Traces the dispersal of power associated with contemporary transformations of the state and discusses the tensions that arise in the shift towards partnership working, public participation, citizen engagement, and the 'responsibilisation' of citizens in modernized social health and welfare systems. Governance theory, it argues, has much to contribute to analyses of the Third Way in that it shifts the focus of attention beyond economic structures or processes towards a broader concern with issues of citizenship, concepts of community, and flows of power beyond the state. However, the chapter critiques a number of assumptions on which it is based and highlights its capacity to de-politicize analyses of the state and to legitimize the Third Way as an inevitable consequence of social and economic change.
Keywords: collaboration, dispersal of power, governance, hybridity, instability, partnership, state, systems theory,