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10. INCLUSIVE GOVERNANCE? THE CASE OF 'MINORITY' AND VOLUNTARY SECTOR GROUPS AND THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WALES Paul Chaney, Tom Hall and Bella Dicks INTRODUCTION The new National Assembly for Wales has set itself a challenge: to involve actively in government 'those who have previously faced barriers in partici- pating in Welsh political and community life' (Equal Opportunities Commission, 1998). This paper presents a discussion of relations between the Assembly and marginalized social groups plus the voluntary organizations that work on their behalf; groups that are located at the cutting edge of the new rhetoric of 'open' government. Pluralism and inclusiveness are amongst the founding aims of devolution in Wales, and promises of consensual and inclusive government have provided the building blocks of the devolutionary argument. These aims emerged from what Ron Davies (1999a: 6), in many ways the architect of Welsh devolution, has called the 'democratic deficit', or 'crisis of representation' of the eighteen years of Conservative government. Inclusiveness, however, is one of a number of key, potentially vague and slippery terms such as 'participation' and 'civil society', that have been used extensively in Wales to make the case for devolution. For Davies (1999a: 7), inclusiveness is 'a willingness to share ideas, talk to others, to include those with common objectives in the pursuit and exercise of.power'; the 'others' to whom he refers being defined 'by ethnicity, language, politics, religion or whatever. It is thus centrally concerned with communication, and the ques- tion of how these channels of communication can be established and sustained will be key to the success of the policy. Thus at the outset Davies insisted that Tony Blair outline an 'inclusive' vision of Labour's devolution proposals at the Wales Labour Party Conference in May 1996. The Labour leader stated: 'A Welsh Assembly and a Scottish Parliament are good for Britain and good for