ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of local authorities in the new networks of local governance. It examines the context of political, economic and social change in which the emergence of local governance networks can be situated. The chapter discusses in some detail the actual nature of ‘networks’, in particular the different forms that inter-agency relationships take within networks. It deals with a very brief consideration of the extent to which working within networks suggests change in the way in which local authorities engage in processes of strategy development and policy making. Local governance networks have developed during a period of very considerable change in the systems of values, institutions and practices through which social, economic and political life is organised. The account therefore reveals the extent to which operating within networks is central to the local authority’s strategy process in complex policy areas such as urban regeneration.
