themselves”32, usually every term.33 As described by a CTA chairman, “the government says that we shouldn’t give any money, but parents arrange ourselves to contribute small things” for community teachers.34 Community members and leaders often repeated that although “the government said that we shouldn’t pay school fees”, there was a local understanding that there are too many kids in school to rely solely on government-paid teachers. As noted by an SMC chairman, “We observed that for every 40 pupils should have one teacher so that the burden of taking care of the children would be lesser”.35 In my qualitative survey of 27 schools, the mean ratio of students to government teachers was 113 to 1, while the mean ratio of students to government and community teachers was 42 to 1. This implies that community teachers are effectively filling a gap left by the state—at least in their quantity. 36 Accordingly, an SMC chairman explained that, “it is the responsibility of government to pay teachers; if the government doesn’t have that ability, and teachers are not on the payroll, it is our responsibility as parents to do that [pay them]”.37 Accordingly, charging “illegal” fees is justified: as explained by a community teacher, “the government said pupils should not pay school fees, but how do you expect a teacher who is not on payroll to teach without salary?”38

32 MON25. As described by focus group participants, “we tax ourselves to help community teachers” to survive without a salary (MONGFG3).

33 76 percent of survey respondents reported paying 3 times a year. Community school CTA chairman, KAM227.

34 Expressed by CTA chairmen in MANFG2. For example, taxpayers in Kono district explained that everyone “come[s] together to raise money for community teachers, even though we’re not supposed to pay school fees”(GBEFG1, also expressed in focus group discussions e.g. GBEFG3, UPPFG1).

35 LUA204

36 Note that for two schools without any government teachers, full enrolment figures were taken for 1 government teacher (e.g. for enrolment of 220, the estimate is for 220 students for 1 government teacher, despite there being no government teachers), meaning that the estimate of a ratio of 113 to 1 is underestimated.

37 LUA204

38 UPP87

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In the case districts in Northern and Eastern provinces, 88 percent of households report having paid an informal tax to support community teachers in the past year, whether in cash, in kind, or through labour on the teachers’ farms.39 These additional payments most usually range between SLL 5000–10,000 (USD 0.67–1.34) per student per term.40 With three terms a year, each student pays an estimated average of SLL 25,000 (USD 3.34) per year, based on survey data complemented by qualitative verification in 37 schools (Figure 83).41 In the context of high poverty and low monetisation, communities may pay in-kind in various forms, most commonly rice, either in lieu of or in addition to cash payments, in order to support community teacher salaries.42

Figure 83: Annual per pupil cash payments to community teachers, survey respondents N 552 (left) and qualitative verification based on data from 37 primary schools (right)

39 Of those who reported having paid, 88 percent noted that payments were only due for those with students in the school (making them more like a user fee), though 11 percent noted that this was a payment made by all community member (making them more like a tax). This latter arrangement was significantly more common in Kono district (15 percent relative to 4 and 3 percent in Kailahun and Koinadugu, respectively), indicating that norms around how teachers are taxed differ in different regions.

40 Forty-four percent of respondents paid USD 0.67, while another 20 percent paid USD 1.34.

41 The qualitative verification exercise in 37 schools resulted in an estimated mean payment of USD 3.98 per student per year.

42 In some areas, parents give rice instead of cash, for example, with 6 cups of rice per term expected from each child in one area (MON11, MON16), though only 2 cups expected in a different town in the same chiefdom (MON22).

415

300 15

200 10 Frequency Frequency

100 5

0 0 0 10 20 30 0 2 4 6 8 10 Annual per pupil payments to community teachers (USD), Annual per pupil payments to community teachers (USD), in cash only in cash only

Data source: Author’s survey data (2017) (left), Data derived from author interviews (right)

Additionally, in rural areas, students and teachers may be required to work on the farms of community teachers.43 Of those reporting contributing for community teachers, respondents reported that their households worked on average 11 days on community teachers’ farms. Commonly, teachers will rely on the “hard work of the community” to help them work their farm, with school kids helping with some of the “easy work”.44 As explained by an SMC chairman, “Sometimes when teachers have some work to do in their farms, I mobilise the school pupils to help them in the farm”.45 A community teacher explained how students work on his farm in order to supplement his meagre salary: “When we want to plant groundnut, we can [each] take five pupils so that they can go and help […] during school hours.’46 Elsewhere, parents organise to work on the farms. In one area, every Saturday, parents go to the farms of community teachers, with men taking care of the brushing and women taking care of the weeding.47 In another town, an SMC chairman explained,

43 In some areas, the community only provides labour and farm support, and no cash (LUA199).

44 MONFG2

45 LUA204

46 UPP87

47 KAS151

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We give them something monthly and we go work on their farm… we the parents work for you… We can tell the kids to tell their parents that this Saturday, Sunday we work… Because we told them in a meeting that government won’t give us money again as a school subsidy.48

