ABSTRACT
The UK has traditionally been viewed as a classic example of a unitary state. Nonetheless, while political power was centralised, by 1997 different arrangements had evolved to combine central control with decentralised decision-making through separate government departments for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.These institutional structures eased New Labour’s programme of political devolution in the Celtic nations (Jeffery 2007).There was no direct equivalent tradition of administrative devolution for England and, although central government had a longestablished presence in the nine ‘standard’ regions, including Greater London, this was primarily focused on the delivery of government functions, rather than the management of territory.Despite these limitations, the Labour Government was able to build on an emerging form of ‘technocratic’ regionalism, which combined ‘top-down’ administrative decentralisation with ‘bottom-up’ co-ordinating initiatives, derived from individual regions and localities.The former was primarily enabled by individual government departments working through the ‘integrated’Government Offices (GOs) – Whitehall’s principal representatives in the regions – established by the Conservative Government in 1994; the latter through the activities of regional Local Government Associations (LGAs).
