Devolution in Wales – In Robust Health or a Precarious Balancing Act?

Abstract
Through the theoretical paradigms of constitutional theory and of movements from territorial to relational space the paper outlines how devolution has evolved in Wales, especially at a formal level and considers the impact of macro-level political ideology and alterations of governance on this as well as on underlying processes of service delivery in Wales within the non-devolved area of criminal justice. The paper reflects on the particular position of non-devolved criminal justice services in the Welsh structure of governance and delivery of social justice. It assesses the fragility of relational space in building permanent and reliable devolved entities and comments on the effectiveness of institutions in building governance which can meet the challenges emerging in Wales. This paper considers how changes in devolution processes affect the delivery of criminal justice services in Wales and points to the effects of recent changes in governance proposed by the UK Government – the new localism – which tend to undermine the devolution process in subtle yet significant ways. Thus, the criminal justice arena is used to measure the health of devolution in Wales.