No abstract

Claims that decentralization could improve government accountability and responsiveness led to its adoption as a policy objective across the globe. But recent empirical work finds little evidence of 'tier effects' in practice; instead, significant variation exists even between most-similar bodies. Recognizing the value of FOI in facilitating large-scale data collection, and that the UK's institutional diversity offers an important source of between-and within-tier variation, I compile a large new dataset by emailing two separate FOI requests to 812 UK public bodies with an executive function. Identifying significant variation in timeliness and quality between UK territories, I argue that differing foundational motives can help explain patterns of responsiveness between institutions established by transparency-facing reforms and those designed to resolve conflict. A lack of evidence that by lower-tier governments are generally more responsive reaffirms the recent challenges to the more fundamental claims about decentralization that informed academic debate and real-world practice.

Striking territorial variations in the 2016 Brexit referendum are neglected in the explanatory literature, a gap our analysis of British Election Study helps to fill. Rather than modelling Britain as one political system, we present parallel models for England, Scotland and Wales.Typical in other multi-national states, this approach is innovative for 'British politics'. To analyse complex multi-level national identities, we develop a Relative Territorial Identity (RTI) measure. Substantively, RTI predicts Brexit vote-choice. Since voters who prioritise English identity tended to vote Leave, while the obverse was true in Wales and Scotland, RTI helps to explain territorial differentiation.

Under the new Fiscal Framework and devolution of some tax powers, from April 2019, the Welsh Government and local authorities will control nearly £5 billion of tax revenues, equivalent to roughly 30 per cent of their combined current spending. In this report we have worked with the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University to examine the key characteristics of the Welsh tax base, the risks and opportunities to the Welsh tax base after fiscal devolution, and some of the implications for Welsh Government policy. It concludes that tax policy reform should be pursued in an integrated way, with all devolved and local taxes considered in the round. It also highlights that given the influence that wider policy areas like education and housing have on the economy, there are cross-departmental challenges for the Welsh Government to ensure it successfully manages the increased risk inherent to fiscal devolution.