In other areas, communities organise and pay for labourers to work on the farms of community teachers:

In the financial aspect, when it comes to brushing [their farm] we know they have to do the brushing and they pay for it, ten thousand Leones per person per day. When we have consultations with the teacher if they are going to farm, we would hire like ten people for the teacher, equivalent to one hundred thousand Leones for ten people, [and] the community pays the money.49

With these contributions, however small, community teachers find a way to survive “thanks to the community people”.50 v. Informal payments for government teachers

Direct supplementary financing of the salaries of teachers on government payroll is similarly common. Despite making up the largest proportion of government expenditures on education and despite significant wage increases in 2011 and 2014 (René Blum et al., 2019; Turrent, 2012),51 teacher salaries remain low in absolute terms, at a monthly average of SLL

750,000 (USD 97.25) in 2018 according to the Sierra Leone Teachers Union (Bah, 2018).52

48 LUA190

49 LUA204

50 GBEFG3

51 In 2014, the government set a minimum monthly wage for teachers at SLL 600,000 (USD 138) (René Blum et al., 2019, p. 296) (using the annual average exchange rate for 2014). This was made possible after 2008, when the previous IMF wage bill cap was relaxed, providing additional fiscal space to the government (René Blum et al., 2019, p. 278).

52 USD exchange based on average exchange rate for 2018. An oft-cited target is 3.5 times GDP per capita (Bermingham, 2007; Bruns et al., 2003), which, using GDP per capita (current LCU) for 2017, amounted to SLL 1,065,773 (USD 143) monthly (UIS, n.d.). While this is close to the international target for teacher salaries, and while teacher compensation compares favourably with equivalent public sector jobs (Bennell, 2004, p. 2), other civil servants often receive additional benefits (housing, training, care of dependents) that teachers have often lacked (J. B. Harding & Mansaray, 2006), and which teachers in remote areas often cite as a disincentive to working. As described by Horatio Nelson-Williams, coordinator of the Education for All program in the Ministry of Education, “In the past, the remote area policy was working very well. But with inflation and all of the economic challenges that have taken place in the world, the allowances that were given to teachers for working

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As a result of perceived hardship, there are incentives even for teachers that are on government payroll to seek additional support from students. At the same time, frequent late payment of salaries can lead teachers to seek additional fees from students (Amman & O’Donnell, 2011; J. B. Harding & Mansaray, 2006). While some payments are undeniably bribes serving to corrupt the system,53 other payments are so institutionalised or heavily sanctioned as to be effectively mandatory and thus part of the effective cost of financing public education. For instance, it has been “suggested that some teachers deliberately do not teach the full syllabus thereby forcing students to attend private classes”, particularly where students are required to take state exams to advance (Bennell, 2004, pp. 3–4; see also UNESCO, 2015b, p. 202).54 Thus, in order to get the complete “free” public education, students need to pay extra. Of those households with a child in primary school, 14 percent made additional informal payments to teachers, described as necessary to have their child in class.55 Moreover, pupils do not only work on the farms of community teachers, but frequently work on government teachers’ farms as well. As described by parents of students, this is a means of “‘buying blessings’ from those who teach them” (Bledsoe, 1992, p. 183).

in the remote areas have now become ridiculously low” (cited in F. Thompson, 2010). President Bio plans to introduce an incentive scheme for remote areas, which would enable every schoolteacher with 10 years or more of experience to get free university education for three of their children.

53 For example, some payments students can opt in or out of, as with bribes for exam results. The 2018 Citizen Perceptions Survey found that more than a fifth (21 percent) of household heads reported paying for “pass” marks for their children (SABI Sierra Leone, 2018). At the same time, transactional sex for passing grades is a significant problem in the country (e.g. A. Campbell, 2015).

54 While particularly prevalent in urban areas, it is also common in rural primary schools, where “extension classes” are reportedly the norm for Grade 5 and 6 pupils (Bennell, 2004, p. 4).

55 Nationwide estimates are much higher, reflecting that this may be a more common phenomenon in urban areas. For instance, the 2018 Citizen Perceptions Survey found that 78 percent of pupils paid for extra lessons within the previous year, with 42 percent reporting paying for such lessons on a daily basis (SABI Sierra Leone, 2018).

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Appendix 8: Perceptions of chiefly contributions to ending the Ebola crisis

Figure 84: Taxpayer perceptions of chiefdom performance during the Ebola crisis

Central government

Local government

Paramount chief

Sub-chiefs

Secret societies

Community health organizations

International actors

Very effective Not very effective Not at all effective Somewhat effective

Neither effective nor ineffective

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Appendix 9a: Multifaceted concepts of tax morale

Table 21: Tax morale survey questions Variable Statement Survey options Sub-concept Right to Please tell me if you strongly agree, Strongly disagree/ Unconditional concept, collect tax agree, disagree, strongly disagree, or Disagree/ Neither measuring acceptance of neither disagree nor agree with the disagree nor agree/ state's authority following statement: Agree/ Strongly agree

The National Revenue Authority (NRA)/ central government always has the right to collect taxes from citizens.

