Drawing on the history of statebuilding in Western Europe, fiscal sociology has proposed the existence of a mutually … reinforcing effect between the emergence of representative government and effective taxation. This paper looks at the case of … Benin, a low-income West African country that underwent a fairly successful democratization process in the early 1990s. It …

Through its National Conference in 1990 and presidential and legislative elections in 1991, Benin successfully … undertook a transition to democracy. Notwithstanding some electoral irregularities, this (minimal) democracy has survived since …, witnessing three successful alternations of executive power. A 'deviant' case, Benin is not well explained by theories of …