The Oxford Handbook of Scottish Politics 9780198825098, 0198825099
The Handbook of Scottish Politics provides a detailed overview of politics in Scotland, looking at areas such as electio
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Table of contents :
Cover
The Oxford Handbook of Scottish Politics
Copyright
Preface
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Chapter 1. Scotland as a Political Community
What is Scotland?
Perspectives on Scotland
Scotland as Society
Political Traditions and the Political Agenda
Institutional Dynamics
New Politics
Multilevel Scotland
Scotland in the World
Imagining Scotland
References
Part I: Understanding Scotland
Chapter 2: Nationality and National Identity
Introduction
What is National Identity?
Trends in National Identity
Re-Measuring National Identity
Politics and National Identity
The Enigma of Brexit
The Provenance of National Identity
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: The Scottish Union in Historic Perspective
Contexts
Why was the Union Passed?
The Shape of Union
Why has the Union Survived?
References
Chapter 4: Women, Gender, and Politics in Scotland
Introduction
Trends in Recruitment and Representation
When is Contagion not very Contagious: Women's Representation 1999-2016
Women's Representation after 2016: Catching on Again?
Substantive Represenation and the Case of Gender-based Violence
New Politics?
Women, Gender, and Scottish Politics: Conclusions
References
Chapter 5: Youth Politics in Scotland: Participation and Inclusion
Background
The Scottish Context: The Early Years
Young Institutions, but Institutions for the Young?
Public Petitions and Young People
Committee Work and Young People
Enfranchisement at 16-An Opportunity for Change?
Youth Engagement Following Enfranchisement in Scotland
Remaining Cautious: Open Questions
References
Chapter 6: Multicultural Scotland
Introduction: Three Perspectives on Multiculturalism
The Demographic Perspective
The Sociological Perspective
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: Understanding the Union
Strands of Unionism
Scotland in Union: Guaranteed Autonomy or Incorporation?
Social Union in 1707
Trade and Security Unionism in 1707
Nationalist Unionism in 1707 and Now
The Modern Social Union
The Modern Trade and Security Union
Miller and the Contest between Defoe and Dicey
28 Acts of the Scottish Parliament
Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: The Scottish Constitution
Introduction
Scotland's Constitutional Arrangements before Devolution
The Scotland Act as a Constitution
The Institutional Structure of Devolved Government
Supremacy
A Small-c Constitution
Entrenching the Devolution Settlement
The Interim Constitution
Prospects
References
Cases
Chapter 9: Scotland’s Dual Public Sphere and the Media
Introduction
The Press in Scotland
Broadcasting
The Media and the 2014 Independence Referendum
Meida Consumption and Devolution
Where Next?
References
Chapter 10: Twin Tracks: Cultural and Political Nationalism after 1967
Cultural and Political Nationalism
Subjective and Objective Nationality
Tom Nairn and the'Great Scottish Dream'
'A crassly philistine body'
'79 and After
The Primacy of Cultural Difference
Re-framing Scotland and 'Experience of the State'
Integrating Parallel Stories
Culture and Politics Today
Conclusion: From the Cheviot to a National Theatre of Scotland
References
Part II: Parties and Elections
Chapter 11: Elections and Electoral Systems
A Multi-level Electoral Landscape
Election Architecture
Campaigning Activities
From One Electoral System to Many: A Case Study
FPTP at Westminster
AMS and the Scottish Parliament
STV and Local Government
Conclusion
References
Chapter 12: Political Behaviour in Scotland
Introduction
What Influences Political Behaviour?
Scottish Voting Behaviour
What Influences Scottish Vote Choice?
Are Scottish Elections Second Order?
Did the 2014 Independence Referendum Lead to Greater Levels of Engagement?
Conclusion
References
Chapter 13: The Scottish Conservative Party
Introduction
Origins and Development
Ideology
The Devolution Question and Policy Change
Davidson, Davidsonism, and the Scottish Conservative Revival?
