Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2013
Despite having transitioned to democracy, the governments of many developing countries still deliver poor public services as measured by social outcome indicators. Recent literature frames these issues of governance and public service delivery as a two-part principal-agent problem: civil servants are the agents of politicians and politicians are themselves the agents of the voters (Olken and Pande 2011). Much of this literature explores the determinants that drive citizens to demand better services (Pande 2011). Less attention, however, has been paid to understanding the behavior of the agents themselves and the interventions that can lead local politicians and civil servants to deliver better services.