This thesis investigates the following research question: what policy effects are produced through Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) and how are they produced? LSPs are a body made up of a formalized membership consisting of a range of organizations operating at the local level, including those from the public, private, voluntary, and 'community' sectors. Introduced by the New Labour government in 2000, they are a non-executive, non-statutory organizational framework existing in local authority areas across England. The question is addressed using an ethnographic approach, employing interviews and participant observation, and this is combined with a case study research strategy focusing on the districts of Chester-le-Street and Derwentside in County Durham. These are areas that suffer from problems of social exclusion due to the repercussions of deindustrialization. I am interested in particular in the role LSPs play in addressing problems of social exclusion. The research focuses on what the policy effects of LSPs mean for conditions of social exclusion. LSPs are an important institution designed to address such problems. The concept of 'policy effects' attends to the generation of governmental objects and the active making of 'policy'. The thesis offers valuable empirical insights into the effects of a local partnership organization. It is argued that while both a governance networks' perspective and relational and crisis-theoretic approaches to state theory provide a useful framework for understanding changing institutions and processes of governance, they do not sufficiently aid an understanding of policy effects. I move beyond a conceptual emphasis upon issues of 'institutional design' and attend to the question of policy effects through a consideration of the practices of 'institutional enactment' which LSPs involve. This is a perspective informed by post-Foucauldian governmentality ideas and ideas of the state' as a set of practices. Analysis critically examines the interplay between the institutional design of LSPs and the institutional enactment of LSPs in the production of policy effects.

This thesis analyses the changing nature of Scottish local government between 1996 and 2008. It does so by employing four analytical perspectives (traditional municipal, managerial, democratic and governance). It utilises longitudinal data gained in three case study sites: Fife, Stirling and Highland Councils. The empirical data on which the study is based was gathered between 1996 and 2008 in the three councils. The broad argument of the thesis is that each of these analytical perspectives contributes to an understanding of Scottish local government. However, the managerial, democratic and governance perspectives tend to over-state the degree of change which has occurred. The language of analysis underpinning them would suggest that local government in Scotland, like England, has been transformed by the catalogue of policy interventions and initiatives that have taken place since 1979. Indeed some have gone as far as suggesting 'the demise of traditional local government' in England (Wilson and Stoker 2004: 248). This thesis suggests that Scotland is different and that an understanding of how Scottish local government operates still requires knowledge of the institutional structures associated which traditional municipal local government. Despite three decades of reform, the traditional municipal interpretation of local government retains resonance in Scotland. The new insights gleaned from managerial, democratic and governance perspectives have not fundamentally undermined the traditional local government framework of analysis.

The Paterson Report on organisation and management in Scottish local authorities had been widely interpreted as an attempt to foster 'rational' decision-making in the mode of other administrative reforms such as Planning, Programming Budgeting Systems, or Programme Analysis and Review. In fact, the Report advocated much more limited reform. Whilst the ideas of rational decision-making were important, the limits to comprehensiveness were fully appreciated. Empirical analysis shows that the overwhelming majority of Scottish local authorities have adopted the basic organisational mechanisms of corporate management, namely the policy and resources committee, the chief executive and the management team, but only a minority introduced the more radical concepts of support for the chief executive, namely the executive office and the policy planning unit. Changes in the management process were more limited, but there was an increased emphasis on project co-ordination, and in a few authorities, positive developments in the direction of corporate or policy planning. When reliance was placed on only the basic Paterson model, little progress was made in developing systems of policy planning, which were more common in urban authorities, exhibiting strong central direction amongst both members and officers, and having an extensive organisational support for the chief executive in the direction of policy planning. The study of Strathclyde Region demonstrates the analytical and political constraints to the development of policy planning, namely the focus, on inputs rather than outputs and the continuance of professionalism and bureaucratic politics. Academic models of the management process, such as the incremental, political or corporate models, offer only partial explanations of the development of corporate management. A more rewarding approach requires the development of a comparative analytical framework which combines the relative elements of traditional models and relates them to their organisational and political environment. Given the environmental diversity of social, economic, and political features in Scottish local authorities, conventional models need adaptation to facilitate richer and more fruitful research.

