Devolution in the United Kingdom: Statehood and Citizenship in Transition

The United Kingdom evolved as a “state of unions,” in which government arrangements were territorially varied in line with the particular circumstances of the sequence of acts of union between the core state territory of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The recent devolution reforms have built on that territorial nonuniformity, embedding a number of idiosyncrasies into the devolved UK state: a lopsidedness that leaves the biggest and wealthiest part of the United Kingdom—England—governed centrally wihle the non-English nations have devolved government, devolved government arrangements for those nations that are markedly asymmetrical, and an underdeveloped system of intergovernmental relations connecting United Kingdom—level and devolved political arenas. Together these issues pose important questions of whether the devolution reforms amount to a coherent overall package, whether the reforms are stable, and whether they erode a common UK citizenship. Copyright , Oxford University Press.