Adam Evans
Biographic Data
| ID | 3886611 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adam Evans |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adam |
| FAMILY NAME | Evans |
| SIGNATURE | EVANS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cardiff University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4150-1517 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
From new dawn to new dispensation
Devolution to Scotland and Wales was a central plank of the New Labour government’s constitutional reform agenda. Yet despite Welsh devolution only being narrowly won at the 1997 referendum by the small margin of just 6,721 votes, almost immediately there would be calls to rethink and revise the devolution dispensation given to Wales and after only a year of the Assembly’s existence a Labour-Liberal Democrat ‘partnership agreement’ coalition woul…
The House of Lords and Devolution
When it published its report in 2022, one of the main recommendations of the Brown Commission, established by the Labour Party to examine the future governance of the UK, was for the replacement of the House of Lords with an ‘assembly of the nations and regions’. This was the most detailed contribution to a long‐running debate about Lords reform which has suggested giving a more territorial focus and/or guaranteed representation in the second cha…
‘Inevitably the package will be dismissed […] as inadequate and grudging’
The New Labour Government of 1997 to 2010 oversaw considerable constitutional reforms, particularly in relation to the United Kingdom’s territorial constitution. While devolution to Scotland and Wales, and the peace process that saw the re-establishment of devolved institutions to Northern Ireland (notwithstanding their subsequent instability), will be familiar to any student of British politics since 1997, there was also an English dimension to …
The Wilson government, the rise of nationalism and the road to the royal commission on the constitution, 1966-1968
The Royal Commission on the Constitution was a rare moment when the UK’s territorial governance was considered as a whole. Established as a response to the rise in electoral support for the SNP and Plaid Cymru in the mid to late 1960s, the Commission was seen by some at the time and others since of being a classic example of Harold Wilson’s claim that Commissions ‘take minutes and last years’ and a cynical attempt to kick the constitutional ‘can …
Welsh devolution 1999–2021
Over the past two decades, devolution in Wales has undergone a remarkable transformation. A Welsh Assembly endorsed by a margin of just 6,721 votes in the 1997 referendum, and which was legally fused with the ‘executive’ branch of devolved government and had no primary legislative powers has become a primary law making and tax levying parliament. This article will chart the evolution of Welsh devolution since 1999 and the role that the centre’s g…
Senedd Reform
In May 2024, the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Bill completed its legislative journey through the Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament. The bill marks the latest chapter in the Senedd's evolution from an assembly established with no formally separated executive branch and no primary legislative powers into a lawmaking and tax‐raising parliament. It also marks the culmination of a long‐running debate about the size of the Welsh legislature. For at…
How Person-Centred Is Cardiac Rehabilitation in England? Using Bourdieu to Explore Socio-Cultural Influences and Personalisation
The National Health Service (NHS) cardiac rehabilitation patient care pathway has remained largely unchanged for many years despite, on average, half of all eligible patients declining to engage. To investigate reasons for non-engagement, we explored the experiences of ten cardiac patients who participated in cardiac rehabilitation, dropped out, or declined, as well as experiences of seven people deemed significant others by participants. Our eth…
Birth pangs or a honeymoon from hell? The long annus horribilis for Welsh devolution, 1998–2000
2024 marks twenty-five years since the first elections to, and meeting of, the National Assembly for Wales. The Assembly had been established by the narrowest of margins at a referendum in 1997. However, supporters of devolution would have no honeymoon period. Instead, the period from Autumn 1998 to February 2000 marked what might almost be seen as a long annus horribilis for Welsh devolution. This was a period of political instability, weak lead…
There will be no shortage of Cabinet ministers taking part in the Scottish referendum campaign. The same is not true in Wales’
Devolution to Scotland and Wales was a central pillar of the legislative agenda of the Labour government elected in 1997, yet despite the constitutional significance of this programme it was undertaken without particular enthusiasm by the then prime minister, Tony Blair. Nowhere was this blend of significant change, yet pervasive lack of passion (or interest) more apparent than devolution to Wales. Drawing upon recently released archival document…
