Civil society and social partnership

Civil society and social partnership: alongside neoliberalism

The concept of social partnership envisages a corporatist model of social

policy based upon co-operation between government, market and civil

society. Jones and Novak (1999, p. 83) note that partnership in the UK

casts the state in the role of facilitator for the market and that it is essentially

‘a partnership with big business and few people else’. Mandell (2002, p. 83)

shares this view of partnership in the UK, which she links to the ‘New

Public Management’ strategy and similar policy approaches in other

English-speaking countries. Ling (2000, p. 89) argues that partnership is a

new form of governance in response to a growing democratic deficit,

which is eroding the legitimacy of the state. He adopts the Foucauldian

concept of ‘governmentality’ and asserts that civil society is being drawn

into ‘a new strategic arena’. Ling concludes that governmentality (which

ultimately means co-option to a new and more subtle form of governance)

‘is a double-edged phenomenon with both an inclusive dimension and a

more worrying authoritarian dimension’ (Ling, 2000, p. 90).

Marxists are highly critical of social partnership. Allen (2000) argues that

social partnership in Ireland has been used to distribute wealth by stealth to

the rich and co-opts dissenting voices. But, a national survey by Powell and

Geoghegan (2004) of Irish community development organizations indicated

a predominantly benign view of social partnership among community acti-

vists, despite reservations about the poor quality of dialogue between the

partners and lack of shared vision. However, the authors conclude that

social partnership represented a new narrative of governance in which

community development was at risk of becoming a paid arm of the state.

Not all commentators would accept such views of social partnership as

governance by social control. For example, Batliwala (2002, p. 406) observes

that grassroots movements are seeking to democratise partnerships: ‘These

are partnerships between relative equals – each brings to the engagement a

different source of power but that power is recognised and acknowledged

by the other ’. In this form, it is possible to view partnership in a very differ-

ent light, as an exercise in ‘democratic experimentalism’ (Sabel, 1996).

In reality, partnership is likely to be influenced by its structures and the

relative power of stakeholders, as well as the quality of dialogue and

respect that exists between them. These stakeholders may include many

progressive voices, with a strong commitment to the idea of social justice.

It is important to remember that organizations geared towards social

change, including trade unions, voluntary and community organizations

and, indeed, political organizations, have a tradition of self-governance

with strong local roots. They are not the creations of a central state appar-

atus. Co-operation at local level through social partnership consequently

has a more tangible sense of democratic inclusion. However, there is a

real threat. The autonomy and vitality of social partnership risks is suffo-

cated by the centralized bureaucracy of the state, with its tendency to repro-

duce hierarchies of power at local level. Effective social partnership

envisages the state as ‘enabler ’ rather than ‘enforcer ’, assisting and empow-

ering local initiative to combat social exclusion and promote inclusive

democratic forms that harness the participative potential of community

development.