Collecting taxes in Somaliland

In a new DIIS Working Paper, “On taxes and suspicion: ambivalences of rule and the politically possible in contemporary Hargeisa, Somaliland”, J. Antonio Campos from the University of Chicago explores the world of tax-collectors and fiscal officers in Hargeisa, the capital of the internationally unrecognized Republic of Somaliland. Based on extensive fieldwork, Campos interprets the interaction between bureaucrats and citizens in terms of “suspicion”, an elaborate feeling of ambivalence among tax officials. Interestingly, therefore, tax collection in Somaliland can be understood as operating without the recourse to state force. Tax officials come out rather as agents of a common collective project of the new state, thus representing the hope of a political future without coercion. The WP is part of a new series from the GOVSEA research program (Governing Economic Hubs and Flows in Somali East Africa).

Editors: Tobias Hagmann & Finn Stepputat