State Capacity and Fiscal Legibility: Evidence from Napoleonic Cadaster

• In Event: State Capacity Beyond Taxation

Abstract

When do increases in state capacity lead to greater acceptance of the state's authority by citizens? States often use the promise of equal treatment and fairness as a justification for collecting systematic information on citizens. However, citizens may worry about increases in coercive and extractive capacity, particularly when their income becomes more legible to the state for fiscal purposes. I investigate this question by analyzing a case of gradual expansion of fiscal capacity at the sub-national level: the Napoleonic cadaster (1807-1851). This major land surveying project was initiated with the official aim of making direct taxation fairer, in accordance with the ideals of the 1789 Revolution. Every individual land parcel on the French territory was to be mapped and valued by state-appointed experts. I build a dataset of the timing of the first cadaster in more than 40,000 communes and combine it with information of compliance with taxation and repressive authorities. I find that tax compliance improved significantly following the cadaster, especially in areas with a high tax burden. I also find an improvement in compliance with repressive authorities in the beginnings of the reform, indicating positive spillovers on non-fiscal dimensions of state-society relations. Finally, it appears that state-led simplification was in some cases counterproductive in comparison with local knowledge as compliance did not improve in areas with high agricultural diversity.

Author

• Anne Degrave, New York University