Political Devolution Research Articles

Policy‐Practice Proximity: The Scope for College‐Based Higher Education and Cross‐Sector Collaboration in Wales

AbstractIn relation to the size of its population, Wales has a relatively large number of higher education institutions, several of which are small and located in rural areas. Compared with other parts of the United Kingdom, only a small number of higher education students are taught in Welsh further education colleges. Nevertheless, efforts have been made to increase higher education provision in the colleges, beginning in the late 1980s with the encouragement of franchising arrangements by the Wales Advisory Body and later with a joint initiative by the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils for Wales to expand some sub‐degree higher education in the colleges by direct funding. These developments represent just one strand of activity linking the higher and further education sectors in Wales and have not been a subject of major or regular policy attention. For reasons of scale and geography, and through the enabling structures and processes serving both funding councils, cross‐sector initiatives and collaboration have generally been given high priority in strategies to widen access and build progression. The administrative devolution reflected in these arrangements has been increased by political devolution since 1999, with as yet unclear implications for the future development of higher education in the colleges.

Business representation and the UK regions: mapping institutional change

Political devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the developing regional agenda in England are prompting changes in the organization of business interest representation within the devolved and decentralized territories. In this paper we seek to describe the realignment of business interest representation at the ‘regional’ scale, first through a detailed review of changes underway across specific business associations and representative fora, and secondly through an initial attempt to compare and ‘map’ the patterns of institutional change recorded in the various territories. In broad terms the overall scale, operation and degree of formalization of the new political arrangements for business representation tend broadly to reflect the established institutional and political contexts of the respective nations and regions and the level of devolution ceded to the territories. However, there are important variations in a complex process of uneven development. In the concluding section we present some initial thoughts on the nature of the changes observed in the institutional framework for business representation. A key argument is that to date such changes suggest a reconfiguration of business political activity rather than a step-change in the institutional foundation for sub-national business interest representation in the UK.

The Northern Ireland Civil Service under Direct Rule and Devolution

Although the United Kingdom is usually regarded as a unitary state in the mould of the Westminster model, in reality, complete political integration and administrative standardization have never existed. Recent political devolution consolidates an increasingly diverse and asymmetrical pattern of territorial governance. Frequently, however, notwithstanding some notable exceptions, this differentiation within the UK's governmental arrangements is overlooked in much of the literature. To help correct this oversight, this article reports on the longstanding differences in the public administration arrangements of one of the UK's smaller component countries, Northern Ireland. Specifically, the article focuses on the role of the Northern Ireland Civil Service and charts some of the key characteristics and trends that have emerged under both the period of Direct Rule from London (since the end of the Stormont devolution in 1972) and in the newly-restored devolved settlement that was introduced in 1999, following the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement.

Scotland's demographic regime: Population and the politics of devolution

Scotland, with just over 5 million inhabitants, is a small country relative to most of its neighbours in Europe, including England. Under the recently (re)established Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, devolved responsibilities have provided a new context within which the characteristics of its demographic regime have come to be seen as problematic. In this paper we review the empirical evidence underpinning political perceptions of a population ‘crisis’ in Scotland and argue that spatial comparisons have been particularly influential in this politicisation of population. We then examine the dimensions of the population debate through the voices of politicians and the media. We conclude with a brief consideration of the relationships between population and devolved politics, suggesting a direction for policy‐relevant research to which population geographers could make a major contribution.

Scotland's demographic regime: Population and the politics of devolution

Abstract Scotland, with just over 5 million inhabitants, is a small country relative to most of its neighbours in Europe, including England. Under the recently (re)established Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, devolved responsibilities have provided a new context within which the characteristics of its demographic regime have come to be seen as problematic. In this paper we review the empirical evidence underpinning political perceptions of a population ‘crisis’ in Scotland and argue that spatial comparisons have been particularly influential in this politicisation of population. We then examine the dimensions of the population debate through the voices of politicians and the media. We conclude with a brief consideration of the relationships between population and devolved politics, suggesting a direction for policy‐relevant research to which population geographers could make a major contribution.

Learning from devolution: UK policy since 1999

This article considers what has been learned regarding health policy in the process of political devolution in the UK.

