devolution in the uk essay

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On this page you will find discussion and analysis of devolution. The content here is specifically designed for A level politics and early undergraduate level students looking to deepen their understanding of the topic. At A level specifically, the component 2 topics on the ‘constitution’ and the ‘relations between the branches’ both cover devolution. This page will help students answer essay questions on the topic.

Click on any of the questions below to be taken to the answer.

What is devolution and how did it come about?

Why is devolution a constitutional issue?

How are these bodies elected?

What powers do the devolved bodies have?

What are the challenges that come from devolution?

What is the West Lothian Question?

What is uneven or asymmetrical devolution?

What power does the UK Parliament have over the devolved bodies?

Could parts of the UK become independent?

Devolution refers to the transfer of certain powers from the central UK government to nations and regions within the United Kingdom. It can involve the establishment of legislative assemblies or parliaments and governments or executives within these sub-state territories.

The existing process of devolution began in the late 1990s. The incoming Labour government promised referendums on devolution to Scotland and Wales as part of its 1997 election manifesto. In Northern Ireland, the establishment of a ‘power-sharing’ government was agreed as part of the Good Friday/‘Belfast’ Agreement – the peace agreement brokered between the nationalist and unionist communities to end the longstanding conflict known as ‘the Troubles’. Devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was confirmed in all three cases by referendum (although only by a very small majority in Wales). The devolved institutions were established by the Scotland Act 1998 , the Government of Wales Act 1998 and the Northern Ireland Act 1998 (all three of which have been changed in various ways since). A more limited form of devolution was introduced shortly after for London, also after approval via a referendum in 1998.

Devolution was not an entirely new phenomenon: a devolved parliament and government had been set up for Northern Ireland by the Government of Ireland Act 1920. However, these arrangements were suspended in 1972. This aside, before devolution in 1998, England, Scotland and Wales had for a long time been run by a central UK government, based in London. During this time, the UK possessed many of the features of a ‘unitary state’ – where a territory is governed from the centre by a single government and Parliament. This changed with devolution.

It is worth also noting that the devolution of the late 1990s gave Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and London different institutional arrangements and powers. This variety is why devolution in the UK is often called ‘asymmetrical’ – it is not the same for all nations and regions. In England devolution remains very limited. Aside from London there are ten English cities and regions to which some additional powers have been devolved, most of which also have a directly-elected mayor.

The constitution refers to the institutions, rules and principles which structure and define the political system. Devolution is a key feature of the UK constitution: it has meant the establishment of new political, legislative and governmental institutions. Through this it has changed the location of power and decision-making in various ways. Some have also argued that devolution has challenged and stretched some of the principles which have been held to lie at the heart of the UK constitution.  

The principle of parliamentary ‘sovereignty’ has been conventionally understood as central to the UK constitution. This means that the Westminster Parliament is supreme and anything it passes becomes law. On this basis, the UK has traditionally been classified as a ‘unitary state’, because the ultimate decision-making power is located in one central institution. This is in contrast to federal or confederal systems where the state is divided into different territorial units with their own autonomy and protected decision-making powers, which are usually set out in a written constitution. In a federal system, sovereignty is usually thought of as shared between the territories and the centre.

Some say that devolution has moved the UK away from being a unitary state towards a system that more resembles the federalism of, for instance, the United States or Germany; in effect, a quasi-federalism has appeared to replace the unitary system. However, it is only ‘quasi’ because it has some but not all of the features of a fully federal state. As we’ve seen, federalism is where power is decentralised to smaller units across the country and where sovereignty is shared between them and the central authority. In Germany, for example, the central political institutions share power with 16 states. Many key decisions that affect the lives of ordinary Germans are made by these federal states and not the central government.

Some believe devolution has also challenged the notion of parliamentary sovereignty. There are a range of different areas, such as education, transport and housing, which are now the responsibility of the devolved bodies. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic it became clear that the many of the rules enacted by central government did not apply in Scotland. This divergence came about because health is one of those areas that is devolved to the Scottish Parliament.  There is an agreement that the UK Parliament would not normally pass legislation in areas which are devolved without the consent of the devolved parliaments. This is known as the ‘Sewell convention’. Furthermore, although the Westminster Parliament still technically retains the power to abolish the devolved governments and legislatures should it vote to do so, many have observed that it is highly unlikely to use this power, meaning the devolved institutions are in practice permanent features of the UK constitution. Some have said that, on this basis, sovereignty is in fact now spread throughout the United Kingdom and no longer resides solely in the Westminster Parliament. However, the UK Parliament has increasingly in recent years passed laws that relate to devolved areas without the consent of the devolved legislatures. Some have suggested that the present central government is keen to assert the sovereignty of the UK Parliament and govern in a manner more typical of a unitary state.

The devolved bodies are elected using electoral systems that differ to the First-Past-the-Post electoral system used for elections to the UK Parliament. This was a significant development, since there is a longstanding debate about whether the disproportionate system used for elections to the House of Commons is an appropriate one. Labour was committed at the 1997 General Election to holding a referendum on introducing a proportional system for UK parliamentary elections but it never held this referendum. However, it did introduce new electoral systems as part of devolution.

Since the introduction of devolution, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have over time been given increased powers. When it was first established, the National Assembly for Wales (as it was then known) had no primary law-making powers. But its powers have been enhanced over the years to include the ability to pass primary legislation without consulting the Secretary of State for Wales. The Wales Act 2017 moved the Assembly (renamed in 2020 Senedd Cymru) to a similar model to that of the Scottish Parliament. The Scotland Act 1998 was also amended in 2012 and 2016 to give the Scottish Parliament more legislative powers. The different laws establishing devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set out which powers remain ‘reserved’ to the UK Parliament. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘reserved powers’ model. Reserved policy areas include defence, immigration and international relations, among several others. The reserved powers model is seen as more decentralising in its effect than its opposite, the ‘conferred’ powers model, which originally applied to Wales. Under reserved powers, the default position is that a given power, if not expressly reserved, is devolved. Under the ‘conferred’ powers model, the assumption is reversed: unless expressly devolved, a power remains at the centre.

The devolved systems have become more secure over time. The Conservatives were initially opposed to devolution in Wales and Scotland (though they supported the Northern Ireland peace process). Eventually they became more positive about it, although there are still some who criticise devolution and would like to see more central government involvement in devolved areas.

Devolution may have become a firm part of the UK constitution, but it comes with its own set of challenges and areas of contention. This is partly down to the piecemeal way in which devolution has been implemented. Four principal challenges that are associated with devolution are:

• The West Lothian question
• Uneven/asymmetrical devolution
• The power of the UK Parliament over the devolved bodies
•  Calls for independence from the United Kingdom

The West Lothian question was named after Tam Dalyell, the former MP for West Lothian, who famously first raised the question in a debate on devolution to Scotland and Wales in 1977. As we’ve seen, since the various devolution acts of the late 1990s, large areas of policy such as health, housing, schools and policing are now devolved to devolved legislatures. This has led to situations in which Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs get to debate and vote on legislation only affecting England in the Westminster Parliament, but English MPs have no equivalent say over the same matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Tam Dalyell asked: ‘For how long will English constituencies and English Honourable members tolerate… At least 119 Honourable Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland exercising an important and probably often decisive, effect on English politics while they themselves have no say in the same matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?’  At face value, this seems undemocratic.

Furthermore, there have been times when it has become a problem in practice. In 2003, for example, Tony Blair decided to introduce student tuition fees to English and Welsh universities for the first time. This controversial decision led to a showdown with his unhappy backbenchers. Blair was facing his first major defeat in the House of Commons. To push tuition fees through he had to rely on Scottish Labour MPs to meet the shortfall. The controversial use of Scottish MPs to vote through a law that would only impact upon non-Scottish students was even more of a problem because the official policy of the Labour Party in Scotland, where at the time they were in government, was to keep university education for Scottish students free.

In 2015, the Conservative government introduced ‘English Votes for English Laws’ (EVEL) to address the West Lothian question. This change to the House of Commons procedures meant that English MPs would have to approve England (or England and Wales)-only legislation before it could be voted on by MPs from the other territories of the UK as well. However, some criticised EVEL for differentiating between MPs based on where their constituencies were, in effect creating two levels of representative in the House of Commons. Others criticised EVEL for being insufficient and not providing for a proper forum for debating specifically English issues. The procedures were suspended during the coronavirus pandemic and then scrapped altogether in July 2021.

Further reading: Fear and Lothian in Westminster: the English question is not going to go away .

The Parliament website also has a great explainer on English Votes for English Laws (EVEL).

