Armed groups tax. Journalistic accounts often include a tone of surprise about this fact, while policy reports tend to strike a tone of alarm, highlighting the link between armed group taxation and ongoing conflict. Policymakers often focus on targeting the mechanisms of armed group taxation as part of their conflict strategy, often described as ‘following the money’.
We argue that what is instead needed is a deeper understanding of the nuanced realities of armed group taxation, the motivations behind it, and the implications it has for an armed group’s relationship with civilian and diaspora populations, as well as the broader international community. This paper builds on two distinct literatures, on armed groups and on taxation, to provide the first systematic exploration into the motivation of armed group taxation.
Based on a review of the diverse practices of how armed groups tax, we highlight that a full account of their motivation needs to go beyond revenue collection, and engage with key themes around legitimacy, population control, institution building, and the performance of public authority. We problematise common approaches towards armed group taxation and state-building, and outline key questions of a new research agenda.
Tanya Bandula-Irwin is an incoming SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and a postdoctoral researcher with ICTD, specialising in the political economy of conflict, governance, and taxation. Her research examines how armed groups develop taxation and financing systems, their relationships with civilians, and the broader implications for state-building and governance. She has conducted field research in the Philippines and Somalia, exploring citizen-led financing for development and how local communities mobilize resources to fill governance gaps. Her PhD dissertation analysed the taxation practices of armed groups in the Philippines. Her work has been supported by the International Development Research Centre, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Department of National Defence and has been published in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Journal of Eastern African Studies, PS: Political Science & Politics, and UBC Press.
Max Gallien is a Research Fellow at the 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.
Dr Ashley Jackson is co-Director for the Centre for the Study of Armed Groups, and author of ‘Negotiating Survival: Civilian-Insurgent Relations in Afghanistan’ (Hurst & Co., 2021).
Vanessa van den Boogaard is a Research Fellow at the 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 and Somalia. Vanessa leads the ICTD’s new programme on civil society engagement in tax reform and co-leads the research programme on informal taxation.
Florian Weigand is the Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Armed Groups at ODI and
a Research Associate at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His work
focuses on armed groups, illicit economies and international interventions and explores the
politics and societal dynamics of conflict zones, borderlands, and other complex
environments. He has conducted extensive research in South Asia and Southeast Asia and
is the author of Waiting for Dignity: Legitimacy and Authority in Afghanistan (Columbia
University Press, 2022) and Conflict and Transnational Crime: Borders, Bullets & Business in
Southeast Asia (Edward Elgar, 2020) and the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of
Smuggling (Routledge, 2021).
