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Devolution has become a key 'global trend' over recent decades as many states have decentralised power to sub-state governments. The UK resisted this trend until the late 1990s when devolution was enacted by the then Labour Government, taking a highly asymmetrical form in which different territories have been granted different powers and institutional arrangements. Devolution allows the devolved governments to develop policies that are tailored to the needs of their areas, encouraging policy divergence, although this is countered by pressures to ensure that devolved approaches do not contradict those of the central state, promoting convergence. This review paper aims to assess the unfolding dynamics of devolution and policy divergence in the UK, spanning different policy areas such as economic development, health and social policy. The paper emphasises that devolution has altered the institutional landscape of public policy in the UK, generating some high-profile examples of policy divergence, whilst also providing evidence of policy convergence. In addition, the passage of time underlines the nature of UK devolution as an unfolding process. Its underlying asymmetries have become more pronounced as the tendency towards greater autonomy for Scotland and Wales clashes with a highly centralised mode of policymaking in Westminster, the consequences of which have spilt over into the devolved territories in the context of the post-2007 economic crisis through public expenditure cuts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues both that devolution is central to our understanding of developments in social policy in the contemporary UK and that social policy is a key means through which we can develop a critical understanding of the process of devolution itself. Much of the devolved powers available to the governments in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff centre on social policy innovation and practice. Devolution was widely welcomed as opening up the potential for the development of radically different social policies. However, the discussion of devolution has been largely dominated by an approach that focuses on institutional and/or organizational differences marginalizing, in the process, the wider social relations of welfare around which social policy is organized. In bringing the study of devolution into the heartland of social policy analysis, it is argued that we can begin to develop a more critically informed appreciation of social policy across the entire devolved UK. Through critical social policy analysis we can both evaluate and explain the complex interrelations between devolved governance and the continuing reproduction of inequalities and social divisions throughout the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]