Another concern has been the inconsistency of devolution. For instance, at the outset of devolution in 1999, the powers devolved to Scotland were significantly more extensive than those devolved to Wales. This gap has narrowed subsequently. The gap is most pronounced when considering the difference between the devolved systems in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the position in England. Where devolution exists, it is less extensive in England, and parts of England have no devolution at all. Some voices within England have called for an extension of powers: Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, for example, has called for more powers, including the ability to bring under his control Greater Manchester’s transport system.

Most devolution in England has been to a handful of cities, which have received some additional powers in exchange for adopting a directly elected mayor. Some argue, however, that devolution should be consistently applied across England. They propose that England should be divided into regions, each with its own regional assembly with more extensive devolved powers. This proposal is sometimes opposed on the grounds that there is an insufficient sense of regional identity to support political assemblies at the regional level in England.

Given this, some argue instead that England should have its own devolved Parliament, of a similar kind to the legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Proponents of an English Parliament believe that if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own parliaments then it is only fair that England does too. This would provide a forum for English representation and the development of a specific English political ‘voice’.  However, opponents of an English Parliament object that England’s population size, geography and relative economic prosperity would lead to an imbalanced union dominated by England and its Parliament. Furthermore, it is argued that devolution to England would not secure any of the benefits of a more local form of devolution, as England would be such a large territorial unit. This debate, which has been ongoing for decades, is likely to continue.

Further reading: Alex Walker, ‘English local government and devolution: inconsistent and incomplete’

One final issue is the ability of central institutions to make decisions that override devolved bodies. According to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty parliament can, theoretically, override devolved laws, legislate in policy areas that are devolved, and indeed take powers back. As mentioned above, the Sewel Convention established that the UK parliament would ‘not normally’ legislate in areas that are devolved without the agreement of the devolved legislatures. This rule has been included in Acts of Parliament for Scotland and Wales and Scotland in 2016 and 2017. Recently though, the UK Parliament has been increasingly passing laws without the consent of the devolved legislatures. The controversial UK Internal Market Act 2020 , for example, was rejected by all of the devolved legislatures but was enacted by the UK Parliament anyway. This has led some to conclude that the Sewel Convention is no longer viable.

The Scotland and Wales Acts also state that the UK Parliament cannot abolish the devolved institutions without first obtaining approval in the territories involved via a referendum. This stipulation reflects the fact that the introduction of devolution followed approval in referendums. Nevertheless, under the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, these provisions could in theory be repealed or replaced. This gives UK devolution a weaker basis than, for instance, the territorial systems of Germany or the United States, where federal and state powers are defined and secured by constitutional law that cannot so easily be overridden.

Further reading: Gordon Anthony, Devolution, Brexit and the Sewel Convention

Perhaps one of the most pressing issues facing the United Kingdom is the cause of Scottish independence. In 2011, David Cameron, in the wake of the SNP winning an absolute majority in Scottish Parliament elections, agreed to an independence referendum for Scotland. In 2014, the pro-Union ‘better together’ side won the vote by 55-45 per cent. The result was closer than might have been anticipated when Cameron first agreed to the referendum; and in the late stages of the campaign there were some signs that the pro-independence side might even win. Calls for independence have not gone away. Polling from 2016 suggests that dislike of Brexit has given impetus to the cause. At the 2021 Holyrood election, the SNP won the most seats. It was one seat short of its own majority in the Scottish Parliament, but has since come to an agreement with the Scottish Green Party who are also in favour of independence. This has kept demands for another independence vote on the agenda. However, to legally secede from the Union would arguably require legislation at the UK level. At the time of writing, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has refused to facilitate a second referendum on Scottish independence. This highlights that there is no agreed mechanism within the UK constitution through which a territory might leave the Union. Even in the case of Northern Ireland, where the right to leave the UK is provided for in the Belfast/‘Good Friday’ agreement, there is some uncertainty as to the point at which a referendum on unification might be held. Some have criticised this lack of clarity as unhelpful.

Click here for a PowerPoint on devolution that condenses the information above. The PowerPoint is primarily designed for teachers covering the topic.

Further reading: Ciaran Martin, ‘The UK government and a second Scottish independence referendum: an unsustainable paradox?’

Jack Sheldon, ‘Union at the Crossroads: Why the British state must overhaul its approach to devolution’

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Devolved Government

Introduction to devolution

How has devolved government developed in Northern Ireland?

How has devolved government developed in Wales?

How has devolved government developed in Scotland?

How has devolution in Scotland and Wales developed since 1998?

What is the West Lothian Question?

What are the arguments for and against devolution?

An English Parliament?

What are the arguments for and against an English Parliament?

Local Government

What is a Local Authority?

How has parliament defined local government?

What services does Local government provide compared to central government?

How do Local Authorities work?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of local government?

What controls does central government have over local government?

How has local government changed in the way it works?

About Levels of Government

What are the arguments for and against devolution? 

Here we examine the different arguments in favour and against devolution in the United Kingdom to help you with your A Level politics studies.

The arguments for devolution in the United Kingdom

• Devolution makes it possible for decisions to be taken at a more appropriate level. For example, the problems of agriculture are different in Scotland to England. Also, the economic problems of the Welsh Valleys are special to that area.
• In Northern Ireland, a balancing of the needs of the two communities is a particular issue. 
• It is unlikely Ministers and civil servants in London have as good a knowledge and understanding of issues as local politicians
• Devolution has allowed the creation of offices in Brussels by the Scottish, Welsh and Norther Irish Governments so that they can give their views directly to the EU.
• There were separate Government Offices in Scotland and Wales before 1997 but the creation of separate Parliaments makes decision-making more democratic.
• Devolution allows the cultural identity and national feeling in each part of the UK to find expression. 
• Scotland has a different legal system, a different established church and a different education system to England.  Since the 1970s there has been a growth in Scottish national identity and interest in Scottish history. 
• The Welsh language is very important to many people in Wales, especially in the rural west of the country, and there have for long been demands for equal status for the Welsh and English languages in education, road signs, official documents and so on.
• Devolution has led to a different sort of politics with more involvement of interest groups and less partisan political debate.  Decision-making has been more dependent on consensus.  In Northern Ireland the new system forced cooperation between the two communities.
• Devolution allows for different policies to develop in different parties of the UK and for innovations to occur.  For example, Scotland has introduced proportional representation into local government elections, made prescriptions for medicines free and merged fire and police services.
• Devolution has created a system which can gradually evolve. Wales has now the ability to legislate that it did not have originally and extra policy areas have been devolved over time.  Scotland is about to gain greater control over taxation and welfare policy.

Arguments against devolution in the United Kingdom

• Extra costs. New Parliaments have been built in Edinburgh and Cardiff. There is an extra cost in running these and having an extra set of politicians
• There may be duplication between Whitehall and the devolved administrations in areas where responsibility is not clear cut
• Conflict can develop between the Devolved Governments and the UK Government. This is more likely to occur if the Scottish and Welsh Governments are run by a different party or parties to the UK Government. Arguments developed over the Barnett formula. This was created in the 1970s, to decide how much Scotland and Wales would get from UK wide taxation.
• Devolution is not the same as Federalism.  In Federal countries the respective powers of national and regional governments are defined in the Constitution and either side can go to a Constitutional Court to decide issues over which there is disagreement. The UK Supreme Court can only interpret the devolution legislation passed by Westminster. 
• The West Lothian question, which asks why Scottish and Welsh MPs can vote on English legislation at Westminster when English MPs cannot vote on Scottish and Welsh issues, has no obvious answer under devolution. 
• Devolution is an unstable system.  The Scottish and Welsh Government and Parliament have been unhappy with the limits on their powers and have wanted more devolution. 
• Westminster can easily be seen as a predominantly English Parliament and not interested in Scottish or Welsh problems, leading to demands for independence.
• There is a variation in services in different parts of the country.  English students pay tuition fees while Scottish students do not.  Many personal services delivered at home for those over 65 are free in Scotland but not in England.

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21 Devolution in the UK

Charlie Jeffery is Professor of Politics and Co‐Director of the Institute of Governance at the University of Edinburgh.

• Published: 02 January 2010
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This article first presents the features of the union state tradition. It then investigates the central themes in devolution research on the four nations of the UK. In addition, a number of overarching, UK-wide problems which arise from the failure to conceive of devolution as an integrated set of reforms to the UK state are covered. It argues that this disconnected approach to the UK's territorial constitution, while consistent with the traditions of the union state, is inherently unstable now that the UK has several governments rather than one, each with competing mandates. It further sets out a number of scenarios which may emerge as the UK grapples with this new territorial politics. The scope for the UK centre to hold the ring is compromised by its failure to renew itself for the post-devolution era and by its continuing preoccupation with England.

