Abstract
The design and evaluation of partnerships delivering public policy goals should consider questions of democratic performance as much as matters of service delivery. The flexibility afforded to partnership working places a premium on managerial action loosely coupled to political oversight. Yet the goals of partnerships are inherently political choices in which the public interest should be represented. This article examines the way in which community leaders and public managers impact on the democratic performance of partnerships. We conceptualize community leaders and public managers as `dual intermediaries' between the formal institutional design of partnership governance and its wider political constituency of citizens, service users and stakeholders. We build on three partnership design archetypes — club, agency and polity — identified in previous research, and theorize how these might be expected to shape the roles of community leaders and public managers. The article concludes by drawing out implications for the theory and practice of partnership working.
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