‘Shock of the New’: Complexity and Emerging Rationales for Partnership Working

Abstract

This article argues that the meta-narrative of ‘newness’ promoted by the current New Labour government embodies numerous assumptions, or theories of change, which add to, rather than reduce, the complexity of working within public sector-led regeneration partnership structures. In particular, it will argue that embedded ways of working within the public sector are also fundamental in explaining the relative success of ‘new’ partnerships and that the overall aim of governance transformation is inherently beset by conflict and hidden power-relations and is not as easy to achieve as policy guidance suggests. Using this conceptualframe, and drawing on the experiences from a number of pieces of action research in England on regeneration partnerships, this paper offers a critical assessment of the rationale behind such implicit, or explicit, claims that such policy interventions are indeed ‘new’ or innovative in terms of facilitating the transfer of knowledge or collaboration within or between partnerships.