21.1 Introduction: Devolution and the Union State

A decade on, devolution appears to be producing the kind of transformative impact on UK politics that many anticipated at its launch (Hazell 1999 ). Arrangements for government in the four nations remain deeply contested. In May 2007 Scotland elected a (minority) Scottish National Party government committed in principle to Scottish independence. In August 2007 it published a historic White Paper on Scotland's constitutional options, which prompted an intense cross‐party debate on additional powers the parliament might seek. In Wales the nationalist Plaid Cymru entered government in coalition with Labour in 2007, with the two parties agreeing a plan for a referendum on further‐reaching devolution by 2011.

And by 2007, a new and vigorous debate about the government of England had also flared up. Prompted mainly by Conservative commentators, this did not focus on the aborted Labour agenda of English regionalization but rather perceptions of inequity in the post‐devolution Anglo‐Scottish relationship. One outcome appears to be a firming up of the Conservative Party's commitment to reform the way Westminster deals with English business as a consequence of devolution outside England.

Only on Northern Ireland is there broad satisfaction with the devolution arrangements following the resumption of devolution after a five‐year hiatus in 2007. The curious government of opposites formed by the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein has managed to relaunch devolution in a deliberately low‐key manner which has—so far at least—avoided the polarizing constitutional debates which disabled its predecessors. Few would bet, though, that the government of Northern Ireland has achieved enduring stability.

The territorial politics of post‐devolution UK remain, in other words, in flux. This contribution reviews some of the main themes in post‐devolution research. It takes its cue from a range of accounts which call attention to the historical context within which the current reforms have unfolded (e.g. Bogdanor 2001 ; McLean and McMillan 2005 ; Mitchell 2009 ). A common thread is that post‐1997 dynamics are not simply the result of a ‘process’ (Davies 1999 ) set off in the late 1990s. This contribution presents devolution instead as the latest attempt —shaped by continuities extending back over centuries—at accommodating distinctive Northern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh political communities alongside the numerically and economically dominant English in a single state structure.

Mitchell ( 2003 ; 2006 a) in particular has drawn attention to the peculiar and persistent problems of territorial politics in the UK's ‘union state’ (Rokkan and Urwin 1982 ). The UK is the product of the series of unions struck between England and the other UK nations, each under quite different conditions over four centuries (the annexation of Wales by England from 1536, the treaty of union of Scotland with England to form Great Britain in 1707, and the union of Great Britain with Ireland made in 1800 and remade, with the partition of the rest from the six counties of Northern Ireland, in 1922). Union states are not unitary; to use contemporary language, they are asymmetrical. They allow for administrative differentiation of some matters in some parts of the state, though typically have ‘administrative standardisation’ across ‘most of the territory’ of the state (Rokkan and Urwin 1982 : 11).

By 1997 the UK union state tradition of administrative differentiation was embodied in UK central government offices for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, Cabinet‐level departments with responsibilities for policy implementation in their respective nations. There was no equivalent territorial department for England. The devolution reforms transferred most of the responsibilities formerly exercised by the territorial departments to devolved legislatures established by new electoral processes. UK central government retained responsibility for a residual mix of UK‐wide and English functions. Beyond the introduction of a Greater London Authority with limited administrative powers, there has been no significant devolution of powers from UK government to England‐wide or English regional authorities. England remains, by and large, a territory of ‘administrative standardisation’.

This latest iteration of the union state tradition carries forward a number of path dependencies. Foremost is that devolution was not approached as a comprehensive, integrated reform of the UK state, but as a series of disconnected responses to changing, and different, demands about how the unions of Scotland and Wales with England and Northern Ireland with Great Britain should be renewed. It has been a project of the parts, not the whole, with reforms drawn up by different ministries, reflecting different territorial circumstances, and using different institutional templates. This has two implications. First, the trajectories of territorial politics in each of the four nations of the UK have been highly self‐contained. Second, and conversely, there has been little attempt to understand and manage the combination of extensive devolution outside England and continued centralization within England as an integrated system of government.

This contribution follows the logic of these features of the union state tradition. The next section explores central themes in devolution research on the four nations of the UK. The third section then draws out a number of overarching, UK‐wide problems which arise from the failure to conceive of devolution as an integrated set of reforms to the UK state. The contribution argues that this disconnected approach to the UK's territorial constitution, while consistent with the traditions of the union state, is inherently unstable now that the UK has several governments rather than one, each with competing mandates. Democratic devolution opens up new potentials for the political mobilization of territorial cleavage. The contribution concludes by setting out a number of scenarios which may emerge as the UK grapples with this new territorial politics.

21.2 Disconnected Devolutions: The Dynamics of Political Change in the Four Nations

Devolution happened for different reasons in different places. In Scotland the debate on devolution was reinvigorated by the accumulated dissatisfactions of being governed from 1979–97 by a Conservative Party which had been for decades a dwindling force in Scotland. In Wales there was a less vigorous version of the same debate. In Northern Ireland devolution was one component of a strategy of pacification of conflict in a divided society. In England regional devolution was about bringing better coordination to the delivery of central government services and (especially in the north) boosting regional economies.

Mirroring the patchwork quality of the devolution reforms, post‐devolution scholarship has largely been differentiated by UK nation. Though there has been some work comparing Scotland and Wales (e.g. Taylor and Thomson 1999 ; Bradbury 2006   a ; Wyn Jones and Scully 2006 ) and on Anglo‐Scottish relationships (Miller 2005 ; Devine 2008 ), three‐ or four‐nation treatments are rare. 1 Northern Ireland often gets bracketed out as sui generis and England for not having ‘real’ devolution. The result is a growing stock of single‐nation studies, including systematic accounts of territorial political systems (Keating 2005 ; Rawlings 2003 ; Sandford 2005 ; Travers 2004 ; Tonge 2005 ), a number of edited collections (Carmichael, Knox, and Osborne 2007 ; Chaney, Hall, and Pithouse 2001 ; Hazell 2006 ; Wright 2000 ; Tomaney and Mawson 2002 ; Wilford 2001 ), and a burgeoning collection of contributions to scholarly journals and other outlets. 2 It is not feasible in this framework to give a full account of these works. Instead the following draws out shared themes of constitutional structure and political process in research on the four nations.

21.2.1 Evolving Constitutional Debates

21.2.1.1 wales.

A first theme concerns the durability of the institutional arrangements established in each of the four nations. Wales has seen most change. Unlike in Scotland Welsh devolution was not prefigured by a vigorous debate on devolution spearheaded by a broad‐based campaign. Its institutional form emerged much more as the result of negotiations between pro‐ and anti‐devolution factions within the Welsh Labour Party. The result was a compromise at a low common denominator: the National Assembly had a form of devolution based on secondary legislative empowerments scattered over hundreds of Westminster statutes, as previously exercised by the UK Welsh Office; and—with pointed analogies to local government practice—it had no formal separation of government and opposition. This ‘strange anatomy’ (Rawlings 2003 : 85) of Welsh devolution was difficult to understand—even for insiders—and to operate. What followed, unsurprisingly, has been an ‘uninterrupted… constitutional debate’ (Rawlings 2003 : 85), involving:

An Operational Review of the Assembly in 2001–2, which led to a de facto move to a government‐opposition model.

A Commission on the Powers and Electoral Arrangements of the Assembly chaired by Lord Richard from 2002 to 2004, which proposed, inter alia , a staged move to full, primary legislative powers, with interim measures to widen the Assembly's autonomy under secondary legislative powers.

A White Paper in 2005, followed by the 2006 Government of Wales Act which significantly widened the Assembly's secondary powers and allowed for a later move to full legislative powers, subject to a referendum.

A commitment by the 2007 Labour—Plaid Cymru coalition to hold a referendum on full legislative powers by 2011.

The establishment in 2008 of an All Wales Convention' to prepare the ground for the proposed referendum.

This constitutional saga is indicative of the fragmented approach of the union state to its territorial politics. The compromises in the mid‐1990s were not part of any overarching vision of how to run a devolved nation as part of a modernized union, but rather what could be sold to a reluctant Welsh Labour Party. When played out in practice these compromises were unsustainable. It would be difficult to find any academic analysis which argues that the original form of Welsh devolution was fit for purpose. 3 Responses to the current halfway house are barely more positive (Trench 2005   c ; Miers, Patchett, and Rawlings 2005 ). All the time there has been a backdrop of public opinion in which full legislative devolution has been more popular than the Assembly model of secondary legislative powers (Wyn Jones and Scully 2008 : 68). Welsh devolution in other words appears hobbled by the narrowness of perspective the Welsh Labour Party brought to the question of renewing the Welsh relationship with the UK.