Playing Away: Popular Music, Policy and Devolution in Scotland

In this paper we examine the agenda for change in policy towards popular music in Scotland brought about by political devolution. Popular music has been one of the most vibrant cultural forms of the past fifty years. Yet, as the evidence we present on its popular music industry makes clear, Scotland has under-performed when compared to the UK as a whole and to Ireland. In recent years, the cultural and economic importance of popular music has become widely recognised. The five major music corporations are now parts of an entertainments industry accounting for total spending globally of an estimated half a trillion US dollars per year (Vogel, 2001: xvii). In Scotland, the music industry has been estimated to be worth £95.4 million per year to the economy (Laing, 2000).

Northern Ireland Public Administration in Transition

Traditionally, studies of British government have rested on the “Westminster model” in which the United Kingdom is a unitary state. Increasingly, however, the model’s explanatory power has been queried. An alternative conception, the “differentiated polity model,” has been developed and seeks to reflect the longstanding diversity that has characterized the institutions of British governance. One area of public administration that illustrates this variation is the civil service. The recent process of political devolution in the United Kingdom is already encouraging pressure for even greater distinctiveness and possibly separate civil service arrangements in Scotland and Wales. With particularly distinct governmental arrangements but still within the British mold, Northern Ireland offers both a vivid illustration of the differentiated polity model and a valuable indicator of how separate civil services might unfold elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

Review: Networking Europe

During the 1990s a series of annual seminars took place in Freudenstadt, subsidised by the German Social Democratic Party's generously endowed Friedrich-Ebert Foundation. The 26 papers collected here are a selection of the work presented to the seminar, ranging from general surveys of the future of the Union, through gender politics, to racism, cultural tourism and the new politics of devolution in the UK. This is an avowedly eclectic approach. It asks historians and political scientists to reflect on any or all aspects of regional structures which interest them. In the light of the debate which is now beginning to surface on the role of regions as a ~ if not the constitutional element of the EU, this could look like a missed opportunity. But the Freudenstadt academics are to be forgiven. For most of the 1990s, the idea of a Europe of the regions carried little weight. We know, in the wake of last December's Nice Summit, that times have changed. Regions are refusing to lie back and think of Europe, even if Member State governments, keen to keep them in the constitutional equivalent of the missionary position, would prefer it that way. Post-Nice regions are starting to sound more and more like Peter Finch in the film Network: 'We're mad as hell and we're not taking it anymore.'

After Housing Policy: Housing and the UK General Election 2001

This paper describes the results of a review of the housing content of UK General Election 2001 manifestos. Housing policy was of little importance during the election campaign. The main British political parties had, essentially, a shared housing agenda--to promote and facilitate home ownership, support area and community regeneration, tackle homelessness, improve the private rented sector, and prevent building on greenfield sites. Many issues of importance to housing specialists received little or no attention, most notably that of low demand. Some policy variations within the UK were evident, for example in attitudes towards greenfield development, home ownership and stock transfer. The paper concludes that differences in housing policy are emerging within the UK as part of a new politics of devolution and that the days of a single housing policy approach for the UK are over.

