Wales and the United Kingdom: a territorial constitutional policy drive

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Abstract
The Welsh Labour government has developed a distinctive brand of territorial constitutional policy in the UK context. The product of a strongly devolutionist government with a care for union, it reinforces the importance of autochthonous development in substate governance, reflects an adverse state of power relations in a famously uncodified constitution, and, framed by ongoing turbulence, provides an alternative vision of the UK territorial constitution at large. Building up Wales as a politically progressive polity, and promoting federal-type ideas of subsidiarity and shared governance in the union, are major threads. Grounded in the notion of popular sovereignties in a multipolar polity, and stressing the need for continued consent to and reform of the union, the approach represents a profound and difficult constitutional challenge. Wales as a substate polity remains a work in process, with largescale devolution of justice high on the policy agenda, while competing pressures of centralism and interest in independence inform an increasingly fluid territorial debate that sees the establishment of a new Constitutional Commission. A sustained exercise of constitutional voice, and, shown with Brexit and a muscular unionism of the Conservative government at Westminster, the struggle to be heard, characterizes the Welsh Government effort at the UK level.
Funding Information
  • The Leverhulme Trust (MRF-2015-133)

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