21.2.1.2 Scotland

By contrast well over a decade's campaigning from the early 1980s produced a template for devolution which had broad support in Scotland. Even so public opinion has also consistently been behind further‐reaching devolution, including more powers to raise revenues in Scotland to fund the responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament (Curtice 2006 : 107). What Scots do not endorse is Scottish independence, with support stable at around 30 per cent since 1999 and falling recently (Curtice 2008   a : 40).

Against that background the SNP's 2007 White Paper is intriguing. It sets out the SNP's preference for independence and its commitment to hold an independence referendum by 2011. That appears unlikely given the opposition to a referendum of Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats, who together hold a unionist majority in the Scottish parliament. But the White Paper also recognizes what now appears to be a consensus among the unionist parties (and the general public) for further devolution within the UK (Scottish Executive 2007: 5–6). Though the unionist parties have refused to join the ‘National Conversation’ on Scotland's constitutional future announced in the White Paper, they have set up their own Devolution Commission to explore possible adjustments to the devolution settlement. The establishment of the Commission makes more likely some measure of further‐reaching devolution in the short term. Significantly the SNP has welcomed the Commission. There is perhaps a sense in this, and in the general tenor of thinking in the White Paper, of SNP recognition that independence is not an absolute and that there may ultimately be little practical distinction between enhanced devolution within the UK and notional independence in a British Isles/European Union setting.

21.2.1.3 Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland there is less of an institutional dynamic at play. At heart this reflects the intricacies of the Belfast Agreement painstakingly negotiated in 1998 and the refusal of some of the parties to it—most importantly Sinn Fein—to revisit it. It does not mean there is consensus on the adequacy of the Agreement as a basis for stable government. Debate has focused on its ‘consociational’ properties. Consociational political systems have features designed to manage conflict in divided societies through a mix of power sharing and protections for the autonomy of distinct communities (Lijphart 1977 ). Many of the features of Northern Ireland devolution follow consociational models.

The repeated early suspensions of the Assembly then the long suspension from 2002 to 2007 were a clear enough sign that consociation in Northern Ireland was not working. The debate is about whether there is a fix, either as recalcitrants in power sharing come on board (as the DUP under Ian Paisley in the end did), or through tweaking the institutions of consociation (McGarry and O'Leary 2007 : 70– 8), or whether there is a more fundamental problem. Wilson ( 2007 ), for example, has argued that the competing, ethno‐national constitutional visions in Northern Ireland (union with the UK versus the reunification of Ireland) leave little room for the sense of shared territorial commitment, normally to a single state, that successful consociations typically have. Without that shared commitment power‐sharing rules may run the danger of polarizing divisions rather than bridging them. The challenge for Wilson is to move ‘beyond consociationalism’ to a new, ‘post‐ethnic’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ agenda that establishes a sense of shared commitment to the territory of Northern Ireland (Wilson 2007 : 26–8).

The connections these theoretical debates have with everyday concerns in Northern Ireland are ambiguous. There is a strong pattern of spatial division of Protestant and Catholic communities—in housing, schooling, recreation, and so on—especially in parts of Belfast (Shirlow and Murtagh 2006 ). Yet alongside that polarization of everyday life there is also evidence of growth in (aspirations to) mixed communities. 4 There are similar ambiguities in data on constitutional preference. Given a choice in principle, over 80 per cent of Protestants consistently prefer continued membership of the UK, while around half of Catholics consistently prefer reunification with the Republic of Ireland (Mac Ginty 2006 : 35). At that level there is clearly no consocia‐ tional commitment to a shared territory. But given the current options, in practice , of either the Northern Ireland Assembly or Westminster having ‘most influence over how Northern Ireland is run’ support for the Assembly far outweighs Westminster in both communities. Devolution has also been the majority constitutional preference in Northern Ireland from 2003 on (Mac Ginty 2006 : 37–9). 5 These data suggest that a pragmatic desire for a functioning local politics is now the cross‐community default option in Northern Ireland. There may, in that case, be a solid platform for power‐ sharing devolution.

21.2.1.4 England

Questions of government structure within England remain open ended. Labour was unable to build a general agreement on the purposes of policy on the English regions (cf. Sandford 2005 : 16, 98–100) nor, as a result, on the institutions needed to carry out that policy, with some favouring beefed‐up central government agencies in the regions, and others elected regional assemblies. No single voice in government was able to combine or prioritize these different views into an agenda shared across government, beyond a long‐standing commitment to establish a London‐wide authority. The only consistent advocate of elected regional assemblies, John Prescott, was widely considered an ineffective minister. This gave other Whitehall departments opportunities to block significant transfers of responsibility to the regional level. So when the Draft Regional Assemblies Bill did appear in 2004—a full seven years after the initial manifesto commitment in 1997—it foresaw elected regional assemblies with very modest powers largely cobbled together from different parts of Prescott's own department. This unconvincing institutional recipe was convincingly rejected in the North‐East as ‘just another expensive talking shop’ (Rallings and Thrasher 2006 ).

But by removing elected regional government from the agenda for the foreseeable future, the North‐Easterners helped open up scope for a different English debate on the balance of the UK constitution; that is, on the appropriate arrangements for governing the English territory as a whole . That debate intensified with the prospect of the Scottish MP Gordon Brown becoming UK Prime Minister, which some Conservative commentators used to revive the ‘West Lothian Question’ about inequities of representation of the Scots and the English after devolution. Subsequently Conservative commitment to excluding Scottish MPs from decisions on England‐only business appears to have firmed up.

As in Northern Ireland, it is not clear that the English have much connection to these debates about new ways to govern them. A majority of the English remain happy with the status quo of direct rule by Westminster with at most 20 per cent or so supportive of regional assemblies and 20 per cent or so of a separate English parliament (Curtice 2008   b ). Unlike the Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish, the English think that Westminster should have most influence over them. There is, though, some evidence that concerns about Anglo‐Scottish inequity have resonance. A clear majority of the English feel that Scottish MPs should no longer be able to vote on English business at Westminster. There are also concerns that the Scots, after devolution, have undue advantages over the English on public spending and the economic benefits of shared UK membership (Curtice 2006 : 105–7). None of this has yet proved politically salient. But there is clearly a correlation with Conservative concerns about the unresolved ‘English question’ which could become a basis for political mobilization of Anglo‐ Scottish cleavage.

That potential illustrates one of the problems that the characteristically disconnected UK approach to territorial politics may bring: a policy, such as Scottish devolution, which makes sense in its own terms, and addresses a distinctive Scottish problem, may have a ‘displacement’ effect which challenges the legitimacy of governing arrangements in some other part of the UK (Mitchell 2006 b). But equally any change in how English business is handled at Westminster might be expected, in turn, to raise further grievances about different statuses of membership of the UK parliament. Similarly, if Scotland won fuller fiscal autonomy or some other asymmetric development of devolution, the effect might be to prompt demands for emulation in Northern Ireland or Wales. The union state tradition of disconnected rather than overarching territorial reform might, in other words, be expected to continue to throw up unintended spillovers that prompt further waves of reform.

21.2.2 Political Dynamics in the Four Nations

The devolution reforms were intended to enable the UK's nations to address collective problems in their own ways. Given the lack of systemic integration between those reforms, it is no surprise that politics has become more diverse across the four nations. Tracking and characterizing that diversity has been one of the main preoccupations of post‐devolution scholarship, with particular focal points on voting behaviour and party systems, and policy process and outcomes.

21.2.2.1 Scotland and Wales

Devolved elections in Scotland and Wales have been a rich testing ground for the assumption that devolved elections are ‘second order’ (Reif and Schmitt 1980 ); that is, shaped by Westminster‐level rather than devolved issues. The evidence so far is mixed, though some voters appear to make systematic distinctions between electoral arenas, not least in a trade‐off which sees ‘differential voting’ as Labour voters at Westminster elections switch to Scottish and Welsh Nationalists in devolved elections (Wyn Jones and Scully 2006 ). This pattern was one of the reasons behind the entry of the SNP and Plaid Cymru into devolved government in 2007. Another was the effect of broadly proportional electoral systems which have limited the scope for single‐party government and made possible new minority and coalition government formations.

One result has been a more left‐leaning and cooperative dynamic of party competition than at Westminster. This is one reason that policy in Scotland in particular has diverged in places from the Westminster pattern; on a number of landmark issues (tuition fees, proportional representation in local elections) difference from Westminster arose from cross‐party negotiations in coalition building from 1999 to 2007. Another cause of policy divergence is differences in policy process in Scotland and Wales, though neither have fully realized the optimistic rhetoric of a ‘new politics’, more open and inclusive than the ‘old’ politics at Westminster that accompanied devolution (McAllister 2000 ; Mitchell 2000 ). That rhetoric was always overblown and naive. In Wales what emerged instead was a new form of regional centralism with a Labour‐dominated Assembly appearing to privilege (Labour‐dominated) public‐ sector producer interests (cf. Greer 2004 : 157; Morgan and Upton 2005 : 79).

