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Protest Matters: The Effects of Protests on Economic Redistribution
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Abstract
Can citizen-led protests lead to meaningful economic redistribution and nudge governments to increase redistributive efforts of fiscal resources? We study the effects of protests on fiscal redistribution using evidence from Nigeria. We digitized twenty-six years of public finance data from 1988 to 2016 to examine the effects of protests on intergovernmental transfers. We find that protests increase transfers to protesting regions, but only in areas that are politically aligned with disbursing governments. Protesters also face increased police violence. Non-protest conflicts do not affect transfers and protests do not affect non-transfer revenue. The results show that protests can influence fiscal redistribution.
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Over three decades after market-oriented structural reforms termed “Washington Consensus” policies were first implemented, we revisit the evidence on policy adoption and the effects of these policies on socio-economic performance in sub-Saharan African countries. We focus on three key ubiquitous reform policies around privatization, fiscal discipline, and trade openness and document significant improvements in economic performance for reformers over the past two decades. Following initial declines in per capita economic growth over the 1980s and 1990s, reform adopters experienced notable increases in per capita real GDP growth in the post-2000 period. We complement aggregate analysis with four country case studies that highlight important lessons for effective reform. Notably, the ability to implement pro-poor policies alongside market-oriented reforms played a central role in successful policy performance.
An important part of every country’s development process is the building of a social contract in which citizens pay tax and, in turn, receive public goods and services. Evidence suggests that this is associated with the establishment of a norm of tax payment and a belief that non-payment is wrong. We exploit a new, nationally representative, dataset to explore which factors are associated with higher tax morale in Nigeria. We find that a perception of higher penalties and greater difficulty avoiding taxes are both associated with higher tax morale. Tax morale is also higher the more people believe that other Nigerians pay taxes, the less frequently they have to pay bribes and the greater the trust they have in tax officials. However, we also find that Nigerians who believe that tax officials discriminate in their treatment of different ethnic, religious and gender groups have higher, not lower, tax morale. And we find no relationship between service delivery and measures of tax morale based on the respondent’s own behaviour, in contrast to the positive association found in the literature using broader measures of tax morale. This suggests that building a social contract based on taxation may be harder than previously thought.
Although the literature has discussed the benefits of precolonial centralization for development in Africa, the findings and the mechanisms provided do not explain the heterogeneity in access to public services of formerly centralized regions. Using new survey data from Nigeria, a significant negative association between precolonial centralization and access to certain public services is observed. While the mechanisms driving these patterns are complex, I use historical evidence to suggest that the negative association may be partly driven by centralized regions whose leaders failed to comply with the autocratic federal regime, and whose jurisdictions may have been subsequently punished by underinvestment in these services, with impacts lasting until today. The results are robust to extensive controls and multiple empirical tests to differentiate among alternative explanations for the finding.
This paper presents a new dataset on subnational ethnolinguistic and religious diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa covering 36 countries and almost 400 first-level administrative units. We use population censuses and large-scale household surveys to compile detailed data on the ethnolinguistic composition of each region and match all reported ethnicities to Ethnologue, a comprehensive catalog of world languages. This matching allows us to standardize the notion of an ethnolinguistic group and account for relatedness between language pairs, a correlate of shared history and culture, when calculating diversity indices. Exploiting within-country variation provided by our new dataset, we find that local public goods provision, as reflected in metrics of education, health, and electricity access, is negatively related to ethnolinguistic diversity, but only if the underlying basic languages are first aggregated into larger families or if linguistic distances between groups are taken into consideration. In other words, only deep-rooted diversity, based on cleavages formed in the distant past, is strongly inversely associated with a range of regional development indicators. Furthermore, we show that subnational diversity has been remarkably persistent over the past two-three decades implying that population sorting in the short to medium run is unlikely to bias our main findings.
Background
In Nigeria, several challenges have been reported within the health sector, especially in training, funding, employment, and deployment of the health workforce. We aimed to review recent health workforce crises in the Nigerian health sector to identify key underlying causes and provide recommendations toward preventing and/or managing potential future crises in Nigeria.
