The Line That Doesn't Move

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Two countries can both hand power to a region and mean entirely different things by it. The United Kingdom devolved government to Northern Ireland in 1921, then to Scotland and Wales in 1997 and to London in 1998, and each of those transfers rests on an ordinary act of Parliament, the same kind of law that created it. Parliament can, in principle, amend or repeal any of them, which is exactly what a federal constitution is built to prevent. Under federalism the division of power sits in the founding compact itself, not in a statute the centre can revisit at its convenience, so a regional government's authority is a right rather than a grant. The distinction is not academic. Spain has devolved so much authority to its regions since the late 1970s that its central government now accounts for only about a fifth of public spending, closer in practice to a federation than to a unitary state, and yet Spain remains constitutionally unitary throughout. The line between devolution and federalism is drawn not by how much power moves, but by whether the power can be called back.