Taxing Times: Taxation, Divided Societies and the Informal Economy in Northern Nigeria
挑战了向非正规经济征税能增强民众政治声音和重建社会契约的观点，基于尼日利亚北部的田野调查，发现征税反而可能加剧社会分裂。
This paper challenges the notion that taxing the informal economy provides a mechanism for increasing popular political voice and rebuilding the social contract. It contends that current arguments for taxing the informal economy suffer from a Eurocentric understanding of taxation and state formation, and a fiscally essentialist and undifferentiated notion of the informal economy. Drawing on fieldwork in northern Nigeria, this paper shows that history, gender, wealth and ethno-religious identity influence how taxing the informal economy shapes governance outcomes. Evidence from Nigeria suggests an inverse relationship between informal economy taxation and political voice, posing the risk that increased taxation will exacerbate social divisions rather than rebuild the social contract.