Governing, Independence and Expertise tells the story of the not-for-profit housing sector in England, focusing on its representative body, the National Housing Federation. Mixing empirical research and social theory, the book looks at how the Federation and housing associations influenced their own space of governing through deploying discourses of independence and expertise; how being governed, and governing, become at times, one and the same.

A recent review in Housing Studies by Professor Hal Pawson,  described this book as “a revealing and learned history of third sector housing … McDermont’s theorisation of power relations is of wider interest for housing policy – and for social policy, more broadly”.