The Australian Journal of Public Administration, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 9–21 doi:10.1111/j.1467-8500.2009.00664.x RESEARCH AND EVALUATION An Evaluation of the Economic Approaches Used by Policy Actors towards Investment in Place-Based Partnerships in Victoria Chris McDonald, Lionel Frost, Andrea Kirk-Brown Monash University Al Rainnie University of Leicester Pieter Van Dijk Monash University Place-based partnerships are supported by the state and include various organisations and interests within particular geographic areas. The Victorian government has established place- based partnerships to plan and coordinate resource allocation decisions to meet objectives such as economic development and social inclusion. In the literature there are positive and negative views of these partnerships. One view is that they allow regions to build competitive advantage, while another is that they are a means of pursuing a neoliberal policy agenda that seeks to reduce government protection and investment. We help clarify the tensions between positive and negative views of partnerships by examining the economic approaches used by policy actors toward place-based partnerships in Victoria. We find that policy actors combine neoclassical and institutionalist approaches to argue that partnerships generate networks that enable more efficient and equitable resource allocation within places. Key words: place-based partners, market failures, economic approaches, resource allocation Partnerships with businesses, not-for-profit or- ganisations and community-based organisa- tions are an increasingly important part of the way in which governments address prob- lems of spatially uneven development. These are ‘place-based’ in that they are intended to plan and coordinate the allocation of resources in particular geographic areas. In general, lo- cal and regional development encompasses the idea that a sub-national geographic area is a key site of political decision-making, economic prosperity, social cohesion and environment sustainability. The state has generally been in- terested in promoting local and regional devel- opment as a means to address geographically unbalanced economic growth (Hudson 2001). The Victorian government has been at the fore- front of these partnership initiatives through strategies such as A Fairer Victoria (AFV ) that focus on promoting social inclusion at a neigh- bourhood level. However, the association be- tween these partnerships and the economic de- velopment of places is at present unclear. On the one hand, governments often argue that these partnerships empower local and regional com- munities to adapt to rapid change and develop C  2010 The Authors Journal compilation C  2010 National Council of the Institute of Public Administration Australia