Ayşem Mert, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden

‘Taking sustainable development as its central substantive area of concern, this important new book offers a compelling portrait of the global partnership regime in all its richness and complexity, revealing its logics of emergence and operation. Mert demonstrates the analytical and critical power of an antiessentialist discourse theoretical approach to the study of partnerships, examining a number of crucial mediating discourses drawn from economics, democratic theory and ecology. Her work embodies what all such studies aspire to be: an ontological and not merely an ontical inquiry. The novel concepts developed - particularly “sedimentation of conflict” - makes this a potentially transformative study.’

• Contents: Acknowledgements PART I Setting the Scene 1. Introduction 2. Methodological Reflections: Studying Change within Continuity 3. Theoretical Reflections: Discourses and Institutions after Nature 4. Partnerships as Sedimented Discourses: The Emergence of Type-II Outcomes PART II Analysing the Mediating Discourses 5. Partnerships and the Discourse of Privatization 6. Partnerships and the Discourse of Sustainable Development 7. Partnerships and the Discourse of Participation 8. Conclusions Index

Ayşem Mert, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden

‘Taking sustainable development as its central substantive area of concern, this important new book offers a compelling portrait of the global partnership regime in all its richness and complexity, revealing its logics of emergence and operation. Mert demonstrates the analytical and critical power of an antiessentialist discourse theoretical approach to the study of partnerships, examining a number of crucial mediating discourses drawn from economics, democratic theory and ecology. Her work embodies what all such studies aspire to be: an ontological and not merely an ontical inquiry. The novel concepts developed - particularly “sedimentation of conflict” - makes this a potentially transformative study.’

• Contents: Acknowledgements PART I Setting the Scene 1. Introduction 2. Methodological Reflections: Studying Change within Continuity 3. Theoretical Reflections: Discourses and Institutions after Nature 4. Partnerships as Sedimented Discourses: The Emergence of Type-II Outcomes PART II Analysing the Mediating Discourses 5. Partnerships and the Discourse of Privatization 6. Partnerships and the Discourse of Sustainable Development 7. Partnerships and the Discourse of Participation 8. Conclusions Index

Ayşem Mert, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden

‘Taking sustainable development as its central substantive area of concern, this important new book offers a compelling portrait of the global partnership regime in all its richness and complexity, revealing its logics of emergence and operation. Mert demonstrates the analytical and critical power of an antiessentialist discourse theoretical approach to the study of partnerships, examining a number of crucial mediating discourses drawn from economics, democratic theory and ecology. Her work embodies what all such studies aspire to be: an ontological and not merely an ontical inquiry. The novel concepts developed - particularly “sedimentation of conflict” - makes this a potentially transformative study.’

• Contents: Acknowledgements PART I Setting the Scene 1. Introduction 2. Methodological Reflections: Studying Change within Continuity 3. Theoretical Reflections: Discourses and Institutions after Nature 4. Partnerships as Sedimented Discourses: The Emergence of Type-II Outcomes PART II Analysing the Mediating Discourses 5. Partnerships and the Discourse of Privatization 6. Partnerships and the Discourse of Sustainable Development 7. Partnerships and the Discourse of Participation 8. Conclusions Index