Professor Vernon Bogdanor has devoted his academic career to charting continuity and change in the constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom. Drawing from the wells of political science, history and constitutional law, his scholarship has provided important insights into the workings of our constitution. The British Constitution: Continuity and Change, edited by Matt Qvortrup, is thus a fitting festschrift to Professor Bogdanor. Eleven chapters, written by political scientists, historians and constitutional lawyers, offer new insights into the functioning of the constitution, with an emphasis on the themes of continuity and change. The volume makes for enjoyable reading by those working in these often separate disciplines, serving to broaden the horizons of all.

The first chapter, written by Sir David Butler, seeks to consider recent constitutional changes in their wider social context. Butler begins by outlining pertinent constitutional changes in recent years, including: a deepening of the UK's membership of the European Union; devolution of legislative and executive power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; the introduction of judicially-enforced human rights; reforms to the office of Lord Chancellor; the creation of a Supreme Court; a decline in the status and anonymity of the Civil Service; increased pressures on the doctrine of collective Cabinet responsibility; the introduction of voting systems that deviate from first-past-the-post in elections to the devolved legislatures and the European Union Parliament; and an increased risk in general elections returning hung Parliaments. All of these, he says, prompt reconsideration of the traditional view of Britain's constitution. Butler then discusses a broad range of social changes over the same time period, seeking to use these latter changes to explain changes to the constitution. While we might question some of Butler's conclusions (is there a definite link, for example, between increased migration and calls for constitutional codification?), his chapter usefully demonstrates a key feature of the UK's constitution: that because of the lack of any special mechanism for effecting constitutional change, most often constitutional change is precipitated by changes in the politics of the populace, changes which are themselves often explained by deeper social changes in the populace as a whole.

In Chapter 2, Mike Finn and Anthony Seldon offer the historians' perspective on constitutional reform since 1997. Looking in particular at the reforms of the Blair government (devolution, human rights, partial House of Lords reform, the changes introduced by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005), Finn and Seldon conclude that constitutional change since 1997 is characterised more by its volume than by its quality, noting the lack of any “grand plan” in the post-1997 changes and commenting on the unintended consequences brought about by those changes. Finn and Seldon's primary observation is that constitutional change since 1997 has been shaped primarily by short- and medium-term politics, as opposed to high-level constitutional principle. To take one example, Blair's motivation in introducing limited House of Lords reform, they say, was the need to weaken the Conservatives' dominance of the upper House; once that had been achieved, the lack of political impetus for any further reform to the House of Lords meant it was put off the Labour government's agenda, irrespective of the continued existence of principled reasons for such changes.

Further historical analysis of the constitution is to be found in Chapter 3. Peter Riddell's chapter offers an interesting intellectual history of how the electorate “forgot” the constitution. Looking at the importance of the constitution and constitutional change to the British electorate from 1945 to the present day, Riddell observes that the electorate has primarily been concerned only with isolated aspects of the constitution, rather than with the constitution as a whole. This lack of a general concern for the constitution as a whole he roots in the attitude of superiority bred by victory in the Second World War; an attitude which, he contends, led in turn to apathy to the need for further constitutional reform. Even the amount of constitutional change instituted from 1997 stands in contrast to the general apathy of the voting public, as demonstrated by Riddell through an interesting reliance on historical opinion poll data. Considering New Labour's constitutional reforms, Riddell joins Finn and Seldon in noting that “the striking feature was how disconnected these reforms were” (p. 50). There was “no big picture”, but instead a palpable sense of the reforms being “half-hearted” (p. 50).

Blair's constitutional reforms are also the focus of Chapter 4, in which Matt Qvortrup argues that, to the Diceyan purist, the reforms have rendered the UK a “foreign land”. The UK, Qvortrup notes, has moved from having a primarily political constitution, with checks on the government being primarily a matter for Parliament, to having a legal constitution under which judges have a controlling influence, in particular with regard to reviewing the legality of the action of devolved institutions in what has become a semi-federal structure. Qvortrup goes on to argue that the UK now has a written semi-constitution in the form of the Human Rights Act 1998, as well as a formalised separation of powers following the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Qvortrup's conclusion that the UK is now, constitutionally, a foreign land might be considered somewhat rash: Montesquieu's separation of powers was, after all, based on his observations of Britain's constitutional arrangements; the Human Rights Act does nothing more than “bring home” a bill of rights drafted by British lawyers; and the devolution arrangements might be seen as something sui generis to the UK, rather than a partial reflection of federal countries' own constitutional arrangements. Nonetheless, his argument that domestic courts have acted in an unexpectedly assertive manner in interpreting the legality of legislative and administrative action under the Human Rights Act 1998, and that Parliament has acted in an unexpectedly deferential manner in responding to courts' declarations of incompatibility issued under section 4 of that Act, is especially interesting.

The subsequent chapters in the volume move beyond the Blair reforms, to look at other aspects of the constitution. Dawn Oliver, for example, offers an interesting account, in Chapter 5, of how institutional changes, along with the development of soft law and self-regulation, have caused a primarily political constitution to become de-politicised in some areas.

