Recursive Hypocrisy: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Unresolved Contradiction of the Westphalian Order from 1648 to Caracas

2026-01-04T17:58:32+00:00

This paper contends that the 2026 capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by U.S. special forces exposes not merely a contemporary breach of international law, but the unresolved foundational contradiction of the Westphalian states system itself: its constitutive suppression of plural and nested sovereignties. Through the critical lens of Indigenous Studies, the analysis re-frames sovereignty not as a monolithic property of the nation-state, but as a contested and relational field. It argues that the modern international order, born from the 1648 treaties that erased Indigenous political authority from European legal recognition, established a hypocritical logic that continues to reverberate. This logic simultaneously asserts the inviolability of state borders while rendering the inherent sovereignties of Indigenous nations within those borders invisible or contingent. The Venezuelan case serves as a potent exemplar of this recursive hypocrisy. The paper examines how the sovereignty of the Venezuelan state over territories like the Amazon, where nations such as the Yanomami, Pemón, and Warao exercise de facto autonomous governance, is itself a legacy of colonial imposition and remains actively contested. The U.S.-led intervention, while a flagrant violation of Venezuelan state sovereignty, was discursively justified in part by co-opting the narrative of Indigenous vulnerability, framing the action as a protection of these communities from state neglect and environmental predation. This instrumentalization reveals a cynical exploitation of the very colonial contradictions the Westphalian system created. The paper concludes that the organized hypocrisy of international relations is thus not simply a practice between states, but a deeply embedded structure originating in the original displacement of Indigenous political orders. Lasting stability requires moving beyond a system that can only see one sovereign per territory, and instead engaging with the plurinational realities that the system has always denied but never erased.

Performance of VAT Revenue Collection in Tanzania: An ARDL Approach on selected Macro-Economic Variables

2026-01-18T11:57:41+00:00

Value-Added Tax (VAT) is a cornerstone of revenue mobilization in Tanzania, yet its dynamic relationship with core macroeconomic drivers remains empirically underexplored. This study investigates the short- and long-run determinants of VAT revenue performance in Tanzania from 2006/07 to 2021/22. Utilizing an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach, we analyze the impact of nominal GDP and inflation on VAT collections. While the informal sector size and VAT taxpayer registration were initially considered, diagnostic tests revealed prohibitive multicollinearity, leading to their exclusion from the final model, an instructive finding that highlights critical data and structural challenges for tax policy. The results indicate a significant positive immediate effect of economic growth on VAT revenue. However, the long-run GDP coefficients are negative, suggesting a complex, lagged adjustment mechanism. Contrary to the traditional Tanzi effect, inflation shows a modest but persistent positive influence in the short run. The study concludes that Tanzanian VAT collections are predominantly influenced by current economic activity and exhibit strong internal persistence. We recommend policies focused on sustaining formal economic growth and improving tax base measurement to enhance VAT revenue predictability and performance.

GNOSI: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Theory and Praxis

Recursive Hypocrisy: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Unresolved Contradiction of the Westphalian Order from 1648 to Caracas

Performance of VAT Revenue Collection in Tanzania: An ARDL Approach on selected Macro-Economic Variables