Massive cuts in public spending are demanding a new era of collaborative working among partners in English local governance. Partnerships have the capacity to pool assets, share scarce resources and leverage new forms of social and human capital. City-wide partnerships are also ideal vehicles...

The sub-discipline of 'urban politics' has been constructed in opposition to a traditional version of 'institutional theory'-an approach that collapsed the political processes affecting urban communities with the workings of elected local government. Attention has shifted towards the broader...

In this timely Handbook, leading scholars from around the world explore the challenges presented by infrastructure PPPs, and contemplate what lies ahead as governments balance the need to provide innovative new infrastructure against the requirement for good public governance. This Handbook...

Some problems of governance regularly resurface, and the use and role of ‘quangos’— public bodies operating at arm's-length to ministers—is a case in point. The administrative history of the British state is littered with official reviews and political debates about quangos....

<title>Abstract</title> Improved performance by public sector organizations is a political imperative in numerous countries. There are particular challenges in turnaround of poorly performing organizations. Theoretical explanations of the performance trajectories of public organizations, and especially the...

<title/> Improvement boards offer a new approach to supporting stronger performance by public service organizations, and especially those facing significant issues of change. They involve formalized peer challenge and support by senior politicians and managers from other agencies. The authors document...

<title/> This article provides early results from a long-term evaluation of the turnaround strategies by poorly-performing local authorities in England. The history and theory behind central government interventions into local government is reviewed, focusing on the Comprehensive Performance Assessment...