Cheating Please tell me if you strongly agree, Strongly disagree/ Unconditional concept, agree, disagree, strongly disagree, or Disagree/ Neither measuring acceptance of neither disagree nor agree with the disagree nor agree/ state's authority/ following statement: Agree/ Strongly agree understandings of criminality Citizens shouldn't cheat on their taxes.

Duty to Please tell me if you strongly agree, Strongly disagree/ Unconditional concept, pay agree, disagree, strongly disagree, or Disagree/ Neither measuring acceptance of neither disagree nor agree with the disagree nor agree/ state's authority/ following statement: Agree/ Strongly agree understandings of citizenship obligations As a citizen of Sierra Leone, it is one's duty to pay taxes to the government.

Tax Please tell me if you strongly agree, Strongly disagree/ Conditional concept, burden agree, disagree, strongly disagree, or Disagree/ Neither capturing understandings neither disagree nor agree with the disagree nor agree/ of fairness/ hardship/ following statement: Agree/ Strongly agree poverty

The tax burden is so heavy you can't blame people for evading taxes when they can.

Not paying Please tell me whether you think that Wrong and Conditional concept, the following action is not wrong at punishable/ Wrong but capturing understandings all, wrong but understandable, or understandable/ Not of fairness/ hardship/ wrong and punishable: wrong at all poverty

Someone not paying the taxes they owe to the central government (NRA).

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Revenue Which of the following statements is Choose statement 1/ Conditional concept, elsewhere closest to your view? Choose statement 2/ capturing understandings Agree with neither of government financial Statement 1: Citizens must pay their management/ fairness of taxes to the government in order for distribution of tax burden our country to develop. Statement 2: The government can find enough resources for development from other sources without having to tax the people.

Table 22: Correlation coefficients

Right to collect Cheating Duty to Tax Not Revenue tax pay burden paying elsewhere

Right to collect tax 1.0000

Cheating 0.4343* 1.0000

0.0000

Duty to pay 0.2976* 0.3680* 1.0000

0.0000 0.0000

Tax burden -0.2905* -0.0449 -0.1259* 1.0000

0.0000 0.1946 0.0003

Not paying -0.1269* -0.0429 0.0623 0.0215 1.0000

0.0005 0.2241 0.0773 0.5434 Revenue elsewhere -0.1686* 0.0231 0.0858* -0.3216* -0.0212 1.0000

0.0000 0.5028 0.0127 0.0000 0.5490 Note * signifies p<0.05 Appendix 9b: Disaggregated IRG measures

Table 23: Convergent IRG for state-provisioned goods Type of IRG Informal payments Primary health unit/ maternity clinic Payments to nurses or doctors for service Labour contribution for construction/ maintenance Other informal payment to clinic/ practitioners Hospital Payments to nurses or doctors for service Labour contribution for construction/ maintenance Public market Labour contribution for construction/ maintenance Tip for market cleaners

Table 24: Convergent IRG for community-provisioned goods Type of IRG Informal payments Informal user fee/ contribution for maintenance fund

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Communal water source (e.g. well, Tip for caretaker/ guardian pump, tap, borehole) Contribution for construction/ repairs Labour contribution for construction/ repairs/ maintenance Crop drying floor Informal user fee/ contribution for maintenance fund Tip for guardian/ caretaker of dry floor Contribution for construction Labour for construction/ maintenance Community development project Contribution to community development or self-help project

Table 25: Divergent IRG (chiefdom goods) Type of IRG Informal payments Conflict resolution Fees for informal conflict resolution mechanisms Tip for service provider Chiefdom institutions Contributions to support chiefdom institutions (e.g. hospitality tax) Contribution for the chief (e.g. labour on his farm, agricultural goods at harvest, cash contributions, or “kola” payment) Appendix 9c: Control variables and tax morale i. Trust

The extent to which taxpayers have trust in the government and believe that it will act in their interest can affect willingness to pay taxes. I include two composite measures of citizens’ trust in the government, capturing both the central and local government levels. Capturing perceptions at different levels of government is relevant to outcomes as research in sub-Saharan Africa has shown that citizens have low levels of confidence and trust in local government (Bratton, 2012; Logan, 2009), though little is known about the implications of these low levels of confidence for broader measures of government trust. At the same time, citizens may not distinguish between local and central government actors; in practice, citizens may conflate the actions of local actors with the performance of central ones, or vice versa. It is thus of relevance to consider how the strength of outcomes is influenced by citizen perceptions of those government officials with whom they interact the most (e.g. local government representatives), as well as broader trust in the national government.