In Scotland the commitment to a ‘new’ politics had greater heft. It was an aspiration carried through from the 1990s devolution campaign and has had direct impact on the way the Scottish parliament works (Arter 2003 ), and on gender balance in the parliament (Mackay 2004 ). Elsewhere on the new politics balance sheet, though, an experiment with a civic forum as a platform for input by civil society organizations into the policy process failed, with funding withdrawn in 2005. And a tendency under Labour to nurture corporatist relationships with public‐sector interests, notably in higher education (Keating 2005 : 180) and health care (Greer 2004 : 72)—itself projecting forward pre‐devolution patterns—has been confirmed under the SNP government since 2007.

Policy processes in both Wales and Scotland are, in sum, distinctive as compared with those at UK level. They are marked by left‐leaning party competition, cross‐ party cooperation, and policy communities in part opened up to new influences, in part to capture by public‐sector interests. The result has been a set of policy outcomes which stand to the left of (both Conservative and Labour) Westminster orthodoxy. There has been less openness to market‐like principles and private finance in the delivery of public services, and a preference for universalism. The Welsh First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, produced the rhetorical flourish of ‘clear red water’ between Welsh and ‘new’ Labour to describe all this. Similarly, Keating ( 2007 : 282) has described Scotland as ‘an enclave of social democracy’. McEwen ( 2006 ) and others (Béland and Lecours 2005 ) have developed terminologies of ‘welfare nationalism’. All may well understate continuing commonalities with England. Nonetheless there are clearly differences of emphasis in the balance of market and state in Wales and Scotland as compared to norms at Westminster.

21.2.2.2 Northern Ireland

Little of the foregoing applies in the case of Northern Ireland. Elections and party competition in Northern Ireland are unique. None of the Britain‐wide parties currently contest elections in Northern Ireland; instead there are parallel, community‐based party systems. The DUP competes with the Ulster Unionists and other unionist splinter groups for Protestant/Unionist votes, while Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour Party compete for Catholic/Nationalist votes. What has been striking has been the polarization of voting behaviour within these communities over the post‐devolution era ( Table 21.1 ).

Percentage are of first preference votes.

This pattern of polarization is a steady one, unaffected by whether the contest is for the Assembly or Westminster. There is no debate in Northern Ireland about first‐ and second‐order elections; all elections appear to carry the same resonance, marked by existential concerns—political violence, policing and security, fundamental constitutional choices—absent elsewhere in the UK.

This polarization may appear problematic given the need under the Belfast Agreement for cross‐party cooperation in power‐sharing government. Patterson and Kaufman ( 2007 : 94) for example argue that the shift of support from moderate UUP to the more trenchant unionism of the DUP reflects a long‐term realignment of the unionist activist base that renders the elite accommodation required for power‐sharing difficult. Dowds and Linn ( 2005 ) offer a more optimistic perspective. They show that by 2003 there had been notable shifts in the characteristics of DUP supporters, with rising agreement that on the need for compromise and ‘a dramatic rise in support for a system of power‐sharing within Northern Ireland—from 35% to 71%’ (Dowds and Linn ( 2005 : 5–6). In other words it does not necessarily follow that in making polarized choices voters expect polarized representation. The migration from the centre to the DUP and Sinn Fein may be less about polarization than a commitment to power sharing on condition of robust defence of community interests.

The absence of devolution over the period 2002–7 (and the stuttering progress of devolution before 2002) means that the impact of devolution on policy process and outcomes has so far been limited, with the partial exception of areas like equality policy and human rights which intersect with the more existential agendas of Northern Irish politics (Dickson and Osborne 2007 ). Otherwise there has been a strong trend of continuity, tempered by an incipient pattern of suspicion while devolution was in operation that devolved ministers were favouring their own ethnic community within briefs like health (Greer 2006 : 115) and education (Osborne 2006 : 71–4). Relaunched devolution in its 2007 guise may also be open to suspicions about this kind of ethnic patronage.

21.2.2.3 England

Even though the elected assembly track of English regionalization failed, the English regions have seen a set of administrative reforms which have established new, or expanded, regional governance structures over the last ten years. Sandford ( 2005 ) argues that these disparate initiatives together have a systemic quality involving semi‐ formalized networks of regional ‘stakeholders’ in local government, the private and voluntary sectors which have carved out some scope for influencing central government policies in the regions. Others, notably Pearce and Ayres ( 2006 ; 2007 ), are more sceptical about any sense of ‘system’, noting that new regional networks compete with more firmly established central—local policy relationships, often causing new coordination problems. They have in practice little grip on the centre, typically acting in response to top‐down prompts rather than feeding in new ideas, and they lack the legitimacy—and clout—that elected tiers of government can claim. More generally there is little sense that Whitehall has real interest in differentiated policy responses in the English regions; at best it sees the regional scale as a convenient one for delivering standard policies across England (House of Commons 2003 : 67).

The only exception in this is London, where the Greater London Authority is now firmly established as a body capable of using modest powers to bring about significant change, for example in transport policy (Travers 2004 : 190–1) or the vigorous lobbying that contributed to the success of the 2012 Olympics bid. It is also a body which appears to have the support of Londoners (Margetts and Dunleavy 2005 ). But London also—perversely, for all its claims to ‘global city’ status—is one of the most insular parts of the UK, consumed in its own specificities as an urban region. It is not likely to act as a catalyst for reform elsewhere in England. This leaves England, London aside, as a territory with a highly centralized system of government producing essentially uniform public policies at a time when elsewhere in the UK further‐ reaching devolution reforms and growing policy divergence from England are in prospect.

21.3 A ‘System’ of Post‐devolution Government in the UK?

That mix of devolution and divergence outside England and centralization and uniformity in England is an uneasy one. Though it projects forward the union state tradition—part differentiation, mainly standardization—it has added a new ingredient: democratic process. Former incarnations of the union state were (excepting Northern Ireland from 1922 to 1972) governed by a single, union‐wide government able to trade off territorial interests within a framework of collective decision‐making. Now, the new democratic processes in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have transformed the old intra ‐governmental framework for accommodating different territorial interests into a new setting. Different governments composed of different parties can now use devolved powers to pursue different policy agendas (or, indeed, seek further powers). Meanwhile the UK government has used its undiluted power in England to drive on marketizing reforms in the public services, amplifying the already centrifugal dynamic that has resulted from devolution.

What has been perhaps most remarkable about UK devolution is the absence of thought put by government into managing that dynamic. Though devolution is logically about enabling more difference, just how much difference is possible, or manageable within a common state? What limits need to be set, and how might they be policed? These questions have bothered political scientists—especially those with interests in comparative territorial politics—since the launch of devolution, and produced two broad and interconnected themes in research. The first has focused on the need for some kind of renewed statement of purpose of the union, post‐ devolution. A second has argued for a denser and more formal web of institutional linkages between devolved and UK institutions. Both are about reconceiving the meaning and operation of the union state in its new circumstances.

21.3.1 What is the Union For?

Though there is a sui generis tenor to much work on UK devolution, some, notably Jeffery ( 2002 ; 2005   a ; 2006 ; Hough and Jeffery 2006 ), stress that the UK is by no means alone in addressing new circumstances. Over the last thirty years there have been extensive reforms to regional institutional structures in Belgium, Spain, and Italy and protracted debates (though few actual reforms) on the institutional configuration of federalism in Canada, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. These reform debates have articulated competing judgements about what is right and just in the balance of meeting state‐wide objectives versus territorial claims to distinctiveness and autonomy. In Germany strong decentralist pressures from the wealthy south have challenged, though not (yet) transformed, the legacy of post‐war commitments to state‐wide ‘uniformity of living conditions’. In Canada and Belgium centrifugal pressures based in distinctive identity (Quebec, Flanders) and declining interregional solidarity (Alberta, Flanders) have opened up scope for the pursuit of regional objectives, but are still bound by enduring state‐wide commitments to Canadian ‘social union’ and a Belgium‐wide understanding of social security. In Italy, Austria, and Switzerland themes of autonomy, identity, and desolidarization have also played into debates on rebalancing the central state and the component units. In all of these places, through state‐wide debate, some general notion of the (changing) common purposes of shared statehood, and a sense of the state‐wide ‘rules of the game’, needed to achieve those common purposes have emerged, even if they remain for some contested and unsatisfactory.

