Unions of the Mind: a Conceptual Framework for Understanding Attitudes to Decentralisation

Those seeking to understand attitudes to decentralization focus on attitudes to constitutional change or to the ideal level of government to control particular areas of jurisdiction. Within this is a wider approach to understanding subjective dimensions of multi-level states and the different communities of interest or polities that exist within them. Drawing on data from successive rounds of the Future of England (including parallel surveys in Scotland and Wales) this paper develops a conceptual framework through which to understand political unions. It outlines the various unions of the mind, including identity unions, policy unions, unions of shared values, influence and resources and then proceeds to map, using comparative data, what we know about a range of unitary and multi-level states as it relates to these unions of the mind. The paper draws primarily on individual-level survey data, much of it collected by the authors but refers also to the way that constitutional change in unions – including specifically decentralisation and devolution – is framed by political practitioners, and how this relates to what we know about how individuals conceive of the states they live in.