5. Partnerships

As the concept has come to be used, in Agenda 2000 as elsewhere, a partnership refers to a quasi-equal association of diverse parties sharing a common interest who commit themselves to work by consensus to achieve agreed goals. The partners may include government departments and non-governmental organisations, public agencies and private enterprises, the European Commission and local communities. The commitment to consensus is intended as a way of avoiding things being forced on one interest by another. If everyone agrees on the direction to go, it does not matter much who 'leads' and each can feel free to proceed in their own way, contributing according to their strengths rather than to an externally prescribed, inflexible plan implemented by a hierarchical chain of command. A partnership is to be co- ordinated rather than controlled, and managed not from in front but from beside if not behind.

Thus conceived, partnerships are a way of circumventing some of the less satisfactory characteristics and consequences of other approaches. Because they proceed integratively, they are alien to and can combat the separatism of the sectoral tradition, promoting 'joined-up thinking' in relation to development. Their division of labour, commitment to consensus, and adaptation to diverse local circumstances make them resistant to and so corrective of authoritarian centrism.

Such at any rate is the theory. In practice most theories tend to work in ways not always envisaged by theorists, especially when they claim novelty compared to what has gone before. So with partnerships. Old attitudes and approaches may be a long time dying, and newly- fledged partners accustomed to the old way of doing things need to learn to use their wings before they can get off the ground, let alone reach for the sky. Some partners may be much more powerful than others due to their access to skilled human resources and matching funding. Frustration as well as resistance can contribute to 'partnership fatigue', when inordinate amounts of time are spent in meetings grappling with the a system that is supposed to avoid institutional complexity.

In promoting partnerships, the Commission was looking for social actors and agents - voluntary organisations, NGOs, unions, private-sector enterprises and commercial firms - to balance both national government and itself. This was a response both to the democratic deficit revealed in the Maastricht treaty ratification referenda, and general concern to increase participation of all kinds and at all levels in community activities. Co-opting diverse economic and social interests as partners in a common enterprise may be seen as a way of addressing both issues. There was the added appeal that using partnerships got round some of the sensitivities of giving public money directly to individuals, entrepreneurs or others.

In the first instance, partnerships are about bringing together those who bring funding and those who bring knowledge and capacity. A major problem with most developmental schemes is that the private economic interests who generate income, and the non- governmental organisations, are too often only marginally involved if not missing altogether: this is true at all levels, from top to bottom. Historically industry has seen itself separate from public agencies and enterprises, and so initially at least has kept its distance from partnerships; if co-opted, there is still a tendency for their representatives to turn up at partnership meetings only once a year. Private and NGO interests often find it hard to justify their engagement due to the direct and indirect cost which such engagement imposes on them.

This is perhaps a legacy of the traditional practice of channelling funds sectorally, when the business was seen as a zero-sum game at which you either won or lost, and it made sense to oppose or block other projects in order to gain approval for one's own. It may also have to do with the age-old disinclination of people with money objecting to have others without money telling them how to spend it, if not spending it for them.

A complication of this is that some partners may not know whether they will be able to contribute financially because their funding is conditional on the approval of other bodies or their success in raising matching-funds. Before other partners are willing to commit themselves firmly, some would like to know whether the various levels of government are willing to allocate public funds to match EU grants. Such knowledge may be late in arriving.

When partnerships were first introduced many people - particularly those accustomed to the sectoral tradition - tended to regard them as just a formality, with the real decisions being taken elsewhere. This attitude needs to be changed if partnerships are to get off the ground. Conducive to this is that each partner has a definite but different role in the partnership. Public-sector partners may contribute via ideas and organisation of the programme, NGOs via specialist knowledge and networks of experienced workers. The private sector can bring proposals for individual projects using knowledge acquired through the market place about what people will actually use; such local knowledge is hard for the public sector to obtain, particularly at regional and national level. Private individuals applying for grants may bring money with them. The voluntary sector brings ideas and applicants but usually not money. So too women's groups and the unemployed, usually neglected by other approaches. The participation of all is more likely the more their general interests and particular wishes are known and recognised by all.

This raises the general problem of representativeness: besides making sure that particular groups of people such as the unemployed, elderly or disabled do not go unrepresented, it is also important to avoid others exerting undue influence through overlapping activities, self-appointment, manipulation of meetings through control of the chair, or control over matching-funding.

Partnerships tend to evolve over time. Initial attitudes may be narrowly selfish or diffusely altruistic, later attitudes the reverse. It is of the nature that their later course and mode of operation is unpredictable at the start. While this makes some traditionalists uneasy because they fear loss of control, others who are newly involved may be enthused by it for the very same reason.

There is a risk that partnerships will prove ephemeral if they are devised in response to a particular funding regime. National government can have a role in making them longer- lasting - perhaps by enabling them to evolve into something else. For example in Scotland the Cairngorms Partnership may become the administration of a future Cairngorms National Park. All partnerships should recognise the need to change with circumstances if they are to survive, or alternatively acknowledge at the start that their term is fixed and make early provision for eventual disbandment.

