ABSTRACT
The United Kingdom has a rapidly evolving territorial constitution. It comprises four territorial units, three of which saw the establishment of devolved – that is, in comparative terminology, regional – legislatures in the late 1990s: the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. The odd one out is England. England is by far the biggest part of the UK, with about five-sixths of the population and economic weight of the UK as a whole. Yet it lacks its own territorial institutions of government. In a sense, though, all the component parts of the UK are odd ones out: the devolved institutions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have different powers and institutional forms. For this reason the UK is often described as an asymmetrically devolved state. An alternative and perhaps better formulation might be a ‘lopsided’ state (Jeffery, 2006). ‘Lopsidedness’ does not just signify asymmetry, but also suggests instability. This chapter charts this instability, offers explanation for it and points to the trajectory it may follow in the coming years.