Far reaching and perhaps destructive’? The 1974–79 Labour Government, devolution and the emergence, and failure, of the Scotland and Wales Bill
The story of devolution in the United Kingdom is a long and chequered one which long predates the establishment of devolved legislatures in Scotland and Wales after referendums in 1997. The devolution programme of Tony Blair’s Labour Government came eighteen years after the failure of the 1974–79 Labour Government’s attempts at establishing Scottish and Welsh devolution. This article explores how after establishing a Royal Commission on the Const…
The Best‐Laid Schemes o’ Mice an’ Men’? Proposals, Planning, Defeat, and Legacy, of Devolution in the 1970s
The question of whether devolved assemblies should be established for Scotland and Wales dominated considerable parliamentary time in the 1970s and became a key pillar of the Labour government's legislative agenda after the two 1974 general elections. The main building blocks of the government's devolution proposals for Scotland and Wales were in place from 1975 with the publication of the white paper, Our Changing Democracy , which outlined prop…
A Tale as Old as (Devolved) Time? Sewel, Stormont and the Legislative Consent Convention
The legislative consent convention forms one of a number of conventions that underpin the UK’s uncodified constitution and has been an important facet of the UK’s territorial governance post‐devolution. It provides that the UK government will not normally seek to legislate on devolved matters, and the devolution settlements, without the consent of the respective devolved legislatures. Commonly referred to as the ‘Sewel Convention’, the convention…
Inter-parliamentary relations in the United Kingdom
Since 1997, the United Kingdom’s territorial constitution has undergone an immense process of change and has resulted in the establishment of separate legislatures and governments for the peoples of Scotland, Wales and, when Stormont is operational, Northern Ireland. These changes have spawned a whole series of relationships between the institutions of the devolved UK, at executive, legislature and civil service levels. However, while intergovern…
A Parliamentary Entente Cordiale ? The House of Commons Defence Committee’s Joint Inquiry with the Assemblée Nationale’s Standing Committee on National Defence and the Armed Forces
Interparliamentary relations do not attract much in the way of public or even academic attention. However, they are an aspect of parliamentary life in which there has been a series of experiments by select committees in the House of Commons. While one of the more prominent examples of such experimentation was the international grand committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy spearheaded by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, this a…
The Territorial Select Committees, 40 Years On
The territorial departmental select committees have largely escaped academic scrutiny since their establishment in 1979 (for Scotland and Wales) and 1994 (Northern Ireland). This article charts the history of territorial representation in Westminster, including the creation of grand committees for Scotland and Wales and a Northern Ireland Standing Committee, before explaining the forces that led to the creation of territorial departmental select …
Devolution and Parliamentary Representation
For as long as devolution has been debated in the UK, there has been fierce discussion as to the representation of the would‐be affected areas at Westminster. That this has been the case is a consequence of Westminster's dual remit as both a state‐wide and a sub‐state legislature. While this dual remit was relatively straightforward when applied to all nations of the UK, it does, however, raise serious questions about the equality of MPs at Westm…
You're Just Chopped Off at the End
Promoting positive transition to retirement and cultural adaption for ex-service personnel has been identified as a priority for both social-science research and for public health policy in the UK. The Royal British Legion aims to provide support to service and retired service personnel, but to date the transition to retirement experiences of older (60-plus) ex-service personnel remain under-researched. In this article, we employ a symbolic inter…
Planning for Brexit
Both during and since the 2016 referendum on the UK 's membership of the European Union, concerns were raised as to the absence of contingency planning within Whitehall. This situation was in direct contrast with 1975, when extensive planning took place for the possibility of a vote to leave the European Community. However, there has been little in the way of detailed analysis of the contingency planning undertaken in 1975. Using archival evidenc…
‘Too old a country … too long accustomed to regard her life as one and indivisible’
The Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 has been a little studied event in Britain’s constitutional history. However, recent analysis has shed new light on this little studied moment in British constitutional history. Building on Evans (2015), this article focuses on the Conference’s deliberations on the units that would be represented by devolution (i.e. whether devolution would be on national or regional lines) to provide further evidence that …
A Lingering Diminuendo? The Conference on Devolution, 1919–20
This article looks at one of the more obscure moments in British constitutional history, the rise of federal devolution in the United Kingdom in the early 20th century and, in particular, the context to the Conference on Devolution that sat between October 1919 and April 1920. The conference, as this article will briefly discuss, has been relegated to footnote status in the historiography on federal devolution and British politics. However, while…
An Interlude of Agreement? A Reassessment of the Conference on Devolution's ‘Consensus’ on Powers
In the decades since the Conference on Devolution's proceedings concluded in stalemate in April 1920, the Conference has been consigned to the margins of political and constitutional history. However, within this limited literature, one interpretation of the Conference's proceedings has been universally held: that the subject of the powers the devolved legislatures should enjoy was a rare source of consensus. This article challenges this orthodox…
Why ‘the best way of learning to coach the game is playing the game’
At the beginning of the 2013/2014 season in England and Wales, 90 head coaches of the 92 men's national professional football league clubs and 20 of the 22 men's professional rugby union clubs had tenure as a professional elite player in their respective sports. Moreover, Rynne [(2014). ‘Fast track’ and ‘traditional path’ coaches: Affordances, agency and social capital. Sport, Education and Society, 19, 299–313] has claimed that many former elite…
The squeezed middle? The Liberal Democrats in Wales and Scotland
In the wake of the repeated electoral losses suffered by the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats in 2011 and 2012, it is perhaps unsurprising that recent analysis has focused on the ‘toxic impact of the federal party's coalition with the Conservative party’ on the devolved state parties electoral fortunes. Certainly this significant electoral collapse, alongside the hostility to both parties recorded in the 2011 Scottish and Welsh electoral surv…
Back to the Future? Warnings from History for a Future UK Constitutional Convention
Amid the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum, a UK constitutional convention has been proposed as a mechanism to take stock not only of the referendum, but also of the past fifteen years of devolution. However, despite longstanding conceptions of British constitutional development, a constitutional convention would not herald a brave new world for the UK 's constitution. As the article highlights, in the past hundred years there hav…
Federalists in name only? Reassessing the federal credentials of the Liberal Democrats
Why ‘the best way of learning to coach the game is playing the game’
At the beginning of the 2013/2014 season in England and Wales, 90 head coaches of the 92 men's national professional football league clubs and 20 of the 22 men's professional rugby union clubs had tenure as a professional elite player in their respective sports. Moreover, Rynne [(2014). ‘Fast track’ and ‘traditional path’ coaches: Affordances, agency and social capital. Sport, Education and Society, 19, 299–313] has claimed that many former elite…
Back to the Future? Warnings from History for a Future UK Constitutional Convention
Amid the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum, a UK constitutional convention has been proposed as a mechanism to take stock not only of the referendum, but also of the past fifteen years of devolution. However, despite longstanding conceptions of British constitutional development, a constitutional convention would not herald a brave new world for the UK 's constitution. As the article highlights, in the past hundred years there hav…
You're Just Chopped Off at the End
Promoting positive transition to retirement and cultural adaption for ex-service personnel has been identified as a priority for both social-science research and for public health policy in the UK. The Royal British Legion aims to provide support to service and retired service personnel, but to date the transition to retirement experiences of older (60-plus) ex-service personnel remain under-researched. In this article, we employ a symbolic inter…
Planning for Brexit
Both during and since the 2016 referendum on the UK 's membership of the European Union, concerns were raised as to the absence of contingency planning within Whitehall. This situation was in direct contrast with 1975, when extensive planning took place for the possibility of a vote to leave the European Community. However, there has been little in the way of detailed analysis of the contingency planning undertaken in 1975. Using archival evidenc…
