Regional Devolution Research Articles

The Politics of Decentralization Level: Local and Regional Devolution as Substitutes

Most contemporary decentralization has occurred at the local (district) rather than the regional (provincial) level. Why? The authors advance a theory highlighting the political incentives of central authorities to bypass the regional tier of government in favor of decentralizing to smaller, more fragmented units. Regional decentralization can capitalize on economies of scale and scope in public service provision, but it also enables political opposition to scale more effectively. Local decentralization provides some of the benefits of regional decentralization at less political risk, making it an imperfect but attractive substitute for central authorities. Drawing on cases from Africa and Latin America, this article discusses when and how strategic local decentralization can be an effective strategy to maintain political control in divided societies, why sometimes governments may instead opt for regional decentralization or (re)centralization, and how the choice of decentralization level depends on political geography and history as well as economic factors.

Why are designs for urban governance so often incomplete? A conceptual framework for explaining and harnessing institutional incompleteness

This article asks why institutional designs for urban governance are so often incomplete and what a critical perspective on incompleteness may offer. We develop a novel conceptual framework distinguishing between incompleteness as description (a deficit to be ‘designed-out’), action (‘good enough’ design to be worked with and around), and prescription (an asset to be ‘designed-in’). An extended worked example of city regional devolution in England illuminates the three types of incompleteness in practice, whilst also identifying hybrid forms and cross-cutting considerations of power, time and space. Perceiving institutional incompleteness as a design logic in its own right, held in tension with completeness, could help augment institutional design repertoires and even enhance democratic values.

Strategic Inefficient Decentralization: Local and Regional Devolution as Substitutes

Most contemporary decentralization has occurred at the local (district) rather than regional (provincial) level. Why? We advance a theory highlighting the political incentives of central authorities to bypass the regional tier of government in favor decentralizing to smaller, more fragmented units. Regional decentralization can better take advantage of economies of scale and scope in public service provision, but it also enables regional political opposition to scale more effectively. Central authorities may therefore have an incentive to forgo the welfare benefits of regional decentralization in favor of the imperfect substitute of local decentralization, which provides some of the same benefits at less risk. Drawing on cases from Africa and Latin America, we discuss when and how strategic local decentralization can be an effective strategy to maintain political control in divided societies and when it is likely to be ineffective.

Brexit, Birmingham and the 2022 Commonwealth Games: an opportunity for regeneration and rejuvenation?

ABSTRACT Research question/agenda: This article explores the awarding of the 2022 Commonwealth Games to Birmingham in the context of Brexit and Regional Devolution and Development. Research methods/approach: A mixed methods approach of qualitative data collection supplemented by desktop research was undertaken. The underpinning research philosophy was that of Pragmatism – triangulating differing ontological & epistemological perspectives. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted between July 2018 and December 2018. Findings: The article critically assesses the potential of the 2022 Games to support regeneration, finding that various factors will continue to impinge on the ability of the 2022 Games to fulfil their promise of a shared vision post-Brexit. Practical implications/Research contribution: Much has been made of the potential for major international sporting events to provide a stimulus to areas in need of regeneration, for which Glasgow is often cited as a classic example in the UK, having hosted the Games in 2014. However, Brexit adds a new piquancy to this debate given the desire by senior UK Government figures to rejuvenate ties with the Commonwealth? Is there anything distinctive about Birmingham (e.g. the presence of significant “Commonwealth Diaspora” communities) that could assist in this regard?

‘It aye like London, you know’: The Brexit Novel and the Cultural Politics of Devolution

This paper takes Anthony Cartwright’s The Cut (2017) as its central focus, a novel commissioned by European publisher Peirene Press as a fictional response to the UK’s 2016 Brexit vote. I provide a discussion of what I term the ‘cultural politics of devolution’ in Cartwright’s text, suggesting that it offers a critique of the British centralised state form and makes demands for the decentralisation of political power. Focussed on a small deindustrialised town, The Cut is an English regional polemic exploring how uneven development played a decisive role in the outcome of the European Union referendum. Building on Doreen Massey’s insight that places are not simply physical locations but ‘articulations of social relations’ (Massey, 1994: 22), my discussion of Cartwright’s novel is concerned with the way a discursive, cultural version of ‘the North’ was mobilised ideologically as a fulcrum of the Leave vote within Brexit media and political discourse. I trace the ways in which The Cut responds to this manoeuvre in an ambivalent deployment of nostalgia as both a vehicle for regional devolution and a literary mode associated with a parochial version of ‘the North’ that continues to exist in the national imagination. As this paper demonstrates, the text equivocates between a radical nostalgia that highlights the need for constitutional reform and a reactionary turn to the industrial past. Ultimately, I propose that The Cut forecloses its own devolutionary potential in an aesthetic and thematic reliance on cultural stereotypes of Northernness, suggesting the limitations of nostalgia as a resource for constructing alternatives to the present.

