Devolution in the United Kingdom: Problems of a Piecemeal Approach to Constitutional Change

Abstract

The UK's devolution reforms have been piecemeal, directed at specific territorial issues in one or other part of the UK, and poorly coordinated with one another. While this piecemeal approach reflects a centuries-old approach to territorial statecraft in the UK, the addition since 1999 of democratic process and, more recently, partisan conflict between UK and devolved government, has established strong centrifugal tendencies. The article explores how territorial policy variation, inter-regional spillovers, the fusion of UK central government institutions with those for governing England, contradictions in public opinion, and under-institutionalized intergovernmental relations underline that centrifugal dynamic. Most significantly there has been no sustained attempt to review and renew the purposes of union since devolution. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.