The Origins of Social Contracts: Attitudes toward Taxation in Urban Nigeria

Cristina Bodea and Adrienne LeBas

No 2013-02, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: How do social contracts come into being? This paper argues that norm adoption plays an important and neglected role in this process. Using novel data from urban Nigeria, we examine why individuals adopt norms favoring a citizen obligation to pay tax where state enforcement is weak. We find that public goods delivery by the state produces the willingness to pay tax, but community characteristics also have a strong and independent effect on both social contract norms and actual tax payment. Individuals are less likely to adopt pro-tax norms if they have access to community provision of security and other services. In conflict-prone communities, where “self-help” provision of club goods is less effective, individuals are more likely to adopt social contract norms. Finally, we show that social contract norms substantially boost tax payment. This paper has broad implications for literatures on state formation, taxation, clientelism, and public goods provision.

Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-cdm, nep-evo, nep-iue, nep-pbe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8d11dc6a-d8c2-4a5a-8a8b-50f907e5c8a0 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csa:wpaper:2013-02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Julia Coffey ().