Introduction

The increasing importance of partnership working has been one of the most notable developments in public policy over the last 40 years (Stoker, 2004; 2011). Collaboration has, it is claimed, become a hegemonic discourse (Skelcher and Sullivan, 2002; 2008), and partnerships have emerged as the instrument of choice when it comes to implementing most public programmes (Turrini et al, 2010). This trend has been reflected in contributions to Policy & Politics. Over the last decade, the journal has featured more than 30 papers – spanning health, social care, community policing, child care, community cohesion, the knowledge economy and regeneration – which have referred to partnership in their title, keywords and/or abstract. One of the recurring themes in these papers has been the interplay between hierarchy and networks, and the role of external steering of partnerships (see for example Glendenning, 2002; Hudson and Henwood, 2002; Kuhlman and Allsop, 2008; Fenwick et al, 2012). There are scholars who believe networks are inherently self-organising and self-sustaining – for example Rhodes emphasises the role of ‘selforganising, interorganisational networks’ that enjoy a significant degree of autonomy from the state (1997a, 15, italics in the original). Seen from this perspective, external intervention can appear to be an impediment to effective partnership working. However, others have argued that networks continue to operate in the shadow of hierarchy and may in fact benefit from external steering by governments (Scharpf, 1997; Klijn and Koppenjan, 2000).

This chapter contributes to the understanding of the impact of external steering through an analysis of the activities of three multi-sectoral public service partnerships and their ability to deal with complex public policy issues. It addresses three research questions. How have the partners in these networks collaborated in order to address ‘wicked problems’? What forms of self-steering do these partnerships exhibit? Has external steering by government helped or hindered them? We conclude that, contrary to some theories of network effectiveness, external steering has been beneficial. However, it is important to differentiate between ‘hard steering’, by which we mean attempts by government to dictate how partnerships operate through the imposition of top down targets and performance regimes, and ‘soft steering’, which we define as the provision by governments of funding, information and expertise.