Devolution is not simply a UK phenomenon but part of a global trend towards more flexible, entrepreneurial and accountable forms of governance (Keating, 1998; Loughlin, 2000). There has been a great deal of debate in recent years concerning the changing nature of the state and the ways in which it is being ‘hollowed out’ by a range of factors which in turn are causing a restructuring of scale, governance and functions. According to such views the notion of ‘hollowing-out’ involves three interrelated processes: the de-statisation of the political system, most clearly reflected in the shift from government to governance; the internationalisation of policy communities and networks; and the denationalisation of the state, in which state political and economic capacities are being reconfigured territorially and functionally along a series of spatial levels – sub-national, national, supra-national and trans-local (see the chapter by Goodwin et al. in this volume).