Completed Project

Traditional Leaders, Taxation, and Statebuilding in Sierra Leone

This project explores the possibilities and impacts of collaboration between traditional authorities and local governments for tax purposes in the context of Sierra Leone. Recent studies by ICTD and the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI) highlight the importance of traditional authorities for successful tax reform, particularly with respect to property taxation. However, little is known about what shapes incentives for collaboration (on the part of traditional authorities and local governments) and the effectiveness of collaborative or hybrid arrangements. Further, little is understood about the impacts of hybrid arrangements on state-building outcomes in contexts of multiple political authority.
This study uses mixed methods (including survey experiments, a comparative analysis of chiefdom outcomes, and qualitative interviews) to address the following questions:
1. Why do government officials and traditional leaders collaborate and when is this collaboration effective?
2. What are the consequences of this collaboration for long-term state-building?

Researchers

Vanessa van den Boogaard

Vanessa van den Boogaard is a 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 programme on informality and tax.

Kevin Grieco

Kevin Grieco is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Local Government Revenue Initiative. He completed his PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2024. He studies how low-capacity governments raise taxes and enforce policies. His current work focuses on fiscal capacity and traditional political institutions in Sierra Leone, collects original quantitative and qualitative data, uses field experiments to answer causal questions, and involves collaborations with local government and civil society partners.
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