Particularly fascinating is the pair of chapters written respectively by David Feldman and Joseph Jaconelli, both addressing the nature of constitutional conventions. In Chapter 6, Feldman focuses on the question of what makes constitutional conventions “constitutional”. Endorsing earlier work by Peter Morton, Feldman says that constitutional conventions are not just descriptions of the actions of constitutional actors, but instead reflect the particular traditions of the UK's constitution: they are obeyed not simply because they describe how people have acted in the past, or because of the sanctions that might be attracted for non-compliance, but because they encapsulate in their prescriptions right behaviour. They are “constitutional” in that, in their encapsulation of constitutional principle, they contribute to the creation and shape of state institutions and manage conflicts between institutions' competing conceptions of what the constitution requires. Feldman also offers a robust defence of the distinctive natures of both convention and law.

In Chapter 7, Jaconelli focuses on the way in which constitutional conventions respond to continuity and change. He explores the effects of continuity and change at different stages in the life of conventions. Jaconelli's analysis of conventions not only shines light on the detailed workings of particular conventions, but also illuminates the inner essence of constitutional conventions. For example, in discussing the development of the constitutional convention that the Prime Minister alone is responsible for advising the Monarch on when Parliament should be dissolved, Jaconelli notes that a decisive shift away from Cabinet-based advice was made under the premiership of David Lloyd George (albeit the practice may have arisen because of an earlier memorandum under the premiership of Asquith). While there were many historic reasons for this shift, Jaconelli notes that it is hard to discern a principled reason why it should be the Prime Minister, and not the Cabinet as a whole, that advises the Monarch on parliamentary dissolution. This in turn calls into question what exactly Jennings meant by his classic requirement that there should be “reason” for a constitutional convention before it can be said to exist. Need a reason be grounded in constitutional principle, or will non-principled reasons be sufficient?

Later chapters discuss more specific constitutional issues. Stephen Tierney provides an interesting reflection on the Scottish independence movement in Chapter 8 – an appropriate and topical issue for a book on change and continuity in the UK's constitution. Robert Blackburn should be particularly mentioned for his engaging discussion, in Chapter 10, of an often neglected aspect of the UK's constitutional arrangements: the Monarch. Blackburn highlights a number of ways in which the role and powers of the Monarch have evolved during the reign of the present Queen while simultaneously illuminating related constitutional issues, such as the royal prerogative and the prorogation of Parliament.

In Chapter 9, Richard Gordon offers one of the most insightful essays in the collection. Sticking closely to his brief, Gordon uses the themes of continuity and change as a launch pad for a wider discussion on the concept of parliamentary sovereignty. Gordon's chapter focuses on the insufficiency of the UK's constitutional arrangements when it comes to effecting constitutional change. He first considers in detail the competing ideas of parliamentary sovereignty and common law constitutionalism, both of which he sees as (a) problematic, in terms of securing adequate mechanisms for constitutional change, and (b) unreflective of the reality of the UK's constitutional arrangements. From this, Gordon goes on to endorse the analysis of the UK constitution favoured by Sir Stephen Sedley: that the constitution is founded on an “historic compromise” between Parliament and the courts, and that the legislative and judicial branches of the constitution are each sovereign in their proper spheres, with the executive being answerable to both – politically to Parliament, and legally to the courts. For Gordon, “[i]t is not the existence of this ‘historic compromise’ that is, or should be, in contest, but the fact that it is camouflaged in fictional narrative to give a monolithic picture of parliamentary sovereignty for the purpose of analytic coherence” (p. 159). The problem, he says, is that the fiction of parliamentary sovereignty prevents any permanent mechanism for change being created: any attempt to institute significant constitutional change is met by a rejoinder as to the impossibility of such action, given that all Acts of Parliament have the same constitutional status. Gordon says that the most obvious way of creating improved mechanisms for constitutional change would be to adopt a written constitution. He accepts, however, that this would be unlikely. Accepting Sedley's idea of the historic compromise as the basis of our constitutional arrangements, however, a more suitable solution might be found. Recognising that, at their heart, our constitutional arrangements rest on a pragmatic compromise between Parliament and the courts, that recognition should be turned into something more formal. Gordon's preferred solution is a formal concordat between the judges and Parliament, “setting out the rules of the game” which was “focussed on devising constitutional mechanisms for change” (p. 162).

The final chapter of the book is perhaps the most conspicuous. While the editor should be praised for seeking to include comparative constitutional law in this wide-ranging volume, Denis Baranger's thoughtful analysis of the place of policy arguments in the decisions of the French conseil constitutionnel is, though interesting, not obviously at home in this volume: the chapter makes only passing reference to the British constitution, and the themes of continuity and change are absent from Baranger's otherwise compelling discussion.

All in all, this is a good book. Exploring the ideas of continuity and change, and considering classic issues of constitutional law through the prisms of other academic disciplines, the book raises new questions on much-discussed issues. The book is an appropriate tribute to Professor Bogdanor's excellent career, and should be considered by all those who have an interest in the workings of the UK's constitution.