Regional politics of an urban age: Can Europe\u2019s former industrial cities create a new industrial economy to combat climate change and social unravelling?

Across Europe, cities are struggling to cope with the loss of industrial jobs; decay of urban infrastructure; in-migration (most often from poorer regions); outward sprawl pressures; traffic congestion and transport bottlenecks. The environmental consequences of continuing urban development are deeply threatening to the survival of both city and countryside. Growing anti-immigrant sentiments, sluggish growth and intense inequality provoke a level of disaffection and marginalisation that threaten social cohesion, with highly divisive consequences. This article, based on a ten year study of seven European cities, argues that recovery is under way in ex-industrial cities with major reinvestment from national and European funds. Transformative deals and innovations have created new jobs and led to population regrowth after years of decline. There are hopeful signs that in different parts of Europe–North, South, East and West–a new phase of growth in core cities is emerging, based on university-civic business partnerships; reuse and remodelling of existing, devalued infrastructure; reinvestment and expansion of rail and water networks; the growth in advanced manufacturing; reduced energy use and the spread of renewable energy; innovative research and technology; city centre and neighbourhood restoration and integration. Europe’s former industrial cities are part of much bigger metropolitan areas or city regions and some benefits are spreading out from core cities to more peripheral areas, although this is often swamped by poverty and unemployment, skills mismatch and inadequate reinvestment. A complex patchwork of changes is driven by a new kind of city leadership; growing collaboration between the core and periphery of cities; central government and Europe-wide concern both to devolve more powers and reduce dependence on central funds; regional devolution and metropolitan level programmes–particularly in areas of skills, research and development, infrastructure, and umbrella services backed with cash and political enthusiasm. Cities are recovering across the world’s most urban continent by combining reuse and new inventions, which deliver more sustainable economies.

Devolution and the regional health divide: a longitudinal ecological study of 14 countries in Europe.

Greater regional devolution can reduce economic inequalities between regions; however, the impact on health inequalities is not clear. We investigated the association between changes over time in the level of devolution in European countries and regional economic and health inequalities. We used the proportion of government expenditure controlled by subnational levels of government as our measure of devolution in 14 European countries between 1995 and 2011. Fixed effects linear regression models were used to analyse trends in the level of devolution, trends in regional economic inequalities (Gini-coefficient) and trends in regional health inequalities (slope index) in life expectancy. Each additional percentage of government expenditure managed at subnational level reduced the Gini-coefficient of regional GDP by -0.17 points (95% CI: -0.33 to -0.01; P = 0.04). However, it increased the slope index of regional life expectancy by 23 days (95% CI: -2 to 48; P = 0.07). When trends in regional economic inequalities were controlled for, as a potential mediator-increased devolution-was significantly associated with an increase in health inequalities between regions (P = 0.01). Increased devolution does not appear to reduce regional health inequalities-even when it reduces regional economic inequalities-and it could be associated with increased health inequalities.

Pedagogy and deliberative democracy: insights from recent experiments in the United Kingdom

ABSTRACTA growing body of research suggests the existence of a disconnection between citizens, politicians and representative politics in advanced industrial democracies. This has led to a literature on the emergence of post-democratic or post-representative politics that connects to a parallel seam of scholarship on the capacity of deliberative democratic innovations to ‘close the gap’. This latter body of work has delivered major insights in terms of democratic design in ways that traverse ‘politics as theory’ and ‘politics as practice’. And yet the main argument of this article is that this seam of scholarship has generally failed to explore the existence of numerous pedagogical relationships that exist within the very fibre of deliberative processes. As such, the core contribution of this article focuses around the explication of a ‘pedagogical pyramid’ that applies a micro-political lens to deliberative processes. This theoretical contribution is empirically assessed with reference to a recent project that sought to test different citizen assembly pilots around plans for English regional devolution. The proposition being tested is that a better understanding of relational pedagogy within innovations is vital, not just to increase levels of knowledge, but also to build the capacity, confidence and contribution of democratically active citizens.

