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No Longer ‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards’? Advances in Local State-Voluntary and Community Sector Relationships During Covid-19

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2023

Joanne Cook ,
Harriet Thiery Open the ORCID record for Harriet Thiery [Opens in a new window]  and
Jon Burchell
Joanne Cook
Affiliation:
Hull University Business School, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull, HU6 7RX
Harriet Thiery*
Affiliation:
Hull University Business School, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull, HU6 7RX (please note that at the time of conducting the research reported here, Harriet Thiery was based at Sheffield University Management School)
Jon Burchell
Affiliation:
Sheffield University Management School, University of Sheffield, Conduit Road, Sheffield, S10 1FL
*
*Corresponding author, email: harriet.thiery@gmail.com
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Abstract

Despite the significant influence of localism on policy discourses in the UK in recent decades, there has been limited evidence of any fundamental changes in state-civil society relationships. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 created a new context for cross-sectoral collaboration, as the local Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) and local communities moved to the forefront of the crisis response. This paper draws upon 49 semi-structured interviews with local authorities (LAs) and VCS organisations across England, Scotland and Wales, to explore how the pandemic has reshaped LA-VCS collaboration. Examining the evolution of a range of local collaborative frameworks during the Covid-19 crisis, the article examines what enabled these collaborations to develop, how they operated and what insights can be derived regarding both the conditions for collaboration to flourish and the capacity to sustain this going forward. The findings offer insights into what more progressive forms of collaboration might look like during the transition from crisis and into recovery. It contributes to broader debates about whether the models deployed during Covid-19 represent a pathway to more consensus-based collaboration after a decade of antagonism between civil society and the state.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , First View , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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