Divergence in Community Participation Policy: Analysing Localism and Community Empowerment Using a Theory of Change Approach

Steve Rolfe

45 citations0/0 files storedLocal Government Studies

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Public Policy and Administration Research Local Governance and Planning Evaluation and Performance Assessment

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed a significant turn towards community participation in public policy around the globe, raising concerns that states are resorting to ‘government through community’, shifting responsibilities onto communities. In order to unpack the ambiguous rhetoric of policy statements, this article employs ideas from evaluation methodology to develop a generic theory of change for community participation policy. The model is then utilised to analyse and compare the UK Coalition Government’s Big Society/Localism agenda and the Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment approach, demonstrating the ways in which these represent a clear example of policy divergence, and potentially significant alternatives to state–community relations in the context of austerity. The article also demonstrates the potential wider applicability of ‘theories of change’ methodology for policy analysis.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 45 citations exist upstream.

References

2000Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community 2001Participation: the New Tyranny?1996The death of the social? Re-figuring the territory of government 2006Spiraling-Up: Mapping Community Transformation with Community Capitals Framework 2011Local Governance under the Coalition Government: Austerity, Localism and the ‘Big Society’2012The alchemy of austerity 2011Public Policy in the Community 2003Urban renaissance?

Cited by

2019Combining Theories of Change and Realist Evaluation in practice: Lessons from a research on evaluation study 2021Towards inclusive cities and social sustainability: A scoping review of initiatives to support the inclusion of people with intellectual disability in civic and social activities 2017Governance and Governmentality in Community Participation: The Shifting Sands of Power, Responsibility and Risk 2021New frontiers in local government community engagement: Towards transformative place-based futures 2021Fugitive coproduction: Conceptualising informal community practices in Scotland's hospitals

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.