Читать книгу Borders and Margins - Группа авторов - Страница 16

We have chosen to compare the United Kingdom and Germany in terms of MLG because both are large and mature European polities of comparable population size, similar levels of industrialisation and urbanisation, and common parliamentary democratic political institutions. Both have recently (since the 1990s) adopted major constitutional and institutional reforms of their politicaladministrative systems to rebalance their internal territorial and political relations in the context of national/supranational (EU) power balances. Germany achieved peaceful reunification of its two formerly post-World War II components, Communist East Germany and democratic capitalist West Germany in 1992, although this event itself is generally considered by German scholars to have not constituted an important territorial constitutional or institutional political reform. In fact, later efforts to overcome some of the intergovernmental decisional weaknesses and political stagnation arising from its closely interlocked form of “joint federalism” are judged by most German political analysts to have been even more significant in their potential impact on federal power rebalancing than reunification. However, they only achieved, at best, minor political success. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, during the same period, did carry out a comprehensive constitutional and institutional territorial devolutionary reform involving Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland after decades of failed efforts to accomplish this. But the extent to which these UK reforms actually did lead to a significant change in the internal territorial and power balance remains a highly contentious one, even after a decade of evolution and adjustment in this respect. Moreover, the extent of the disagreement among UK scholars regarding the utility and applicability of MLG in evaluating the impact of these devolutionary changes is still substantial. (See section II below.)