Abstract

This article looks at the deployment of partnership-as-governance in the area of EU and Irish waste management and incineration policy. Looking at the specific case of plans to locate a municipal incinerator at Poolbeg in Dublin, the key argument offered is that institutional arrangements in this instance fail to address fundamental issues of power inequalities. As a result, concertation actually increases levels of citizen’s dissatisfaction and hostility, making community-based resistance against incineration all the more likely.