The Blurring of the Public and Private Sectors in England’s ‘Local Enterprise Partnerships’: collaborative governance or local elite networks?

Over the last decade a new approach to regional government in England has sought to bring together groupings of local authorities and local business leaders in ‘Local Enterprise Partnerships’ (LEPs). This latest attempt to fill the void of regional governance in England has been explicitly focused on fostering ‘private-public partnerships’ and ‘collaborative governance’. However, this paper argues that those partnerships fail to effectively capture the benefits of private-public collaboration and have instead allowed for the solidification of networks of local elites. This paper builds on research from eight case-study regions in England using document analysis, social network analysis, and stakeholder interviews. Government policy documents assume that LEPs represent the intersection of two distinct realms, the public and the private, which are each held to have distinctive actors, institutions, and practices. However, social network analysis shows a blurring between public and private institutions and between local politicians and local business leaders. For example, one LEP Chair had, in recent years, been leader of the region’s largest local authority and the region’s largest private-sector employer. Stakeholder interviews emphasise the importance of public-private collaboration, but also highlight a lack of understanding about the precise relation between the public and private sector. Overall, this paper argues that if public-private collaboration is to be at the heart of England’s regional government, there must be a clear separation between partners, in terms of both institutions and personnel, and there must be effective mechanisms for accountability. Without these two conditions, ‘Local Enterprise Partnerships’ reinforce elite networks and therefore limit the value of public-private collaboration.