Thoughts on Catalonia

Thoughts on Catalonia

Ageing Places in an Ageing Country: The Local Dynamics of the Elderly Population in Spain

AbstractSpain is an ageing country, and the present demographic burden is not homogeneously distributed across space. Will the aged population be evenly distributed in the future, or will disparities broaden over time? Identifying the spatial patterns of the aged population concentration and the existence of a demographic burden convergence/divergence process is a pertinent question in Spain after the regional devolution the country has undergone in the last decades and the coexistence of different regimes. In this paper, we use a non‐parametric approach (geographically weighted regressions) to identify the determinants of the ageing dynamics, checking for the existence of a convergence/divergence ageing process after controlling for the socio‐economic characteristics of the Spanish municipalities. Although global estimations support the convergence hypotheses posed, GWR results show a significant variability of the effects depending on the area considered, which calls for a careful treatment of the results both for analysis and policy purposes.

Nurturing English regionalism: A new role for local newspapers in a federal UK?

Abstract Any constitutional move towards a federal system in the United Kingdom would inevitably be unbalanced by England’s obvious economic, cultural and numerical dominance. Some form of English regional devolution is therefore essential if we are to progress as a multinational state post Scottish and Welsh devolution. This article adopts a deliberately polemical approach to a consideration of the potential role of regional English newspapers in that context, suggesting that their established links with a coherent audience, rooted in place, might allow them to act as a vehicle for debate and nurture a sense of regional identity often absent from contemporary English politics. Regional newspapers are ‘culturally specific’ and have a key role to play in articulating the popular experience of post-devolution political change: this might also present this struggling sector with valuable commercial opportunities as they take advantage of the new political paradigm to further embed themselves within their communities.

Elected mayors in England: leaders or managers?

Purpose Philosophers and political scientists have a long history of dealing with the difficult puzzle of leadership, and how it is to be distinguished from management and administration. The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of whether the innovative role of elected executive mayor in England can be considered as leader or manager. The paper critically assesses the concept of leadership before using empirical evidence to come to conclusions about the current role of elected mayor, an office with an uncertain history and unclear future in English public sector leadership. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws from the authors’ qualitative interviews with mayors from the inception of the office to the recent past. Findings The study finds that elected executive mayors are both leaders and managers, but that the notion of leadership in the local public sector remains contested as the mayor is a part of a bureaucratic structure of administration which limits the exercise of leadership as outlined in the existing literature. Research limitations/implications As central government continues to advocate the expansion of the office of mayor, not least as part of English regional devolution, the study relates to future practice and to overall understanding of just what elected mayors do. Practical implications The paper provides useful insight into the forthcoming expansion of the mayoral system into the new Combined Authorities. Originality/value The paper provides original evidence about the faltering progress of the mayoral system in the English public sector.

The Politics of England

AbstractParty political interest in the so‐called ‘English Question’ has grown in recent years, due to the enmeshing of constitutional issues with a growing political and public affiliation with and expression of English national identity and culture. More recently, attention has shifted to the decentralisation of government within England. The ‘English Question’ is thus defined by two interconnected but distinctive ‘English Questions’. This article will assess whether, in seeking to find answers for these ‘English Questions’, the Conservatives and Labour are establishing a more distinctive ‘politics of England’. It will first consider the extent to which the politicisation of English identity and civic society have stimulated a more nationally framed political culture and party politics, and then assess whether constitutional reforms undertaken in Westminster, especially the introduction of EVEL, and regional devolution initiatives within England might facilitate greater party political engagement with an emergent ‘politics of England’.

The Party Politics of the ‘New English Regionalism’

This article explores the potential that ongoing regional devolution in England might transform the so-called ‘party politics of Englishness’, complicating and potentially compromising the emergence of a nascent English political nationalism. It provides a primary examination of the extent to which conceptual and normative intersections between nationalism and regionalism are reordering both the constitutional architecture and the party political landscape of England. The article argues that politicised manifestations of ‘new English regionalism’ raise new and important challenges to how the two main Union-wide political parties, the Conservatives and Labour, frame and articulate issues of English national party organisation, policy development and identity. The article concludes by noting that the emergence of national and regional forms of identity politics in England is undermining the plurinational organisation and political unity of both parties.

Why Public Finance Matters: Evolution of Independence Movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country during the Twenty-First Century

This paper analyzes trends of regional devolution throughout Spain’s modern history—as well as equivalent trends of public favor for such devolution—to inform ongoing discussions on how the country can maximize its political and economic efficiency, while accounting for constituencies’ preferences and a federal affirmation of sub-state identities. The article describes evolution of public support for secession in the Basque Country and Catalonia; assesses the historical-institutional framework of region-state relations following Spain’s transition to democracy; and evaluates economic motivations of political interest groups across the Basque and Catalan regions. Having considered these frameworks, the piece concludes by discussing obstacles toward secessionist movements in Spain within the EU and United Nations frameworks.

