Studies in Comparative International Development

Rosenzweig, Leah R.; Wilson, Nicole E.

doi: 10.1007/s12116-022-09369-6pmid: N/A

Governments often have contentious relationships with residents of urban informal settlements. Motivated by the desire for rents and dreams of becoming the next luxury destination, city governments worldwide have forcefully evicted and demolished informal communities in this pursuit. In such instances it would seem that the state has broken the social contract with its most vulnerable citizens. How do citizens respond? We might expect them to reciprocate in kind, by withholding taxes owed to the government. Using a survey of citizens living in informal settlements across Lagos State in Nigeria, we explore what predicts citizens’ willingness to comply with government taxation. In this unlikely context for voluntary compliance, we observe that a third of respondents pay taxes and a majority are willing to pay absent enforcement. We find minimal support for standard theories of tax payment — trust in or reciprocity toward the government, or identification with the nation. Instead, we find that willingness to pay taxes is correlated with group membership, believing that community members respect taxpayers, and donating to the community. Our data suggest that local institutions and social relations are associated with citizens’ willingness to comply with tax policy.

Tiscornia, Lucía

doi: 10.1007/s12116-022-09360-1pmid: N/A

Climate-generated stress has been linked to multiple socio-political outcomes, many of which are violent. Scarcity is a key mechanism behind these violent outcomes. I argue that climate-induced scarcity creates conditions for organized criminal groups to capture the markets of legal commodities. Scarcity drives prices up, creating incentives for criminal groups to capture the production and distribution of these commodities with pernicious consequences. Using qualitative evidence for the abalone shellfish market in two South African provinces, I trace the process connecting climate-induced scarcity to price changes, to criminal market capture. In doing so, I make three contributions: I propose a new theory about the climate drivers behind the behavior of organized crime by bringing together scholarship on climate and conflict and criminal violence; I extend research on organized crime from markets of illicit goods into markets for licit ones; and I provide evidence suggestive of brokerage as a specific mechanism to illegally control a market.

Li, Zeren; Yu, Arthur Zeyang

doi: 10.1007/s12116-022-09356-xpmid: N/A

Enhancing taxation capacity is crucial to state building in developing countries. While numerous studies argue that political selection serves as a high-powered incentive mechanism for fiscal revenue collection, relevant empirical evidence is mixed. This study adopts a regression discontinuity (RD) design to estimate the magnitude of the career incentive effect by exploiting two institutional designs for political selection in China: the age threshold for promotion and regulated term limits. By analyzing the age threshold to enter the last promotion-eligible term (50–55 years old), our RD design shows that prefectural party leaders extract additional fiscal revenue to demonstrate their competence. We also show empirical support for the political competition phenomenon in which promotion tournaments become more intense when prefectural party leaders enter their last promotion-eligible term.

Csata, Zsombor; Hlatky, Roman; Liu, Amy H.

doi: 10.1007/s12116-022-09362-zpmid: N/A

The literature suggests ethnic diversity has a negative effect on development. Yet, we also know that government policies—e.g., recognizing multiple languages in minority-sizable areas—can attenuate these effects. In this paper, we ask: What are the socioeconomic implications of minority language recognition? We leverage a legal stipulation in Romania as a quasi-experiment: Minority languages are recognized as official in areas where the minority constitutes more than 20% of the population. We argue the recognition of minority languages builds social trust and facilitates efficiency in economic exchanges—mollifying the otherwise detrimental consequences of diversity. Using data at the municipality level, we find that in areas where only Romanian is recognized, ethnic diversity has a negative effect on development—a result consistent with the literature. This effect, however, is absent in areas where a minority language is recognized. The implications suggest that lowering the threshold for language recognition could promote even further development.

Perelló, Lucas; Navia, Patricio

doi: 10.1007/s12116-022-09379-4pmid: N/A

This article examines the disruptive effect of coups on party systems. Coups are junctures that can increase polarization and explain party system disruption—measured in the dynamics and determinants of inter-party competition. Until recently, scholars labeled Honduras’s party system as one of Latin America’s most institutionalized, albeit based on clientelist linkages. The 2009 coup against President Manuel Zelaya abruptly ended decades of two-party rule. We use presidential and legislative election results and the AmericasBarometer surveys to assess the coup’s impact on vote choice. The evidence shows that the coup jumpstarted an ideological alignment in a party system where clientelism had historically thrived.