{"title":"9. Governing from Below","authors":"P. John","doi":"10.1093/hepl/9780198840626.003.0009","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This chapter studies a key aspect of delegation in British politics: decentralization and local/national self-government. It deals with local government in England, and government in the devolved territories/nations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Decentralization in British politics has formed into a complex pattern, where there are different dynamics in the various territories: relative centralization in England, power-sharing in Northern Ireland, pragmatic devolution in Wales, and then a strong push towards independence in Scotland. For a question about how centralized or decentralized British politics is, the answer would need to be based on where a person lives, with England rehearsing the conventional arguments about constitutional centralization and the rest of the country increasing decentralization, if not a form of federalism. The chapter then assesses the question of the rationale and general stability of the system, with respect to the integrity of the UK as a whole.","PeriodicalId":46067,"journal":{"name":"British Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"British Politics","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/hepl/9780198840626.003.0009","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This chapter studies a key aspect of delegation in British politics: decentralization and local/national self-government. It deals with local government in England, and government in the devolved territories/nations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Decentralization in British politics has formed into a complex pattern, where there are different dynamics in the various territories: relative centralization in England, power-sharing in Northern Ireland, pragmatic devolution in Wales, and then a strong push towards independence in Scotland. For a question about how centralized or decentralized British politics is, the answer would need to be based on where a person lives, with England rehearsing the conventional arguments about constitutional centralization and the rest of the country increasing decentralization, if not a form of federalism. The chapter then assesses the question of the rationale and general stability of the system, with respect to the integrity of the UK as a whole.
期刊介绍:
British Politics offers the only forum explicitly designed to promote research in British political studies, and seeks to provide a counterweight to the growing fragmentation of this field during recent years. To this end, the journal aims to promote a more holistic understanding of British politics by encouraging a closer integration between theoretical and empirical research, between historical and contemporary analyses, and by fostering a conception of British politics as a broad and multi-disciplinary field of study. This incorporates a range of sub-fields, including psephology, policy analysis, regional studies, comparative politics, institutional analysis, political theory, political economy, historical analysis, cultural studies and social policy.
While recognising the validity and the importance of research into specific aspects of British politics, the journal takes it to be a guiding principle that such research is more useful, and indeed meaningful, if it is related to the field of British politics in a broader and fuller sense.
The scope of the journal will therefore be broad, incorporating a range of research papers and review articles from all theoretical perspectives, and on all aspects of British politics, including policy developments, institutional change and political behaviour. Priority will, however, be given to contributions which link contemporary developments in British politics to theoretical and/or historical analyses. The aim is as much to encourage the development of empirical research that is theoretically rigorous and informed, as it is to encourage the empirical application of theoretical work (or at least to encourage theorists to explicitly signify how their work could be applied in an empirical manner).