The identity implications have been overlooked from discussions on devolution, which have tended to focus on constitutional, legal and financial issues. In this volume, contributors from the communities under discussion explore the ways in which devolution is experienced and understood by citizens from the devolved regions of the UK. The additional inclusion of a US perspective allows parallels with American federalism to be drawn out. Informed by a discursive/textual/communication approach to identity, Devolution and Identity offers a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives, including both macro- and micro-level analyses of devolution and identity processes. Themes covered include discourse and interaction, national identity, flags and emblems, gender representation, newspaper letters, regional marketing, language ideology, history and culture, artistic practice, minority identities and political ideology. In exploring the impact of the devolution process on both individual and group identities, this book provides a richer understanding of the devolution process itself, as well as a new understanding of the relationship between socio-political structures and identity.

Governing England examines the state of England's governance, identity and relationship with the other nations of the UK. It brings together academic experts on constitutional change, territorial politics, nationalism, political parties, public opinion, and local government both to explain thecurrent place of England within a changing United Kingdom, and to consider how the "English constitution" is likely to develop over the coming years.At a time when questions of territory and identity have grown increasingly politicised, Governing England offers a deeper academic analysis of how England and Englishness are changing. The central questions it addresses are whether, why, and with what consequences there has been a disentangling ofEngland from Britain within the institutions of the UK state, and of Englishness from Britishness at the level of culture and national identity.This volume includes competing interpretations of what has changed in terms of English nationhood.

What does it mean to say you're English, Scottish, British? Does it matter much to people? Has devolution and constitutional change made a difference to national identity? Does the future of the UK depend on whether or not people think they are British? Social and political scientists answer these questions vital to the future of the British state.

What is national identity? What are the main challenges posed to national identity by the strengthening of regional identities and the growth of cultural diversity? How is right-wing nationalism connected to the desire to preserve a traditional image of national identity? Can we forge a new kind of national identity that responds to the challenges of globalization and other deep-seated changes? In this important new book, Montserrat Guibernau answers these and other compelling questions about the future of national identity. For Guibernau, the nation-states traditional project to unify its otherwise diverse population by generating a shared sense of national identity among them was always contested, and was accomplished with various degrees of success in Europe and North America. Such processes involved the cultural and linguistic homogenization of an otherwise diverse citizenry and were pursued by different means according to the specific contexts within which they were applied. At present, the impact of strong structural socio-political and economic transformations has resulted in greater challenges being posed to the idea that all citizens of a state should share a homogeneous national identity. Diversity is increasing, and plans for further European integration contain the potential to generate significant tensions, casting greater doubt on the classical concept of national identity. As a result, we are faced with a set of new dilemmas concerning the way in which national identity is constructed and defined. The book offers a theoretical as well as a comparative approach, with case studies involving Austria, Britain, Canada and Spain, as well as the European Union and the United States of America. The Identity of Nations will be essential reading for advanced students and professional scholars in sociology, politics and international relations.

A major review of New Labour's foreign policy from leading experts. This book re-imagines policy thinking, away from Churchill's idea of Britain as at the intersection of 'three circles' (the English speaking world, Europe, and the Commonwealth) and towards a new conceptual model that takes into account identity, ethics and power.

Until the Brexit referendum, there was widespread doubt as to whether English nationalism existed at all, at least beyond a small fringe. Since then, it has come to be regarded an obvious explanation for the vote to Leave the European Union. Subsequent opinion polls have raised doubts about the extent of continuing English commitment to the Union of the United Kingdom itself. Yet even as Englishness is apparently reshaping Britain's place in world and perhaps, ultimately, the state itself, it remains poorly understood. In this book Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones draw on data from the Future of England Survey, a specially commissioned public attitudes survey programme exploring the political implications of English identity, to make new and original arguments about the nature of English nationalism. They demonstrate that English nationalism is emphatically not a rejection of Britain and Britishness. Rather, English nationalism combines a sense of grievance about England's place within the United Kingdom with a fierce commitment to a particular vision of Britain's past, present, and future. Understanding its Janus-faced nature - both England and Britain - is key not only to understanding English nationalism, but also to understanding the ways in which it is transforming British politics.

This book argues for a new Welsh Way, one that is truly radical and transformational. A call for a political engagement that will create real opportunity for change. Neoliberalism has firmly taken hold in Wales. The 'clear red water' is darkening. The wounds of poverty, inequality, and disengagement, far from being healed, have worsened. Child poverty has reached epidemic levels: the worst in the UK. Educational attainment remains stubbornly low, particularly in deprived communities. Prison population rates are among the highest in Europe. Unemployment remains stubbornly high. House prices are rising, with the private rented sector lining the pockets of an ever-increasing number of private landlords. Minority groups are consistently marginalised. All this is not to mention the devastatingly disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on working class communities. The Welsh Way interrogates neoliberalism's grasp on Welsh life. It challenges the lazy claims about the 'successes' of devolution, fabricated by Welsh politicians and regurgitated within a tepid, attenuated public sphere. These wide-ranging essays examine the manifold ways in which neoliberalism now permeates all areas of Welsh culture, politics and society. They also look to a wider world, to the global trends and tendencies that have given shape to Welsh life today. Together, they encourage us to imagine, and demand, another Welsh future.

There is no doubt that the political and cultural map of Europe is in the process of being radically redrawn. Alongside the major upheavals in continental Europe, the British Isles has undergone far-reaching constitutional reform. In Devolving Identities, feminist scholars explore their personal negotiations of gender, class, ethnicity and national or regional identity through their readings of two literary and cultural 'texts'. The collection centres on the ontological experience of reading and writing 'as a feminist', and combines the discussion of texts which are inscribed - whether consciously or unconsciously - with the academics' own struggle to reconcile their 'roots' with their current 'situations' or 'identities'. This book's focus on the overlapping of gender and national or regional identity is a direct response to the devolution movements currently active in the British Isles. The contributors are drawn from Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, Northern Ireland and selected regions of England. In its complex engagement of subject and text and its political insistence that we no longer consider key aspects of 'identity' in isolation, this volume presents a truly state-of-the-art investigation of (a) what it means to be 'regionally defined' and (b) how the complexity of our positioning in terms of class, gender and nation impacts upon our practice as literary and cultural critics.

Examines recent evidence of a growing symmetry in the operation of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This book makes one of the first systematic and detailed comparisons of the operation of the devolved institutions and machinery of governance. It uses a comparative approach to explore the key workings of government.

This book looks at the fundamental components of national identity as understood by ordinary nation members, and the way in which it is mobilised by political elites. Drawing on an original case comparison between Wales and the Basque Country, the author suggests there are many commonalities between these two nations, particularly around the fundamentals of their national identities. However, differences occur in terms of degree of intensity of feeling and around the politicisation of identity, with more entrenched and hostile political positioning in the Basque Country than Wales. Through a multi-level comparison, the book generates insights into national identity as a theoretical concept and in a ‘stateless nation’ context. It argues for national identity's intangible, yet polemical, nature, looking at the primordialist way it is understood, its permanence and importance, coupled with its lack of everyday salience and consequent obligations.