Taxation, Stateness and Armed Groups: Public Authority and Resource Extraction in Eastern Congo

Abstract

This contribution analyses the role of taxation in the constitution of authority in the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a multitude of authorities alternately compete and collude over the right to extract resources. Taxation ranges from simple plunder, to protection

Public Authority and Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict: Virunga National Park as a ‘State within a State’ in Eastern Congo

“…To have public authority, there should be a mutual recognition between those ‘who rule’, and those ‘who are ruled’ in the public sphere. Public authority is based on unequal power relations, where certain forms of citizenship, order and duty are normalized and, if necessary, can be secured by force (Hoffmann et al., : 1436). To establish control and gain authority, actors often use state symbols and arguments of state sovereignty to exercise public authority.…”

“…As Hoffmann et al. (: 1436) argue, ‘In spite of the current fragmentation of authority in eastern Congo, the political order remains deeply anchored in a “language of stateness”’.…”

“…In their view, effective territorialization of these claims includes: the mapping of boundaries, establishing and enforcing new rights, and determining access to resources (ibid.). Yet structures of public authority go beyond territorialization and are constituted through various practices, including the production of knowledge about people living in a certain area, the setting up of bureaucratic procedures and the accumulation of resources (Hoffmann et al., ).…”

“…However, there is a significant discrepancy between the ‘back to the barriers’ approach that puts ‘great emphasis on formal (state) enforced structures of regulation and conservation in conserving nature’ (Büscher and Dietz, : 1), and the actual structures in place in war‐torn regions. In many conflict zones, formal state structures have deteriorated, the ‘state’ is an object of contention, and a range of state and non‐state actors exercise public authority and provide public services (Hoffmann et al., ; Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers, ). These conditions are evident in the Congolese state institution responsible for the management of protected areas, L'Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature.…”

Corrigendum

“…In the article (Hoffmann et al, ) published in Volume 47, Issue 6 of Development and Change , the funding source was inadvertently omitted from the acknowledgments section.…”