Taxation without Representation? Experimental Evidence from Ghana and Uganda on Citizen Action toward Taxes, Oil, and Aid

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Social, behavioural and community engagement interventions for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health: An evidence gap map

“…Two of the experimental studies were close to lab-in-the-field experiments of information campaigns, in which the information provision and survey to measure outcomes happened at the same time (Paler 2013;de la Cuesta et al 2017). People received a piece of information orally and/or through a leaflet, and their attitudes and beliefs were measured immediately after.…”

“…As Figure 4 illustrates, all the EITI studies were coded as dealing with all extractive sectors (mining, oil and gas). For the remaining nine studies, one evaluation dealt with all of these sectors (Sexton 2017), two focused on the oil sector (Pellegrini et al 2019;de la Cuesta et al 2017), three focused on both oil and gas (Edjekumhene et al 2019;Coleman et al 2019;Paler 2013), two focused on the gas sector (Birdsall et al 2018;Armand et al 2019) and one focused on the mining sector (Pande and Sudarshan 2019).…”

Agricultural innovation: an evidence gap map

“…As Figure 4 illustrates, all the EITI studies were coded as dealing with all extractive sectors (mining, oil and gas). For the remaining nine studies, one evaluation dealt with all of these sectors (Sexton 2017), two focused on the oil sector (Pellegrini et al 2019;de la Cuesta et al 2017), three focused on both oil and gas (Edjekumhene et al 2019;Coleman et al 2019;Paler 2013), two focused on the gas sector (Birdsall et al 2018;Armand et al 2019) and one focused on the mining sector (Pande and Sudarshan 2019).…”

“…Three studies use lab-in-the-field experiments to measure outcomes almost immediately after the information provision intervention (Alex et al 2019;de la Cuesta et al 2017;Paler 2013). The remaining impact evaluations examining programmes other than the EITI measured outcomes in time frames between 11 months to 2 years.…”

Bringing in China

“…Almost all of this theoretical literature, however, is based on the experience of early European states. Findings from recent empirical research on developing contexts, however, show little connection between procedural justice and voluntary compliance with taxation (see, for example, Broms, 2015; Castro & Scartascini, 2015; de la Cuesta, Milner, Nielson, & Knack, 2015; Paler, 2013). In developing contexts, where the rule of law is often weak and corruption is rampant, ordinary citizens may have little confidence that existing institutions for citizen participation will have any effect on government decision making.…”