Our friends and partners at ND Burma have released this new report today on the arbitrary and excessive system of 'taxation' in Burma.
What does taxation have to do with mass atrocities?
At its best a tax system can cement the bonds between citizen and state. The theory is that citizens demand accountability for the money they hand over to the state - demanding oversight and some form of democratic control. A lack of such a bond between citizen and state can be profoundly damaging - witness the abuses committed by many oil rich states or (less commonly) states overly dependent upon development aid. In such rentier states accountability and oversight is absent or, at best, owed to international donors.
The theory goes on: pushy taxpayers creating checks and balances over the executive branch will have a spillover effect into other areas of governance. Some of these effects may be important in preventing future mass atrocities: democratic oversight of the military; an end to winner takes all politics; and leaders more responsive to the demands of a broad taxpayer base.
That's roughly the theory; of course middle class taxpayers can be anti-democratic also (witness Weimar Germany at one extreme, the Thai middle classes at the other).
And in Burma? Well lets just say there's a thin line between pillage and taxation. Many of the international crimes committed in Burma result from the requirement that the Tatmadaw be self-sufficient. This order created the incentives for individual units to resort to forced labour and pillage in order to live off the land. Checkpoints, requirements to hand over foodstuffs, land confiscation all follow... As this excellent report says: "the military has transformed taxation from a routine and legitimate function of government into extortion and a tool of repression."
