Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/331464 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 65/25
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
Can the exposure to civil war make people more motivated to pay taxes and (re)build the state? Our project examines this question in the context of Africa, a region where civil wars have frequently undermined state capacity. We move from the popular Tillian view of war-making as state-making to study how civil wars shape states' capacity to collect and mobilize revenues (i.e. tax compliance and tax morale) in Sub-Saharan Africa. We combine subnational data on civil wars in Africa with Afrobarometer surveys to assess whether civil wars make citizens (1) more compliant with taxation and (2) more likely to believe paying taxes is important. We find that citizens exposed to intense civil war report higher levels of tax morale and tax compliance compared to those exposed to more moderate warfare. We also find that this effect is more pronounced in areas that had higher levels of institutional trust, suggesting that the perceived legitimacy of the government is a potential scope condition. We do not find that perceived ethnic discrimination by the state mitigates the positive effect of intense civil wars.
Subjects: 
civil war
state capacity
tax compliance
tax morale
ethnic discrimination
Sub-Saharan Africa
JEL: 
H26
H56
H11
C83
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9267-624-7
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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