Building State Capacity Research Articles

Taxpayer Self-Inspections, Audits, and Optimal Tax Administration: Evidence from China

I document an important tax collection practice that is previously unknown to research on tax administration: mandatory taxpayer self-inspections. The practice emerged spontaneously across China in the 1990s and persists to this day despite having no basis in law. If taxpayers report additional liabilities after self-inspections, no penalties are imposed. Unlike tax amnesties, self-inspections are (i) backed up by the threat of government inspections with a significantly higher-than-normal audit probability, and (ii) used as a basic, routine revenue-generation technique. I show that self-inspections represent roughly 50% of the activity in China’s “tax inspection” (jicha) system and assume even greater importance in the larger “revenue management” (shuiyuan guanli) system. Evidence suggests that self-inspections are much more effective at generating revenue than costlier government inspections. I argue that self-inspections show that the presumed centrality of audits to tax administration cannot rest on audit’s effectiveness in raising revenue. Rather, audits, but not self- inspections or tax amnesties, enforce a social/legal norm of truthful reporting. Audits are important only when the state relies on the norm of truthful reporting. Further, I argue that self-inspections highlight limits to the theory of optimal tax administration: where social norms are relevant, the enforcement elasticity of government interventions may be indeterminate. Finally, I suggest that self-inspections can be usefully classified in a scheme that sort enforcement strategies in terms of whether government interventions are (i) based on directly observable information or (ii) respond to taxpayer disclosure of private information. Recent research on building state capacity in developing countries privileges ex ante interventions afforded by case (i). But in case(ii), where intervention in compliance is necessarily ex post, social norms play a critical role.

State Strategies to Address Opioid Use Disorder Among Pregnant and Postpartum Women and Infants Prenatally Exposed to Substances, Including Infants with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome.

Since 1999, the rate of opioid use disorder (OUD) has more than quadrupled, from 1.5 per 1,000 delivery hospitalizations to 6.5 (1), with similar increases in incidence of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) observed for infants (from 2.8 per 1,000 live births to 14.4) among Medicaid-insured deliveries (2). CDC's response to the opioid crisis involves strategies to prevent opioid overdoses and related harms by building state capacity and supporting providers, health systems, and payers.* Recognizing systems gaps in provision of perinatal care and services, CDC partnered with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) to launch the Opioid Use Disorder, Maternal Outcomes, and Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Initiative Learning Community (OMNI LC). OMNI LC supports systems change and capacity building in 12 states.† Qualitative data from participating states were analyzed to identify strategies, barriers, and facilitators for capacity building in state-defined focus areas. Most states focused on strategies to expand access to and coordination of quality services (10 of 12) or increase provider awareness and training (nine of 12). Fewer states focused on data, monitoring, and evaluation (four of 12); financing and coverage (three of 12); or ethical, legal, and social considerations (two of 12). By building capacity to strengthen health systems, state-identified strategies across all focus areas might improve the health trajectory of mothers, infants, and families affected by the U.S. opioid crisis.

Biometric Smartcards and payment disbursement: a replication study of building state capacity in India

ABSTRACTMost low- and middle-income countries lack the infrastructure to efficiently process and deliver payments to beneficiaries of welfare programs. As a result, many poor people are financially excluded or receive only a portion of the funds intended for them. There are few empirical studies for policy reference to identify and justify potential returns of public investment in building technology-based infrastructure. This study replicates a recent experimental study that fills this empirical gap by examining the effect of biometrically authenticated payments, ‘Smartcards,’ on India’s two largest welfare programs (a work-for-payment scheme and a national pension program). We evaluate the original study’s findings and obtain comparable outcomes – that Smartcards decrease the time lag for recipients to receive funds, reduce leakages of benefits and increase enrollment rates in the two programs. We also examine the robustness of the original study to outliers, alternative model specifications, changes in estimation methods and treatment effects heterogeneity bias.

Professionalizing bureaucracy and building state capacities: are there unequal advances in Brazilian public administration?

