Unravelling the process of 'partnership' in urban regeneration policy

In the UK, there is a political consensus that a multi-sectoral partnership approach is essential to achieve urban regeneration. As a term, however, 'partnership' is overused, ambiguous and politicised. The Conservative government has inscribed 'partnership' with a complex political agenda. It is not clear whether the politics of partnership are still dominated by a Thatcherite agenda of privatising and centralising urban policy or whether a new, more democratic era has been entered. The paper explores how the stakeholders in the central government-led Scottish Urban Partnerships conceive of the nature of their interrelationships within this political context. It also presents a conceptualisation of partnership processes which extends and refines the framework put forward by Mackintosh (1992). The paper concludes that the Urban Partnerships are essentially limited applications of the potential of the partnership approach.