While significant theoretical developments have been made in the research on common pool resources, heterogeneity remains a contested issue. Focusing on economic inequality, one particular aspect of heterogeneity, we examine its impact in facilitating cooperation in two rural forest communities in Sierra Leone. The findings reinforce prevalent ambiguities in the literature: in the context of economic inequality cooperation was thriving, while in the setting of uniform poverty cooperation was largely absent. Though further research is imperative, the key recommendation is that policies directed towards rural communities should take into account their ability to craft robust self-governing systems.
The ability to access the state as a taxpaying citizen is important for the purposes of building trust and reciprocity, voicing grievances and disseminating knowledge, and strengthening tax compliance and transparency. Based on original empirical data, this paper elaborates a theoretical argument of how state-citizen encounters in the case of taxation are conditioned by five interacting factors. Drawing on interviews with tax officials and taxpayers in Windhoek, Namibia, this paper shows that these five factors are weakly present and negatively reinforce each other, thereby providing insights into the Namibian tax system and everyday state-citizen tax encounters in developing countries.
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