ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of partnership in national urban policy in England over the last 25 years. It discusses the concept of partnership within the significant break point in the attempts by national political interests to transform the state in Britain. The chapter draws on critical issues with respect to decentralization, democratic accountability and citizenship in an attempt to explore the scope and construction of policy legitimacy. It deals with an examination of the degree to which partnership has become a desired outcome in its own right, an expression of a desired model of politics, rather than a means of securing other political goals, in particular the assertion of individual and market behaviour over the state. A critical interpretation is more useful, in that this can reveal transforming effects partnerships might have on power relationships and the involvement of political interests in the urban polity.