Methods
We conducted a scoping literature search of PubMed to identify studies on health workforce and health governance in Nigeria. A critical analysis, with extended commentary, on recent health workforce crises (2010–2016) and the health system in Nigeria was conducted.
Results
The Nigerian health system is relatively weak, and there is yet a coordinated response across the country. A number of health workforce crises have been reported in recent times due to several months’ salaries owed, poor welfare, lack of appropriate health facilities and emerging factions among health workers. Poor administration and response across different levels of government have played contributory roles to further internal crises among health workers, with different factions engaged in protracted supremacy challenge. These crises have consequently prevented optimal healthcare delivery to the Nigerian population.
Conclusions
An encompassing stakeholders’ forum in the Nigerian health sector remain essential. The national health system needs a solid administrative policy foundation that allows coordination of priorities and partnerships in the health workforce and among various stakeholders. It is hoped that this paper may prompt relevant reforms in health workforce and governance in Nigeria toward better health service delivery in the country.
Do new communication technologies, such as social media, reduce collective action problem? This paper provides evidence that penetration of VK, the dominant Russian online social network, affected protest activity during a wave of protests in Russia in 2011. As a source of exogenous variation in network penetration, we use information on the city of origin of the students who studied together with the founder of VK, controlling for the city of origin of the students who studied at the same university several years earlier or later. We find that a 10% increase in VK penetration increased the probability of a protest by 4.6%, and the number of protesters by 19%. Additional results suggest that social media has affected protest activity by reducing the costs of coordination, rather than by spreading information critical of the government. In particular, VK penetration increased pro-governmental support and reduced the number of people who were ready to participate in protests right before the protests took place. Also, cities with higher fractionalization of network users between VK and Facebook experienced fewer protests. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that municipalities with higher VK penetration received smaller transfers from the central government after the occurrence of protests.
As the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) prepares to review the country intergovernmental fiscal relations, one begins to wonder if there is, indeed any justification for increased revenue to the states. And on account of very poor performance, justification for the existence of most local councils is a lot more difficult than finding out how much the federal government actually does for the populace. Under the current revenue sharing formula, the federal government takes 52.68 percent, the states 26.72 percent and the local governments, 20.60 percent with 13 percent derivation revenue going to the oil producing states. This paper seeks to examine the pros and cons of a new revenue formula, the desperation for increased revenue from the Governors. It goes on to show with empirical evidences the states’ desperation in their penchant for borrowing from local banks, foreign loans, sale of bond and by flexing their strong political muscles to cause to depletion of the Excess Revenue Account. The paper concludes by positing that the litany of poor socio economic amenities, like health care, educational facilities and potable water, months of unpaid salaries are common features hidden by boastful talk and deceptive propaganda should be used as indices for denying the states any additional revenue.
Purpose
– Fuel subsidy removal has become a recurring issue in Nigeria. Successive governments in the country have interfaced with this issue as they attempted to reform the economy and the petroleum downstream to reduce corruption and waste and make the sector more effective. Importantly however, fuel subsidy removals have always met opposition from the citizens and civil society organisations. The remit of this article is to bring original and current perspectives into the issue and trajectories of fuel subsidy, which has become a major problem in Nigeria's development struggles. Previous works were dated and did not capture most recent popular uprising. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
– Purely primary, empirica and normative with primary insight.
Findings
– A major mechanism that must be put in place is popular and unpoliticized anti-corruption mechanisms and networks especially to sanitize the oil sector in the minimum. Also, government must demonstrate transparency and accountability across sectors and spending including at the government house. Sufficient palliatives like public transport and dedicated social services for the really poor is important before subsidy is implemented. Until these are done, government's intention to successfully Remove Subsidy For Development (RS4D) may be a mirage!
Research limitations/implications
– This paper presents details of an international work with evolving issues.
Originality/value
– The paper argues that subsidy removal that will lead to high fuel prices appears unjustified given the wide income gap between workers in Nigeria and those in other oil-producing nations.
