State and Nation in the United Kingdom

Author(s):  
Michael Keating

The United Kingdom is not a nation-state but a political union. It was formed by the coming together, over centuries, of territories which retained their own national identities and institutions. Key questions of demos (the people), telos (the purpose of union), ethos (binding values) and the locus of sovereignty were never definitively resolved. Since 1999, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have had their own self-governing institutions within the Union. Devolution was an effort to stabilize the Union in the face of centrifugal pressures, but it left the same key questions unresolved. The Union is now contested in all four of its component parts and fundamental questions are raised about the meaning of political, social and economic union. Unionism, as doctrine and practice appears to have lost its way, unable to adjust to devolution. Brexit has added to the strains because membership of the European Union provided an external support system for the union of the United Kingdom itself. Yet the UK cannot easily fall apart into its constituent nations, and public opinion still appears largely content with the idea of a plurinational union. There is no definitive answer to the question of state and nation within the United Kingdom.

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2/2021) ◽  
pp. 159-173
Author(s):  
Zuzanna Ptaszynska

The United States and the United Kingdom have special political, economic, military and cultural relations. The new American administration is restoring priority to multilateralism and old alliances, and the British authorities have announced an expansion of international engagement. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fight against climate change, the growth of China’s influence, and threats to cybersecurity are the biggest international challenges in the view of both states. The US and the UK urge other states to jointly take responsibility and work out solutions to the world’s most crucial problems. The United Kingdom left the European Union in January 2020 and, in line with the rhetoric of the government, it regained a sovereign foreign policy. US-UK relations could deepen but new troubles appeared, for example the need to negotiate a new trade deal. However, the differences between Joe Biden and Boris Johnson are less important in the face of common interests, as evidenced by the signing of a new Atlantic Charter by both leaders in June 2021 or increasing joint engagement in the Indo-Pacific region.


Author(s):  
Neil Parpworth

This chapter discusses the structure and devolution of the UK. It first sketches the constitutional history of the UK, presenting a brief outline of events that led to the creation of the UK, ie the union of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The chapter then examines the issue of devolution, which has been particularly important to the people of Scotland and Wales. The key provisions of the devolution legislation enacted in 1998 and more recent legislative developments are reviewed. The chapter concludes by considering the ‘English Question’, and the agreements between the UK Government and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and the devolution provisions in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 767
Author(s):  
Connie Lethin ◽  
Andrea Kenkmann ◽  
Carlos Chiatti ◽  
Jonas Christensen ◽  
Tamara Backhouse ◽  
...  

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected care workers all over the globe, as older and more vulnerable people face a high risk of developing severe symptoms and dying from the virus infection. The aim of this study was to compare staff experiences of stress and anxiety as well as internal and external organizational support in Sweden, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom (UK) in order to determine how care staff were affected by the pandemic. A 29-item online questionnaire was used to collect data from care staff respondents: management (n = 136), nurses (n = 132), nursing assistants (n = 195), and other healthcare staff working in these organizations (n = 132). Stress and anxiety levels were highest in the UK and Germany, with Swedish staff showing the least stress. Internal and external support only partially explain the outcomes. Striking discrepancies between different staff groups’ assessment of organizational support as well as a lack of staff voice in the UK and Germany could be key factors in understanding staff’s stress levels during the pandemic. Structural, political, cultural, and economic factors play a significant role, not only factors within the care organization or in the immediate context.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kubin

The exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union (so-called Brexit) is one of the most important events in the process of European integration. It has a lot of extremely remarkable implications – both for the EU and for the United Kingdom. Among other, Brexit will affect the security of the United Kingdom and the EU. The aim of the study is to answer the research question: how will Britain’s exit from the EU influence the EU common security and defence policy? In order to answer this question, the factors that are most relevant to the United Kingdom’s significance for the EU’s security and defence policy will be identified. This will show how the EU’s potential of the security and defence policy will change, when the UK leaves this organisation. The most important conclusions are included in the summary.


