Meeting the service needs of the less well-off and the elderly in areas of low
density population remains a perennial problem. Increasingly, partnership
between two or more of the state, the private and the voluntary sectors is viewed
as a strategy for delivering welfare services, as part of new forms of local
governance. Previous research points to the influence of established and new
institutional and associated territorial structures on the formation and working of
partnerships. This paper examines the role of partnerships in home-based welfare
service delivery in France and Ireland; countries which share similarities, but also
marked differences in their systems of local government and governance. The
results reveal that both established and new territorial and institutional structures
are influential in moulding approaches to service delivery through partnership. So
too is the continuing role of the state, in contrast to some descriptions of the
influence of neo-liberalism.