Constitutional Change and Economic Governance: Territories and Institutions L

Full Report of Research Activities and Results Constitutional Change and Economic Governance: Territories and Institutions L219252013 Background The framework for this project was developed against the background of considerable academic, political and practitioner interest in analysing the shifting contours of economic development defined as the frameworks and mechanisms associated with: infrastructure and site provision; capital formation and investment; innovation, entrepreneurship and technological change; training and human resources and establishing the best institutional context for delivering these policies. Put simply, this work has argued that the securing of economic success within any given territory is not exclusively the result of a narrow set of economic factors, but instead is partly dependent upon a whole series of social, cultural and institutional forms and supports. Attention is thus drawn to the emerging new institutional architectures of economic governance, to their scalar and territorial forms, to social capital (including institutional personnel) and to issues of power with respect to the capacity of institutions to act and accomplish goals (Stone, 1989: 229). In terms of these issues, devolution has significantly altered the UK s institutional architecture, has led to the rescaling of governance and has set in train changes to the frameworks and mechanisms supporting social capital in each of the devolved territories. This much was clear as we formulated our project. What was less clear is whether devolution had enhanced or hindered the capacity of the new institutions of economic governance to act and accomplish goals. This question formed the focus for our project. In theoretical terms one route into these questions is through the work of Jessop (2002) who has suggested that the former policy dominance of the nation state is being undermined by the three inter-related processes of denationalisation, de-statisation and internationalisation. The most relevant of these for us is denationalisation, which is reflected in a structural hollowing out of the nation state apparatus. As the nation state s capacity to promote economic development is being weakened, so old and new state capacities are being reconfigured territorially and functionally along a series of spatial levels sub national, national, supranational, and translocal. The processes of devolution in the UK have contributed to this reconfiguration in two key ways. First, the tangled hierarchies (Jessop, 1996: 310) of economic governance operating at various interlinked spatial scales have been made more complex, with the UK now having five distinct institutional structures for the promotion of ecomomic development in London, the rest of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Second, devolution has provided momentum for the process of formally filling in the hollowed out structure of the UK state. As the national level is being hollowed out, the devolved territories are busy building new institutional and political structures at a sub-national level. Another way of approaching these concerns is to use the work of Amin and Thrift who have suggested that the ability to promote successful economic development is contingent on an emerging institutional integrity ot thickness, based on four key constitutive elements. The first is a strong institutional presence of firms, financial institutions, chambers of commerce, local authorities, development agencies, innovation centres, unions, business service organisations and voluntary bodies. The second emphasises a high level of interaction amongst these institutions so as to facilitate reflexive networking, co-operation and informational exchange. The third centres on well-defined structures of coalition building and collective representation in order to minimise sectionalism, encourage co-ordination and govern competition. Fourthly, there is the emergence of a cognitive mapping of place (MacLeod, 1999) to the extent that agents perceive of a common territorial agenda. Together these four constituents enable a territorial integrity that can establish legitimacy and co-operation by, and

for, those structures involved in economic development. Amin and Thrift cite a number of examples where this thickness has been established, such as the devolved territories of North Rhine-Westphalia. This is significant because these examples have heavily influenced Labour Party thinking on devolution and, at least in part, recent constitutional change can be understood as a search for such integrity. A closer examination of the literatures on hollowing out and institutional thickness suggests that three dimensions of institutional reconfiguration are especially important for analysis those of intergovernmental relations; scale and territory; and personnel. These three formed the basis for the aims and objectives of our project. First, as the hollowed out UK state is gradually filled in, the need to examine the inter-relationship between various institutions of government becomes paramount. Second, since all institutions of economic governance as well as all the new devolved bodies operate over a particular territory and spatial scale, then any form of institutional complexity will also entail a degree of territorial and scalar complexity. Thus the question is not merely how to develop appropriate structures to support economic development, but at which scales and over which territories can economic strategies be best delivered. Third, the increasing institutional complexity that characterised economic governance in a