That sense of a state‐wide common purpose is largely absent in a post‐devolution UK marked by disconnected devolution reforms and divergent territorial politics. That absence led Hazell and O'Leary ( 1999 : 42) to set out a clear challenge for the UK government on the purposes of union back in 1999: ‘The trick will be to identify and understand what items need to be held in common throughout the kingdom as constants of UK citizenship; and what items can be allowed to vary’. Others since have explored similar themes. T. H. Marshall's ( 1950 / 1992 ) concept of social citizenship has become a catalyst for research on how far the supposedly territory‐blind benefits of the welfare state are compromised by, or reconcilable with, devolution (Banting 2006 ; Jeffery 2006 ; Mitchell 2006   a ; Wincott 2006 ). Others have used concepts of (pan‐UK) ‘territorial justice’ to explore the potential roles of UK‐ level government in limiting territorial economic disparities (Adams, Robinson, and Vigor 2003 : 213–19).

The UK government has not exactly risen to these challenges. Tony Blair rarely spoke about devolution after its introduction in 1999, and never in any depth. Only Gordon Brown, Blair's successor as Prime Minister, has shown a sustained interest. In part that has been interpreted as an opportunistic attempt to reaffirm his credentials as a Scot to be UK Prime Minister in the post‐devolution state, not least in his series of speeches on ‘Britishness’. But his interest is in other respects an enduring one. Brown had already posed the question of how state‐wide welfare objectives could be combined with devolution in his doctoral thesis back in 1981 (Mitchell 2006   a : 163). By 1999 Brown claimed to have the answer by emphasizing how core components of the post‐war welfare state remained ‘British’ despite devolution:

Today when people talk about the National Health Service whether in Scotland, Wales or England people think of the British National Health Service … And its most powerful driving idea is that every citizen of Britain has an equal right to treatment regardless of wealth, position or race and, indeed, can secure treatment in any part of Britain … When we pool and share our resources and when the stronger help the weak it makes us all stronger. (Brown 1999 )

Brown's claims about the strength of common, Britain‐wide beliefs—which he also extended to education and labour market policies—are in one sense well founded. Despite divergent post‐devolution policy agendas, there are at best marginal differences in the values that the English, Northern Irish, Scots, and Welsh hold on the balance of market and state, or on preferences on some of the headline issues which have seen territorial policy variation since devolution like free personal care for the elderly or tuition fees. And most people across the UK appear to dislike the idea that policy standards might diverge from place to place as a result of devolution (Jeffery 2006 : 78–80).

Yet while Brown's claims may resonate with public opinion, they are wrong empirically and getting more wrong as time passes. In practice, because of the administrative differentiation of the union state, health and other public policies have probably never been delivered in ways consistent with Britain‐wide uniformities of public opinion (Wincott 2006 : 176–8). The divergences of devolved governments from the policies of the UK government acting for England have added significantly to that historical legacy: Greer ( 2007 : 159) concludes that devolution has ‘already had an impact on the meaning and rights associated with citizenship in the UK’; Jeffery ( 2006 : 90) that social citizenship has become less UK‐wide and increasingly ‘territorialised’; and Morgan ( 2006 : 201) that the UK ‘fails to meet … any … reasonable definition of territorial justice’.

21.3.2 Reconfiguring the Union

The thrust of these conclusions is that the notion of ‘union’ is losing substance since devolution. Such conclusions are not—as is sometimes suggested—arguments for a recentralization of the UK, or for uniform, pan‐UK policy provision. Rather they point to a concern to express better and more explicitly how the balance of devolved autonomy with continuing, pan‐UK objectives is understood and achieved (Jeffery 2005   b ). Yet post‐devolution UK lacks a framework for pursuing specific territorial interests and reconciling them with those of the union as a whole. Analysis on what the union would need in order to reconcile union and devolution has largely followed two tracks: arrangements for financing devolved government; and intergovernmental relations.

Work on territorial finance, though often cloaked in the rationalist language of economics, often reflects different perspectives on the nature and desirability of union (cf. Jeffery and Scott 2007 ). Proponents of a needs‐based system of fiscal equalization (Bell and Christie 2001 ; McLean and McMillan 2005 : 237–8) generally articulate UK‐wide concerns about interregional equity. Proponents of greater devolved fiscal autonomy (almost wholly focused on Scotland) generally have in mind some kind of loosening of the Scottish—UK relationship (Hallward and MacDonald 2006 ). In Scotland these issues of equalization versus autonomy are central to the debates of both the SNP's National Conversation and the unionist parties' Devolution Commission. There are also stirrings of debate in Wales (about the impact of alternatives to the current system) and Northern Ireland (about cross‐border tax competition with the Republic of Ireland). What is missing—yet entirely consistent with the fragmented approach in the UK to managing union—is policy debate in UK government about UK‐wide objectives in the structure of territorial finance.

There is a similar picture in the field of intergovernmental relations. The system of intergovernmental coordination that evolved in the first years of devolution was, in essence, a simple projection forward of procedures for discussing territorial concerns within UK government before devolution. As such it was informal, behind the scenes, ad hoc, and normally carried out by civil servants working in a context of collegiality and goodwill. The question persistently raised by devolution research is whether that largely pre‐devolution practice is ‘fit for purpose’ (Jeffery 2007 ). The general consensus is that it is not, or more precisely that it was workable if the same party led governments both at UK level and in Scotland and Wales, but that as soon as that congruence was broken informality and goodwill would be insufficient. The point was well made in the very first recommendation of the very first official inquiry on devolution (by the House of Lords Constitution Committee, then chaired by Lord Norton): ‘We recommend that further use be made of the formal mechanisms of intergovernmental relations, even if they seem to many of those presently involved as excessive … Such mechanisms are likely to become increasingly important when governments of different political persuasions have to deal with each other’ (House of Lords 2002 : 5).

The 2007 elections have brought ‘governments of different persuasions’. Predictably enough the response has been renewed arguments for beefing up current, but underused institutional linkages between UK and devolved governments, like the Joint Ministerial Committee (JMC). There is a question mark, though, over whether this kind of institutional tweaking would be sufficient. There are two concerns. First, effective institutional coordination mechanisms arguably need a normative underpinning, a sense of the underlying rules of the game in balancing state‐wide and territorial interests. Yet post‐devolution UK lacks a sense of what it, as a whole as well as part by part, is for. The failure of Gordon Brown to acknowledge the contradiction between his arguments about the benefits of sharing welfare risk on a UK‐wide scale and the erosion in practice of UK‐wide commonalities is striking. It is indicative of a mindset in UK central government which remains curiously unchanged since and by devolution. That mindset sees devolution as a minor tweak to the UK constitution. It has been entrenched by the piecemeal approach to the devolution reforms which have fragmented any sense of a ‘bigger picture’ of reform across the UK.

21.3.3 The Problem of England

This rigidity of thinking at the centre has been facilitated, second, by the preponderance of England—where indeed nothing much has changed—in the business of Westminster and Whitehall. England is devolution's big problem. It dominates the perspective of the UK centre, which has so far failed not just to decentralize within England, but also to disentangle its England‐only and wider UK roles (Lodge and Mitchell 2006 : 98–102). This creates a number of problems. Because England is such a big component of the UK (85 per cent or so of population and GDP), what happens there can have significant spillover consequences outside England. Because England‐ only and UK‐wide roles are so entangled, that potential for spillover is often not recognized (McLean and McMillan 2005 : 219) and at times wilfully ignored (cf. Aron 2007 ). And because it is simultaneously the government for England, the UK's government appears ill‐suited to the arbiter role that central governments typically play in the management of competing territorial interests. There is an obvious risk that the UK‐wide roles of government become captured by English territorial interests and as a result sharpen incipient territorial cleavages, in particular that between England and Scotland.

21.4 Perspectives

This, needless to say, is not a promising basis for the effective accommodation of distinctive territorial interests in different parts of the union. It is, though, a logical outcome of a reform process since 1997 which has taken forward the union state tradition of patchwork reform into the new territory of democratic devolution. That patchwork approach on the one hand has failed to stabilize the constitutional structure of devolution; on the other it has opened up new territorial political processes which have evolved discretely and are becoming increasingly diverse. The scope for the UK centre to hold the ring is compromised by its failure to renew itself for the post‐devolution era and by its continuing preoccupation with England. As a result (Anglo‐)UK and devolved politics by and large talk past one another.

While there is general agreement that this disconnection of centre and parts could work, more or less as a policy of benign neglect (cf. Bradbury 2006   b : 579), while Labour dominated government in Westminster, Scotland, and Cardiff, less is agreed about what might unfold now that the era of ‘Labour all round’ is over. Broadly speaking three scenarios have been identified:

Continuity of current arrangements, with minor incremental adaptations on the usual disconnected, nation‐by‐nation pattern (Trench 2005   b : 264–5).