I create an index of citizen trust in the central government taking the average responses of three questions. The first captures reactions to the following scenario: “If the central government (the government in Freetown) was given SLL 500 million (USD 91,490) to complete a project in this area, do you believe they would spend all the money doing a good

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job on the project or would they cut some of the money?” The responses are measured on a 5-point scale, with the following options: “They would just take all the money”, “They would do a bad job and cut most of the money”, “They would neither do a good nor bad job, and would cut some of the money”, “They would do a good job, but cut a little money”, and “They would do a great job and spend all the money [on the project]”. The second question asks respondents, “How much trust or mistrust do you have that the central government acts in the interest of ordinary people like you?”, while the third question asks the same but of the National Revenue Authority (NRA).1 Responses are likewise measured on a 5-point scale, with the following options: “No trust at all”, “Not very much trust”, “Neither trust nor mistrust”, “Some trust”, and “A lot of trust.” A higher number represents higher trust. The mean of this composite variable is 3.20, implying relatively positive perspectives of trust in the central government.

Table 26: Correlations between variables making up the composite variable “Trust in central government” Trust that the central Trust that the central Trust that the NRA government would use government acts in the acts in the interest of revenues appropriately interest of ordinary people ordinary people Trust that the central government would use revenues appropriately 1.0000

Trust that the central government acts in the interest of ordinary people 0.2009* 1.0000 0.0000 Trust that the NRA acts in the interest of ordinary people 0.4026* 0.6406* 1.0000 0.0000 0.0000

I also create a parallel index of citizen trust in the local government taking the average responses of the same two questions, though asking about the local government rather than central government and NRA. The index likewise ranges from 1 to 5. With a mean of

1 Note that the number of observations differ when asking about different actors because of an error in data recording.

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composite variable 3.15, the measure reflects a similar average degree of trust in both the local and central governments.

Table 27: Correlations between variables making up the composite variable “Trust in local government” Trust that the local government Trust that the local government would use revenues acts in the interest of ordinary appropriately people Trust that the local government would use revenues appropriately 1.0000

Trust that the local government acts in the interest of ordinary people 0.3433* 1.0000 0.0000

There are limitations to these measures of trust. Qualitative and observational evidence make clear that capturing citizen trust in government is challenging, while various studies consider the possibility of self-censorship by respondents has possibility of potentially biasing results (Call & Cousens, 2008; see e.g. Calvo et al., 2019; García-Ponce & Pasquale, 2015; D. Robinson & Tannenberg, 2018; Tannenberg, 2017; Zimbalist, 2018). Relative to other questions, a greater proportion of respondents chose not to respond or stated that they didn’t know the answer to the questions about trust, reflecting the greater hesitancy of respondents to answer questions about the government and its possible involvement in corruption. This, in part, reflects the period of instability in Sierra Leone during the time of data collection, influenced by the post-Ebola postponement of the national election and an increase of incidents of government repression of journalists, freedom of speech, and protests (e.g. Amnesty International, 2017; Inveen, 2016; Sierra Leone Telegraph, 2016). As noted by Keen (2005a, p. 68), however, they also reflect “strongly ingrained habits of deference and silence in Sierra Leone”. Accordingly, it is likely that these measures of trust overstate trust in government. ii. Fiscal reciprocity

The extent to which taxpayers believe that the government spends tax revenues on public goods that benefit the taxpayer—sometimes referred to as a reciprocal fiscal exchange—can influence tax morale. As “a visible manifestation of the social contract” public services are

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thus likely to be “the primary site where citizens are likely to encounter, and therefore subjectively judge, the state” (McLoughlin, 2015, p. 344; see also Brinkerhoff et al., 2012; Corbridge, 2005; A. Gupta, 1995; Robins, 2012). Conventionally, it is thought that “tax payments are made in exchange for services provided by the state” (Luttmer & Singhal, 2014, p. 157). Indeed, the nature of government expenditures and the understanding that taxes are necessary to finance public goods are thought to fuel sentiment around tax payment (e.g. Alm, Jackson, et al., 1992; Andreoni et al., 1998; Cowell & Gordon, 1988; Levi, 1988; Mick Moore, 2004). Public services are “highly visible and amongst the most basic necessities for the majority of citizens in developing countries” (Prichard, 2015, p. 66), making them common targets of popular demands around taxation and responsiveness (see e.g. Fjeldstad & Semboja, 2001; Timmons, 2005). As noted by Sacks (2012a, pp. 12–13), “Quasi-voluntary compliance is most likely among those who believe that a government is trying to meet its end of the fiscal contract by delivering essential infrastructure and services”. This reflects the fiscal social contract at the heart of taxation and the relationship between state and society, a quid pro quo with trade-off gains as prerequisites of voluntary compliance (Levi, 1988, p. 56).