postdevolution UK also posed potential problems in terms of social capital and personnel. It is in this context, especially when personnel are transferred to new devolved agencies, that the cultural identities and working practices of the individuals working in and through the new institutional and policy structures become critical. With this background in mind, we designed a research project which would take account of these academic, policy and practitioner issues. Its aims and objectives are set out in the next section Objectives The main aim of the project was to assess whether the process of devolution has helped or hindered the capacity to act of the new institutions of economic governance. In order to achieve this aim, the project encompassed the following objectives; To construct a database of the institutional and policy structures underpinning economic development strategies across the UK, and provide an indicative content analysis of those strategies. To produce a strategic review of the major issues facing the institutions of economic governance in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales To assess how effectively the institutions of economic governance are able to meet these challenges, by analysing the nature of intergovernmental relations; the level of institutional cooperation and collaboration; and the realignment of policy responsibilities and working practices. To employ findings from this research to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework able to inform our understanding of the role of devolution in the contemporary re-organisation of the state. To use the research findings to produce a series of best-practice statements that will address the lessons to be learned, and shared, in terms of better economic governance. In order to meet these objectives we devised a three-phase research project. The initial phase involved the collection of data on the post-devolution institutions and policies of economic governance in order to produce a baseline audit of practice in each devolved territory. For each major institution of economic governance we constructed a documentary profile, detailing information on personnel, terms of reference, organisational structure, consultation procedures, strategies produced, territory of operation and linkages with other agencies. In addition we analysed all major economic development strategies, analysing key themes and issues. As a result we produced sixteen internal project reports during this phase. Four covered the key

changes in the structures of economic governance since devolution in each of the devolved territories. Four other papers provided profiles of economic development institutions, and a further four comprised a review and analysis of the key strategy documents produced by each major institution in the four territories. An analysis of this material enabled us to address and meet objectives 1. The final set of four papers examined the key challenges and issues faced by each territory, helping us to meet objective 2. The second phase of research was designed to address objective 3. It consisted of case studies which examined the experiences of post-devolution economic governance in each country. In England we looked at the evolution of economic governance at a regional level in the East Midlands; in Wales we examined the introduction of a new agency responsible for all post-16 education and training, Education and Learning Wales (ELWa); in Northern Ireland we looked at the formation and operation of Invest Northern Ireland (INI), another new agency which amalgamated the functions of three former economic development institutions; and in Scotland we looked at the coordination of economic governance in the context of the development of Ministerial Task Forces, Joint Performance Teams and Local Economic Forums. Taken together these case studies met objective 3 by examining the capacity to act of the new structures of economic governance centred around the three dimensions of intergovernmental relations; scale and territory; and personnel. Eight internal project papers were produced during this phase, four covering the changing cultural identities and working practices of personnel, and four looking at the nature of collaboration and co-operation between different institutions operating at different scales. Phase Three of the project was devoted to reviewing all the material collected in phases one and two, in order to complete our analysis and review the implications of our findings for policy and academic audiences. This allowed us to address objectives 4 and 5. In terms of objective 4 we have written several papers and given a number of seminar and conference presentations which have tackled conceptual and theoretical issues around state restructuring, the rescaling of governance and the changing practices of state personnel. With regard to objective 5 we have written one paper for each devolved territory which provides examples of best practice in economic governance. The key findings from each of these phases are detailed in the results section of this report. Taken as a whole these findings allowed us to address and meet all of our objectives. Methods Across phases one and two, each research assistant was responsible for gathering data relating to two devolved territories. This enabled them to build up an in-depth knowledge of economic governance issues in each territory as well as establishing relationships with political and administrative personnel involved in economic governance. In phase one we used documentary analysis, desk research and semi-structured interviews with key actors to build up a broad picture of organisational