Taxes, death and development (at the LSE Public Policy blog)

Seb Bytyci argues that the ability to raise taxes is essential for transforming developing countries. Increased revenue from taxation and effective tax-collection would free developing countries from aid dependence. …

Violent politics

You'd be forgiven to think this is the early 1990s in the Balkans. The SPS is in power in Serbia, there are political arrests and even log revolutions. Obviously, this is the 2010s, but one thing that hasn't changed …

Elections 2012 Ferizaj: Opportunity for fraud is great

CEC has not cleaned the voter list. There are 24,152 people in the list that that should not be …

Transformation of Kosovo

Here I talk about Kosovo's processes of transformation and what needs to be done to complete the transition to a modern state, focusing on the model of the developmental state and its synergy with civil …

Sui Generis Independence

I explain what the agreement on the footnote means for Kosovo. …

Rule of law or rule of violence

I explain the difference between the police intervention in the protests of 14 January 2012 and 22 January 2012 and why the first one was …

Reciprocity of respect

I talk about how the public pressure for "reciprocity" measures comes from the desire for mutual respect and relations on an equal basis between Serbs and …

On parallel institutions

I describe how the focus on the northern municipalities has ignored the fact that Serbia's parallel institutions are spread in almost all Serbian settlements in …

Violence and its recurrence

Here I provide an overview of structural violence, how patron-client relationships are a form of it, and how political violence (or riots) happens and recurs based Hannah Arendt's concept of violence as a tool of the …

The illusion of progress

by Seb Bytyci.

I outline the way in which a public discourse of "reform" is meant to create the illusion of improvement of the political and socio-economic situation in …