Working Paper 172 - Political Economy of Service Delivery: Monitoring versus Contestation

Many communities suffer limited public goods provision due to civil servants (doctors, teachers, etc) supplementing their low income with moonlighting activities. Monitors of civil servants commonly also earn low salaries from monitoring and may prefer political contestation for power and prestige. We determine an internal equilibrium for how monitors strike a balance between monitoring and political contestation. We also determine a corner solution where an unresourceful monitor does not monitor. A variety of characteristics including the intensity of political contestation are accounted for. Survey data from Tanzania and Senegal are used to show the significance of poor service delivery within education and healthcare services.