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a b s t r a c tAlthough rural partnership working is a well-researched area, less attention has been paid to the particular challenges in IUCN Category V protected areas. This paper explores the policy and practice of partnership working in a case study Category V area-Northumberland National Park, England. Qualitative research was conducted through documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with a sample of 23 stakeholders involved in the management of this protected area. It was found that a convoluted institutional history has shaped the present day approach to its management. The processes driving partnership working were understood in terms of governance factors with a relatively high degree of control and behavioural factors with a relatively low degree of control. There was a tacit acceptance among actors that success was dependent upon uncontrollable factors and in particular inter-personal relations between representatives of stakeholder bodies. These findings are important for all IUCN Category V protected areas reliant upon working within stakeholder partnerships to achieve sustainable development objectives. Management bodies can benefit from examining the history of these often complex webs of relationships and the implications for communications between organisations if they are to understand the processes that underpin this form of governance.

Introduction: the political rationalities of devolution Writing in The Economist in 1996, Tony Blair set out the case for constitutional change in terms of its potential to bring about``democracy's second age''. As part of an ambition to build a`partnership' between politicians and the people, Blair set out plans for a series of reforms aimed at securing democratic renewal. Prominent in this reform programme was political devolution for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, administrative devolution in England, and the creation of an elected London Assemblyösubsequently enacted in Labour's first term of office (1997^2001). This was followed by (unsuccessful) plans for political devolution in England being put forward in Labour's second term (2001^05). Blair was not alone in constructing devolution as a means of developing a more democratic Britain. The democratising thesis has been outlined at length in the campaigning literature alongside identity, economic, and administrative imperatives (see, for example, Campaign for the English Regions, 2005; Humphrey and Tomaney, 2002; Scottish Constitutional Convention, 1988). Although the call for democracy has an immediate and incontrovertible appeal, the precise ways in which devolution is potentially democratising are myriad and complexöranging from holding the`quangocracy' to account, through new scrutinising structures (Morgan and Mungham, 2000), to getting ordinary people more engaged through reforming the manner in which politics is conducted (Hassan and Warhurst, 2000). The chance to involve a broader constituency of interests in politics and policymaking is, therefore, one of several ways in which devolution is argued to promote democratisation. According to devolutionists, this enhanced involvement can be achieved in specific ways. These include a greater openness in the political system and a willingness to include`civil society' in the day-today business of policy development. In short, devolution contains the possibility of a commitment to a more participatory politics. In this paper I treat the claim that devolution can result in democratic renewal in this way as a particular`political rationality'. In using the term`political rationality' I draw on the work of Rose and Miller (1992), who defined the term as the way in which