It would be useful to know what makes partnerships function well or badly, what common obstacles need to be overcome in setting them up and what procedures help them operate smoothly once established. However, such knowledge might not exist or not be readily transferable: particular partnerships may be too closely linked to individual circumstances of time, place and people for there to be general rules.

Be that as it may, the case of the amenities centre in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland is worth considering. On the board were people with a range of complementary skills: a taxation expert, a lawyer, members of the local media, a boat owner, and a range of 'ordinary' people from the locality. This complementarity extended to finance: different partners had access to different sources of finance. Such complementarity led to confidence among the partners about what they wanted to do, and the more confidence there was the less the need to depend on others, including 'experts'. Though consultants were useful sources of advice on what ideas were practical and what were not, the partners decided what to do with it. This confidence was underpinned by the ethos of regularly going back to the people to consult them about proposals, not just to report decisions.

Getting the composition of a partnership right may be as important as deciding its objectives. Broad social representation at local level lent strength in the Fermanagh case. If the partners had been drawn from just one or two agencies or interest groups, such as government officials or farmers, the partnership may well have lacked the social acceptance needed for it to work well.

The successful operation of developmental partnerships presupposes that enough applicants will be forthcoming, projects devised and proposed. If funds are allocated to pre-determined measures, some may well be under-utilised because the number or quality of projects to do with those measures turns out to be small. On the other hand if there are more projects than funds, some from public agencies, some private, some involving NGOs, hard decisions must be made about which to support. Broad participation and perhaps a democratic mandate will be required to give or sustain legitimacy.

If partners who are part of the decision-making process are also applicants who stand to benefit from the way decisions go, particular problems may arise to do with who gets approved and what support is offered. Different sectors tend to have their preferred projects: public-sector agencies favour infrastructure schemes, because that is what they supply, whereas private-sector firms often want training and business support which they cannot supply themselves. There is a risk that the common purpose of the partnership may be undermined, with each partner-applicant tending to regard their allocation as their own capital which others cannot draw on or only with their consent and a quid pro quo, rather than a common pool. In such cases, separation of powers can be a useful safeguard. Different partnerships could prepare programmes, decide which to support, and implement and monitor.

In such considerations, a key question is, 'who is taking the risk?'. This concerns not just who gains if things go right but who loses if they go wrong. The role of banks here is problematic. In the UK banks do not have a good record in selecting which projects to support; they tend to choose people with good security rather than good ideas, particularly at the small end of the scale. They also like to shift risk to the public sector wherever possible, particularly for 'social' rather than 'commercial' projects.

Conclusion
When they work effectively, partnerships can be a way of getting round the limitations of individual agents or agencies - the limited knowledge of the market place of the public sector, the narrow personal concerns of the private sector, or the sectoral organisation of the State, for example. If their base is broad and their collective sense of purpose strong, they can engage the interest of a wide range of individuals and interests, and so overcome the psychological obstacles of unfamiliarity and inertial resistance to change and avoid the besetting sin of most developmental schemes, reactionary attitudes that reduce everything to getting hold of money.

Much of the their value may derive from indirect consequences. By broadening experience, giving wider scope for the application of existing skills and encouraging the development of new ones, they can help transform the much lamented 'culture' of dependence into one of active independence. By establishing novel linkages across sectors and communities, they can build up networks through which new ideas and good practice may spread to other places and be transferred to other activities. Doing such things collectively and with common purpose can increase both transparency and participation, amounting to a genuine, if informal, democratic gain.

Partnerships have their difficulties, however. Their novelty demands learning to overcome these, which takes time and trouble. To establish a sense of common purpose among many people of diverse and different interests, including limited experience, may take too many meetings that drain the spirit. And even when objectives have been agreed and workable procedures evolved, the temptation to cut corners and court convenience may entrench a new set of habits and attitudes, through which old interests may re-emerge to assert their old baleful influence. Partnerships are no more exempt from the impossibility of perpetual revolution than other regimes and so like them are subject to attrition of familiarity that can dissipate enthusiasm. While this might breed more complacency than contempt, it sets a term to the useful life of many partnerships.

In terms of rural development, partnerships often conceal the reality of unequal power, especially over access to skilled human resources and matching funding. Questions have been raised about the desirability of separating the partnership's responsible for planning and implementing regional/rural development programmes, and avoiding situations where major beneficiaries of programmes compete against each other for funds within a partnership.

These and other problems are reflected in the mixed experiences of Member States with partnerships since they were introduced. They need to be borne in mind by Acceding States trying to get to grips with something of which under their old order they had no experience at all.

7. Partnerships were identified as one of the new trends in rural policy making in a 1988 report by the OECD: New Trends in Rural Policy making. OECD, Paris 1988. The Issue was later explored in greater depth in Partnerships for Rural Development, OECD, Paris 1990.