and institutional change post-devolution. An indicative content analysis was undertaken of major documents and strategies in order to identify their major themes. This content analysis was supplemented by further interviews in order to produce a strategic review of the major issues facing the economic development institutions in each devolved territory. Each interview was taped and fully transcribed. It was then analysed using Nudist-NVIVO qualitative software, which allowed us to identify, sort and store interview data around a number of key codes. In phase two, empirical work on the case studies in each devolved territory was based on semistructured interviews with a variety of practitioners in the field of economic governance ranging from Permanent Secretary and Ministerial level to field officers engaged in policy delivery. Again each interview was taped and transcribed before being transferred to Nudist-NVIVO for sorting, storing and analysing, using over 250 separate codes to identify different textual topics. Taken together, over phases one and two we conducted interviews with ninety nine key actors involved in policy formulation and implementation. Each gave permission for the interviews to be taped and transcribed. These interviews were supported by the analysis of policy documents, including institutional minutes, policy briefings and strategy papers. In phase three, we

undertook a desk analysis of all the material previously collected and went through the twenty four internal project reports in order to produce the final four papers on best practice. We also used these internal reports to prepare a number of papers for dissemination via publication and presentation (see activities and outputs below). Results Given the range and scope of this project it is impossible for us to outline our full findings here (although see the accompanying papers for further detail). We have concentrated on setting out our broad findings at a UK scale, rather than provide detailed results which might be applicable to some territories but not others. We have chosen to do so with reference to the objectives set out above, and will address each objective in turn. 1) Institutional change The project found major changes in the structure and institutions of post-devolution economic governance across all four devolved territories. In England, regional level administrative devolution was centred around economic development with the creation of the eight Regional Development Agencies. A ninth new economic development agency in London came within the auspices of the Greater London Authority. The devolution settlement established new state structures in the form of a Scottish Parliament, and elected Assemblies for Wales and Northern Ireland. Significantly, economic development was one of the key policy areas devolved to these new institutions. However, there is no necessary reason why these institutions should have changed the structures of economic governance they could have left them untouched, and operated their policies through an existing set of agencies. In fact the political pressures felt in each territory as the newly devolved administrations sought to place their own stamp on policy development resulted in completely new configurations of economic governance - at both a political and administrative level within the new Parliament and Assemblies, and at an implementation level on the ground. These new configurations are detailed in the attached Figures 1-4, with further details in the accompanying paper by Goodwin et al. These figures show that at a basic empirical level, devolution has been followed by a remaking of the institutions responsible for formulating and implementing economic development policy. We have witnessed a complex rescaling of economic governance, both vertically between scales and horizontally between institutions operating over the same territory, but the UK s asymmetrical devolution has meant that these new spatial divisions are uneven across the four devolved territories. Attempts at rationalisation have occurred, both at a formal governmental level, and at a more local delivery level, but these have proceeded very differently in each territory. Northern Ireland and Wales have perhaps seen the greatest changes. In the former, at a political level within the new Assembly, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment and the Department of Employment and Learning have been formed, along with their respective Committees. The other major change has been the formation of Invest Northern Ireland to act as the lead agency for economic development in the Province, taking over the roles of the three previous economic development agencies, the Local Enterprise Development Unit; the Industrial Development Board and the Industrial Research and Technology Unit. Wales has also seen major changes at both political and delivery level. Within the Assembly, a new Ministry of Economic Development has been formed with Cabinet responsibility for indigenous and inward investment, EU Structural Funds, regeneration policy, industrial policy and business support, alongside the Education and Lifelong Learning Ministry which has responsibility for training, skills development and employment policy. The work of each Ministry is scrutinized by an Assembly Committee. In terms of delivery, the Welsh Development Agency assumed the responsibilities of the Development Board for Rural Wales and the Land Authority for Wales, and acquired many of the enterprise functions of the former Training and Enterprise Councils. Their training functions have been subsumed within a completely new agency, Education and Learning Wales.