Taxation is one of the most important and easy sources of revenue to any government, as the government possesses inherent power to impose taxes and levies. Nigeria tax system has been weak due largely to inadequate data of the tax base and heavy reliance on oil revenue. With the volatility in oil prices and excruciating impacts of the recent global financial crisis, taxation deserves more attention now than ever before in Nigeria. One issue that is critical to domestic resource mobilization and utilization is the issue of fiscal federalism. Nigeria operates three tiers of government; Federal, State and Local Governments with separate revenue, expenditure, and assigned responsibilities each. However, all decisions including resources are controlled from the centre and the vertical revenue allocations tilt more towards the direction of federal government, contrary to the tenets of federalism the country is practicing. Both vertical and horizontal revenue in Nigeria is engulfed in controversy. The paper presents key issues, trend and challenges of taxation and fiscal federalism in Nigeria. In addition, the paper highlights a number of suggestions that would stimulate increase in tax revenue and guarantee fiscal assignment acceptable to the federal and sub-national government.
When food prices spiked in 2007–8, urban Africa experienced more instances of food riots than any other part of the world. Problems were then encountered again during the 2010–11 food price spikes. This paper explores the cases of 14 African countries where food riots occurred during these two periods by presenting a qualitative content analysis of news reports on the riots drawn from both global and local African news sources. This analysis highlights the ways in which the media portrayed the links between food price rises and food riots in Africa. Briefly, our results show that the international media generally portrayed poverty and hunger as the factors that linked the incidence of food price rises with the occurrence of riots. By contrast, the African media tended to portray food riots as being caused by a more complex set of factors, including citizen dissatisfaction and people’s ability to mobilize. Exploring both the international and local interpretations of the drivers behind the food riots is important for the understanding of the multi-scalar and multifaceted factors that shape increasing food insecurity in urban Africa.
This paper undertakes a critical analysis of the 2007 Nigerian general elections, with emphasis on the ‘garrison’ process and its implications for the consolidation of democracy. It is argued that garrisoned electoral processes represent a powerful source of democratic instability that can threaten the consolidation of democracy. The paper illustrates these processes and concludes that much, however, will depend on how ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ manage their successes and failures, respectively. The greatest threats to the consolidation of democracy in the aftermath of the garrisoned elections relate to the handling of post-election issues, especially election petitions, tribunals and court processes, by all stakeholders in the democratisation process. So far, these issues would appear largely to have been properly handled by all affected parties, raising hopes of the possibility of mitigating potential pitfalls. Sustained efforts are required both to ensure that these democratic gains endure and to avoid democratic regression that could potentially lead to military intervention.
sence of detailed and reliable information generated from surveys of taxpayers. 5 on individual compliance choices. This Unfortunately, these surveys are subject paper uses data from laboratory experi- to a number of methodological problems ments to estimate individual responses to that make their data highly suspeet.6 The tax, penalty, and audit rate changes, as well difficulties with the various data sources as to changes in government expenditures. have meant that no one single study has The empirical results confirm some (al- been able to construct and use measures though not all) theoretical predictions, and of tax, penalty, and audit variables .7 It compare qualititatively with other empir- seems unlikely that the quality of field ical work. Taxpayer reporting increases data will soon-if ever-improve. with greater audit and penalty rates; how- There is, however, another source of in- ever, these responses are not large. Com- formation on the compliance choices of in- pliance is also greater when individu@'s dividuals: data from laboratory experi- face a lower tax rate and when they receive ments. There is a growing literature that something for their taxes. uses experimental methods to examine the compliance behavior of individuals.' INCEClotfelter(1983),theempiricalHowever,thesedatahavenotbeenfully analysis of taxpayer compliance has utilized in the estimation of individual attracted increasing attention. However responses to government policies. In par- despite these efforts, our understanding' ticular, no work estimates individual re- of compliance remains surprisingly lim- sponses to a broad range of fiscal vari- ited. The fundamental difficulty in em- ables. pirical work is the absence of detailed and This paper provides such an analysis. reliable information on individual com- Data from a series of laboratory experi- pliance choices. By its very nature, people ments are collected, and these data are have an incentive to hide information on then used to estimate the individual re- their evasion behavior, and this conceal- sponses to various policy changes. Unlike ment makes empirical work quite diffi- measures of evasion in previous empirical cult. Most work in the United States has work, those that emerge from the labo- used information from the Taxpayer ratory are accurate and unambiguous Compliance Measurement Program measures of individual noncompliance; (TCMP) of the Internal Revenue Service these measures are also derived in a set- (IRS).' However, TCMP data have some ting that controls explicitly for extra- well-recognized deficiencies,' and until neous influences on individual behavior.
