The Role of Information in State-Building

One of the most basic questions regarding any state is 'can it act?' Does it have the capacity, that is, to uphold the rule of law and to deliver security and public services? 

For a state has the capacity to act it needs information on its citizens. You can’t tax someone or assess their eligibility for services if you don’t know who or where they are.

But states may be unable to require its citizens to provide information – it may have to rely on their wanting to do so. And that has potentially profound implications for how equitable state activities are – and therefore ultimately how the state develops and builds its legitimacy. 

We are joined this week by Dr Jeremy Bowles, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, expert in the political economy of development and the interaction of state-building processes with distributive politics.

Mentioned in this episode;

• Jeremy Bowles (2024) Identifying the Rich: Registration, Taxation, and Access to the State in Tanzania. American Political Science Review