ABSTRACT
With inspiration from R.A.W. Rhodes’ Network Continuum (Rhodes 1997), a ‘governance-partnership continuum’ has been developed to investigate the conditions for creating partnerships in the new Danish regional growth fora. The continuum is based on theories dealing with partnership, network and trust and ranges from ‘network-oriented governance-partnership’, characterised as an instrumental network, to ‘partnership-oriented governance-partnership’, characterised as a future-oriented partnership. The basic assumption behind the continuum’s network-oriented and partnership-oriented distinction is the superior ability of the partnership to implement strategic documents compared to other implementing models such as pluralism, corporatism and network. Hence, by applying the governance-partnership continuum, scientific scholars and civil servants will be capable of qualitatively assessing the efficiency of regional development conducted by regional development agencies. The empirical case of Denmark draws on extensive work on the six Danish regional growth fora as examples of governance-partnerships. The results and selected illustrative quotes presented in this chapter are grounded in the author’s PhD dissertation defended in May 2011.