I focus on perceptions of the quality of public services, including a measure of citizens’ satisfaction with public goods. This composite satisfaction variable ranges from 1 to 5, with a higher value denoting greater satisfaction with the public services that the taxpayer accessed. This variable is the composite mean satisfaction with any of up to nine public goods that the respondent or anyone in their household used within the last year. The respondent was asked: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with this service/ good?” These public goods are: a communal water source (e.g. water well, tap, borehole), primary school, secondary school, primary health unit or maternity clinic, hospital, community centre, public market, drying floor, and police services. A key limitation of this measure of satisfaction is that it only captures taxpayer satisfaction of services that they used, though it does not capture whether the taxpayer lacked access to a service that they would like to use if it was available. It is likely that not having access to certain services implies that taxpayers would be more dissatisfied with overall services, in turn implying that this measure overestimates respondents’ satisfaction with services.

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iii. Accountability Taxpayers may be more willing to pay taxes if they perceive the government to be accountable, allowing input into decision making. I include a measure of perceived voice in decision making ranging from 0 to 5, with a higher value denoting greater perceptions of government accountability. Respondents were asked, “How easy or difficult it is to voice discontent about policies or actions that you are unhappy with when they are taken by the central government?” Responses are situated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “very difficult” to “very easy”. iv. Fairness Evidence suggests that perceptions of fairness within a tax system—including in particular the belief that others are paying their fair share—influences tax morale and state legitimacy. To test these assumptions, I include a measure of the perceptions of the perceived equity of the tax system ranging from 1 to 5, with a higher score reflecting greater perceptions of fairness. This variable captures responses to the question, “How fair (equitable) do you feel that the tax system is in Sierra Leone?” Responses are situated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “very unfair” to “very fair.”

Appendix 9d: Demographic control variables and tax morale

In addition to taxpayer perceptions of the government, the tax system, and public goods, there are a number of individual socioeconomic and demographic variables that may affect the norms and values that may influence tax morale. i. Gender

I include the gender of the respondent, with males coded as 0 and females coded as 1. There is some evidence that women have stronger tax morale (Alm & Torgler, 2006; Doerrenberg & Peichl, 2013; Torgler, 2006; Torgler & Murphy, 2004; Torgler & Valey, 2010), while the tax compliance literature provides evidence that men are less compliant than women (see e.g. Spicer & Becker, 1980; Tittle, 1980; Vogel, 1974). However, the evidence of this is less strong in developing countries (e.g. Daude & Melguizo, 2010; Levi & Sacks, 2009), while D’Arcy

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(2011) provides evidence from Africa that women with no or limited education are less likely to agree to the government’s right to collect tax. ii. Education

Existing evidence is ambiguous as to whether more educated individuals have stronger tax morale than less educated individuals, with positive (D’Arcy, 2011; Konrad & Qari, 2012; Torgler, 2005b; Torgler et al., 2008), negative (C. W. Chan et al., 2000; Doerrenberg & Peichl, 2013; Frey & Torgler, 2007; Groot & van den Brink, 2010; Lago & Lago-Peñas, 2010; Torgler, 2006) and mixed (e.g. E. Ahmed & Braithwaite, 2005; A. M. Ross & McGee, 2012) results being reported in different contexts. This question has also been less explored in the African context, with the exception of D’Arcy (2011), who finds a negative relationship between no education and low levels of education and the probability of a respondent strongly agreeing that the tax department has a right to collect tax. However, there is also evidence from elsewhere that a positive effect of higher education may be limited to countries “with a better quality of services, a fairer tax system and more transparent institutions” (Rodríguez-Justicia & Theilen, 2018). This is intuitive: assuming that higher levels of education allow for greater capacity to access information about public affairs, where governments are less transparent and/or more corrupt, higher education may serve to detract from a general willingness to pay taxes to the government. Accordingly, there is no clear expectation about the relationship between education and tax morale in Sierra Leone, where there is plentiful evidence of the non-transparent nature of public institutions (e.g. Transparency International, 2017).

I include a measure with levels of education increasing from 1, representing no formal education to 7 (university completed).2 Reflecting the well-documented low level of education and literacy in Sierra Leone (UNESCO, 2013; World Bank, 2007b), it is unsurprising that 60 percent of the sample never attended formal schooling, with only 29

2 The remaining ranks represent the following: 2 some primary school completed, 3 primary school completed, 4 some secondary school completed, 5 secondary school completed, 6 non-university diploma completed.

