We invite you to our in-person tax seminar with Anna Persson, senior lecturer at University of Gothenberg. The seminar will be held in meeting room Just Faaland at CMI. Everyone is welcome and no registration nesessary.

Sub-Saharan African states are typically described as states governed by an ethnic-based, patronage type of logic, within which the president’s own ethnic/regional group is disproportionately favored. However, the empirical literature upon which this insight is based focuses almost exclusively on the output side of distributive politics. Based on the argument that distributive politics takes place also on the input side, this study reassesses the depiction of states in sub-Saharan Africa as being governed by ethnic-based patronage. Using survey data from 20 countries on payments of taxes, fees and bribes, we demonstrate that, whereas the description of sub-Saharan African states as being governed by ethnic-based patronage holds in general terms, the members of the president’s own ethnic/regional group are, if anything, disfavored in terms of the distribution of payments. Moreover, patterns of patronage vary significantly across different countries. Drawing on fiscal sociology, the article concludes with a discussion of whether these findings indeed call for a new understanding of what constitutes patronage politics altogether. It moreover calls for the more nuanced study of sub-Saharan African states.