Conclusion
References
Chapter 14: The Scottish Labour Party
Introduction
The Organization and Development of Scottish Labour
The Electoral Dimensions of Scottish Labour
The Territorial Politics of Scottish Labour: Ogranization
The Territorial Politics of Scottish Labour: Policy
The Internal Politics of Scottish Labour
The Ideological Dimension of Scottish Labour under Devolution
The Evolution of Devolution and After
A Future for Scottish Labour?
References
Chapter 15: The Scottish National Party
Introduction
The SNP's Electoral Performance
The SNP's Ideological Character
The SNP's Vision of Independence
The SNP as a Professional and Governing Party
The SNP and the Scottish Independence Referendum(s)
The SNP's Support Base
The SNP and Movement Politics
Conclusion
References
Chapter 16: Smaller Parties
Introduction
The Problem of 'Smallness'
Small Parties in Scotland
Scottish Liberal Democrats
Scottish Green Party
Scottish Socialist Party
UKIP
Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party
Others
Smaller Parties and the Scottish Party System
Conclusion
References
Chapter 17: Religion and Political Parties
Introduction
The Labour Party and the Catholic Vote
Protestant Identity and Political Preference
Devolution and 'Indyref'
Conclusion
References
Chapter 18: Ethnic Minorities and Political Citizenship in Scotland
Introduction
Scotland's Ethnic Minorities
Ethnic Minority Representation in Government in Scotland
Barriers to Politics in Scotland
Emerging Improvements in Approaches to Ethnic Minority Representation in Scottish Politics
Aspirational Pluralism and Ethnic Minority Political Representation: Rhetoric or Reality?
References
Chapter 19: Green Politics
Introduction
Introducing Green Politics
Adding Scotland to the Equation
Understanding Green Politics in Scotland
The Case of Climate Change
Limitations in Scottish Green Ambitions
Conclusion
References
Part III: Institutions and the Policy Process
Chapter 20: Devolution
Introduction
Asymmetrical Devolution
The Process of Devolution
The Governing Model
The Powers of the Parliament
The Sewel Convention
Brexit and Devolution
Conclusion
References
Chapter 21: The Civil Service and Government Structures
The Civil Service in Scotland
The Expenditure Context and Central-Local Framework
Continuity and Change for the Public Service after 1999
Minister-Civil Servant Relations in Different Political Contexts
Leaders and Leadership Styles in the Civil Service
The Structures of Scottish Government-A UK Analogue
Other Aspects of UK System Replication
The Structure at Civil Service Level-No Ministries
The 'Scottish Model'-National Outcomes and Community Planning
Service Delivery Choices in Key Policy Areas
Modes of Behaviour: The Challenge of Nationalism
Stabilization Functions and High Politics
Conclusion: A Strong Bureaucracy in a Derived Framework
References
Chapter 22: The Leadership and Management of Public Services Reform in Scotland
Introduction
Public Value Leadership and Netwrok Governance
Public Services Reform in Scotland: Context, Opportunites, and Challenges
Delivering Effective Public Value Leadeship in a Complex Netwrok: Contemporary Challenges in Scotland?
Conclusion
References
Chapter 23: Interest Groups and Policy Communities
Introduction
The Interest Landscape in Scotland Prior to 1999
Devolution in Context: Regionalization/Territorialization
The Regionalization of Interests in Scotland?
A Distinctively Scottish Policy System?
Venue Shopping
Conclusion
References
Chapter 24: Religion, Policy, and Politics
Reformation and Religious Pluralism
Pluralism and Social Division
Secularization
Reglion and Policy
Attitudes within Faith Communities
Family and Sexual Attitudes
Conclusion
References
Chapter 25: The ‘Scottish Approach’ to Policymaking
Introduction: Scottish Policymaking in Historical and Intenational Context
The SATP as a New Model of Government and Public Service Delivery
The Development of the 'Scottish Model of Government'
The 'Scottish Approach' Since 2013: Improvement, Assets, Co-Production, and 'Decisive Shift to Prevention'
The SATP as Three Models of Policy Delivery
Three Models Constrained by Democratic Accountability?
