Rebel Taxation as Extortion or a Technology of Governance? Telling the Difference in India’s Northeast

Abstract

Payments made to non-state armed groups are often treated as predation. But rebel organizations deploy multiple logics when constructing their taxation systems, many of which cannot be reduced to extortion. Rebels also use taxation as a “technology of governance” to resolve a number of social and political challenges related to constructing a wartime order. Drawing on extensive subnational research in four distinct areas of control by a single organization, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah, we argue that two factors, political legitimacy and military control, determine whether taxes are extortive or deployed as a technology of governance. Our controlled comparison shows that rebels frequently implement a wider variety of taxes than commonly presumed and that these different categories of taxation are shaped by the larger social and political context in which the group operates.