A more thoroughgoing reform aimed at a more general and union‐wide rebalancing of the post‐devolution constitution, but still with a recognizable lineage to the reforms of 1997–9, including further‐reaching autonomy in Scotland and Wales, a fuller distinction of English and UK business in Westminster and Whitehall, a needs‐based system of fiscal equalization and some element of fiscal autonomy for the devolved administrations, and a more systematic approach to intergovernmental coordination (Trench 2005   b : 264–8).

A move by Scotland to a new constitutional status, either as a special status nation within the UK, or as an independent state outside the UK. McLean offers two accounts of such a move (McLean 2001 : 444–6). The first (his ‘Quebec scenario’) envisages a process led, from Scotland, by an SNP continuing to push for independence. The second (his ‘Slovak scenario’) envisages an English (most likely Conservative) calling of the SNP's bluff in a backlash against the apparent privileges of the Scots in the post‐devolution state.

The most likely of these scenarios is the second. A more thoroughgoing rebalancing of the devolution arrangements appears feasible as discussions on reform in Wales and, in particular, Scotland unfold. Though the SNP's National Conversation and the unionist Devolution Commission are running in parallel, and have competing ultimate objectives of independence versus union, there is a large common ground shared by all the significant parties in Scotland around pushing the devolution arrangements further. Much depends, though, on the willingness in Westminster and Whitehall, whether under Gordon Brown or perhaps, after the next UK election, David Cameron, to accept—or, better, understand—the rationale for further reform. The third scenario is still a distant one, though in the absence of a systematic rethinking of current arrangements it may, whether through Scottish or English agency, or simply intransigence at Westminster, zoom rapidly into focus. What is clear is that the status quo—scenario one—is not much of an option. The scale of the dysfunctions of the current arrangements, and their as yet unchecked centrifugal logic, suggests that muddling through will not be enough. In one way or another the UK faces a protracted debate about how—and whether—it can continue to accommodate its multinational heritage within a shared state.

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The State of the Nations series is a welcome exception: Hazell ( 2000 ; 2003 ); Trench ( 2001 ; 2004 ; 2005   a ).

The Economic and Social Research Council's programme on Devolution and Constitutional Change alone produced around 500 publications.

See, for example, the library of evidence submitted to the Richard Commission; at http://www.richardcommission.gov.uk/content/template.asp?ID=/content/evidence/index.asp .

Compare the ‘Community Relations’ sections in the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, e.g. for 2003 ( http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2003/Community_Relations/index.html ) and 2006 ( http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2006/Community_Relations/index.html ).

See also http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2005/Political_Attitudes/FUTURENI.html and http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2006/Political_Attitudes/FUTURENI.html for later survey waves.

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The Politics Shed- A Free Text Book for all students of Politics.

The Impact of Devolution

The British Constitution has changed from a unitary framework to one that has been termed ‘quasi- federal’. This means that it combines elements of both a unitary state and a federal state. The UK remains unitary since ultimate sovereignty still lies with Westminster — in theory, the UK parliament could repeal all the devolution Acts and abolish the regional assemblies.  However, the UK does have characteristics  of a federal state, since policy in many key domestic areas is now decided in the devolved bodies outside of Westminster, unless it concerns England.

Case study The Gender Recognition Bill and Devolution  

 Also, it would be very difficult and unlikely for the parliamentary Acts enabling devolution to be repealed. Parliamentary sovereignty, of the Westminster variety at least, has been significantly reduced outside England. The Scotland Act 2016 established that Westminster cannot legislate in devolved matters without consent, therefore effectively acknowledging that the devolved institutions are permanent not temporary political fixtures.

Laboratories of policy: Devolution has led to policy variation, which inevitably means inequality, across the UK. It has considerably reduced the control Westminster has on domestic policy beyond England. University tuition fees, hospital car parking, parental use of corporal punishment (banned in Scotland in October 2019) or income tax rates, there are now considerable differences  across the UK. A significant example of variations within the four constituent parts of the UK can be seen in how the four parts of the UK handled lockdown during the COVID-19 crisis 

Devolution and the Pandemic  

Devolution meant that alternative voting systems besides FPTP are now used in the UK. This has usually resulted in minority or coalition governments. This means  more stalemate as well as greater cross-party cooperation.  What cannot be disputed is the impact it has had on the balance of power in the devolved assemblies — multiparty governance is now the norm not the exception in the regions.

Different Voting Systems used in the UK  

Devolution has had consequences for how and where pressure groups operate, for example when the Scottish Parliament debated and subsequently passed the law banning the smacking of children north of the border. The consultation document was sent out to 12 charities, seven equality organisations, 12 police, legal and human rights bodies, and 20 medical and care profession organisations. Most of these responded and contributed their views. Children’s charities such as Children 1st (previously known as the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) were particularly involved in lobbying for the passing of the law. Pressure groups will focus their energies on where policy is made, and so they increasingly lobby the devolved bodies and not just Westminster.

Are pressure groups becoming more significant?  

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Devolution in the UK: success or failure?

2nd September 2021

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A couple of examples from the same newspaper this week to add to a typical A Level question

The arguments for and against devolution have been trotted out serval times on this blog site. And they go something like this:

What has been the positive impact of devolution?

• Democracy has been enhanced within the UK since government is much more region sensitive:, e.g. the congestion charge in London
• On a separate but related note, the new legislatures act as policy laboratories - e.g. the Scottish first smoking ban
• The electorates within the devolved regions accept devolution and express the view that it is the preferred system of government.
• Despite increases in support for the nationalists in Scotland support for independence has never been a sustained majority
• Within England the vast majority want Scotland and Wales to remain in the Union, thus there has been no English ‘backlash’.
• The use of proportional electoral systems in the new assemblies has resulted in UK politics becoming much more pluralistic.
• Devolution has boosted the representation of women in comparison with Westminster.

What has been the negative impact of devolution?

• Devolution is an expensive luxury in terms of the costs of setting up and running the devolved bodies:
• The raft of different policy measures that have emanated from the devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have been made possible simply as the result of the unequal distribution of public funds within the UK as allocated by the complex Barnett formula
• Far from reinvigorating democracy, voters appear to be ‘underwhelmed’ (Curtice) by devolution.
• Questions still remain about whether devolution will lead to the break up of Britain.
• Participation in elections to the new arenas has been a disappointment.
• There is tension and confusion regarding the roles of the elected representatives for different tiers of government
• That Labour’s devolution plans did not appear to be fully thought through has become evident.
• Devolution has not resulted, as proponents had hoped, in a new form of politics, free from the tales of corruption which are so often associated with Westminster life.

So, if we look at the second to last argument in the case for, we can point as an extra example to the historic announcement that the Greens would form a coalition with the SNP at Holyrood.

As reported in the Guardian on Monday:

"The Scottish Greens’ co-leaders, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, are to become ministers in the Holyrood government – the first time representatives of the party have been appointed to government in the UK.

The Scottish government and Scottish Green party announced a power-sharing deal last month.

Harvie will be the minister for zero-carbon buildings, active travel and tenants’ rights, while Slater will take on the role of minister for green skills, circular economy and biodiversity.

Among Harvie’s responsibilities will be driving the move away from high-carbon transport and heating, while ensuring fairness during the transition. Slater’s role will include Scotland’s green industrial strategy and dealing with national parks."

See here for the full story: https://www.theguardian.com/po...

But, against this, we have the following story about a former First Minister - as I've said, reported in the paper on the same day (an interesting juxtaposition, you might say):

"A Scottish government inquiry upheld five complaints of sexual harassment against Alex Salmond , sparking the police investigation that led to his eventual prosecution."

Read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/po...

So this ties in with the final argument listed above in the car against. Yes, sadly, it seems sleaze is always with us.

To end on a lighter note, given I am writing about Scottish matters. See below for a video of Michael Gove busting some moves in an Aberdeen nightclub. No, words I never thought I'd write.

• Constitutional reform
• Constitutional reform (UK politics)
• Scottish National Party
• Additional Member System (AMS)

Mike McCartney

Mike is an experienced A-Level Politics teacher, author and examiner.

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Learn LLB Law

Essay: Devolution [57]

‘Devolution has transformed the UK from a unitary state to a quasi-federal state’.

This essay will argue that devolution since the mid-20th century has transformed the UK from a unitary state to a quasi-federal state. The first section will address the UK’s move away from a unitary state, the second section will examine that this does not mean that the UK can now be considered federal, and the final section will seek to reconcile these two seemingly competing ideologies. [i]

Federal shall refer to a structure of the state which combines a hierarchy of government comprising of national-rule and regional-rule with non-centralised sovereignty. Devolution, on the other hand, will refer to the process by which the supreme legislative authority delegates powers and responsibilities from a national to a regional level. Quasi-federal will be defined as a system that functionally mimics a federation, while simultaneously lacking the constitutional or institutional framework that would make it so. [1]

References to devolved legislatures is to encompass the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly, though particular distinction will be drawn between the Northern Irish agreement and those of the other devolved nations where relevant.