Abstract This article contributes to the discussion on public administration in Brazil. It examines the differences between the four functions of the state (basic functions, welfare, infrastructure and development, and emerging functions), based on the positions and careers of public servants. The data were collected in 2014 using a survey with public managers from different agencies of the Brazilian federal administration. The results point to distinctions regarding the roles played by middle managers, considering their distribution by state functions, profile, and activities. In a historical perspective, although there are basic functions that constitute the state, the creation of new careers and the recruitment of staff in the bureaucracy resulted in unequal development of the different state functions, generating imbalance and asymmetries. Also, emerging functions are generating new, more flexible, and dynamic ways for managers to work, which have renewed the Brazilian bureaucracy, albeit in a limited and heterogeneous way.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER: INHERITANCE SYSTEMS AND THE DYNAMICS OF STATE CAPACITY

AbstractThis paper examines how the degree of gender-egalitarianism embedded in inheritance rules impacts state capacity at its early stages during medieval times. We present a theoretical model in which building state capacity enables nobles to raise taxes and overcome rivals. The model addresses the use of inheritance to consolidate landholding dynasties, also accommodating interstate marriages between landed heirs. On the one hand, dynastic continuity—of utmost importance to medieval lords—directly encourages state-building. Male-biased inheritance rules historically maximize the likelihood of dynastic continuity. We weigh this effect against the indirect impact of the more frequent land-merging marriages under gender-egalitarian rules. Contrary to the literature, our results suggest that gender-egalitarian norms—offering a low probability of dynastic continuity—promote state capacity in the short run more than gender-biased norms. In the long run, results are reversed, providing a rationale for the pervasive European tradition of preference for men as heirs.

Fragmented Conflict: Handling the Current World Disorder

AbstractThe current context of increasing entropy in international politics characterizes actions and relations on many levels: internationally among leading regional states, and domestically, within states. Following a few decades of progress in conflict management after the bipolar system. Major regions of the world have seen dedicated attempts to bring conflicts under control in the current decade failing for lack of ripeness, tradeoffs, reframing, mediation and support. New structures of world order embodying high values such as the UN/World Bank sustainable peace are good to keep in mind but in the meanwhile there is a need for smaller, immediately feasible measures, procedural and structural, to build and channel interim responses until the disorder of the system can be overcome. Examples are offered here, focusing on regional conflict, coalition of the willing responses, but also on building state capacity and legitimacy.

The International Monetary Fund’s interventions in food and agriculture: An analysis of loans and conditions

The mandate and competence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not cover food and agriculture policies. While there is anecdotal evidence that the IMF engages in these policies regardless, the state-of-the-art lacks a systematic empirical foundation to identify the extent of its mission creep into these sectors. Based on a combination of machine and human coding, we present a comprehensive database on the IMF’s policy interventions in food and agriculture. Using new data on ‘conditionalities’—policies that governments must implement to access IMF credit—we assess to what extent the IMF has targeted these sectors for the period 1980 to 2014. Our analysis evaluates the agricultural content and ideological orientation of conditions according to whether they promote a developmental state, a night-watchman state, or neither. We find about 2% of all IMF conditions (1105 of 58,406) directly target food and agriculture issues. These are present in 43% of all IMF programs (332 of 781); and affect 100 countries (of the 131 countries that have had an IMF agreement). In addition, our analysis reveals that 59.2% of these conditions embody policy measures in line with night-watchman state policy preferences, 40.1% are model-neutral, and 0.7% developmental. Within the model-neutral category, 23.9% are conditions oriented towards building state capacity; 2.7% have a poverty reduction content; and 2.9% contain pro-environment policies. The IMF’s primary reason for targeting food and agriculture is to enforce fiscal discipline by removing subsidies, yet our analysis identifies that only 8% of these policies abolish subsidies. A more consistent explanation of the IMF’s interest in food and agriculture is its broader mission creep into development policy, and its deep-rooted pro-market ideology.

Global patterns of power sector reform, 1982–2013

A reliable supply of electricity is essential for economic development, and developing countries across the world have implemented reforms to improve their power sector performance. We publish a dataset of power sector reforms in 142 developing countries from 1982 to 2013 and use the data to describe patterns of variation. We find that privatization and liberalization of competition continue to lag behind other reforms, such as allowing independent power producers and establishing electricity regulators. However, this gap is only wide for relatively poor and authoritarian countries with low institutional capacity. Hybrid power markets remain a reality, but economic growth and democratization can move power sectors in emerging economies to a different direction. If developing economies continue to expand their economies, build state capacity, and move toward democratic political institutions, then we may see more private electric utilities and competition for profits in the future.

