Ward, J. orcid.org/0000-0002-3605-9931, Ward, B. and Kerr, P. (2024) Whither the centre? Tracing centralisation and fragmentation in UK politics. Political Studies Review. ISSN 1478-9299
Abstract
This article explores the question of how to conceptualise the location, capacity and effectiveness of the ‘centre’ in the UK policymaking process. While the literature on UK governance has historically featured avid disagreements about the power and capacity of central government, we identify a more recent convergence around the idea that the UK government is characterised by persistent centralisation of decision making alongside a fragmentation of policy delivery and frontline capacity. Through a detailed review of UK governance debates, we trace the development of two, seemingly contradictory, schools of thought: the centralisation school and the fragmentation school. We then identify an emerging consensus which recognises a continuous and uneven centripetal–centrifugal dynamic and the concurrence of both centralisation and fragmentation. We contend that changes to the British political context following the 2016 European Union referendum buttress the claim that UK politics is shaped by twin processes of centralisation and fragmentation, reinforcing tensions between a centre that desires power and a range of forces eroding its capacity to deliver. Our overall contention is that the notion of ‘power without capacity’ effectively captures the contemporary character of the ‘centre’.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Except as otherwise noted, this author-accepted version of a journal article published in Political Studies Review is made available via the University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | centralisation; fragmentation; multi-level governance; UK politics; metagovernance |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ECONOMIC & SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL ES/Y007581/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 22 May 2024 15:21 |
Last Modified: | 01 Jul 2024 10:34 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/14789299241258629 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:212531 |