Territory and PowerRevisited: Theorising Territorial Politics in the United Kingdom after Devolution

Abstract

The article seeks to contribute to theoretical analysis of political decentralisation in the UK occasioned by devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 1998–9. It examines the contribution that can be made by Jim Bulpitt's 1983 book, Territory and Power in the United Kingdom. First, it argues that Bulpitt's critique of conventional wisdoms in the early 1980s remains highly relevant to reflecting on shortcomings in the literature today. Key among these is the lack of a common conceptual language for analysis, and Bulpitt's overarching re‐conceptualisation of the field as the study of ‘territorial politics’ would repay renewed reflection. Secondly, the article clarifies Bulpitt's own centre perspective and argues that its application is best understood today as a realist historical institutionalist account of UK territorial politics. In so doing Bulpitt also provides an enduring methodological and interpretative challenge to assumptions of state centralism. Thirdly, the article argues that key methodological/interpretative insights can be adapted from Territory and Power in analysis of UK territorial politics and the advent of devolution. This reinforces the utility of Bulpitt's historical institutionalism to contemporary analysis. Finally, it argues that Territory and Power's concepts and methods, understood in these ways, would bear application in comparative studies of political decentralisation.

Territory and Power: Jim Bulpitt and the Study of Comparative Politics

“…With most of the academics working in the field, the debt to Bulpitt is implicit rather than direct. The exception is Bradbury (2006) who uses 'y the underlying problem is the samehow to develop a form of statecraft that allows the central authority to sustain itself over time and to reward the interests of its governing elites'.…”

“…It concerns economic interests, pressure groups and the political parties, which are differently constituted in the various territories of the nation state. This term, and the analysis behind it, has stimulated a stream of work in the UK political science (e.g., Rhodes, 1988), which is now labelled as territorial politics (Bradbury, 2006). Territorial politics scholars fully acknowledge the importance of the state as a concept to understand the exercise of power and authority and places historical context at the centre of political analysis.…”

“…In particular, his classic book, Territory and Power in the United Kingdom, engages with the big intellectual themes of the organisation of local and territorial politics, the role of political parties and the prominence of economic policy and foreign affairs, to which he directed questions about the operation of statecraft, the salience of elite interests, the development of territorial identity and the contradictions of political power. By placing nation states in their historical context, examining the constraints and limitations on central decision makers and the scope for political choice and autonomy, he belongs to the institutional political science tradition that now dominates the study of comparative politics and policy (Ware, 1987: 75;Bradbury, 2006).…”

Fifth nation: The United Kingdom between definite and indefinite articles

“…A generation ago, at the time of the devolution debates in the 1970s, a similar existential question was asked by scholars in the Work Group on United Kingdom Politics. Jonathan Bradbury (2006), in order to highlight some of the shortcomings of the contemporary literature, has profitably and subtly re-examined, in the light of devolution, the insights of Jim Bulpitt's (1983) book Territory and Power in the United Kingdom. This article looks at another of that group's seminal thinkers, Richard Rose, and specifically re-examines the utility of 'fifth nation' to conceptualise the contemporary United Kingdom.…”

Territory, power and statecraft: understanding English devolution

“…British territorial management was therefore a history of continuity rather than change based around a 'dual polity' whereby the national government preferred to concentrate on 'high politics'. Analyses of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland through a Bulpittian framework have concluded that the central autonomy model remains dominant there despite the strength of devolved powers (Bradbury, 2006;Convery, 2014). Our Bulpittian analysis continues in this historical and qualitative vein to look at the political imperatives shaping the most recent chapter in English territorial governance.…”