7.  Impact on Development:

A. Enhancing the impact of health, education and environmental programmes: We saw in section 5 how the uptake on health services can increase when elected local councillors explain their utility in terms that ordinary people can grasp. Good experiences on the health front, plus the ability of councillors to explain education, environmental and other programmes - and their adaptation of such programmes to local conditions -- can incline citizens towards greater acceptance of (and engagement with) those programmes too. Note also the growth, in many countries, of at least partially elected 'user committees' in the health, education, water and environmental sectors - committees which operate like elected decentralized councils.

B. Adapting development policies to local conditions and 'scaling up': Decentralized authorities are often able to adapt schemes devised at higher levels to distinctive conditions and needs within local arenas. They can inject local knowledge into them, and harmonize them with often quite constructive local arrangements for managing resources and addressing needs. When a success is achieved within one locality, the decentralized system provides a useful network for informing all localities of the success thus facilitating the 'scaling up'.

C. Alleviating poverty and contributing to the sustainable livelihood outcomes: This is an extremely complex issue, but in brief - democratic decentralization seldom assists in alleviating poverty which is the result of inequalities within lower-level arenas. This is because prosperous groups at the local level, who usually capture substantial power in decentralized authorities, are often more uncompromising in their attitudes to the poor than elites at higher levels. But note that this generalization does not apply when poorer groups at the local level are well-organised and politically aware - as they are, for example, in much of Latin America. Note also that decentralization often helps to reduce poverty which is the result of inequality between regions or localities to which power is devolved. It does so by giving deprived areas more equitable representation within national systems, and by ensuring a fairer distribution of resources across various areas.