ABSTRACT
Promoting “partnership” and greater interagency cooperation between government departments, public agencies, private companies and the third sector has become a staple of strategies to promote social and labor-market inclusion at national and supranational levels, for instance internationally (CEC 2003, 2001: 6; OECD 2008) and the UK (DWP 2006). Area-based strategies to tackle social and labor-market exclusion have particularly used partnership approaches involving different organizations and forms of relationship – for the UK government, “renewal relies on local communities”, and non-public bodies have a leading role to play in promoting employability, regeneration and inclusion (SEU 2001; McQuaid and Lindsay 2005; McQuaid et al. 2007).