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percent completing primary school, 15 percent completing secondary school, and 1 percent completing university.3 iii. Age

I include the age of the individual, which may affect the development of norms and values that underpin tax morale. There is considerable evidence that older individuals engage in less tax evasion and have higher tax morale (Daude & Melguizo, 2010; Gaviria, 2007; Hug & Spörri, 2011; Martinez-Vazquez & Torgler, 2009; OECD, 2013; Torgler, 2004a, 2005b). Accordingly, I include a variable capturing the respondent’s age, with age ranges captured on a 1 to 7 scale, from 19 or younger (coded as 1) to 71 or older (coded as 7), with ten-year intervals in between.4 iv. Religion

Evidence suggests that religion can play an important role in tax morale (Daude & Melguizo, 2010; Grasmick et al., 1991; Stack & Kposowa, 2006; Torgler, 2004a, 2006), while qualitative evidence suggests that strength of religious beliefs may influence tax morale in Sierra Leone. Indeed, qualitative evidence from northern Sierra Leone suggests that some Muslims from the Mandingo tribe pay tax not for any earthly benefit, but as a means of ensuring their swift entry into the afterlife. As one interviewee exclaimed, “I pay tax to be a good Muslim!” Such proclamations may support social theories about peer pressure and tax morale, with being a good Muslim presumably correlated with being a good community member in Islamic communities—that is to say, to not pay tax may make you a disruptive community member and therefore a “bad” religious community member. However, interviews and focus group discussions make clear that participants explicitly relate paying tax to a religious duty,

3 As a low estimate of 33 percent of respondents were potentially of school-going age during the civil war, this likely reflects the significance of conflict-related educational disruption. This captures respondents between 20–40 (who were 5–15 at the beginning of the war).

4 There is one exception of an eleven-year interval (20–30).

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outside of the implications of present community life, providing evidence of how religion may influence the norms around tax morale.

Accordingly, I have included a measure of the respondent’s religion, with Christians coded as 0 and Muslims, making up the majority (67 percent) of respondents, coded as 1. No respondents reported having any other or no religion. There is reason to believe that, in a country where everyone reports having a religion, the degree of religiosity and the religious beliefs one holds may influence outcomes more than a binary variable is able to determine. However, measuring religiosity is challenging in this context, as 99 percent of respondents also reported having at least one member of their household attend church or mosque on a regular basis (once a month or more). v. Income

Income has an ambiguous relationship with tax morale in the literature, with negative relationships (Alm et al., 2006; Doerrenberg & Peichl, 2013; Torgler, 2006) as well as no significant relationships (Konrad & Qari, 2012; Torgler et al., 2008) reported. Asking respondents to quantify their income can be problematic in the context of developing economies (see e.g. Bratton, 2006), where individuals are often embedded in barter or commodity exchange, rather than market economies (e.g. Levi-Strauss, 1969; Malinowski, 1961; Mauss, 1990; Sahlins, 1972). Further challenges of relying on taxpayer recall for household income, consumption, or expenditure are well documented (e.g. N. Ahmed et al., 2006; Battistin et al., 2003; M. Brewer et al., 2013; Browning et al., 2003, 2017; Browning & Crossley, 2009; Crossley & Winter, 2014; Deaton, 1992; Deaton & Grosh, 2000; McWhinney & Champion, 1974). Accordingly, I use a simplified binary proxy for income, coded as 0 where the respondent resides in a traditional house, common in rural areas of Sierra Leone, or a temporary structure, common in informal settlements in urban areas of the country, and coded as 1 where the respondent resides in any other formal or “modern” structure. Enumerators were trained to identify and code such structures across different sub-national regions, finding that 28 percent of respondents reside in traditional or informal dwellings that are representative of lower incomes.

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vi. Experience of conflict

Based on qualitative evidence that an individual’s experience of conflict may influence their willingness to pay tax, I include a measure of a respondent’s experience of conflict. Qualitative evidence suggests that individuals’ willingness to pay tax to the government may be particularly influenced by the experience of losing their home during the civil war. As forcefully described by a focus group participant in Kailahun, “Why should I pay property tax to the government, when they didn’t help me rebuild my house after the war? I rebuilt my house on my own, I will not pay them tax!” This sentiment was reiterated throughout the highly conflict-affected areas of research. Accordingly, despite high incidence of many traumatic and negative experience of conflict across research participants (Figure 85), with only 0.83 percent of respondents reporting no major hardships as a result of the conflict, I include only a binary variable representing whether the respondent had their house burned down during the civil war—a fate which affected a surprisingly large 92 percent of respondents.

Figure 85: “During the civil war, did any of the following happen to you or any member of your household?”

