ABSTRACT
Challenge partnerships are symbolic, lacking both autonomy and significant business input. In specific implementation partnerships, there is greater business input and fragmentary evidence of 'added value'. The chapter evaluates the context for partnerships in the four cases and compares the evolution of partnership practices. It examines partnership initiatives and looks at the objectives and activities of the 'challenge' partnerships in each area. Each of the four case study areas can be characterised as 'deprived'. Barnsley and Rotherham suffered the decimation of their coal industries. Hull and North East Lincolnshire find themselves in a different position, where although economic decline has had serious effects. Barnsley's economic strategy is focused on attracting new inward investment to derelict coalmining sites in and around the area. Economic globalisation appears to 'bite' at a higher geographical scale than the locality in relation to competition for inward investment; thereby undermining the notion that global-localisation is a key 'dialectic' in economic development.