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This thesis examines the way in which community development as an acknowledged feature of government activity has evolved in one emergent country. It is concerned with the changes in official thinking over several decades changes by no means always progressive, and with the relationship between thought and action. It discusses the factors that influenced these changes, ranging from the details of an individual's personal role or the effects of fortuitous happenings, through administrative and financial controls, to the constraints imposed by the prevailing conceptual climate. The events in the Botswana example are of course themselves unique, but in so far as they illustrate the processes by which policy has evolved in a country which markedly exhibits most of the classical features of the underdeveloped areas of Africa - the dual economy; over dependence on a single product; political immaturity; rural underemployment, and the drift, especially of youth, to towns; inadequate and unsuitable educational provision; traditional practices conflicting with modernisation; and an administrative machine of very uneven quality - it has wider relevance, notwithstanding the contention of this study that to be fully appreciated community development must be examined in a particular situation rather than in the abstract, the evolution hero discussed has much in common with other African countries. Furthermore Botswana's relatively uncomplicated, undiversified economy and polity permit national patterns and trends to be demonstrated without the myriad reservations and exceptions necessary in more advanced African countries, thus giving it added value as a case study. The Introduction has a three-fold purpose: to explain the method of study chosen; to discuss the meaning of community development and point out some of the obstacles in the way of assigning a precise definition; and to outline the historical and geographical situation of Botswana* The main body of the study is divided into three parts. The two chapters comprising Part I are concerned with general context, putting the Botswana case into the perspective of colonial policy and of developments in other African countries. It is shown that although Bechuonaland was following progressive policies in community find adult education in the 1930s, there was a decline of interest in the field in the 1940's. Part II deals in detail with the post-war growth of government activity in Botswana in relation to social welfare and subsequently community development, paying particular attention to the way ideas took root and developed. Chapter 3 describes the Welfare Department's programme up to 1961, showing the influence first of the British voluntary organisation tradition, and then of South African urban social work. Chapters 4 and 5 are concerned with the reassessment of government's role in social welfare in the early 1960's. They examine in detail the reasoning which led in 1965 to the Social Welfare Department being reorganised as the Community Development Department with a shift of emphasis from urban to village development. Chapter 6 discusses the operation and effects of the World Food Program Community Development Project in 1966- 1967. National policy in the second half of the 1960's, concentrating on departmental structure and organisation, is described in Chapter 7. Part III is concerned with community development and national development. In Chapter 8 the results of a 1968 survey of attitudes to development held by political and civil service leaders are reported and discussed. Chapter 9 contains the conclusions to the thesis. It is concluded that although Botswana was until independence well out of the African mainstream in terms of community development, as indeed in relation to government administration generally, this is no longer the case. It is sham that community development as a specific function of public administration in Botswana has made and is making a significant contribution in the sphere of village organisation and institution building at all levels, as well as in several other ways. It Is suggested that many of the ideas which were previously seen as being the rational© of community development in particular have now been subsumed into the national philosophy. Proceeding from this position, it is further suggested that the time is approaching in Botswana, and has probably arrived in most other African countries, when major changes in community development policy and organisation are called for, possibly associated with decisive terminological changes.

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The way in which employed senior elites in English local government exercise their agency in the practice of local democracy and local governance is considered in this thesis. The research posits the notion that elite Officers act as Local Democracy Makers as they draw on their own traditions and ideologies in responding to the dilemmas of changing policy and politics in the public realm. The study is located in the latter part of New Labour?s term of office and applies an interpretive and reflexive approach to three studies of the exercise of well being powers. The approach is one of applied ethnography through the examination of literature reviews, interviews and observations of decisions taken in the exercise of the powers of economic, environmental and social well-being are used to examine how and why the Local Democracy Makers make sense of their world in the way that they do. The research suggests that, despite prevailing narratives, local governance arrangements depend on a system of hierarchy, employed elites and local politics. The challenges of re-configuring local democracy and attempts at "hollowing out" the state have secured an influential role for the non-elected official. How officials interpret, advise, mediate and manage the exercise of local governance and local democracy presents a challenge to assumptions that public services are governed beyond or without local government. New narratives and reflections on the role of the local government Officer and the marginalisation of the elected Councillor are presented in the research. In particular, how the senior elite occupy managerial, strategic and political roles as Local Democracy Makers, offers an insight into the agency of strategic actors in localities. Consequently, the success of changes in public policy is materially influenced by how the practitioner responds to such dilemmas. The thesis concludes by suggesting that integral to the design and success of public policy implementation is the role of the Officer, and especially those practitioners that advise governing arrangements and democratic practice.

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In these times of scarce resources and the introduction of new local charges and taxes, it is imperative that local government services are delivered as efficiently and effectively as possible. One on the tools available to local authorities to measure performance is the national service indicators. However, there is some debate about their use and value. The focus of this dissertation is on the views and perceptions of city and county managers in relation to the use and effectiveness of the current set of National Service Indicators and how the system might be improved. The dissertation focused in a number of key theories and developments in the field of the performance management in the public sector. In particular, it looked at the use of performance measurement and management in decision making, in organisational management, for driving efficiency, and as an aid to accountability and staff motivation. The study reviewed trends in the performance indicators over the nine years since their introduction. It also involved the use of a questionnaire to the entire population of city and county managers to ascertain their views and perspectives on the indicators. In addition it involved indepth interviews with eight managers to elicit deeper insights. The data generated was analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, as appropriate, to identify the key themes and enable conclusions to be drawn.