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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]

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]

Devolution has led to a dramatic restructuring of the UK state over the last 15 years. Planning is a devolved function and a concerted process of 'planning reform' has been implemented by devolved (and central) government since devolution, including a move from 'land-use' to 'spatial planning'. Despite some expectations of, and pressure for, policy divergence post devolution, we draw on findings of discourse analysis to demonstrate how there are common framings and understandings of the concept of 'spatial planning' present in the policy documents of all the UK administrations, and in Ireland. As such, we conceptualise spatial planning as what, after Peck and Theodore (2010, Geoforum 41 169-74), we might consider a 'policy on the move'. Policy mobility is a fundamentally geographical phenomenon and its presence here raises questions about the mechanisms by which spatial planning has been mobilised. Drawing on interview data, we highlight the role of civil servants who meet through the British- Irish Council's workstream on spatial planning and a forum known as the ' Five Administrations' meetings. The relational connections between these state actors suggest that they are key 'transfer agents' and their role helps explain some of the path dependency in planning reform post devolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]