Current Project

Aiding the War & Neglecting Citizens: International Donor Policy

South Sudan’s revenue complex underwent a series of reforms in the build-up to its 2011 independence and in the years that followed. Examples include the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) ‘Strengthening Core Economic Governance Institutions II (CORE II) and World Bank and UN Development Programme (UNDP) technical assistance. These initiatives were costly for donor countries and organisations and frequently operated under the erroneous assumption that the region that is now South Sudan was a ‘tabula rasa’ or a blank slate upon which to project ‘best practice’ fiscal reforms and failed to work with the grain of the region’s pre-existing practices. These include heretofore unacknowledged legacies of colonial, rebel, and pre-separation tax practices, which Dr Matthew Benson’s wider research examines. Given that South Sudan’s revenue system is also the outcome of contemporary best practice for development actors in weak and fragile states, this project’s findings will be relevant to all conflict-affected countries. With this pressing global salience in mind, the project will draw crucial lessons from the South Sudanese example for how donors could incorporate research findings into future best practice.

Researchers

Matthew Benson

Dr Matthew Sterling Benson is a social and economic historian of Africa in the Conflict and Civicness Research Group (CCRG) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where he is Research Fellow and Sudans Research Director, leading research on both Sudan and South Sudan and affiliate staff in LSE’s Department of Economic History. Matthew’s research interests include the changing nature of war, state and armed group finance, and state formation in the 21st century. Matthew is currently writing a book manuscript examining the history of revenue and different forms of often coercive rule in both Sudans. He holds a PhD in History and an MA in Social and Economic History from Durham University, an MA in Governance and Development from the IDS at Sussex, and a BA in International Relations from Tufts University.
Research theme:
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