This article examines the emerging rhetoric of 'community governance' under the current Labour government and its import for local government-voluntary sector relationships. It explores the continuities and differences of this with that of the previous Conservative government and evaluates the extent to which this is a genuinely new perspective on these relationships. It concludes by offering a conceptual framework with which to understand these relationships and highlights the political and managerial challenges which must be faced if 'community governance' is to become more than simple rhetoric.
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