The Social Origins of Institutional Weakness and Change: Preferences, Power, and Police Reform in Latin America

AbstractDespite historic increases in crime and violence, Latin America’s police forces are characterized by long periods of institutional weakness punctuated by rare, sweeping reforms. To understand these patterns of institutional continuity and change, the author applies the concept of structural power, demonstrating how police leverage their control of coercion to constrain the policy options available to politicians. Within this constrained policy space, politicians choosing between continuity and reform assess societal preferences for police reform and patterns of political competition. Under fragmented societal preferences, irrespective of political competition, reform brings little electoral gain and risks alienating a powerful bureaucracy. Preference fragmentation thus favors the persistence of institutional weakness. When societal preferences converge and a robust political opposition threatens incumbents, politicians face an electoral counterweight to the structural power of police, making reform likely. Using evidence from periods of continuity and reform in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, the author traces both outcomes to shifts in societal preferences and political opposition. Despite the imperative to address citizens’ demands by building state capacity in security provision, these cases show that police reform is often rendered electorally disadvantageous.

State-Building in Afghanistan

This article examines post-2001 state-building in Afghanistan. In so doing, it explores how interactions among aid, politics, and state capacity shaped the characteristics of the state by looking at the existing conditions, sources of state income, the development planning process, aid coordination and alignment, and interventions in building state capacity.

‘Bumps in the Road Ahead’: How External Actors Defuse Power-Sharing Crises

ABSTRACTPower-sharing is a governance approach favoured by external actors for building state capacity and legitimacy in post-conflict societies. Yet it can be unstable and crisis-prone, compelling external actors to guide cross-community cooperation. Why and how do external actors seek to maintain power-sharing and prevent its collapse when operational difficulties emerge? We explore the distinction between ‘light touch’ and ‘heavy hand’ techniques and the motivations of external actors in defusing power-sharing crises. We find a trade-off between the short-term value of crisis management (‘putting out fires’) and the long-term objectives of sustainable local arrangements and external exit (local actors ‘going it alone’).

Building Legitimacy and State Capacity in Protracted Fragility: The Case of Afghanistan

Building Legitimacy and State Capacity in Protracted Fragility: The Case of Afghanistan

Are service‐delivery NGOs building state capacity in the Global South? Experiences from HIV/AIDS programmes in rural Uganda

AbstractService‐delivery NGOs are often attacked for abandoning the pursuit of ‘alternative development’ in favour of ‘technocratic’ forms of development. Yet some commentators argue that these organizations can have progressive impacts on political forms and processes. We investigate this debate through the lens of state building. Research into The AIDS Support Organisation's (TASO) work with the Ugandan government reveals that its state capacity building effects were both uneven and temporary. Although TASO played important roles in strengthening the bureaucratic ability of targeted hospitals to deliver HIV/AIDS services and increased the state's embeddedness in society in the targeted districts, it was less successful in expanding the infrastructural reach of the state in rural Uganda. We conclude that NGOs need longer time‐frames to achieve state building goals.

Are Service-Delivery NGOs Building State Capacity in the Global South? Experiences from HIV/Aids Programmes in Rural Uganda

Service-delivery NGOs are often attacked for abandoning the pursuit of 'alternative development' in favour of 'technocratic' and 'depoliticised' forms of development. Yet some commentators argue that these organizations, through their 'technocratic' interventions, can in fact have progressive impacts on political forms and processes. In this paper we investigate this debate through the lens of state capacity building in the global South. Primary research into the 'Mini-TASO Project', a programme by Ugandan NGO TASO to support government health workers and hospitals in improving HIV/AIDS service delivery, reveals that NGOs can have a constructive impact on four aspects of state capacity – bureaucratic capacity, embeddedness, territorial reach, and legitimacy. The paper finds that within its project areas TASO strengthened the bureaucratic ability of government hospitals to deliver HIV/AIDS services, made people living with HIV (PLHIV) visible to the state, increased the state’s embeddedness within society through co-production, and enhanced state legitimacy in the eyes of beneficiaries, due to increased accessibility to life-saving services and improved patient-provider relationships. However, the impact of the programme on the infrastructural reach of the state in rural Uganda was not sustained beyond its implementation. The overall conclusion of this paper is that service delivery by NGOs is not merely a technical activity: it can actually be an avenue for building more effective states.

Trajectories of International Engagement with State and Local Actors: Evidence from South Sudan

ABSTRACTExternal actors have been engaged in what is now South Sudan from the colonial era through to the present day, providing humanitarian and development assistance and exerting political pressure during and since the second civil war that has helped to protect people, legitimize the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), broker the peace agreements leading to independence, and undergird the new state of South Sudan. After the civil war and especially at independence, many international actors approached South Sudan as a tabula rasa, ready for peace and development; since then, engagement has shifted back to large-scale humanitarian efforts and crisis response. This paper investigates how international actors have engaged with the South Sudanese state and local actors in order to improve access to basic services and build state capacity to deliver those services and provide social protection and livelihood support, what the impacts of such engagement have been, and what aid actors can learn from this history. The paper draws on four years of fieldwork by the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC), with a focus on Jonglei State.