The Scottish Executive has also taken the opportunity afforded by devolution to develop and rationalise its structures of economic governance. The Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department (ETLLD) has responsibility for business and industrial policy, Lifelong Learning and Further and Higher Education. Other developments include the formation of a Ministerial Taskforce to give greater oversight at a national level of the operation of Local Economic Forums and the creation of Joint Performance Teams to set and monitor targets for Scotland s Enterprise Networks. These post-devolution developments emphasize the need for joined-up government with regard to policy development, service delivery and performance assessment. In constast to the other territories fewer new institutions have been formed to deliver economic development policy in Scotland, the major exceptions being the Local Economic Forums set up in April 2001. England remains something of an enigma within the territorial politics of a devolved UK. At one level the economic development of England is often conflated with broader policies relevant to the whole of the UK, especially through the activities of UK-wide Ministries such as the Department of Trade and Industry. At another level, administrative devolution to the regions has been centred around economic development with the creation of the Regional Development Agencies. There remains little territorial integrity for economic development at the scale of England, and indeed there is no economic development strategy for England as a territorial entity. Moreover, many of the changes to the structures of economic development in England such as the establishment of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Education and Skills - have been prompted by Ministerial reshuffles and resignations rather than being any direct result of devolution. 2) Major issues and challenges Despite this diversity of institutional restructuring there was a commonality in the major issues and challenges which the new institutions were addressing, and to which their strategies were orientated. We undertook an indicative content analysis of the strategies produced by each of the post-devolution institutions, and all were very similar. Each stresses the improvement of productivity and enhanced competitiveness as their main goals. All highlight an increase in entrepreneurship, an improvement in skills and learning, and the development of digital technology and Information and Communication Technology as the key means of reaching these goals. At times the strategies did take on a more local colour - Invest Northern Ireland s Corporate Plan, for instance stressed the need to develop a high wage economy to replace an over-reliance on low value declining sectors, and it also highlighted the potential role of inward investment and tourism in a province recently buoyed by a peace settlement. On the other hand A Winning Wales, the national economic development strategy of the Welsh Assembly Government, tends to play down foreign investment in favour of indigenous growth perhaps mindful of recent high profile failures from overseas companies such as LG Electronics. In the main, however, the strategies and the challenges they outlined were very comparable. As two senior civil servants in Wales commented to us we scoured the world looking for something a bit different go over to Atlanta, New South Wales, you go to Queensland there are no new solutions. There are however, as we have seen, a wide range of new institutions - raising the question of whether we are witnessing converging strategies but somewhat diverging capacities to implement them. 3) Intergovernmental relations, institutional collaboration and the realignment of working practices In order to assess how effectively the post-devolution institutions of economic governance are able to meet these challenges we undertook a series of case studies in each of the four devolved territories, designed to analyse the nature of intergovernmental relations; the level of institutional co-operation and collaboration and the realignment of working practices and policy responsibilities. We will deal with the latter dimension first, as one recurring issue mentioned by our interviewees is that of personnel - centred on the practices of those working for these new agencies and institutions, and on the links and networks which are formed between them. Put

simply, those involved in economic development have had to make sense of these new postdevolution settlements they have had to adapt to (and indeed adapt) the new institutions through their day-to-day working practices. Their informal rules of practice, the networks of trust and support they have built up both within and between institutions have put the flesh on the administrative bones that devolution put into place. Yet we found that this has been far from easy. Invest Northern Ireland for example, was deliberately established as a Non-Departmental Public Body, at arms length from government to foster a sense of commercial freedom yet 80% of its staff are civil servants on secondment, who have the option of returning to the civil service within two years of appointment. This in turn has facilitated a civil service style pay and grading structure, and fostered the notion that the new agency is not as flexible, innovative and risk-taking as its business customers would like. In Wales, ELWa has tried to forge a common working culture across staff who previously worked for the four TECs, the Further Education Funding Council and the Higher Education Funding Council all of which had a variety of employment practices and pay differentials. Indeed, the recent Auditor General s report on ELWa pointed to the difficulties created by the organisational legacies of its predecessor organisations. Although such institutional bedding-down is to be expected, we found that the internal divisions within new organisations were deeper, and have persisted longer, than initially anticipated. To move on to the other two dimensions, such divisions have also been reinforced by the fact that many of these new institutions are operating at new scales, and are having to co-ordinate their work with other organisations operating at different scales and over different territories. Our case studies identified a complex rescaling of economic governance, both vertically between