Northern Research Legacies and the Future: A University Perspective

I am writing as a Canadian who was involved in northern research as a post-doctoral student in the 1970s and who, since then, has been involved as a researcher and educator in southern university-based northern studies. My goal is to bring together some comments on research databases and the lost generation of northern researchers, .... The and Northerners have always faced major changes; in the 20th century, these included the air industry, the DEW Line, hydroelectric dams, mines and roads. Now Northerners are facing the greatest acceleration of changes on landscapes and in communities since the 1970s. On landscapes remote from communities is a diamond industry that could supply the world with 15% of its diamonds within three years; several thousand people will be employed. Petroleum exploration (seismic and drilling) is operating today at the highest level since the 1970s. Pipeline construction projects of a size greater than ever seen in America are being proposed: the Texas of the North is the new vision. ... What are the research needs? Researchers are being urged to collect more and better data and to make better predictions. They are urged to adhere to ethics guidelines, to demonstrate the impacts of their research at the proposal stage, and to effectively transmit research results to the community. Those responsible for management policy and implementation in the are now searching for solutions, and they are finding many gaps in our knowledge. They emphasize that data are obsolete and capacity building is needed. ... Questions are being asked about jobs for university researchers who work on northern topics: are there opportunities for long-term employment, or are these dead-end jobs? How do we maintain long-term northern research programs - at least one generation in length? How can we develop value-added industries with local benefits that are complementary to the programs of multinational giants? ... Who is responsible for research that will lead to understanding, solutions, and management strategies? A few decades ago, the federal government provided research support, management policies, and policing. Now political devolution has resulted in multi-layers of governance in the North. Can we assume that this new governance system will invest in research that leads to new approaches? For example, who will invest in the monitoring of cumulative effects? If the linkage between government regulators and industry is too close, who will provide the long-term perspective so that environmental damage will not accrue to future generations? ... Maybe we should re-think the traditional role of government in light of the new power of industry. Many feel that industry-sponsored university research tarnishes the image of universities as honest brokers. ... Without budgets that reflect the realities of expensive northern research, researchers must stay close to their home institutions - and that is what they did in the 1980s and 1990s. ... I believe we need more northern research endowments in Canada. I believe we need more research and think tank nongovernmental organizations in Canada, and I believe these are increasingly important as the role of government changes from watchdog to stimulator of industry. ... There is also a need to reinterpret the 1970s information and to convert it into more usable forms. Much of this information was collected and stored in libraries and databases as private and public research collections were consolidated in the 1980s and 1990s. ... We must not forget that these resources are now much more accessible than they were in the 1970s. Finally, there is a need to capture the experience of many northern and southern people involved in the petroleum industry and many other activities in the 1970s and 1980s. ...

The Northern Ireland Civil Service: Characteristics and Trends Since 1970

“This is a damned funny country. There’s one crowd singing ‘Wrap the Green Flag Round Me’ and another crowd sings ‘Rule Britannia’ and there’s a lot of bloody civil servants up there in Stormont drawing twenty pounds a week and laughing at the lot of us.”Comment made in 1939 to Patrick Shea, cited in Shea 1981, p. 205.This paper offers a summary of research on the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) that has been undertaken as part of an ESRC‐supported project examining the changing nature of civil services throughout the British Isles. Not since Gladden’s seminal work in 1967 have studies of the British Civil Services offered sufficient coverage of the long‐existing variations within the UK. The weaknesses in coverage are particularly visible with respect to the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS), which is accorded either footnote status in most work or even ignored altogether. A compelling case for closing the gap in the literature is underscored by the political devolution that was introduced after 1998. Far from being the unitary state associated with the Westminster model, the UK exhibits the features of a differentiated polity in which figure the contradictory impulses of centralization and fragmentation. In illustrating ‘parity with particularity’, the civil service arrangements obtaining within the Province of Northern Ireland clearly exemplify the differentiation with the UK. Moreover, with devolved fora now established for both Scotland and Wales, with associated pressure for more distinctive and even separate civil arrangements in each, Northern Ireland’s experience offers valuable lessons on how the UK civil service may develop in Scotland and Wales.

‘Devolution’ as an opportunity to test the ‘synergism hypothesis’ and a cybernetic theory of political systems

Abstract‘Devolution’ is a political buzzword these days as empires, nations, bureaucracies and even business firms collapse, divide, downsize, outsource and in various ways become less than they once were. But what does devolution mean? How can we measure it? And, most important, how do we explain it? Some years ago it was proposed that synergistic functional effects of various kinds have been the underlying causal agency in the progressive evolution of complex, goal‐oriented (teleonomic) systems at all levels of biological organization, including human societies. (The term ‘synergy’ refers to otherwise unattainable combined effects that are produced by the interactions among various elements, parts or individuals.) Support for this theory has continued to mount over the past decade or so, and we will briefly review some of the evidence. One important corollary of this theory is the proposition that all teleonomic systems require cybernetic control processes which, in human societies, are typically referred to as political systems, management systems, or governments. In accordance with the synergism hypothesis, it is postulated that the fate of any cybernetic control process in a living system is ultimately contingent upon the underlying functional effects that the system produces; the functional synergies are the very cause of the differential selection and survival of complex systems and their cybernetic subsystems. Can this theory of government qua social cybernetics be tested? It is argued here that the phenomena often referred to as ‘devolution’ provide just such an opportunity. A causal explanation of socio‐political systems should be able to account not only for various ‘progressive’ trends but also for the many cases in which regression or collapse occurs. Some studies related to political devolution will be discussed, and the arguments for competing hypotheses will be considered. A major example of political devolution will also be invoked in support of this theory. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Self and Nation: Issues of Identity in Modern Scottish Drama by Women

