Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T16:34:34.554Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Norms, Power, and the Socially Embedded Realities of Market Taxation in Northern Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2017

Wilson Prichard  and
Vanessa van den Boogaard
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article provides a ground-level view of market taxation in two local government areas in Ghana’s relatively disadvantaged northern region. It describes a system shaped by informal practices that are grounded in social relationships and collective norms, which sometimes foster greater equity and in other cases serve to reinforce existing inequalities. The evidence suggests the need for a more nuanced understanding of the highly informal and socially embedded realities of local tax collection, and the possibility that improved outcomes could be achieved by “working with the grain” of these inescapable local realities, while seeking to minimize potential costs of informality.

Résumé:

Cet article donne une vue d’ensemble sur la fiscalité du marché du Ghana dans deux gouvernements locaux relativement désavantagés de la région Nord. Il décrit un système marqué d’une par des pratiques informelles ancrées dans les relations sociales et de l’autre dans des normes collectives, qui parfois favorisent une plus grande équité et dans d’autre cas servent à renforcer les inégalités existantes. La preuve suggère la nécessité d’une compréhension plus nuancée d’une réalité très informelle et socialement intégrée du recouvrement des impôts locaux et la possibilité que des résultats améliorés puissent être obtenus en “travaillant avec le grain” de ces réalités locales incontournables, tout en cherchant à minimiser les coûts potentiels d’ informalité.