scales, and horizontally between institutions operating over the same territory. Each part of the UK has decided to tackle this complexity differently. Scotland has introduced Local Economic Forums to identify overlap and avoid duplication in business support, but it is questionable whether they have worked we found some areas where they were perceived positively, but others which saw them as another layer of bureaucracy. In contrast to this more local approach, a central thrust in Wales has been to regionalise the governance of economic development around the four territories of North, Mid, South West and South East Wales. Much of the operation of both the Welsh Development Agency and ELWa is based on this emerging regional structure especially ELWa, which has four regional offices and (at the time of the research) only a very small team covering all-wales corporate functions. This has made communication difficult, and caused problems in balancing the demands of regional delivery within a national framework. In other words, we found that the spatial and scalar manifestation of the organisation possesses direct implications for the way it operates. It is significant, in this respect, that attempts to solve the recent well-documented problems associated with ELWa have, in part, been based on an increased emphasis on the national Welsh scale, and a related downsizing of operations within its four regional offices. Issues of scale are equally important in the other territories. In England the regional scale is obviously paramount in terms of economic governance, but in the East Midlands, which we examined as a case study, they have formalised a sub-regional scale of operation through the introduction of Sub-regional Strategic Partnerships to co-ordinate and deliver the Development Agency s agenda on the ground. While the Regional Development Agency sees these as a key mechanism for translating policy into acton, other agencies in the East Midlands are wary of yet another scale of operation which has to negotiate a working relationship with the Government Office, local authorities and Local Strategic Partnerships. What does seem to have been received positively in the East Midlands has been the development of an Integrated Regional Strategy. Originally produced by the Regional Assembly as the region s sustainable development strategy, the IRS is now drawn on as an overarching regional strategic framework that can unite other regional strategies, integrate regional policy-making and provide a framework for developing future regional policies. In this sense it provides a way of negotiating integrated policies in a multi-level policy making and governmental environment. Such co-ordination was however rare

the norm in all areas of the UK was one of competing and overlapping competencies, rather than integrated co-ordination. 4) Best practice This brings us on to the issue of best practice, and we found a wide variety of administrative and delivery mechanisms which acted to facilitate effective economic governance. We only have room here to give a few indicative examples. In Scotland, for instance, Joint Performance Teams were established in 2001 alongside the publication of the Scottish Executive s economic strategy A Smart Successful Scotland (SSS). Their overarching goal is to articulate the overall policy direction of the executive in the economic governance field, to link the work of the Executive with that of the Enterprise networks on the ground and to measure progress toward the goals set out in SSS. It does this through a sophisticated performance measurement regime, which assesses progress against twelve objectives, each broken down into one lead measure and two supporting measures. While other territories of the UK have developed methods and systems for evaluating performance, the Scottish model represents the most comprehensive and sophisticated approach. In Northern Ireland, INI has developed a fluid regional structure to facilitate delivery of its policies and avoid duplication. The regional offices of the organisation deal with regional clusters of local councils and other agencies that are not necessarily co-terminous with INI s regional boundaries. This allows external actors to choose which regional office to approach over any particular issue, and gives them access to the most appropriate programmes irrrespective of location. As noted above, the clearest instance of best practice in the East Midlands is the Integrated Regional Strategy. In addition to this, however, it is notable that the Regional Development Agency has pursued an agenda for economic inclusion, seen as an important tool for combatting the wider problems of social exclusion. This is aimed at supporting community regeneration via small capital projects, promoting the growth of social enterprises and establishing a community development finance initiative. In this way the economic development agency has intervened in what are traditionally seen as issues of social and community policy, in order to facilitate a more inclusive and joined-up approach to both economic and social decline. In Wales, we would want to emphasise the potential for best practice linked to the so-called twin engine model of economic development existing at the regional scale, where the operations of ELWa, as a provider of education and skills training, and of the WDA, as a facilitator of entrepreneurship, have been interlinked. This has the potential to create an effective, coherent and holistic approach to economic development within the four Welsh regions, most clearly reflected in the context of the Regional Economic Fora and the Regional Statements of Needs. It is unfortunate, in this respect, that ELWa s regional mode of operation has been difficult to sustain and may well call into question the effectiveness of this innovative approach to economic development in Wales. 5) Conceptual innovations We have sought to use our empirical findings to advance conceptual and theoretical debates, partly in response to Nash's claim that emerging work on devolution and constitutional change in the UK suffers from a lamentable lack of theoretical and conceptual grounding (2000:30). We began this process with a review of existing debates on economic governance and state restructuring - such as those around the new regionalism, multi-level governance and the political-economies of scale - before concluding that a modified version of Jessop's strategicrelational state theory (2002) offered the best route to understanding comtemporary state restructuring (see paper by Goodwin et al which accompanies this report for further details). In this work, Jessop identifies the 'hollowing out' of the national state form as being of critical significance. However, building on our empirical work we have extended this by suggesting that a focus on 'filling in' is also valuable. This is because the hollowing out metaphor, especially in its discussion of denationalisation, refers to a potential rescaling away from the national state, both upwards and downwards, at a series of levels from the local to the supra-national. In this sense it lacks specification. The use of filling in as a concept draws attention to such specification, but focuses on the manner in which power is being transferred, and on the scales it

