Edinburgh Napier University

  Partnerships are crucial to regional and local economic development. There is a need for greater understanding about the real operations of such partnerships in order to improve their efficiency and effectiveness and to understand the appropriateness of different forms of partnership in different circumstances. This paper describes the first part of an analysis of these questions using a survey of participants of the East of Scotland European Partnership. It considers the partners’ views of the role of the partnership and seeks to apply a framework for analysing partnerships and considers its advantages and disadvantages from the perspectives of the participants.

Major advantages of the Partnership were more effective projects and improved implementation, together with greater accountability, co-ordination budget enlargement and strategy formulation. The perceived disadvantages were considerably less significant. The two greatest disadvantages were bureaucracy costs and the skewing of projects towards those eligible for funding rather than those likely to make the greatest contribution towards local economic development. The paper indicates a notable divergence in views of different partners (based upon factors such as sector, location, aims). Both theoretically and empirically such differing perspectives must be fully analysed.