Governance at community level: Small towns in rural Victoria

Abstract

The ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between and within public and private sectors has led to new styles of governing that affect the way that rural communities organise themselves. Some have called this a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ where there has been a convergence of neo-liberal and communitarian ideologies to form the basis of a new relationship between the state, the market and civil society. We analyse the impact of these converging ideologies using a survey of development groups in 35 towns in rural Victoria and explore the types of community governance that have emerged as a response to changes in those towns that lost their local government authorities in the last decade of the twentieth century.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Anna Macgarvey and the referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts and the Public Administration Research Trust Fund for part funding of this project.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin O'Toole

Kevin O'Toole is an Associate Professor of Politics in the Faculty of Arts at Deakin University.

Neil Burdess

Neil Burdess is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the Faculty of Arts at Deakin University.