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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]

In this introductory essay, we outline how recent events have generated considerable debate and discussion surrounding the future constitutional status of Scotland and the current devolutionary settlement in the UK, and how the aim of this collection of papers is to evaluate UK devolution and the policy mobilities surrounding it. We argue that there has been a tendency for scholars to concentrate on the detail of the constitutional and administrative structures and a reluctance to theorise devolution, and suggest geographers can offer a particular contribution here through an understanding of devolution as fundamentally about the interaction of politics, culture and territory. We discuss the value of considering the particular geographies of policy at work, and the role of the everyday work of civil servants in creating and sustaining the creation of new state spaces. We then briefly highlight the main findings of each of the papers in this special collection and show how, together, they add to our understanding of the geographies of devolution and of policy at a critical juncture in the devolution story. We conclude that whatever the particular future for the United Kingdom, the policy interactions between territories will continue to have an important role in their governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How national parliaments adapt to the European Union is an important debate. However, scholars often overlook the regional aspect. This is particularly so for the UK where, despite devolution since 1999, scholarship remains largely devolution-blind. It is assumed that evaluating UK parliamentary adaptation only requires assessing the work of Westminster committees. This article takes a first step towards rectifying this oversight through reconceptualising UK–EU parliamentary engagement as multi-territory, not state-centric. This is demonstrated by comparing the social construction of practices in Scotland, Wales and at Westminster since 1999. Acknowledging devolution, however, does not just require comparing practices. Additionally, the paper asks how the ideas of devolution have been taken up by actors, potentially transforming the meaning of UK engagement for them. This necessitates new approaches drawn from interpretivist and constructivist institutionalist theories. Ultimately, therefore, the paper goes further than arguing for devolution-aware research to promoting change more generally in how parliamentary adaptation is theorised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the decades since the Conference on Devolution's proceedings concluded in stalemate in April 1920, the Conference has been consigned to the margins of political and constitutional history. However, within this limited literature, one interpretation of the Conference's proceedings has been universally held: that the subject of the powers the devolved legislatures should enjoy was a rare source of consensus. This article challenges this orthodoxy, using archival evidence from the Conference to demonstrate that while a consensus on powers may have existed on paper, such agreement certainly did not exist in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political devolution in the UK has afforded opportunities for studying policy differences and similarities in relation to local-level community-based planning initiatives in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Organised around the concepts of 'lesson-drawing' and the 'filling in' of local governance, this paper critically considers aspects of policy design and development associated with community-based planning within and between the devolved UK polities. In practice, policy instruments vary with respect to their institutional, scalar and organisational rationalities. A policy mobility perspective may enable a relatively more critical understanding of how local governance arrangements are being externally and internally shaped in the respective devolved nation-regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across Great Britain, engagement with civil society is an increasingly central component of public policy and governance rhetoric. However, attention has tended to focus on policy developments emanating from Westminster that relate to England, rather than the policy and governance 'spaces' emerging in the devolved administrations, such as Scotland and Wales. It has also tended to focus on the organisations through which voluntary participation takes place, rather than on voluntary participation itself. In this paper we examine the extent to which there are divergent governance spaces with regards to voluntarism apparent at the national levels of England, Wales and Scotland, set against a backdrop of wider debates on devolution, civil society, community, and the Big Society. Given the common driver of public service reform which emerges from our review, we then examine the emergence of sub-national 'spaces' through the example of rural Scotland, in which the delivery of public services can be particularly challenging. Overall, we contend that public policy towards volunteering and the voluntary and community sector ( VCS) in Scotland, Wales and England has been shaped by similar drivers, but the rhetoric surrounding their deployment and the distinct governance landscapes in Wales and Scotland have the capacity to influence the deployment of these goals in distinct ways. We also argue that greater attention may need to be paid to emergent 'sub-national' governances spaces of voluntarism. [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]