The main element of Nigeria's system of intergovernmental fiscal transfers - known as the "Federal Allocations" - is driven by a set of vertical and horizontal allocations formulae. The vertical sharing formula determines the share of national revenues that is passed on to state and local governments, and it typically receives the greatest political attention. However, the horizontal allocation formula is also of major importance, and determines the allocation of resources among Nigeria's 36 states. In this paper we use a unique data set on Federal Allocations to examine the distribution (or the "incidence") of transfers across the states. Our empirical analysis suggests that the current allocation formula fails to achieve its stated objectives of equalizing expenditure needs and stimulating fiscal effort. Instead, the current incidence of transfers does not channel more resources to states with greater expenditure needs, and does not stimulate fiscal effort. The formula in fact is pro-wealthy, and provides disproportionately greater transfers to less populous states.
Why so many people pay their taxes, even though fines and audit probability are low, is a central question in the tax compliance literature. Positing a homo oeconomicus having a refined motivation structure sheds light on this puzzle. This paper provides empirical evidence for the relevance of conditional cooperation, using survey data from 30 West and East European countries. We find a high correlation between perceived tax evasion and tax morale. The results remain robust after exploiting endogeneity and conducting several robustness tests. We also observe a strong positive correlation between institutional quality and tax morale. Journal of Comparative Economics35 (1) (2007) 136–159.
Historical and micro-survey evidence, as well as the standard data from international organizations, support less pessimistic conclusions on Africa's development performance than those reached by many social scientists. The changes that have benefited women over the last four decades are highlighted; a discussion of growth in agricultural production follows. However, the complexity and the brutality of processes of social and economic change in Sub-Saharan African economies are also stressed. The theoretical implications of these complexities have not been adequately analyzed by World Bank economists. The Bank's recent efforts to reassess its policies are, therefore, unlikely to achieve the results anticipated.
Rule-based intergovernmental transfers are often presented as the panacea to avoid the manipulation of transfers for political motives. We question that assertion in the case of Nigeria, where these transfers are highly dependent on natural resources and likely to be subject to elite capture. In this article, we use oil windfalls as a source of exogenous variation in the political discretion an incumbent government can exert in rule-based transfers. Exploiting within-state variation between 2007 and 2015 in Nigeria, an increase in VAT transfers induced by higher oil windfalls is found to improve the electoral fortune of an incumbent government. Our results question the promotion of rule-based transfers as a one-fits-all institutional solution in resource-abundant countries with relatively weak institutions.
Hundreds of thousands of high-school students skipped school during the 2011 student movement in Chile to protest and reform educational institutions. Using administrative data of daily school attendance I present causal evidence of complementarities in school skipping decisions within student networks in national protest days. Identification relies on partially overlapping networks and within school exposure to an inaugural college protest. A structural estimation of a coordination game with incomplete information also supports the existence of these complementarities. Importantly, I show that skipping school imposed significant educational costs on students but it also helped to shift votes towards non-traditional candidates more aligned with their demands.
Protests can engender significant institutional change. Can protests also continue to shape a nation's contemporary politics outside of more formalized channels? I argue that social movements can not only beget institutional change, but also long‐run, attitudinal change. Using the case of the U.S. civil rights movement, I develop a theory in which protests can shift attitudes and these attitudes can persist. Data from over 150,000 survey respondents provide evidence consistent with the theory. Whites from counties that experienced historical civil rights protests are more likely to identify as Democrats and support affirmative action, and less likely to harbor racial resentment against blacks. These individual‐level results are politically meaningful—counties that experienced civil rights protests are associated with greater Democratic Party vote shares even today. This study highlights how social movements can have persistent impacts on a nation's politics.
