This book set out to displace certain conventional wisdoms that have developed in the literature on the introduction and early development of devolution in the UK. These have suggested first, that there were strong cases of identity politics propelling cases for self-government around the UK in the late 20th century; second, that the settlements of self-government granted in 1997–99 were unsatisfactory for each part of the UK; and third, that the UK government's approach to thinking about the territorial organisation of the state as a whole was neglectful and lacking in foresight. The book has attempted to reappraise the politics of the advent and early development of devolution in three essential ways: first, by taking a fully UK-wide perspective; second, by taking a serious interest in both territorial and UK centre points of view; and third, by theoretically engaging with concepts and ideas that can help shape an organising perspective for developing a fresh analysis of what we should acknowledge was a deeply complex period of political development.

The bedrock of the book has been to suggest that dominant organising perspectives in the existing literature have been predominantly idealistconstitutionalist, rooted in the assumptions of what have been termed here as competing British and territorial schools in the study of UK devolution. These perspectives have tended towards inherent criticism of what was done, if and when it did not conform to their ideals of how devolution should have been developed. Consequently, the book has also sought to be novel in adopting a realist approach, designed to understand the contexts in which actors approached devolution and how they were duly constrained in what options they had and approaches they could take. It has inherently sought to be empathetic to the realities of trying to forge major territorial change and, in turn, manage territorial challenges in situations of political contestation, rather than appraising them against ideal criteria.

The book specifically has reinvested in the important but still relatively neglected realist analytical framework for the study of UK territorial politics of Jim Bulpitt, principally by making it serviceable for the equal study of centre and periphery in the determination of territorial politics, and by marrying the study of broad factors of territorial politics with the detailed study of territorial constitutional policy.