Whither the Centre? Tracing Centralisation and Fragmentation in UK Politics

This article explores the question of how to conceptualise the location, capacity and effectiveness of the ‘centre’ in the UK policymaking process. While the literature on UK governance has historically featured avid disagreements about the power and capacity of central government, we identify a more recent convergence around the idea that the UK government is characterised by persistent centralisation of decision making alongside a fragmentation of policy delivery and frontline capacity. Through a detailed review of UK governance debates, we trace the development of two, seemingly contradictory, schools of thought: the centralisation school and the fragmentation school. We then identify an emerging consensus which recognises a continuous and uneven centripetal–centrifugal dynamic and the concurrence of both centralisation and fragmentation. We contend that changes to the British political context following the 2016 European Union referendum buttress the claim that UK politics is shaped by twin processes of centralisation and fragmentation, reinforcing tensions between a centre that desires power and a range of forces eroding its capacity to deliver. Our overall contention is that the notion of ‘power without capacity’ effectively captures the contemporary character of the ‘centre’.