We analyze the effects of the 2011 Egyptian protests on the relative labor market conditions of women using panel data from the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS). Using unique information from the Statistical Database of the Egyptian Revolution, we geocode each “martyr”, i.e. demonstrators who died during the protests, based on the location of the political incident. We construct our measure of the intensity of the protests – the district-level number of “martyrs” – and rely on a Difference-in-Differences approach. We find that the 2011 protests have reduced intra-household differences in labor force participation by increasing women's employment and unemployment relative to men. Women's employment relative to men increased in both the private and informal sectors. Our estimates suggest how economic uncertainty such as the one associated to the recent protests may undermine the importance of cultural factors and attitudes towards female work. We link these findings to the literature showing how a relevant shock to the labor division between women and men may have long run consequences on the role of women in society.
Since the enthronement of democracy, especially the western-liberal variant, as the “only game in town”, every tribe and clime has struggled not only to be democratic but also have it sustained and consolidated in line with America (the Apostle of democracy) model. But, with the deleterious implications of ethnicity in Nigeria, which to an extent has had negative impact on our efforts at political stability and development since independence; attempt at democratic consolidation has also been a mirage. Though, with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the saddle of leadership fore upward of seven years with membership cutting across the climes and sections of the country, a new assessment of party politics and democracy seems to be an interesting thrust for scholars and political observers. This paper therefore examined the capability of the dominant party to aid consolidation of democracy in a heterogeneous and ethnically sensitive Nigeria.
Nigeria is faced with the daunting challenge to improve performance of its agriculture sector. Currently,crop production in Nigeria is predominantly rainfed; irrigation is perceived as an important means to boost agricultural productivity in the country. We estimated the potential of expanding small-scale irrigation in Nigeria, considering both biophysical and economic constraints. Under baseline conditions, the land area in Nigeria with investment potential for small-scale irrigation is estimated to be 1 million ha in dry-season and 0.65 million ha in rainy season, respectively. Further sensitivity analyses show that the estimated potentially irrigable area depends on input parameters such as irrigation cost, fertilizer application rate and farmers’ risk aversion coefficient. These results reveal not only substantial potential of investing in small-scale irrigation in Nigeria, but also financial risks in the investment and importance of linking irrigation investment decisions to agricultural policies beyond irrigation to create coordinated strategy for agricultural development
During Egypt's Arab Spring, unprecedented popular mobilization and protests brought down Hosni Mubarak's government and ushered in an era of competition between three groups: elites associated with Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP), the military, and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Street protests continued to play an important role during this power struggle. We show that these protests are associated with differential stock market returns for firms connected to the three groups. Using daily variation in the number of protesters, we document that more intense protests in Tahrir Square are associated with lower stock market valuations for firms connected to the group currently in power relative to non-connected firms, but have no impact on the relative valuations of firms connected to other powerful groups. We further show that activity on social media may have played an important role in mobilizing protesters, but had no direct effect on relative valuations. According to our preferred interpretation, these events provide evidence that, under weak institutions, popular mobilization and protests have a role in restricting the ability of connected firms to capture excess rents.
This book discusses the evolution of taxation in Nigeria within the framework of eight broad themes i.e., The Origin and Practice of Fiscal Federalism in Nigeria, The Constitutional Context for Taxation, The Three Eras of Taxation in Nigeria, The Structure and Jurisdiction of Nigerian Tax Authorities, Instruments of Tax Policy, Statutory Developments, Beyond Oil Revenue: The Case for Tax Reform and Making the Nigerian Tax System Globally Competitive.
Pork barrel spending is typically attributed to the strategic behavior of political elites hoping to be electorally rewarded by voters residing in their districts. Such behavior is expected to depend on the incentives imposed by the electoral system. We estimate the causal effect of local representation in a closed-list proportional representation system where individual candidates have no clear electoral incentive to favor their hometown. Using data from Norwegian regional governments, we still find a hometown bias. We document that municipalities with a representative on the regional council from the same party as the regional governor tend to obtain more funding for local investments. Citizens also tend to vote more often for parties whose gubernatorial candidate is from their own hometown, consistent with expectations of particularistic benefits. A possible explanation is that regional council members are often recruited from local politics and remain loyal to their roots. We find no evidence that regional council experience affects politicians’ future career prospects at the local level.