.6 Percent .4

0 House burned down Looting/ theft Displacement Death Injury Abduction Sexual assault

Finally, there is an expectation that tax morale should increase as the salience of national identity relative to ethnic identity increases. I include a five-point measure of national identity, with greater salience of national identity increasing with the value of the measure. Respondents were asked to select the statement that best expressed their feelings, with one representing the sentiment “I feel only Sierra Leonean”, two representing “I feel more Sierra

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Leonean than [respondent’s ethnic group]”, three representing “I feel equally Sierra Leonean and [respondent’s ethnic group”, four representing “I feel more [respondent’s ethnic group] than Sierra Leonean”, and five representing “I feel only [respondent’s ethnic group]”. The identity variable has a mean of 3.55, implying relative salience of national versus ethnic or tribal identity.

Appendix 9e: Regional fixed effects

There may be fixed effects at the chiefdom level as it is plausible that chiefs influence both the extent of informal taxation and its impact on tax morale, with chiefs’ positions towards the state likely influencing subjects’ sentiments towards the state in fashion. Indeed, as described by Fjeldstad (2004, p. 446), the “attitude of local political leaders with respect to payment seems to be important, for instance by legitimising non-payment through their own behaviour”. Chiefs’ position may vary at the chiefdom level according to the random distribution of mineral wealth, different historical engagements with the state, and varied cultural beliefs. At the same time, levels of informal tax vary across chiefdoms, reflecting the facts that chiefs play an important role in enforcing informal communal taxes, even when they are not levying them, and that chiefdoms vary in strength across the case districts. As chiefdoms are nested within districts, effects may be clustered at the district level, as districts are the central channel through which the state interacts with chiefs (through the DO), the recipients of different institutional and development during the colonial period, and the key decentralized unit of development (GoRSL, 2004a). Organisations of PCs at the district level facilitate the diffusion of chiefdom opinions and strategies toward the state.

Table 28: Ordered logistic regressions for districts (col. 1) and chiefdoms (col. 2) (1) (2) VARIABLES Tax_morale Tax_morale

Convergent_state 0.391** 0.378** (0.190) (0.191) Convergent_comm_nolabour -0.488** -0.591*** (0.201) (0.217) Divergent_chief 0.227 0.333 (0.212) (0.223) Trust_central 0.0218 0.0554 (0.133) (0.137) Trust_local 0.288** 0.301** (0.127) (0.134)

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sat_new 0.250*** 0.264*** (0.0969) (0.0978) Voice 1.759*** 1.740*** (0.139) (0.141) Fairness 0.0396 0.0663 (0.0659) (0.0677) Female -0.170 -0.158 (0.184) (0.186) Religion 0.366* 0.446** (0.205) (0.220) Education 0.0207 0.0297 (0.0536) (0.0546) Income 1.699*** 1.758*** (0.224) (0.227) Conflict_experience -1.293*** -1.201*** (0.391) (0.399) Identity_salience -0.0482 -0.0444 (0.0743) (0.0745) mongo 0.0648 (0.388) sulima -0.617 (0.400) kasunko 0.00547 (0.414) gbane 0.169 (0.403) gbense 0.260 (0.409) kamara -0.624 (0.388) mandu -0.104 (0.373) bambara -0.154 (0.381) o.luawa -

/cut1 1.453** 1.778** (0.717) (0.782) /cut2 2.228*** 2.568*** (0.722) (0.787) /cut3 2.445*** 2.790*** (0.725) (0.790) /cut4 4.309*** 4.678*** (0.743) (0.809) koinadugu -0.0902 (0.243) kono -0.0456 (0.246) o.kailahun -

Observations 709 709

Standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

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Appendix 9f: Summary statistics

Table 29: Summary statistics Variable Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max

Tax_morale 788 3.635787 1.656097 1 5 ConvergentIRG_state 844 0.3886256 0.487727 0 1 ConvergentIRG_community 844 0.6919431 0.461964 0 1 DivergentIRG_chiefdom 844 0.3187204 0.4662567 0 1

Trust_central 825 3.198182 1.180205 1 5 Trust_local 812 3.152094 1.19878 1 5 Public goods satisfaction 839 3.537686 1.001114 1 5 Voice 755 1.157616 0.8480307 0 2 Fairness 819 3.051282 1.449157 1 5

Female 840 0.3988095 0.4899452 0 1 Religion 844 0.6658768 0.4719627 0 1 Education 844 2.263033 1.749973 1 7 Income 839 0.7222884 0.4481375 0 1 Conflict_experience 844 0.9182464 0.2741513 0 1 Identity_salience 844 3.550948 1.179505 1 5

koinadugu 844 0.3412322 0.4744043 0 1 kono 844 0.3341232 0.4719627 0 1 kailahun 844 0.3246445 0.4685195 0 1

mongo 844 0.1149289 0.3191252 0 1 sulima 844 0.1125592 0.3162407 0 1 kasunko 844 0.1137441 0.3176884 0 1 gbane 844 0.1149289 0.3191252 0 1 gbense 844 0.1101896 0.3133116 0 1 kamara 844 0.1090047 0.3118299 0 1 mandu 844 0.1113744 0.3147818 0 1 bambara 844 0.1066351 0.3088317 0 1 luawa 844 0.1066351 0.3088317 0 1

