Little is known about the role that non-financial incentives could play in improving the delivery of public services in the developing world. Paul Collier (Oxford University), Oeindrila Dube (New York University), Vivek Maru (World Bank) and Bilal Siddiqi (Oxford University) assess two interventions to improve service delivery in Sierra Leone. The first intervention tackles worker motivation by introducing yardstick competition among health clinics, and providing non-financial awards to facilities that show the largest improvement in performance. The second strengthens bottom-up accountability by disseminating information on the state of health services to communities through a ‘scorecard’, and facilitating meetings between community members and health workers to help them develop joint action plans for improving the provision of health services.

Social capital is the glue between individuals and groups such as trust networks and shared norms and values, and it contributes to both social cohesion and productive activity. It is especially important in developing countries with low physical, financial and human capital, and expresses itself in institutions such as co-operatives. But social capital may itself be inadequate in post-conflict states like Sierra Leone, which suffered widespread internal conflict during its civil war (1990-2001). Ted Miguel (University of California, Berkeley) and Rachel Glennerster (MIT) evaluate the effectivness of post-conflict community driven development programmes in Sierra Leone which aim to improve the inclusiveness and participation of decision-making.