ABSTRACT
The situation is not unlike that in the early days of the Spanish regional state. With only the more nationalist (and peripheral) regions in existence, bilateral agreements are the easiest, and possibly the only, method of structuring the intergovernmental system. Should the English regions devolve, the desire of the United Kingdom Government to create a degree of uniformity in its relations with the regional tier might increase. It is likely that such a process would be resisted by the ‘nations’ of the UK, as it was by the high autonomy regions in Spain.