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Appendix 9g: Alternative measures of IRG

Table 30: Ordered logistic regressions: Measure of IRG as the number of public goods accessed that required IRG (1) (2) (3) (4) VARIABLES Tax_morale Tax_morale Tax_morale Tax_morale

Conv_state_Numbergoods 0.988*** 0.517*** 0.518*** 0.527*** (0.115) (0.141) (0.148) (0.149) Conv_comm_Numbergoods -0.311*** -0.0912 -0.140 -0.190 (0.0976) (0.118) (0.122) (0.131) Div_Numbergoods 0.627*** 0.132 0.0538 0.137 (0.129) (0.159) (0.166) (0.185) Trust_central 0.0766 0.0868 0.125 (0.122) (0.132) (0.137) Trust_local 0.261** 0.242* 0.249* (0.116) (0.124) (0.132) sat_new 0.425*** 0.249*** 0.258*** (0.0871) (0.0948) (0.0962) Voice 1.988*** 1.736*** 1.710*** (0.133) (0.139) (0.141) Fairness 0.104* 0.0359 0.0714 (0.0577) (0.0604) (0.0677) Female -0.209 -0.194 (0.183) (0.185) Religion 0.360* 0.465** (0.188) (0.220) Education 0.0231 0.0377 (0.0531) (0.0547) Income 1.653*** 1.711*** (0.223) (0.227) Conflict_experience -1.305*** -1.191*** (0.385) (0.396) Identity_salience -0.0660 -0.0649 (0.0734) (0.0742) koinadugu 0.292 (0.407) kono -0.391 (0.384) o.kailahun - mongo -0.0238 (0.409) sulima -0.685 (0.432) o.kasunko - gbane 0.645* (0.392) gbense 0.880** (0.393) o.kamara - mandu -0.112

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(0.378) bambara 0.0137 (0.379) o.luawa -

/cut1 -0.881*** 3.133*** 1.657** 2.171*** (0.126) (0.437) (0.649) (0.765) /cut2 -0.488*** 3.790*** 2.430*** 2.958*** (0.122) (0.447) (0.653) (0.771) /cut3 -0.387*** 3.968*** 2.648*** 3.180*** (0.122) (0.451) (0.655) (0.774) /cut4 0.521*** 5.661*** 4.519*** 5.073*** (0.121) (0.485) (0.677) (0.796)

Observations 788 713 709 709 Standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

Table 31: Ordered logistic regressions: Measure of IRG as the total number of payments made

(1) (2) (3) (4) VARIABLES Tax_morale Tax_morale Tax_morale Tax_morale

Convergent_state_number 0.764*** 0.364*** 0.401*** 0.415*** (0.108) (0.130) (0.135) (0.135) Convergent_comm_number 0.0227 0.101 0.0600 0.0557 (0.0579) (0.0702) (0.0723) (0.0764) Divergent_number 0.530*** 0.0532 -0.0145 0.0439 (0.128) (0.158) (0.165) (0.183) Trust_central 0.112 0.131 0.187 (0.122) (0.132) (0.136) Trust_local 0.257** 0.232* 0.219* (0.116) (0.124) (0.132) sat_new 0.427*** 0.252*** 0.259*** (0.0868) (0.0943) (0.0958) Voice 1.965*** 1.714*** 1.677*** (0.133) (0.140) (0.142) Fairness 0.104* 0.0337 0.0805 (0.0577) (0.0604) (0.0678) Female -0.210 -0.186 (0.184) (0.186) Religion 0.332* 0.445** (0.188) (0.220) Education 0.0283 0.0467 (0.0533) (0.0550) Income 1.601*** 1.663*** (0.224) (0.228) Conflict_experience -1.327*** -1.207*** (0.380) (0.390) Identity_salience -0.0796 -0.0843 (0.0733) (0.0743)

435

koinadugu 0.473 (0.408) kono -0.283 (0.382) o.kailahun - mongo -0.196 (0.407) sulima -0.738* (0.432) o.kasunko - gbane 0.451 (0.389) gbense 0.817** (0.392) o.kamara - mandu -0.169 (0.379) bambara 0.0186 (0.380) o.luawa -

/cut1 -0.637*** 3.361*** 1.798*** 2.397*** (0.109) (0.425) (0.633) (0.747) /cut2 -0.249** 4.020*** 2.570*** 3.185*** (0.106) (0.436) (0.638) (0.754) /cut3 -0.150 4.197*** 2.785*** 3.406*** (0.105) (0.440) (0.640) (0.757) /cut4 0.750*** 5.895*** 4.656*** 5.299*** (0.108) (0.477) (0.664) (0.781)

Observations 788 713 709 709 Standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

436

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