is being transferred to. It also allows a specification of the relationship between different tiers of the state, and stresses the active and contested nature of state reformation - a process we very much witnessed through our empirical work. Activities Over the course of the project we have disseminated results at several conferences, many of them sponsored or arranged by the ESRC as part of the Devolution and Constitutional Change Research Programme. We presented a paper to the annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers in Belfast in January 2002, as part of a special conference session, sponsored by the ESRC, on Devolution, Constitutional Change and Territorial Governance and organised by the project directors. This also involved five other project teams from the Programme. Dr M Jones also organised a session New Regional Spaces, New Spaces of Regionalism held at the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers in Los Angeles in March 2002, where the project presented a paper on regional structures of economic governance. A further project paper on Devolution, State Personnel and the Production of New Territories of Governance in the UK was given at the following years Association of American Geographers annual conference in New Orleans in March 2003, in a session co-organised by Dr M Jones on Devolution, Constitutional Change and Economic Governance in the UK, which involved presentations by two other Programme projects. We also presented a paper to the 4 th European Urban and Regional Studies Conference in Barcelona in July 2002 on Devolution, Economic Governance and Uneven Development: Towards a Spatial Division of the State?, and at the RGS-IBG annual conference in London, in September 2003, entitled Peopling the state : Devolution, social capital and the identities of state personnel in the UK. Further papers have been presented at ESRC sponsored seminars in Belfast, in February 2002; in Cardiff, in March 2003; and in Birmingham in June 2003 on postdevolution economic governance in Northern Ireland, Wales and England respectively. Papers from the research have been presented at three Geography Department seminars at Aberystwyth, Glasgow and Staffordshire Universities. Project members have also been invited to participate in two forthcoming conferences in November 2003 on Territorial Governance in a multi-level environment at the University of Amsterdam, and the annual conference of the Regional Studies Association on Economic governance post-devolution: differentiation or convergence?. Outputs Published M Goodwin, M Jones, R Jones, K Pett and G Simpson (2002) Devolution and economic governance in the UK:Uneven geographies, uneven capacities Local Economy, 17, 3, 200-15 Forthcoming M Jones (2003) The regional state and economic regulation: Regional regeneration or political mobilisation? in D Valler & A Wood (eds) Local and Regional Economies: Institutions, Politics and Economic Development (Ashgate, Aldershot) R Jones, M Goodwin, M Jones and G Simpson (2004) Devolution, state personnel and the production of new territories of governance in the UK Environment and Planning A R Jones, M Goodwin, M Jones and K Pett (2004) Filling in the state: Economic governance and the evolution of devolution in Wales Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy (accepted subject to minor revisions) M Jones, M Goodwin and R Jones (2004) (eds) Regional Studies Special Issue entitled Regional devolution and economic governance

Submitted M Goodwin, M Jones and R Jones Devolution, constitutional change and the shifting economic and political geographies of the British state Environment and Planning D: Society and Space R Jones, M Goodwin and M Jones Peopling the state : Devolution, social capital and the identities of state personnel in the UK International Journal of Urban and Regional Research In addition to these journal articles and book chapters, we have held discussions with the Programme director over submitting a book proposal to Manchester University Press as part of the Programme book series. This proposal is currently being written following full analysis of the project results. Impacts Economic development practitioners have shown considerable interest in the project findings at conference and seminar presentations, and during interview discussions. We had planned to host a special user conference as part of our dissemination strategy but following discussions with the Programme Director it was agreed that this should now take place as part of a larger Programme practitioner event to be convened in Wales. Future Research Priorities Our project has revealed a significantly uneven institutional geography following devolution. This possesses the potential to create uneven capacities to act by economic development institutions, which in turn may contribute to an uneven pattern of economic success and/or failure across the UK. Early warning signs of such uneven capacities are becoming evident in the arguments being made by some parts of the UK for greater administrative and fiscal autonomy for their own economic development institutions, and in increasing concerns over inter-territorial economic competition. In this sense a longer term tracking exercise on the links between economic development and devolution would be valuable not just for revealing the impacts of devolution on economic development, but also for assessing the potential influence of uneven economic development on the future shape of the (devolved) Union.