Collaboration and the State

Abstract

The UK case provides a powerful example of the way in which the collaborative agenda has become a central instrument of public policy, particularly in the context of the government’s modernisation project from the late 1990s. Collaboration across the public sector, and between it and business, community and voluntary organisations, reflects a desire by government to overcome the organisational and professional boundaries that separate services and to build an integrated approach to the development of policy, exercise of management and delivery of real improvements in outcomes. Yet collaborative activity has its roots in earlier periods. Interagency working between health and social care has a long legacy, with various mechanisms being developed in the 1960s and 1970s to undertake joint planning and ease users’ transition between the National Health Service (NHS) and social service provision. During this period partnership arrangements between the public and voluntary sectors were also developed in response to problems of urban deprivation (Chapter 3). The consequences of new public management, however, gave a stimulus to the collaborative agenda. The deconstruction of large welfare bureaucracies and consequent fragmentation of organisational responsibilities and authority generated a need to create integrative mechanisms.