An Interlude of Agreement? A Reassessment of the Conference on Devolution's ‘Consensus’ on Powers
In the decades since the Conference on Devolution's proceedings concluded in stalemate in April 1920, the Conference has been consigned to the margins of political and constitutional history. However, within this limited literature, one interpretation of the Conference's proceedings has been universally held: that the subject of the powers the devolved legislatures should enjoy was a rare source of consensus. This article challenges this orthodox…
A Tale as Old as (Devolved) Time? Sewel, Stormont and the Legislative Consent Convention
The legislative consent convention forms one of a number of conventions that underpin the UK’s uncodified constitution and has been an important facet of the UK’s territorial governance post‐devolution. It provides that the UK government will not normally seek to legislate on devolved matters, and the devolution settlements, without the consent of the respective devolved legislatures. Commonly referred to as the ‘Sewel Convention’, the convention…
Inter-parliamentary relations in the United Kingdom
Since 1997, the United Kingdom’s territorial constitution has undergone an immense process of change and has resulted in the establishment of separate legislatures and governments for the peoples of Scotland, Wales and, when Stormont is operational, Northern Ireland. These changes have spawned a whole series of relationships between the institutions of the devolved UK, at executive, legislature and civil service levels. However, while intergovern…
The Territorial Select Committees, 40 Years On
The territorial departmental select committees have largely escaped academic scrutiny since their establishment in 1979 (for Scotland and Wales) and 1994 (Northern Ireland). This article charts the history of territorial representation in Westminster, including the creation of grand committees for Scotland and Wales and a Northern Ireland Standing Committee, before explaining the forces that led to the creation of territorial departmental select …
Federalists in name only? Reassessing the federal credentials of the Liberal Democrats
An Interlude of Agreement? A Reassessment of the Conference on Devolution's ‘Consensus’ on Powers
In the decades since the Conference on Devolution's proceedings concluded in stalemate in April 1920, the Conference has been consigned to the margins of political and constitutional history. However, within this limited literature, one interpretation of the Conference's proceedings has been universally held: that the subject of the powers the devolved legislatures should enjoy was a rare source of consensus. This article challenges this orthodox…
Why ‘the best way of learning to coach the game is playing the game’
At the beginning of the 2013/2014 season in England and Wales, 90 head coaches of the 92 men's national professional football league clubs and 20 of the 22 men's professional rugby union clubs had tenure as a professional elite player in their respective sports. Moreover, Rynne [(2014). ‘Fast track’ and ‘traditional path’ coaches: Affordances, agency and social capital. Sport, Education and Society, 19, 299–313] has claimed that many former elite…
The squeezed middle? The Liberal Democrats in Wales and Scotland
In the wake of the repeated electoral losses suffered by the Scottish and Welsh Liberal Democrats in 2011 and 2012, it is perhaps unsurprising that recent analysis has focused on the ‘toxic impact of the federal party's coalition with the Conservative party’ on the devolved state parties electoral fortunes. Certainly this significant electoral collapse, alongside the hostility to both parties recorded in the 2011 Scottish and Welsh electoral surv…
Back to the Future? Warnings from History for a Future UK Constitutional Convention
Amid the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum, a UK constitutional convention has been proposed as a mechanism to take stock not only of the referendum, but also of the past fifteen years of devolution. However, despite longstanding conceptions of British constitutional development, a constitutional convention would not herald a brave new world for the UK 's constitution. As the article highlights, in the past hundred years there hav…
‘Too old a country … too long accustomed to regard her life as one and indivisible’
The Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 has been a little studied event in Britain’s constitutional history. However, recent analysis has shed new light on this little studied moment in British constitutional history. Building on Evans (2015), this article focuses on the Conference’s deliberations on the units that would be represented by devolution (i.e. whether devolution would be on national or regional lines) to provide further evidence that …
A Lingering Diminuendo? The Conference on Devolution, 1919–20
