Zusammenfassung:
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.