4 - Colombia’s Targeted Security Taxes

Summary

Focusing on Colombia’s “Democratic Security Taxes,” Chapter 4 is the first of four case studies illustrating causal logic of elite taxation in the adoption of security taxes. Since 2002, the government in that country has adopted a series of taxes on the wealthy to address a deplorable public-safety situation. The revenue from the taxes has played a central role in funding efforts considered successful in reducing violent crime. With a historically difficult conflict and traditional set of elites, Colombia is a least likely case in which elites would have become invested in financing the strengthening of the state. Moreover, with the approval of elite-funded security taxes on multiple occasions across administrations, the Colombian case allows us to study the conditions under which this investment in state building becomes sustained over time.