The Growing Importance of Partnership in Regional and Urban Policy from the 1980s until Nowadays

Abstract

Partnership emerges as a new organisational principal in structural policy, urban policy and administrative management, which as a problem solution technique first and foremost is needed by the state. Many consider horizontal partnership connected to co-operation as a magic word, however neither its concept nor its contain have been clarifled yet. The structures of the new co-operation forms among public, private and non-profit sphere spread from the loose networks to strictly controlled institutionalised organisations. The subject of the study is particularly the so-called top-down initiated regionalism, which takes place due to the strong incentive of the state and the operation of which is maintained by the activity of the central government respectively. "Arranged Corporativism" demonstrated by the case of the United Kingdom and Germany has many difficulties: the exerting of state control is uncertain, the operation field of representational democracy is narrowing down, and the lifting of the social forces into decision making process raises the question of participation ability. Do the application of partnership and its associated values like flexibility, successfulness or efficiency influence the manageableness of the given region positively in all cases? The latter question effects sensitively the planned modernisation of the regional development institutional system in Hungary, whereas legislator has to consider again which kind of participation to assure to economic and social sphere in the formation of regional policy.