This article looks at one of the more obscure moments in British constitutional history, the rise of federal devolution in the United Kingdom in the early 20th century and, in particular, the context to the Conference on Devolution that sat between October 1919 and April 1920. The conference, as this article will briefly discuss, has been relegated to footnote status in the historiography on federal devolution and British politics. However, while…
Planning for Brexit
Both during and since the 2016 referendum on the UK 's membership of the European Union, concerns were raised as to the absence of contingency planning within Whitehall. This situation was in direct contrast with 1975, when extensive planning took place for the possibility of a vote to leave the European Community. However, there has been little in the way of detailed analysis of the contingency planning undertaken in 1975. Using archival evidenc…
Devolution and Parliamentary Representation
For as long as devolution has been debated in the UK, there has been fierce discussion as to the representation of the would‐be affected areas at Westminster. That this has been the case is a consequence of Westminster's dual remit as both a state‐wide and a sub‐state legislature. While this dual remit was relatively straightforward when applied to all nations of the UK, it does, however, raise serious questions about the equality of MPs at Westm…
You're Just Chopped Off at the End
Promoting positive transition to retirement and cultural adaption for ex-service personnel has been identified as a priority for both social-science research and for public health policy in the UK. The Royal British Legion aims to provide support to service and retired service personnel, but to date the transition to retirement experiences of older (60-plus) ex-service personnel remain under-researched. In this article, we employ a symbolic inter…
Inter-parliamentary relations in the United Kingdom
Since 1997, the United Kingdom’s territorial constitution has undergone an immense process of change and has resulted in the establishment of separate legislatures and governments for the peoples of Scotland, Wales and, when Stormont is operational, Northern Ireland. These changes have spawned a whole series of relationships between the institutions of the devolved UK, at executive, legislature and civil service levels. However, while intergovern…
A Parliamentary Entente Cordiale ? The House of Commons Defence Committee’s Joint Inquiry with the Assemblée Nationale’s Standing Committee on National Defence and the Armed Forces
Interparliamentary relations do not attract much in the way of public or even academic attention. However, they are an aspect of parliamentary life in which there has been a series of experiments by select committees in the House of Commons. While one of the more prominent examples of such experimentation was the international grand committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy spearheaded by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, this a…
The Territorial Select Committees, 40 Years On
The territorial departmental select committees have largely escaped academic scrutiny since their establishment in 1979 (for Scotland and Wales) and 1994 (Northern Ireland). This article charts the history of territorial representation in Westminster, including the creation of grand committees for Scotland and Wales and a Northern Ireland Standing Committee, before explaining the forces that led to the creation of territorial departmental select …
The Best‐Laid Schemes o’ Mice an’ Men’? Proposals, Planning, Defeat, and Legacy, of Devolution in the 1970s
The question of whether devolved assemblies should be established for Scotland and Wales dominated considerable parliamentary time in the 1970s and became a key pillar of the Labour government's legislative agenda after the two 1974 general elections. The main building blocks of the government's devolution proposals for Scotland and Wales were in place from 1975 with the publication of the white paper, Our Changing Democracy , which outlined prop…
A Tale as Old as (Devolved) Time? Sewel, Stormont and the Legislative Consent Convention
The legislative consent convention forms one of a number of conventions that underpin the UK’s uncodified constitution and has been an important facet of the UK’s territorial governance post‐devolution. It provides that the UK government will not normally seek to legislate on devolved matters, and the devolution settlements, without the consent of the respective devolved legislatures. Commonly referred to as the ‘Sewel Convention’, the convention…
Far reaching and perhaps destructive’? The 1974–79 Labour Government, devolution and the emergence, and failure, of the Scotland and Wales Bill
The story of devolution in the United Kingdom is a long and chequered one which long predates the establishment of devolved legislatures in Scotland and Wales after referendums in 1997. The devolution programme of Tony Blair’s Labour Government came eighteen years after the failure of the 1974–79 Labour Government’s attempts at establishing Scottish and Welsh devolution. This article explores how after establishing a Royal Commission on the Const…
