In the recent past, the United Kingdom and Italy have shared a number of similar territorial challenges, most of which seem to point to broader issues concerning the state and the capacity of governing parties to cope with requests of autonomy in the two countries. The paper traces the roots of devolution reforms in a long-term perspective. By complementing an approach based on ‘gradual institutional change’ with a focus on differences and similarities in national and local contexts, I propose an analytical framework that can be extended to map territorial politics in centre-periphery relations in states decentralizing authority and powers.
