Concluding Discussion

Abstract

New Labour came to power promising to reform many aspects of public life and to fundamentally revolutionalise governance of the UK. They would do this by using new forms of mechanisms which would go beyond the old hierarchies of the left and the market-based mechanisms of the political right. At the time of their election, there was immense enthusiasm for this new government and a sense amongst the nation that they would deliver something different to what had gone before. The Third Way ideology was fundamentally based on a notion of partnership, and this concept became integral to many areas of public life. Significant investments were made in varied forms of partnerships with a broad array of partners. Yet, most accounts of the evidence that these different organisational arrangements produced seem to suggest that they had only a limited impact. However, this book has argued that such a conclusion privileges particular views on the sorts of performances that partnerships have delivered, dominated by views of the effectiveness and efficiency of these types of relationships and neglecting their cultural impact in terms of values, meaning and identity. This book has sought to shed light on the impact of partnerships in a much broader sense than that traditionally found within the literature.