Government‐Voluntary Sector Compacts: Governance, Governmentality, and Civil Society

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00148
Published date01 March 2000
Date01 March 2000
In 1998 government and the main representatives of the voluntary sec-
tor in each of the four countries in the United Kingdom published ‘com-
pacts’ on relations between government and the voluntary sector. These
were joint documents, carrying forward ideas expressed by the Labour
Party when in opposition, and directed at developing a new relationship
for partnership with those ‘not-for-profit organizations’ that are
involved primarily in the areas of policy and service delivery.This arti-
cle seeks to use an examination of the compacts, and the processes that
produced them and that they have now set in train, to explore some of
the wider issues about the changing role of government and its develop-
ing relationships with civil society. In particular, it argues that the new
partnership builds upon a movement from welfarism to economism
which is being developed further through the compact process. Drawing
upon a governmentality approach, and illustrating the account with
interview material obtained from some of those involved in compact
issues from within both government and those umbrella groups which
represent the voluntary sector, an argument is made that this overall
process represents the beginning of a new reconfiguration of the state
that is of considerable constitutional significance.
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
* School of Law, The Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 INN, Northern
Ireland
I am grateful to all those who spoke to me and sent me material from the Compact
Development Office in the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Home
Office Voluntary and Community Unit in London, the Voluntary Information Unit of the
Scottish Office and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, the National Assembly
for Wales and the Wales Council for Voluntary Action, the Voluntary Activity Unit in Belfast
and the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action, and a number of individual volun-
tary and community organizations. I am particularly grateful to Paul Berasi, Neil Bradley, and
Seamus McAleavey. I am also happy to acknowledge a small grant towards travel costs given
by SLS Legal Publications (NI).
98
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 27, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2000
ISSN: 0263–323X, pp. 98–132
The Government-Voluntary Sector Compacts: Governance,
Governmentality, and Civil Society
JOHN MORISON*
99
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000
I. INTRODUCTION
In an earlier contribution to this journal this author argued that the con-
stitutional reform agenda was focused too exclusively on the traditional
institutions of big government and thus was missing an opportunity to
engage with a wider project of renewing and invigorating democracy in
those new structures and relationships that make up a wider process of gov-
ernance1. This wider idea of governance marks a move from the modern
state to an idea of ‘cosmopolitan governance’2and, as such, involves com-
plex relationships at regional, national, and global levels and across politi-
cal institutions, agencies, networks, and associations in the economy and in
civil society at each level. It is at these levels and towards these processes
and inter-relationships that a project for democratizing the operation of
governance as it actually occurs should be directed.
This account attempts to look at a particular exercise of power taking
place outside the formal constitution and at how it is structured by wider
processes. It provides an examination of the four compact documents
drawn up by government and representatives from the voluntary sectors in
England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. These seek to structure a
new partnership relation between the formal state and those parts of the
voluntary sector which are particularly open to moving from a traditional
welfarist ethos towards a more managerial or economist one as they per-
form functions that at one time were considered the direct responsibility of
government bureaucracy. In part one the general context of changing struc-
tures of governance is reviewed before consideration is given to the formal
development of civil society that is encouraged within the third way
approach that characterizes some aspects of government policy. Changing
patterns within the voluntary sector are examined before the account focus-
es in part two on how the compact documents emerge as a point from
which the details of a new relationship between government and the sector
can be cultivated further in a continuing process. Drawing upon govern-
mentality literature, it is argued in part three that this new relationship
must be seen as a particular exercise of power where new frameworks for
thought and action are being developed in a process of exchange and dia-
logue. Part four offers the conclusion that there are now and increasingly
spaces beyond the formal constitution, even reaching into civil society,
where the realities of contemporary public power escape the notice of much
current constitutional scholarship and elude the reach of any formal
constitutional control.
1J. Morison, ‘The Case Against Constitutional Reform?’ (1998) 25 J. of Law and Society 510.
2D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan
Governance (1995).
100
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000
1. Changing structures of governance
Although the scope of what is meant by governance is now widening to dif-
ferent levels and across various relationships, the whole project of govern-
ment is becoming now reduced as there is a loss of decision-making power
and accountability to bodies beyond the traditional state. This general
process ought to be becoming more and more familiar to constitutional
lawyers who now increasingly must struggle to make the traditional cate-
gories of public law fit the new processes of governance. Of course much of
this has to do with what might be termed the de-nationalization of govern-
ment. Another important feature is the emergence some years ago of
a belief in market forces as the basis for the efficient allocation of resources
and the revival of contract as the foremost organizing mechanism for orga-
nizing a range of relationships in ways that blur further the boundary
between public and private spheres. The old battle between market and
state may not be entirely over and won but even now, with a Labour
administration, the main question is less likely to be about the nature of the
good society than, more prosaically, about how government can secure ser-
vices on behalf of consumers through contracts with quality assured
providers.3This is the situation with medical services, university education,
and even legal services. The Labour government has inherited a complex
set of markets and quasi-markets where contracting out and outsourcing
exists alongside contracting in regimes where competitive in-house agencies
operate at a distance from the parent operation.4Overall, it seems set to
continue with this. There has not been any significant shift back to large-
scale, direct-service provision by local or central government such as exist-
ed before the public sector reforms of the 1980s and early 1990s. The joint
public sector and private sector ventures are to continue through the
Private Finance Initiative for public infrastructure projects and in the
encouragement of private investment in local services infrastructure
through the Public Private Partnerships Programme. The move from
Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) to the Best Value framework as
outlined in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions
document Modernising Local government: Improving Local Services through
Best Value (1998) provides only a change in emphasis rather than a
counter-revolution.5There are even radical proposals for public service plcs
3Of course public service contracting in this context means something very different from tra-
ditional ideas of regular commercial contracts. As P. Vincent-Jones puts it, ‘only at the mar-
gins of the investigation do we encounter what lawyers would recognize as “contracts”
operating within what economists would recognize as “markets’ (‘Public Sector
Contracting and Quasi-Markets’ in Contract, Co-operation, and Competition, eds. S. Deakin
and J. Michie (1997) at 144). Contracts in the public sector environment are better regard-
ed as a species of policy implementation and control.
4See, further, W. Bartlett, J. Roberts, and J. Le Grand (eds.), Quasi-Market Reform in the
1990s: A Revolution in Social Policy (1998).
5See P. Vincent-Jones, ‘Competition and Contracting in the Transition from CCT to Best
Value: Towards a More Reflexive Regulation?’ (1999) 77 Public Administration 273.

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