Governance and Public Service Delivery in India

Citizens in low income democracies depend, to a large extent, on the state for the provision of basic services either due to absence of a market for these services or poverty. This paper synthesizes the findings of the International Growth Centre (IGC) supported research on governance and public service delivery in India. Existing research suggests that the quality of public services affects economic growth via its impact on poverty alleviation, human capital formation and corruption. There is near consensus, however, that India has had limited success in reducing poverty and enhancing human capital inspite of myriad programs that provide free or heavily subsidised essential services to its citizens. The paper identifies incentives, transparency and state capacity as the key challenges to reducing the governance deficit in India. IGC supported research emphasizes building state capacity to implement and monitor public programs, rewarding performance of civil servants and providing information to stakeholders as key policies that can be implemented, and scaled up, to both improve the quality of public service delivery and spur economic growth.

Disentangling aid dynamics in statebuilding and peacebuilding: a causal framework

ABSTRACTWhile scholars and practitioners alike argue that the pursuit of sustainable peace in post-conflict developing countries requires international interventions to build state capacity, many debate the precise effects that external assistance has had on building peace in conflict-affected states. This paper seeks to clear conceptual ground by proposing a research agenda that disentangles statebuilding and peacebuilding from each other. Recent scholarship has made the case that the two endeavours are geared towards distinct sets of goals, yet few have subjected the causal mechanism underlying those processes or the relationship between them to sustained theoretical and empirical inquiry. Additionally, despite decades of mixed results from international interventions, we lack knowledge of the mechanisms by which external engagement leads to specific outcomes. To address these gaps, this paper offers a causal framework for understanding the effects of aid dynamics on state coherence and the depth of peace. It specifies the variables in that framework, with a view to establishing a new research agenda to advance our understanding of statebuilding and peacebuilding. Finally, it proposes that public service delivery in post-conflict countries offers fertile empirical ground to hypothesize about and test the relationship between state coherence and sustainable peace.

Capacidad estatal y fiscalidad: Apuntes teóricos para el debate

Recover and rethink the State is part of the ongoing debate in the social sciences in Central America. Addressing the prospect of stateness for development can enrich our reflection on social and institutional issues in the region. The central argument of this article is to bring stateness debate and make visible the importance of building State capacity for inclusiveness, watching taxation as transversal perspective on development opportunities in the region. We propose in this article to give relevance to the State as a key actor and observe it from a neo-Weberian perspective, with the aim of building bridges towards a new institutional design and reform of the State for the region. We seek to encourage the reader to observe the institutions with another look, and suggest the importance of taxation, inclusiveness and stateness as central to promote a new role for the State in the region. Our proposal is an exercise of theoretical and conceptual reflection, and propose a proactive critical towards the current role and reform of State positions.

ICT-driven projects for land governance in Kenya: disruption and e-government frameworks

Critical academic research has yet to comprehensively identify conceptual linkages and tensions between information communication technologies (ICTs) and land governance projects. In order to make a contribution to these complex research fields, this article examines three Kenyan projects to illustrate different aspects of competing theoretical frameworks for ICT-based land rights projects. The projects documented land and property in the informal settlements of Kibera and Mathare in Nairobi, and in the rural community of Lari in Kiambu County. Drawing particularly on conceptual frameworks that emphasize the ‘disruptive’ potentials of ICTs, and frameworks based on e-government models, the article argues that these projects include both disruptive aspects, which work through applying pressure on the state, and more ‘integrative’ approaches which seek to build state capacity. The projects also rely on multiple stakeholders, and cannot be easily categorized within simple narratives of crowdsourcing, for example. Instead the realities are more complex and ‘success’ is difficult to assess, and potential uses of such projects are open and multiple.

New Public Management and Managerial Reforms in Italy between 1990-2013: A Chronological History of Implementation Gaps?

Public management reform is concerned with the democratic character of government officials’ decisions and its objective is not just to make the state organization more efficient but to build state capacity. New public management constituted a movement that, inspired by private sector management principles, intended to manage public sector according to a more coherent approach to governance inspired by principles of performance orientation to improve government’s strategic and policy making capacities. Following a chronological structure, the paper provides an analysis of managerial reforms in Italy between 1990-2013 by evidencing the processes of implementation and “apparent” implementation of managerial and new public management driven reforms in Italian public sector across the period in object. Then, it will discuss alternative public management models and emerging managerial tools that have raised to overcome the shortcomings derived by the new public management approach to public sector management. Future directions for research in the field of public management will be also discussed.