ABSTRACT
In many European Union and national programmes aimed at building social cohesion, promoting regeneration and combating poverty, unemployment and exclusion, the establishment of local partnerships has gained increasing importance in recent years. The aim of these arrangements is to harness the energy, skills and resources of the key actors – the public, private and voluntary sectors, and community organisations – in developing and implementing solutions to the increasing poverty and social exclusion across the EU. These partnerships – in inner city areas, peripheral housing estates or underdeveloped rural areas – take different forms and their remit tends to cover a broad range of social, economic and environmental policies. The European Commission’s Third Programme to Combat Poverty and the LEADER and URBAN programmes concerned with rural and urban regeneration are examples of European programmes in which a local partnership approach has been adopted. Programmes such as the Developpement Sociale des Quartiers (DSQ) initiative in France, the City Challenge and Single Regeneration Budget Challenge Fund urban regeneration programme in the United Kingdom, the Flemish Fund for the Integration of the Underprivileged in Belgium, and the Programme for Integrated Development in Disadvantaged Areas in Ireland, are examples of national programmes adopting a partnership approach to tackling unemployment and deprivation.
Many of the arguments in this paper were developed in dialogues within the transnational research team undertaking the research project of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions on the Role of Partnerships in Promoting Social Cohesion. I am indebted to Wendy O’Conghaile and Robert Anderson of the Foundation, my colleague John Benington, and the researchers who undertook the research studies in each of the member states.
