International records / OpenAlex research

Devolution and the structure of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom as a union state The United Kingdom is a union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in a single state. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, which are internally self-governing dependencies of the Crown, are not part of the United Kingdom. It used to be generally thought that the United Kingdom has a unitary constitution, like those of France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand and South Africa, and unlike the federal constitutions of Germany (‘The Federal Republic of Germany’), Switzerland, the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, …