regions to question the presumption that glocalisation necessarily generates greater sub-national variegation or whether, insofar as meaningful divergences exist, they are better explained as contingencies, particularly of the political agency of key actors such as police chiefs, elected mayors and, in England and Wales, the recently established Police and Crime Commissioners.The chapter contrasts this presumption with two countervailing arguments. Firstly, that irrespective of any governing arrangements devolving policy-making for metropolitan policing to sub-national authorities, policing agendas are converging, as authorities copy one another's responses to commonly perceived problems, such as organised crime, terrorism, migration and social cohesion.Secondly, that nation states retain considerable influence over the trajectories of local governance within their sovereign territory and that insofar as any divergences can be identified across Europe these are better understood in terms of inter-national rather than intra-national comparisons.Addressing these countervailing arguments necessitates some engagement with the meaning of nation state power in the United Kingdom and its role in shaping policing. To this end, certain particularities of the constitutional-legal settlement in the United Kingdom need to be acknowledged, including the ongoing process of devolving political authority to the constituent nations of the Union and, within England and Wales, to sub-national actors such as the directly elected mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners. In this context, pressures for greater selfdetermination within the four constituent nations of the 'United Kingdom' render abstract concepts of the national security state problematic. Following the devolution of powers to these constituent nations, commencing in the late-1990s with the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, the United Kingdom is better conceptualised as a fragmenting, if not a Federalising, state rather than a coherent unitary political actor. Grounds for thinking about the fragmentation of the UK include the composition of the Brexit vote, which was primarily concentrated in provincial England and Wales, whereas voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly to remain within the European Union. In turn this provoked Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of the Scottish Parliament and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), to argue the case for another referendum on Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, claiming this was now back on the agenda less than two years since the last vote, which the Scottish independence movement narrowly lost.Further peculiarities in the constitution of the United Kingdom complicate simple references to nation-state power, especially in relationship to policing. Scotland has always had its own legal
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