From Partnership to the Big Society: The Third Sector Policy Regime in the UK

Abstract

AbstractThis article provides an overview of the changing balance of state and third sector relations in the UK over the last decade or so. It briefly sets this in the broader context of the changing nature of these relations over a longer historical perspective, and it develops the notion of interdependence as a framework for understanding how these relations have become established in the country. Recent political discourses and policy publications are drawn on to explain the shifts in policy regime under the Labour and Coalition governments in the UK in the early twenty-first century, emphasising the differences and similarities in these. The conclusion situates these regimes in a broader context of state and third sector analysis and the contested conceptualisation of civil society. Since 1999 third sector policy in the UK has been devolved to the separate administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; and this article focuses largely on developments in England only.