Although NI elected representatives can often be heard urging their political opponents to park constitutional matters and cooperate on policy development, in practice most significant policy areas in Northern Ireland are not divorced from constitutional aspirations.
Queen’s University Belfast academics consider the region’s journey of political impasse and recurrent political crisis and how it has influenced devolved government in Northern Ireland, since devolution in 1999.
Slowly but surely, by means of at least five changes to its devolution dispensation, Wales has accrued a set of powers that would astound those first sixty members elected to the Assembly in May 1999.
Henriette Ruhrmann Spatial inequality in the UK stands out as a significant concern. The top half of its regions are on par with prosperous Finland in terms of GDP per capita, and the bottom half ranks below the Czech Republic (LGA 2023, McCann 2020). Policymakers are faced with the ongoing dilemma of whether Whitehall or local leaders are better equipped to address inequality between and within regions. IPPO Cities’ policy roundtable on “Place and Spatial Inequality” convened national and local policymakers and experts to discuss the road ahead for remedying spatial inequality....
