dc.contributor.author | Ahrenshop, Mats | |
dc.coverage.spatial | Ghana | en |
dc.date.accessioned | 2024-06-26T11:53:28Z | |
dc.date.available | 2024-06-26T11:53:28Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2024-06 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Ahrenshop, M. (2024) 'Tax Earmarking and Political Participation: Theory and Evidence from Ghana', ICTD Working Paper 197, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, DOI: 10.19088/ICTD.2024.051 | en |
dc.identifier.uri | https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/18406 | |
dc.description.abstract | Earmarking taxes for specific expenditure categories is thought to be a crucial factor in the development of the early modern European fiscal states and remains a widespread yet fiscally rigid and often inefficient policy tool. I explore a decidedly political logic to the puzzling prevalence of tax earmarking. In this paper, I test an initial micro-behavioural condition for this political logic of
earmarking: that general fund taxation may produce more political mobilisation than earmarking would, threatening the political survival of governments in lowcapacity states. I outline two interrelated mechanisms for this expectation: citizens’ discontent with the absence of government-provided information aboutthe revenue uses of taxpayers’ money and the anticipation of increased
government discretion over spending policy. I design an online survey experiment with 874 citizens in Ghana to test these implications. The experiment randomly varies different proposals of how to use increased tax revenue from a recent government fiscal capacity programme and measures citizens’ intentions to engage politically. The results indicate that earmarking does not produce greater bottom-up accountability pressures than general fund taxation. | en |
dc.language.iso | en | en |
dc.publisher | Institute of Development Studies | en |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | ICTD Working Paper;197 | |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | en |
dc.subject | Finance | en |
dc.subject | Politics and Power | en |
dc.title | Tax Earmarking and Political Participation: Theory and Evidence from Ghana | en |
dc.type | Series paper (non-IDS) | en |
dc.rights.holder | © Institute of Development Studies 2024 | en |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.19088/ICTD.2024.051 | |
rioxxterms.funder | Default funder | en |
rioxxterms.identifier.project | International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) | en |
rioxxterms.version | VoR | en |
rioxxterms.versionofrecord | 10.19088/ICTD.2024.051 | en |
rioxxterms.funder.project | 3b220a8a-8703-4b31-ae24-8e7b0c5f7583 | en |