The method of instrumental variables was first used in the 1920s to estimate supply and demand elasticities, and later used to correct for measurement error in single-equation models. Recently, instrumental variables have been widely used to reduce bias from omitted variables in estimates of causal relationships such as the effect of schooling on earnings. Intuitively, instrumental variables methods use only a portion of the variability in key variables to estimate the relationships of interest; if the instruments are valid, that portion is unrelated to the omitted variables. We discuss the mechanics of instrumental variables, and the qualities that make for a good instrument, devoting particular attention to instruments that are derived from 'natural experiments.' A key feature of the natural experiments approach is the transparency and refutability of identifying assumptions. We also discuss the use of instrumental variables in randomized experiments.
The collapse of autocratic regimes is often brought about through large-scale mobilization and collective action by elements of the populace. The willingness of any given member of the public to participate in actions such as strikes and protests is contingent upon her beliefs about others’ willingness to similarly mobilize. In this article, we examine the effect of a specific form of transparency—the disclosure of economic data by the government—on citizen belief formation, and consequently on collective mobilization. We present a theoretical model in which, under autocratic rule, transparency increases the frequency of protests, and increases the extent to which protest is correlated with incumbent performance. We find empirical support for these claims. Transparency destabilizes autocracies via mass protest.
Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? We address this
question by studying the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose to prominence through coordinated rallies across
the country on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. We exploit variation in rainfall on the day of these rallies as an exogenous source
of variation in attendance. We show that good weather at this initial, coordinating event had significant consequences for
the subsequent local strength of the movement, increased public support for Tea Party positions, and led to more Republican
votes in the 2010 midterm elections. Policy making was also affected, as incumbents responded to large protests in their district
by voting more conservatively in Congress. Our estimates suggest significant multiplier effects: an additional protester increased
the number of Republican votes by a factor well above 1. Together our results show that protests can build political movements
that ultimately affect policy making and that they do so by influencing political views rather than solely through the revelation
of existing political preferences. JEL Code: D72.
This paper investigates how the institutional structure of the government affects the incentives of local governments to provide public goods both to individuals and private businesses. Using a unique data set on budgets of Russian cities, I show that the existing revenue sharing schemes between regional and local governments provide local governments with no fiscal incentive to increase their tax base and, therefore, to foster the growth of businesses. The main result is that in Russia, any change in local government's own revenues is almost entirely offset by changes in shared revenues. This situation leads to predatory governmental behavior towards private businesses. This finding is compared to the structure of federalism in China, where fiscal incentives are very strong. Some evidence is provided that local governments' fiscal incentives are an important determinant of (1) the formation of private businesses, (2) the allocation of local public finances among different uses, and (3) the efficiency of public goods provision at the local level. These findings shed some light on the puzzle of why Russia has grown more slowly and has less efficient public goods provision, compared to other countries undertaking economic reforms.
Conflicts between oil companies and village communities in the Niger Delta have lasted for several decades, but during the 1990s they escalated further and received international media coverage. Much of it focused on the anti-Shell protests by the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) which led to Shell's withdrawal from the Ogoni area in 1993. Notwithstanding the political changes following General Abacha's death in June 1998, the conflicts are continuing. While the intensity of the Ogoni protests decreased from 1995 onwards, other ethnic and political groups across the Niger Delta began to disrupt oil activities, This article critically examines the response of the Nigerian state and the oil companies to the anti-oil protests in the Delta. The investigation focuses on three generic strategies: concessions by the state and oil companies to protesters, such as the creation of development projects; the use of public relations in dealing with the Niger Delta crisis; and the use of violence by the state and the oil companies against anti-oil protesters. The analysis suggests that the state and corporate response to the Niger Delta crisis has so far been inadequate in the sense that it fails to satisfy the demands of the local people. Judging from past experience, unless there are structural changes within Nigeria's institutional framework, which would allow for a more effective use of the country's oil wealth for the benefit of the oil-producing areas, conflicts in the Niger Delta are likely to continue.