The creation of the devolved Scottish parliament in 1999, argues Adrienne Scullion, has the potential to change everything that has been understood and imagined or thought and speculated about Scotland. The devolved parliament shifts the governance of the country, resets financial provisions and socio-economic management, recreates Scottish politics and Scottish society – and affects how Scotland is represented and imagined by artists of all kinds. The radical context of devolution should also afford Scottish criticism an unprecedented opportunity to rethink its more rigid paradigms and structures. Specifically, this article questions what impact political devolution might have on the rhetoric of Scottish cultural criticism by paralleling feminist analysis of three plays by women premiered in Scotland in 2000 with the flexible, even hybrid, model of the nation afford by devolution, resetting identity within Scottish culture as much less predictable and much more inclusive than has previously been understood. An earlier versions was delivered by the author on 5 March 2001 to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in receipt of the biennial RSE/BP Prize Lectureship in the Humanities. Adrienne Scullion teaches in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, where she is also the academic director of the Centre for Cultural Policy Research.

Primary care in the UK: understanding the dynamics of devolution.

The United Kingdom is ostensibly one country and yet public policy often varies between its constituent territories - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Health policy illustrates the dilemmas inherent in an apparently unitary system that permits scope for territorial variation. Administrative devolution has now been accompanied by political devolution but their interaction has yet to produce policy outcomes. This paper describes recent health policy reform with regard to primary care in terms of the tension inherent in current policy between notions of a 'one nation NHS' and the territorial diversity wrought by devolution. The paper provides a framework for understanding the emergent outcomes by exploring various concepts. In particular, the existing character of territorial policy networks, the properties of policies in devolved territories and intergovernmental relations are considered from various disciplines to examine whether greater diversity or uniformity will result from the dual reform process. Whilst this evaluation can, at this stage, only be preliminary, the paper provides a framework to appraise the emerging impact of devolution upon primary care in the UK.

Social Investment Funds: An Organizational Approach to Improved Development Assistance

This paper examines the design of social investment funds (sifs) and explores the ways they affect agents' incentives to propose, select, and implement good projects. Compared with other forms of decentralized service provision, sifs possess features of administratively delegated authority and deep political devolution. Where existing political institutions fail to deliver assistance to vulnerable groups, a well‐designed sif may represent a useful administrative alternative. This article reviews several features that provide incentives for both sif staff and project beneficiaries and concludes with practical guidelines for designing and appraising social investment funds.

Extending Ethnolinguistic Democracy in Europe: The Case of Wales

The recent establishment of political devolution in Scotland and Wales would appear to herald far greater national, and eventually regional autonomy within a British state long dominated by England. However, support for devolution in Wales remains, at best, ambivalent; in contrast to Scotland where devolution is far more strongly supported. Much of this can be explained by the fact that Wales, unlike Scotland, is almost indistinguishable from England with respect to its institutional structure. As such, Wales has historically sought a distinctive identity from England principally through the promotion and retention of Welsh language and culture within rather than outside these shared institutional arrangements. This, in turn, has led in recent years to a significantly increased role for the Welsh language in the public domain in Wales, after centuries of proscription, and the emergence of a nascent Welsh bilingual state. The prospect of greater self-government is likely to solidify these developments. However, it can be argued that the contribution of Wales is most significant here not as an example of political devolution but as a model of ethnolinguistic democracy. In this latter respect, Wales provides us with a democratic model that specifically accommodates and promotes bilingualism and minority language rights while, in so doing, redefining the traditional role of language(s) in the nation-state. Both these aspects offer important lessons for the rest of Europe's nation-states which, despite moves to greater political devolution and regionalism, often remain reluctant to protect, let alone foster the minority languages still spoken within their borders.

Devolution: the effects on health policy.

Health policy modernisation and political devolution in the UK creates a challenge for all involved. This article examines this challenge from a nursing perspective.

The importance of political devolution for professional psychology.

The importance of political devolution for professional psychology.

The importance of political devolution for professional psychology.

The importance of political devolution for professional psychology.