Weak Street-level Enforcement of Tax Laws: The Role of Tax Collectors’ Persistent but Broken Public Service Expectations
基于埃及两年的田野调查，研究发现税务人员对白领中产阶级工作的历史期望和权利感持续存在但未实现，导致他们不愿执行关键征税任务，并阻碍行政能力建设。
What drives ineffective tax collection in developing countries? This widespread phenomenon has been explained by weak ‘state capacity’, rent-seeking bureaucrats, or the influence of political elites. More recently, scholars have also emphasised the role of ‘moral economies’, shared notions of what constitutes fair and legitimate taxation that prevent tax collectors from strictly enforcing the law. However, the literature has thus far missed the ways in which shared notions of what constitutes fair work and employment in the tax administration affect collection. Drawing on two years of fieldwork in Egypt, including ethnographic research among street-level tax collectors, the article finds that the simultaneous persistence and disappointment of historical expectations and feelings of entitlement to a white-collar, middle-class job renders tax collectors unwilling to carry out vital enforcement tasks, and further impedes the building of administrative capacity. Furthermore, the administrative leadership’s buying-into such narratives hollows out its capability to incentivise tax collectors to change their ways. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the micro-foundations of governance and state capacity, underscoring the role of normative-ideational factors not only in shaping the willingness of taxpayers to pay taxes, but also of tax collectors to collect them.