Armed Non State Actors, Taxation, and Coercion and Consent in the Philippines

• In Event: Lightning Round: Research Design

Abstract

While some rebel groups choose to provide services such as health care (Cammett, 2006; Reuters, 2020), the provision of justice and conflict resolution (Bamber, 2020; Khalaf, 2015), education (Hammond, 1996), and even job creation (Abuza, 2005) to civilians living under their jurisdiction, others do little other than protect civilians from violence from their own hands (Human Rights Watch, 2017, 2019; Thaler, 2012). Many, too, govern while simultaneously inflicting brutal violence against civilians (Asal et al., 2020; Heger et al., 2017; Malthaner, 2015). The literature tends to explain rebel group behavior as being driven by profit-maximizing protection-rackets or else characterizing these groups as criminally-minded bandits. However, this diverges from empirical reality – many resource-rich rebels engage in costly governance activities without actually needing to do so.(Fanusie & Entz, 2017; Losh, 2018; McDermott, 2017; Revkin, 2020).

My research studies this variation in rebel group institutions during civil war, specifically by including non-material drivers of behavior, and the issue of coercion and consent in these contexts. Further, my research intends to contribute to the limited literature on rebel group governance and taxation with the broader literature on civil war outcomes and state- and peace- building efforts post-conflict (e.g. (Heger & Jung, 2017)). The following research questions emerge as a result: (1) Why do some rebel groups choose to provide services, like security and healthcare, during conflict? Why do others inflict brutal violence on civilians?
(2) What do these wartime institutions mean for conflict outcomes, and for the fate of the rebel groups themselves?
(3) Finally, how do civilians frame their interactions with these actors, and does citizen consent or coercion impact rebel group behaviours, and civil war outcomes?

Through the lens of liminality, I aim to explain the coercive and consensual nature of ANSA taxation from the perspective of civilians that pay these taxes to armed groups. The concept of liminality is useful for both (1) thinking about taxation as quasi-voluntary, and as existing somewhere between coercion and consent and (2) for armed non-state actor taxes in particular, as they sometimes occupy a space between performed statehood and outright banditry. This project will try to explain why those living in conflict affected areas voluntarily contribute to ANSAs via taxation, and why in some cases they must be coerced into doing so. In so doing, my work will uncover the dynamics surrounding coercion and consent in ANSA taxation, and what these dynamics mean for both wartime institutions, like the provision of goods and services by ANSAs, as well as post-conflict outcomes, like peace and democracy.

The first stage of the project, which is well underway in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Armed Groups and the International Centre for Tax and Development, will require engaging a novel dataset of rebel group taxation that identifies the different types of rebel group taxes (e.g. “revolutionary tax”; “fines”; “service fees”, etc.). My research will use the CSAG/ICTD dataset on ANSA Taxation to allow for an analysis of the 2nd and 3rd research questions regarding the impact of rebel group tax regimes on conflict duration, conflict outcomes, and post-conflict peace durability.

Questions included in both survey work as well as in-depth interviews with key informants will focus on tax compliance attitudes across different actors. The survey component will hopefully include a conjoint experiment in which different attributes of armed non-state actors will be presented to determine which are viewed to be more important than others in terms of garnering support. The questions used to measure tax morale will be similar to the World Values Survey questions, but will be broadened to account for the possibility of multiple tax collectors. For example, tax compliant attitudes across numerous actors will be measured by asking, “please tell me whether you think that the following actions are not wrong, wrong but understandable, or wrong and punishable: someone not paying the taxes they owe to x” where x will include the relevant local actors known to extract revenue from citizens. Questions will also be included to measure actual compliance, both in formal and informal contexts, as well as the reasons behind compliance. Interviews will build on these key themes of (1) coercion/consent inducing attributes; (2) tax morale and (3) tax compliance behaviour more broadly.

Author

• Tanya Bandula-Irwin, University of Toronto