Author(s):  
Radovan Malachta

The paper follows up on the arguments introduced in the author’s article Mutual Trust as a Way to an Unconditional Automatic Recognition of Foreign Judgments. This paper, titled Mutual Trust between the Member States of the European Union and the United Kingdom after Brexit: Overview discusses, whether there has been a loss of mutual trust between the European Union and the United Kingdom after Brexit. The UK, similarly to EU Member States, has been entrusted with the area of recognition and enforcement of judgements thus far. Should the Member States decrease the level of mutual trust in relation to the UK only because the UK ceased to be part of the EU after 47 years? Practically overnight, more precisely, the day after the transitional period, should the Member States trust the UK less in the light of legislative changes? The article also outlines general possibilities that the UK has regarding which international convention it may accede to. Instead of going into depth, the article presents a basic overview. However, this does not prevent the article to answer, in addition to the questions asked above, how a choice of access to an international convention could affect the level of mutual trust between the UK and EU Member States.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-164
Author(s):  
Richard Barnes

Abstract On 30 September 2020, the United Kingdom and Norway signed the Framework Agreement on Fisheries that will provide the basis for future cooperation in the sustainable management of their fisheries. The Agreement is the first such agreement adopted by the UK following its decision to the leave the European Union. This note provides some background to the Agreement and examines its key features. Whilst the content of the Agreement appears to be rather basic, this is broadly consistent with other framework agreements, and it does provide some insight into the direction and focus of fisheries management in the North Sea, and how cooperation may develop between coastal States and the European Union.


Author(s):  
Federico Fabbrini

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Withdrawal Agreement of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). The Withdrawal Agreement, adopted on the basis of Article 50 Treaty on European Union (TEU), spells out the terms and conditions of the UK departure from the EU, including ground-breaking solutions to deal with the thorniest issues which emerged in the context of the withdrawal negotiations. Admittedly, the Withdrawal Agreement is only a part of the Brexit deal. The Agreement, in fact, is accompanied by a connected political declaration, which outlines the framework of future EU–UK relations. The chapter then offers a chronological summary of the process that led to the adoption of the Withdrawal Agreement, describing the crucial stages in the Brexit process — from the negotiations to the conclusion of a draft agreement and its rejection, to the extension and the participation of the UK to European Parliament (EP) elections, to the change of UK government and the ensuing constitutional crisis, to the new negotiations with the conclusion of a revised agreement, new extension, and new UK elections eventually leading to the departure of the UK from the EU.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-346
Author(s):  
David Mangan*

2020 had been marked as a significant year for the UK with its departure from the European Union. The coronavirus pandemic quickly became the most important issue facing the Government under a third Prime Minister since the 2016 referendum. From the start, problems have dogged this Government in meeting the monumental challenges posed by Covid-19. The UK approached the work implications of this pandemic in some distinct ways, as compared to European Union Member States. This piece is longer than other country reports in this volume as a result of critically engaging with these differences.


2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme T. Laurie ◽  
Kathryn G. Hunter

This article assesses the legal framework within which responses are deployed in the United Kingdom in the face of a pandemic such as the current H1N1 crisis or some other public health emergency. It begins with an account of the importance of legal preparedness as an essential feature of public health preparedness. It moves to an outline of the key legal provisions and parameters which provide the architecture for the existing framework in the UK, both domestically and internationally; thereafter, it identifies relevant factors that can be used to assess the efficacy of current legal preparedness, drawing on comparative experiences. Finally, it offers recommendations on how legal preparedness could be improved within the United Kingdom and in line with international obligations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 558-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wyn Rees

The Obama administration played a surprisingly interventionist role in the UK referendum on membership of the European Union (EU), arguing that a vote to leave would damage European security. Yet this article contends that US attitudes towards the EU as a security actor, and the part played within it by the United Kingdom, have been much more complex than the United States has sought to portray. While it has spoken the language of partnership, it has acted as if the EU has been a problem for US policy. The United Kingdom was used as part of the mechanism for managing that problem. In doing so, America contributed, albeit inadvertently, to the Brexit result. With the aid of contrasting theoretical perspectives from Realism and Institutionalism, this article explores how America’s security relationship with the United Kingdom has helped to engineer a security situation that the United States wanted to avoid.


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