This article presents ACLED, an Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset. ACLED codes the actions of rebels, governments, and militias within unstable states, specifying the exact location and date of battle events, transfers of military control, headquarter establishment, civilian violence, and rioting. In the current version, the dataset covers 50 unstable countries from 1997 through 2010. ACLED's disaggregation of civil war and transnational violent events allow for research on local level factors and the dynamics of civil and communal conflict. Findings from subnational conflict research challenges conclusions from larger national-level studies. In a brief descriptive analysis, the authors find that, on average, conflict covers 15% of a state's territory, but almost half of a state can be directly affected by internal wars.
Various countries have adopted formulas for determining intergovernmental transfers as a strategy to limit the role of political considerations in resource allocation. In this paper, we investigate a formula-based system of allocating resources from a central government to local governments to determine whether the political characteristics of recipient areas have any bearing on their allocation. Specifically, we study the sharing of resources of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) in Ghana amongst the country's district governments over the period 1994 to 2005. We find evidence that the mechanism does not eliminate politically motivated targeting of the grants. Per capita DACF grants were higher in districts where vote margins in the previous presidential election were lower, suggesting that swing districts were targeted. We find evidence that DACF formula indicators and their weighting were chosen and amended to produce politically desired patterns of transfers.
We show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. Combining contemporary individual-level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group, we find that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today. Evidence from a variety of identification strategies suggests that the relationship is causal. Examining causal mechanisms, we show that most of the impact of the slave trade is through factors that are internal to the individual, such as cultural norms, beliefs, and values. (JEL J15, N57, Z13)
This paper explores the dynamics of state taxes and spending during the late 1980s when regional economic downturns and increased expenditure demands led to substantial state budget deficits. More restrictive state fiscal institutions, such as 'no-deficit carryover' rules and tax and expenditure limitations, are correlated with more rapid fiscal adjustment to unexpected deficits. Political factors are also important. When a single party controls the state house and the governorship, deficit adjustment is much faster than when party control is divided. In gubernatorial election years, tax increases and spending cuts are both significantly smaller than at other times. Copyright 1994 by University of Chicago Press.
The concept of scapegoating is frequently used to explain how opportunistic elites attempt to deflect blame onto vulnerable ethnic minorities, particularly during times of social turmoil. However, the notion of scapegoating is undertheorized in the confli
This paper is a selective survey of fiscal federalism. It begins with a brief review and some reflections on the traditional theory of fiscal federalism: the assignment of functions to levels of government, the welfare gains from fiscal decentralization, and the use of fiscal instruments. It then explores a series of important topics that are the subject of current research: laboratory federalism, interjurisdictional competition and environmental federalism, the political economy of fiscal federalism, market-preserving federalism, and fiscal decentralization in the developing and transitional economies.
Using a principal-agent framework, this paper analyzes a public good provision problem in which a central government tries to favor one of the regions for political reasons. We show how this favoritism leads to some distortions of the allocation scheme compared to the benevolent case. We then study the effects of decentralization, modeled here by giving an outside option to the minority region. We exhibit a trade-off between rent and equality and study the allocative and redistributive effects of a decentralized setting. Copyright 2002 by Blackwell Publishing Inc.
Following half a century of fiscal activism and federal leadership, the call now is for downsizing the federal budget and a devolution of fiscal responsibilities to states and localities. The call for "federalism," meant to secure a stronger center in James Madison's time, now seeks to decentralize. This paper outlines the main features of fiscal federalism as I see them, sketching a vision which differs in major respects from that offered by the lead paper in this symposium. First I highlight the role of distribution, which I see as a central function. Then, I focus attention on grants-in-aid and their role in the federal system. Finally I consider competition, cooperation, and coordination between jurisdictions.
We study elections in which one party (the strong party) controls a source of political unrest; e.g., this party could instigate
riots if it lost the election. We show that the strong party is more likely to win the election when there is less information
about its ability to cause unrest. This is because when the weak party is better informed, it can more reliably prevent political
unrest by implementing a “centrist” policy. When there is uncertainty over the credibility of the threat, “posturing” by the
strong party leads to platform divergence.
The role of the Nigerian Police Force in maintaining peace and security in Nigeria
- Timbee Akuul
Akuul, Timbee. 2011. "The role of the Nigerian Police Force in maintaining peace and
security in Nigeria." Journal of Social Science and Public Policy 3 (7): 16-23.