Birth pangs or a honeymoon from hell? The long annus horribilis for Welsh devolution, 1998–2000
2024 marks twenty-five years since the first elections to, and meeting of, the National Assembly for Wales. The Assembly had been established by the narrowest of margins at a referendum in 1997. However, supporters of devolution would have no honeymoon period. Instead, the period from Autumn 1998 to February 2000 marked what might almost be seen as a long annus horribilis for Welsh devolution. This was a period of political instability, weak lead…
There will be no shortage of Cabinet ministers taking part in the Scottish referendum campaign. The same is not true in Wales’
Devolution to Scotland and Wales was a central pillar of the legislative agenda of the Labour government elected in 1997, yet despite the constitutional significance of this programme it was undertaken without particular enthusiasm by the then prime minister, Tony Blair. Nowhere was this blend of significant change, yet pervasive lack of passion (or interest) more apparent than devolution to Wales. Drawing upon recently released archival document…
The Wilson government, the rise of nationalism and the road to the royal commission on the constitution, 1966-1968
The Royal Commission on the Constitution was a rare moment when the UK’s territorial governance was considered as a whole. Established as a response to the rise in electoral support for the SNP and Plaid Cymru in the mid to late 1960s, the Commission was seen by some at the time and others since of being a classic example of Harold Wilson’s claim that Commissions ‘take minutes and last years’ and a cynical attempt to kick the constitutional ‘can …
Welsh devolution 1999–2021
Over the past two decades, devolution in Wales has undergone a remarkable transformation. A Welsh Assembly endorsed by a margin of just 6,721 votes in the 1997 referendum, and which was legally fused with the ‘executive’ branch of devolved government and had no primary legislative powers has become a primary law making and tax levying parliament. This article will chart the evolution of Welsh devolution since 1999 and the role that the centre’s g…
Senedd Reform
In May 2024, the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Bill completed its legislative journey through the Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament. The bill marks the latest chapter in the Senedd's evolution from an assembly established with no formally separated executive branch and no primary legislative powers into a lawmaking and tax‐raising parliament. It also marks the culmination of a long‐running debate about the size of the Welsh legislature. For at…
How Person-Centred Is Cardiac Rehabilitation in England? Using Bourdieu to Explore Socio-Cultural Influences and Personalisation
The National Health Service (NHS) cardiac rehabilitation patient care pathway has remained largely unchanged for many years despite, on average, half of all eligible patients declining to engage. To investigate reasons for non-engagement, we explored the experiences of ten cardiac patients who participated in cardiac rehabilitation, dropped out, or declined, as well as experiences of seven people deemed significant others by participants. Our eth…
‘Inevitably the package will be dismissed […] as inadequate and grudging’
The New Labour Government of 1997 to 2010 oversaw considerable constitutional reforms, particularly in relation to the United Kingdom’s territorial constitution. While devolution to Scotland and Wales, and the peace process that saw the re-establishment of devolved institutions to Northern Ireland (notwithstanding their subsequent instability), will be familiar to any student of British politics since 1997, there was also an English dimension to …
From new dawn to new dispensation
Devolution to Scotland and Wales was a central plank of the New Labour government’s constitutional reform agenda. Yet despite Welsh devolution only being narrowly won at the 1997 referendum by the small margin of just 6,721 votes, almost immediately there would be calls to rethink and revise the devolution dispensation given to Wales and after only a year of the Assembly’s existence a Labour-Liberal Democrat ‘partnership agreement’ coalition woul…
The House of Lords and Devolution
When it published its report in 2022, one of the main recommendations of the Brown Commission, established by the Labour Party to examine the future governance of the UK, was for the replacement of the House of Lords with an ‘assembly of the nations and regions’. This was the most detailed contribution to a long‐running debate about Lords reform which has suggested giving a more territorial focus and/or guaranteed representation in the second cha…
Political science (22 works) · Political Systems and Governance (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Public Administration (16 works) · Public Administration (16 works) · Devolution (biology (13 works) · Scottish History and National Identity (11 works)