Dismantling the Unitary State

Since the mid-20th century, nationalist sentiments have grown within each respective nation in the UK. This has led to progressive shifts in power: central government and legislative powers have slowly been delegated as a result of legislation passed in Westminster. [2]

By definition, a unitary state ‘consist[s] of a number of areas or groups that are joined together and are controlled by one government or group’. [3] It can be seen that this is simply not the case in relation to the complex arrangements between the Westminster Parliament and the devolved nations: there is not one government, but a hierarchy of natio nal and devolved administrations and legislatures. There is, however, a sovereign Parliament. [ii]

The ‘reserved powers’ model, used in Scottish and Welsh devolution, delegates jurisdiction to the devolved nations over all matters, except those that are reserved for central governance. [4] The system relating to Northern Ireland is different: the Northern Irish Assembly has full legislative control over transferred powers, partial control over reserved powers (subject to approval by the Secretary of State) and no jurisdiction over excepted powers. It is clear that power is no longer confined solely to Westminster but spread between Westminster and the devolved bodies. This has eroded the unitary nature of the state as power is no longer centralised.

Federalism in the UK

While the state was unitary in nature prior to devolution, it cannot be said that the United Kingdom is still a unitary state in the fullest sense anymore. This shift should not be conflated with the idea of federalism though.

The United Kingdom differs in its constitutional arrangement from many federal states, perhaps most importantly on the means and operation of power sharing. For example, the US Constitution grants individual states the right to legislate on any matter that is not explicitly excluded by the Constitution and the federal government’s powers are limited by what has been granted to them by the Constitution. [5] While there is some leeway with an ‘elastic clause’, [6] the federal approach in the US certainly employs a decentralised, power-sharing model.

Differently, the UK Parliament has retained the power to legislate contrary to the devolved legislatures. [7] The idea that one legislative entity holds supreme power (Parliamentary sovereignty) directly conflicts with the power-sharing model employed in federalism. Despite the widespread recognition of the Sewel Convention and its placement on a statutory footing, Parliament remains sovereign. The Supreme Court in Miller (No 1) held that the convention merely provided ‘symbolic reassurance’ regarding legislative consent, not a ‘legal obligation’ to consult the devolved nations. [8] Furthermore, it was reaffirmed in Axa that devolved legislatures can only legislate on matters within their competence. [9] In this sense, devolution in the UK does not amount to federalism. [iii]

Brexit has demonstrated particular tension between Westminster and the devolved nations. While Theresa May’s government had commented that the ‘devolved administrations should be fully engaged’, [10] Paul Craig has criticised that ‘while the devolved bodies exercised voice, its impact at Westminster was muted’ when Article 50 was invoked without seeking consent from the devolved administrations. [11] This is particularly important in light of the fact that the majority of leave votes stemmed from England and English MPs make up the majority of seats in Parliament; asymmetric representation within the UK Parliament is another demonstration of how the British system cannot be considered completely federal in nature.

Furthermore, in regard to the Withdrawal Agreement, Westminster reaffirmed its supremacy in the Scottish Continuity Bill Case by adding the European Union (Withdrawal) Act to the list of provisions that cannot be modified by the Scottish Parliament. [12] Even when the judgment from the Supreme Court was given, it was in favour of UK government. It can be seen that the devolved nations were, and continue to be, easily side-tracked by Westminster. Without the oversight of a constitution that establishes and regulates a federal state, devolved bodies are always subordinate to the legislator that enables their power. In the case of the UK, the Scottish Parliament, Senedd and Northern Ireland Assembly are subordinate to the Westminster Parliament because of Parliamen tary sovereignty. This model, in theory as well as practice, does not allow for power sharing to the same degree as in federalism. [iv]

Reconciliation – A Hybrid Quasi-Federal State

It is also important to examine the more practical aspects of devolution. While the Westminster Parliament has not relinquished its sovereignty and retains the unilateral power to transfer power back to itself, [13] this would be politically unacceptable and likely lead to further calls for independence within the devolved nations if it attempted to do so. Bogdanor comments on this, writing that

‘It is then in constitutional theory alone that full legislative power remains with London; and it is only in constitutional theory that the unitary state is preserved. In practice, power will be transferred, and it cannot, except under pathological circumstances, be recovered.’ [14]

Parliament has not transferred or limited its sovereignty in a legal sense, but the political ramifications of attempting to regain full control do threaten it. Therefore, the Westminster Parliament’s sovereignty is limited due to devolution. [v]

It cannot then be said, in a political sense, that the UK remains a unitary state; nor can it be said, in a legal s ense, that the United Kingdom is now a federal state [vi] . The United Kingdom is a union of states [vii] , but not a federation. [15] Legally, the UK remains as a unitary state that has been devolved, but on a functional basis it incorporates federal ideologies, pragmatically making it quasi-federal. [16] Academics have argued that since Brexit, ‘the old notion that the UK is a unitary state is no longer credible and it makes more sense to describe the UK as having a quasi-federal constitution.’. [17] [viii]

Conclusion:

In conclusion, it has been shown that the UK is neither a unitary nor federal state. Devolution has transformed the UK into a quasi-federal state from a unitary one and while theory suggests that this development could easily be reversed, it has been shown that this could not be the case in practice due to the tensions between Parliamentary sovereignty and national sentiment in the devolved nations.

What was done well:

This essay shows that you have incorporated the feedback on your previous essay, in particular the point about substantiating your claims. This essay is a significant improvement in that regard. It generally reads very well: it is logically organised, clearly written, and contains good references to the key cases and academic texts. It is a good effort. However…

What is needed to improve:

The question is not asking whether devolution has turned the UK into a federal state. It is asking whether the UK is now a quasi-federal state. There is an important distinction between the two. Your argument that the UK is not a federal state is trivially correct, but does not answer the question. A better way to approach the question is to ask to what extent devolution has turned the UK into a quasi-federal state—and this is where the Brexit discussion is key.

Apart from that, the essay is very good in terms of the presentation, expression and coherency of the argument. You would have scored better if you had correctly focused the essay. You are definitely on the right track.

References: [1] Gerard Horgan, The United Kingdom as a Quasi-Federal State [2] See Scotland Act(s), Government of Wales Act(s) and Northern Ireland Act [3] ‘unitary’ Oxford Learner’s Dictionary [4] Scotland Act 1998 s29, Schedule 4-5; Government of Wales Act 2017 [5] US Constitution, 10th Amendment [6] US Constitution, Article 1 s8 [7] EG: Scotland Act 1998 s28(7) [8] R (on the application of Miller and another) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5 [9] AXA General Insurance Ltd v Lord Advocate [2011] UKSC 46 [10] Theresa May, Lancaster House Speech (17 January 2017) [11] Paul Craig, ‘Chapter 4’ in Jeffrey Jowell and Colm O’Cinneide (eds), The Changing Constitution (9th edn, Oxford University Press) [12] McHarg and Mitchell, ‘Brexit and Scotland’ (2017) 19 British Journal of Politics and International Relations 512; Re UK Withdrawal from the EU (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill [2018] UKSC 64 [13] Royal Commission on the Constitution 1967–73, vol. 1 (Cm 5460), para. 543 (often called ‘the Kilbrandon report’ after the commission’s chairman) [14] Vernon Bogdanor, Devolution (Oxford University Press 1979) 217 [15] Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan, State of the Union (2005) [16] Gerard Horgan, The United Kingdom as a Quasi-Federal State [17] Ros Taylor, ‘Brexit is forcing the UK to confront its territorial governance’ ( LSE Blog , 6th March 2019) < https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/03/06/brexit-is-forcing-the-uk-to-confront-its-territorial-governance/ > accessed 20th March 2022; Tom Mullen (Professor of Law, University of Glasgow), ‘Brexit and the Territorial Governance of the United Kingdom’ (2019) Contemporary Social Science

Marker Comments:

[i] Good paragraph that clearly sets out the essay’s objectives and argument. [ii] What’s the significance of this in terms of the question? [iii] This is all correct, but the question is asking whether the UK has been turned into a quasi-federal state. [iv] Same comment as above. I think a better approach would be to consider to what extent, in the light of this discussion, the UK is even quasi-federal. [v] So is UK unitary or quasi-federal? [vi] That’s not what the question is asking. [vii] What does this mean? [viii] This is an important point and should have been developed more (that is, to what extent is this true?).

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