Completed Project

The Logic of Armed Group Taxation

In partnership with the Centre for the Study of Armed Groups (CSAG) at ODI, ICTD explores in this project the logic of armed group taxation. It seeks to capture broad themes of how and why armed groups collect taxes, which may vary according to underlying variables, such as territorial control, capacity, ideology, political goal, and their relationship with taxed population.
By exploring heterogenous outcomes and tracing causal pathways, the research team aims to contribute nuance to the discussion of armed group taxation, showing the ways in which armed groups may have multiple and overlapping motives and interconnected underlying constraints to tax.
The main source of data for the project is the existing literature on armed groups and revenue extraction. It will primarily involve a wide scoping of cases of armed groups in the contemporary period, with case studies on the ways in which identified armed groups engage in taxation and revenue extraction.

Researchers

Max Gallien

Max Gallien is Research Director of ICTD. His research specialises in the politics of informal and illegal economies, the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa and development politics. He completed his PhD at the London School of Economics. Max co-leads the informality and taxation programme with Vanessa, as well as the ICTD’s capacity building programme.

Vanessa van den Boogaard

Vanessa van den Boogaard is a Senior Research Fellow at ICTD and a Senior Research Associate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She completed her PhD thesis on informal revenue generation and statebuilding in Sierra Leone, and has ongoing research on the topic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, and Somalia. Vanessa co-leads ICTD's research programmes on informality and gender and tax.
Research theme: ,
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