Keywords

Local government taxationmarkettradersWest Africa
Type
ARTICLES
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , April 2017 , pp. 171 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agyemang, Yaw S. 2011. “Crisis of Legitimacy: Secularization and the Authority of Asante Traditional Rulers in Ghana’s Decentralization.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 10: 300–26.Google Scholar
Ali, Merima, Fjeldstad, Odd-Helge, and Sjursen, Ingrid. 2013. “To Pay or Not to Pay? Citizens’ Attitudes Towards Taxation in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa.” World Development 64: 828–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atuguba, Raymond. 2006. The Tax Culture of Ghana: A Research Report Prepared for the Revenue Mobilisation Support. Accra: GTZ Revenue Mobilisation Support Ghana.Google Scholar
Bahl, Roy. 1999. “Fiscal Decentralization as Development Policy.” Public Budgeting and Finance 19 (2): 59–75.Google Scholar
Bird, Richard. 2011. “Subnational Taxation in Developing Countries: A Review of the Literature.” Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy 2 (1): 1–23.Google Scholar
Bird, Richard, and Zolt, Eric. 2005. “The Limited Role of the Personal Income Tax in Developing Countries.” Journal of Asian Economics 16: 928–46.Google Scholar
Blundo, Giorgio. 2006. “Dealing with the Local State: The Informal Privatization of Street-Level Bureaucracies in Senegal.” Development and Change 37 (4): 799–819.Google Scholar
Bodea, Cristina, and LeBas, Adrienne. 2016. “The Origins of Voluntary Compliance: Attitudes toward Taxation in Urban Nigeria.” British Journal of Political Science 46 (1): 215–38.Google Scholar
Booth, David. 2011. “Working with the Grain? The Africa Power and Politics Programme.” IDS Bulletin 42 (2): 1–10.Google Scholar
Carroll, Erica. 2011. “Taxing Ghana’s Informal Sector: The Experience of Women.” Christian Aid Occasional Paper. Accra: Christian Aid Ghana.Google Scholar
Clark, Gracia. 1991. “Colleagues and Customers in Unstable Market Conditions: Kumasi, Ghana.” Ethnology 30 (1): 31–48.Google Scholar
Clark, Gracia. 2010a. “Gender Fictions and Gender Tensions Involving ‘Traditional’ Asante Market Women.” African Studies Quarterly 11 (2 & 3): 43–66.Google Scholar
Clark, Gracia. 2010b. Onions Are My Husband: Survival and Accumulation by West African Market Women. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cleaver, Frances. 2001. “Institutional Bricolage, Conflict and Cooperation in Usangu, Tanzania.” IDS Bulletin 32 (4): 26–35.Google Scholar
Cleaver, Frances. 2012. Development through Bricolage: Rethinking Institutions for Natural Resource Management. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cleaver, Frances, et al. 2013. “Institutions, Security, and Pastoralism: Exploring the Limits of Hybridity.” African Studies Review 56 (3): 165–89.Google Scholar
Devarajan, Shantayanan, Khemani, Stuti, and Shah, Shekhar. 2009. “The Politics of Partial Decentralization.” In Does Decentralization Enhance Service Delivery and Poverty Reduction?, edited by Ahmad, E. and Brosio, G., 102–24. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Fjeldstad, Odd-Helge 2004. “What’s Trust Got to Do with It? Non-Payment of Service Charges in Local Authorities in South Africa.” Journal of Modern African Studies 42 (4): 539–62.Google Scholar
Fjeldstad, Odd-Helge, and Semboja, Joseph. 2001. “Why People Pay Taxes: The Case of the Development Levy in Tanzania.” World Development 29 (12): 2059–74.Google Scholar
Government of Ghana (GoG). 1992. Fourth Republican Constitution. Accra: GOG.Google Scholar
Guha-Khasnobis, Basudeb, Kanbur, Ravi and Ostrom, Elinor, eds. 2006. Linking the Formal and Informal Economy: Concepts and Policies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hart, Keith. 2005. “Formal Bureaucracy and the Emergent Forms of the Informal Economy.” UNU-WIDER Research Paper No 2005/11. Helsinki: UNU-WIDER.Google Scholar
Jibao, Samuel, and Prichard, Wilson. 2014. “Tax Perceptions in the Periphery: The Local Foundations of Tax Compliance in District Councils in Sierra Leone.” Brighton, U.K.: International Centre for Tax and Development.Google Scholar
Jibao, Samuel, and Prichard, Wilson. 2015. “The Political Economy of Property Tax Reform in Africa: Elites, Political Competition and Tax Bargaining in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone.” African Affairs 114: 404–31.Google Scholar
Jönsson, Julia. 2009. “The Overwhelming Minority: Inter-Ethnic Conflict in Ghana’s Northern Region.” Journal of International Development 21: 507–19.Google Scholar
Joshi, Anuradha, and Ayee, Joseph. 2008. “Associational Taxation: A Pathway into the Informal Sector.” In Taxation and State Building in Developing Countries: Capacity and Consent, edited by Bräutigam, D., Fjeldstad, O.-H., and Moore, M., 183–211. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Joshi, Anuradha, and Moore, Mick. 2004. “Institutionalized Co-production: Unorthodox Public Service Delivery in Challenging Environments.” Journal of Development Studies 40 (4): 31–49.Google Scholar
Joshi, Anuradha, Prichard, Wilson, and Heady, Cristopher. 2014. “Taxing the Informal Economy: The Current State of Knowledge and Agendas for Future Research.” Journal of Development Studies 50 (10): 1325–47.Google Scholar
Kelsall, Tim. 2011. “Going with the Grain in African Development?” Development Policy Review 29 (51): 5223–51.Google Scholar
Ladouceur, Paul A. 1979. Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Lawra District Assembly (LDA). 2009. Fee Fixing Resolution (1st Jan.—31st Dec. 2009). Lawra: LDA.Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret. 1988. Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Meagher, Kate. 1990. “The Hidden Economy: Informal and Parallel Trade in Northwestern Uganda.” Review of African Political Economy 47: 64–83.Google Scholar
Meagher, Kate. 2010. Identity Economics: Social Networks and the Informal Economy in Nigeria. Suffolk, U.K.: James Currey.Google Scholar
Meagher, Kate. 2013. “Informality, Religious Conflict, and Governance in Northern Nigeria: Economic Inclusion in Divided Societies.” African Studies Review 56 (3): 209–34.Google Scholar
Meagher, Kate, and Lindell, Ilda. 2013. “Introduction—Engaging with African Informal Economies: Social Inclusion or Adverse Incorporation?” African Studies Review 56 (3): 57–76.Google Scholar
Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre. 1999. “A Moral Economy of Corruption in Africa?” The Journal of Modern African Studies 37 (1): 25–52.Google Scholar
Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre. 2008. “Researching the Practical Norms of Real Governance in Africa.” Africa Power and Politics Research Programme Discussion Paper No. 5. London: Overseas Development Institute.Google Scholar
Owusu, George, and Lund, Ragnhild. 2004. “Markets and Women’s Trade: Exploring Their Role in District Development in Ghana.” Norwegian Journal of Geography 58 (3): 113–24.Google Scholar
Prichard, Wilson. 2010. “Taxation and State Building: Towards a Governance Focused Tax Reform Agenda.” Institute of Development Studies Working Paper 341. Brighton, U.K.: University of Sussex.Google Scholar
Prichard, Wilson. 2015. Taxation, Responsiveness and Accountability in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Dynamics of Tax Bargaining. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rathbone, Richard. 1999. Nkrumah and the Chiefs: The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951–1960. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Roitman, Janet. 1990. “The Politics of the Informal Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of Modern African Studies 28 (4): 671–96.Google Scholar
Schomerus, Mareike, and Titeca, Kristof. 2012. “Deals and Dealings: Inconclusive Peace and Treacherous Trade Along the South Sudan–Uganda Border.” Africa Spectrum 47 (2–3): 5–31.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Smoke, Paul. 2013. “Why Theory and Practice Are Different: The Gap between Principles and Reality in Subnational Revenue Systems.” International Center for Public Policy Working Paper 13. Atlanta, Ga.: Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.Google Scholar
Smoke, Paul, and Lewis, Blane D.. 1996. “Fiscal Decentralization in Indonesia: A New Approach to an Old Idea.” World Development 24 (8): 1281–99.Google Scholar
Tegera, Aloys, and Johnson, Dominic. 2007. “Rules for Sale: Formal and Informal Cross-Border Trade in DRC.” Pole Institute Report. Goma, DRC: Pole Institute.Google Scholar
Thompson, Edward P. 1971. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd during the Eighteenth Century.” Past & Present 50: 76–117.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 2005. “Regimes and Contention.” In The Handbook of Political Sociology: States, Civil Societies, and Globalization, edited by Janoski, T., 423–40. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Titeca, Kristof, and Herdt, Tom De. 2010. “Regulation, Cross-Border Trade and Practical Norms in West-Nile, North-Western Uganda.” Africa 80 (4): 573–94.Google Scholar
Titeca, Kristof, and Flynn, Rachel. 2014. “‘Hybrid Governance,’ Legitimacy, and (Il)legality in the Informal Cross-Border Trade in Panyimur, Northwest Uganda.” African Studies Review 57 (1): 71–91.Google Scholar
Titeca, Kristof, and Kimanuka, Célestin. 2012. Walking in the Dark: Informal Cross-Border Trade in the Great Lakes Region. London: International Alert.Google Scholar
World Bank. 2004. Bridging the North South Divide in Ghana. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.Google Scholar