Social contracts in transformation: Tax reform in Nigeria

本申请旨在开展有关尼日利亚新形式直接税和间接税的演变和影响的工作，尼日利亚是一个迄今为止严重依赖自然资源租金的非洲联邦政体，目前在其许多组成州正在经历向直接税的紧急转变。通过观察公民和国家行为体如何感知并与次国家机构的新增税举措互动，我试图批判性地审视公民和国家之间新形式的社会契约的期望，并确定对治理模式的新影响，使用政治人类学作为中心方法。在过去的40年里，尼日利亚政府在财政上严重依赖石油收入，导致公民和政府之间的责任相互脱节。现在，尼日利亚联邦共和国的36个组成州中的许多州都在寻求超越他们有限的国家石油资源份额，通过对人民和企业的经济活动直接征税来筹集更多资金。关于税收和问责制的经典社会理论认为，当政府引入直接税时，公众会对政府提出更多要求，要求政府展示“他们”的钱是怎么用的，从而形成一种税收和代表制相互促进的社会契约。当代尼日利亚是观察这一过程并检验其假设的理想场所。社会契约的概念，或者政府和公众的角色，更广泛地说，国家和政治权力的概念，受到历史经验和文化框架的强烈制约，这意味着我们不能简单地假设社会契约的规范概念。当前的税收改革是建立在过去的实践和意义的积累之上的，这意味着我们要考虑前殖民、殖民和后殖民的行政和强制实践、社区认同、政治忠诚和政府权威和合法性的观念，或者缺乏它。这项研究将建立在我之前对尼日利亚警务的研究的基础上，通过采用类似的视角，作为参与者观察者，不仅在公众与税收官员互动并成为新形式税收要求的主体时与公众一起工作，而且还与国家内部的税收官员一起工作，以确定他们的工作具有什么意义，以及他们在追求其目标的过程中采取了哪些做法。作为政治经济学的一个新兴转型，它的步伐正在加快。

This application seeks to develop work on the evolution and impacts of new forms of direct and indirect taxation in Nigeria, an African federal polity hitherto heavily reliant on natural resource rents, which is now undergoing an emergent transformation towards direct taxation in many of its constituent states. By looking at how citizens and state actors perceive and interact with new revenue-raising initiatives by sub-national bodies, I seek to critically examine expectations of new forms of social contract between citizens and state, and to identify the emergent implications for modes of governance, using political anthropology as the central methodology. The Nigerian state has been heavily fiscally reliant on oil revenues for the past four decades, producing a situation which has led to a mutual disconnect in accountability between citizens and state. Now, many of the Federal Republic of Nigeria's 36 constituent states are looking beyond their limited share of national oil resources to raise more money from direct taxes on the economic activities of people and businesses. Classical social theory on taxation and accountability suggests that as governments introduce direct taxation, publics will make more demands on government to show what is done with 'their' money, leading to a social contract in which taxation and representation are mutually productive.Contemporary Nigeria is an ideal place to see this process in action and to test its assumptions. Ideas of social contract, or of the roles of government and public, and of state and political power more broadly, are strongly conditioned by historical experiences and cultural framings which mean that we cannot simply assume a normative idea of social contract. Current tax reforms are situated atop an accumulation of past practices and meanings, which implicate our consideration of precolonial, colonial and post-colonial administrative and coercive practices, communal identities, political loyalties and ideas of governmental authority and legitimacy, or the lack of it. The research will build upon my previous research on policing in Nigeria, by adopting a similar perspective, working as participant observer not just with the public as they interact with revenue officials and become subject to new forms of taxation demands, but also working 'inside' the state with revenue officials themselves, to ascertain with what meanings they imbue their work, and what practices they evolve in pursuit of its goals, as an emergent transition in political economy gathers pace.