Left and Right in the Basque Country and Catalonia: The Meaning of Ideology in a Nationalist Context

Why are the Basques and Catalans the most left-wing societies in Europe? Treating peripheral nationalism and ideology as two orthogonal dimensions, the literature to date has not yet provided a systematic theoretical account of this pattern. In an attempt to fill this gap, this paper explores how nationalism has marked the meaning of ideology in these regions. Contrary to the left, the right has been treated as the opponent of regional devolution. The findings highlight the need to revise the orthogonality assumption often made when employing these two dimensions in the study of public opinion in Catalonia and the Basque Country.

Political opposition and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa

This special issue takes a closer look at the role and meaning of political opposition for the development of democracy across sub-Saharan Africa. Why is it that room for political opposition in most cases is severely limited? Under what circumstances has the political opposition been able to establish itself in a legitimate role in African politics? To answer these questions this special issue focuses on the institutional settings, the nature and dynamics within and between the political parties, and the relationship between the citizens and the political parties. It is found that regional devolution and federalist structures are areas where the political opposition can find room to organize and gain local power, as a supplement to influence at the central level. Important factors behind support for the opposition are a realistic appreciation of the level of democracy, dissatisfaction with corruption and pro-democratic values. Generally, however, opposition parties are lacking in organization and in institutionalization, as well as in their ability to find support in civil society and at promoting the issues that voters find most important. Overall, strong executive powers, unchecked by democratic institutions, in combination with deferential values and fear of conflict, undermine legitimate opposition activity.

Management of vaccinations in Italy: a national survey after healthcare regionalization

Objectives:The main aim of this study was to describe the effects of regional organization and performance in managing vaccinations, in the light of the institutional devolution recently introduced in Italy.Methods:We analysed (1) the general organization of regions for vaccination programmes, (2) the management of four vaccination programmes (combined measles-rubella-parotitis, varicella for children, influenza, and pneumococcal 23-valent for adults).First, we conducted preliminary face-to-face interviews with 16 regional managers of the infective disease prevention departments. Subsequently, we sent them a standardized questionnaire to obtain comparable information on general organization and on the four specific vaccination programmes considered. In all, 14 regions were eventually included.Results:The survey showed a widespread lack of regional staff involved in the management of vaccinations and a geographical variation in the availability of computerized data collection. We recorded poor coverage for varicella and pneumococcal 23-valent vaccinations compared to MRP and influenza. Prices of the four vaccines varied widely among regions, with only a weak correlation between prices and volumes.Limitations and conclusions:The major limitation of the survey was the lack of information available at regional level. The piecemeal diffusion of computerized systems and the widespread lack of sufficient staff should mainly explain this.Economic incentives could be offered to regions that achieve national targets. Such incentives should encourage collaboration between central and regional authorities consistent with institutional trends in regional devolution.

Repressive Legacies and the Democratisation of Iberian Police Systems

Literature on democratisation claims that the dictatorship's police forces are difficult to reform and that modes of transition and authoritarian legacies are linked. It predicts that a continuous transition will leave greater legacies than a discontinuous one. This paper analyses the police reforms during democratisation in Spain and Portugal, comparing them in several dimensions: symbolic changes, demilitarisation, decentralisation, accountability, professionalisation and new service role. In both countries a democratic police was built; yet, contrary to predictions, the Spanish police underwent a faster and deeper reform than the Portuguese, a result explained by the double legacy of dictatorship and revolution in the Portuguese transition, the credibility dilemmas of the Spanish reformers and the impact of regional devolution.

Tackling Neglect and Mental Health Reform in a Devolved System of Welfare Governance

AbstractA system of devolved welfare governance, it is argued, increases participation in welfare services. However, limited empirical evidence has been reported on how it influences welfare reform. This paper draws upon evidence from the mental health system in Spain, where health care is devolved to the regional states (autonomous communities), to examine whether policy reform of neglected policy areas may be triggered through heightened policy awareness and better participation of interested stakeholders. We find that regional devolution has helped to scale up mental health in some of Spain's autonomous regions relative to support for other services. Evidence suggests that whilst fragmentation and certain historical legacies remain path dependent, regional devolution has indeed enhanced experimentation, reform and policy innovation in mental health care. However, the expansion of mental health care coverage has been constrained by the lack of a clear definition of public coverage, as well as the need to meet the demands of evidence-based policy in an era of cost-containment. Inequalities in access to mental health care remain; they are compounded by the stigma and discrimination experienced by people with mental health problems, which is a common challenge for all health systems in Europe.