Democratic decentralization has transformed local government in the Global South, enabling millions of first-time candidates — especially women and historically marginalized groups — to enter politics. However, this expansion of representation has occurred in contexts with entrenched social hierarchies, weak capacity, and limited autonomy. Through three essays set in rural India, this dissertation investigates who enters politics under decentralization, and how novice politicians learn to govern effectively in low-capacity settings. The first essay focuses on public sector employment (PSE), a highly coveted job in developing countries, as a pathway to local politics. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, I reconceptualize political entry as a household-level decision and argue that PSE relaxes financial, informational, and social constraints households face when contesting elections. Using a difference-in-differences framework on nationally representative panel data of 40,000+ households, I find that acquiring PSE increases household-level political entry. Conjoint experiments with 1,105 citizens show that voters view PSE households as more electorally viable, especially when jobs confer bureaucratic access and programmatic knowledge. The second essay evaluates a randomized peer learning intervention with over 7,700 local elected representatives in Bihar. The intervention organized regular peer group meetings to share governance strategies. It improved procedural knowledge, confidence, and knowledge of governance best practices, though effects for marginalized groups were limited. The third essay uses original survey data to study “proxiness” — when elected women serve in name while male relatives perform their duties -- among local politicians in Bihar. I estimate, using a novel measure, that nearly 90% of elected women in my data are proxies. Proxy women are more likely to come from dominant castes and from households with prior political experience. These women leaders are less likely to attend official meetings. However, their absence is made up for by other household members. These essays show that understanding who governs — and how — requires moving beyond formal rules to analyze the household-level and social dynamics that shape political entry and representation. Local democracy’s promise depends not only on institutional design but on the informal structures that mediate its implementation.