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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]

The term 'filling in' was developed in the context of research into UK devolution in order to move beyond the literature on the 'hollowing out' of the national state. We critically unpack the concept of filling in and assess its value, identifying three main ambiguities. First, we emphasise the need to distinguish between what we term structural and relational forms of filling in, ensuring a clear analytical separation between structure and agency. Second, we examine the associated scalar politics of devolution, arguing that filling in and hollowing out are not scale-specific processes. Third, we distinguish between filling in as originally advanced, which is time-specific in relation to the process of devolution, and 'pure' forms of filling in which can be seen as time-neutral. In abstracting filling in from the context of devolution in this way, our purpose is to render it capable of wider application to the study of other processes of state restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. Devolution has been described as a key 'global trend' over recent decades as governments have decentralised power and responsibilities to subordinate regional institutions. UK devolution is characterised by its asymmetrical nature with different territories granted different institutional arrangements and powers. This paper seeks to examine the role of state personnel in mobilising the new institutional machinery and managing the process of devolution, focusing on transport policy. The research presented shows a clear contrast between London and Northern Ireland, on the one hand, and Scotland and Wales, on the other, in terms of the effectiveness of political leaders in creating clear policy priorities and momentum in transport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New state spaces can be seen as products of the interaction between emerging initiatives and pre-existing institutional arrangements (, Space and Polity 2:5-31). In the devolved territories of the UK devolution has created new political centres of policy formulation and this paper is concerned with how devolved policy initiatives are reshaping and rescaling sub-national spaces of governance. We focus on the rescaling of transport governance in Scotland through a nationally orchestrated process of regionalisation involving the creation of Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs), an initiative that has been shaped by tensions between changing national political objectives and local interests. Our approach draws on Neil Brenner's 'new state spaces' (NSS) framework, which has value in emphasising the historically embedded and path-dependent nature of restructuring processes. At the same time, its abstract nature leads the NSS approach to privilege the broad processes that generate new configurations of state power over the complex politics associated with the restructuring of particular spaces. In response, we suggest a new theoretical synthesis that draws NSS together with the ancillary notions of 'regional armatures' and 'the politics of scale' to provide a stronger purchase on the political agency and struggles that 'form' and 'mould' particular spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of devolution in the United Kingdom on transport policies in the first two terms of devolved government, from 1999/2000 to 2007/08. In particular, we discuss the nature and extent of policy convergence and divergence between the devolved territories (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and London) and England (wherein responsibility for policy formulation remains with the UK government at Westminster), and between the devolved territories themselves. Our analysis builds on existing work on devolution and public policy not only through its focus on transport policy, but also by distinguishing between `horizontal' and `vertical' dimensions of policy divergence and convergence, referring to relations between territories and to links to previous~policies adopted within the same territory, respectively. Findings point to a convergence of overarching transport strategies and a complex picture of both convergence and divergence in terms of specific policy measures. The latter provides evidence of a devolution effect on transport policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]