The Implications of Each Model for Leadership and Public Service Reform
Conclusion: The Scottish Approach as a Signal of Aspiration
References
Chapter 26: The Scottish Parliament
Introduction
The Road to a Scottish Parliament
Setting Up the New Parliament
The Legislative Process
The Scottish Parliament Budget Process
Assessing the Realization of 'New Politics'
A Maturing Institution
Conclusion
References
Chapter 27: The Political Class in Scotland
New Politics, New Politicians?
Gender Balance
Class and Occupation
The Political Career
Education
A Scottish Political Class?
References
Chapter 28: The Politics of Scotland’s Public Finances
Introduction
The Dilemmas of Fiscal Decentralization
Political Realignments of State Size and Fiscal Decentralization
Public Finances of Scotland versus Scottish-controlled Public Finances
The Workings and Impact of the Barnett Formula
Devolved Taxation
Conclusion
References
Part IV: Multilevel Politics
Chapter 29: Local Government
Introduction
Shaping Scotland's Local Government: The Pre-Devolution Structure and Legacy
Post-Devolution Approaches
Scottish Local Democracy
The Welfare State and Local Government
The Role of Local Government
Conclusion
References
Chapter 30: Intergovernmental Relations: Two Decades of Co-operation, Competition, and Constitutional Change
Introduction: A Shock to the System
Union, Federalism and the Constitutional Underpinnings of Intergovernmental Relations
Mechanisms of Co-operation
IGR and Territorial Finance
The IGR of Constitutional Change
Decades of Development, with More to Come
Conclusion
References
Chatper 31: Scotland at Westminster
Introduction
The Liberals and Liberal Democrats
The Unionist Party/Conservative and Unionist Party
Labour
The SNP: From Marginal Presence to the Third Party at Westminster
Scottish Affairs Committee
Scottish Grand Committee
Departmental Questions
The West Lothian Question
Conclusion
References
Chapter 32: Scotland International: Understanding Scotland’s International Relations
Introduction
Explaining Scotland's International Connectedness
Government, Economy, and Development
Engaging the USA and Canada
Relations with People's Republic of China
International Development
Conclusion
References
Chapter 33: Scotand and Europe
Introduction
The 2016 EU Referendum: Scotland and the Rest of the UK
Political and Policy Responses to the Brexit Vote
The Initial Response
Diferentiation or Indendence
‘Soft’ Brexit Strategy
Brexit Transition, Independence and the EU
Conclusion
References
Chapter 34: The Independence Question
Introduction
Conceptualizaing Self-Government and Independence
Independence in a Changing Context
Scotish Independence, the United Kingdom, and the British Empire
Independence and the Nation state
Independence in Europe
The Road to Referendum
Independencein 2014
Independence in a Changing World
Reference
Chapter 35: The Independence Referendum of 2014: Issues and Outcome
Introduction
Towards the Referendum
The Rules
The Protagonists
Experts and Evidence
The Issues
Identity: Scottishness, Britishness, and Union
The Economy
Welfare
The External Dimension
Risk and Uncertainty
Did the Campaign Matter?
When No eans More
Winners and Losers
The Next Referendum
References
Part V: Whither Scotland?
Chapter 36: The State of Scotland
Chapter 37: Scotland, Britain, and the Union
Introduction
Building Plitical Captial, nvesting in Political Infrastructure
Deconstructing the Idea of Britain
ScottishNationalism: From Romance to Respectability
Re-Imaging Britain
References
Index of Names
General Index
Citation preview
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SCOTTISH POLITICS
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SCOTTISH POLITICS ...................................................................................................................... Edited by
MICHAEL KEATING
1
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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, , United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in Impression: All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press Madison Avenue, New York, NY , United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: ISBN –––– Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
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The invitation to produce a handbook on Scottish Politics came as both an opportunity and a challenge. It was an opportunity to get in one place a set of papers on what has, over the last forty years, become a serious area of study. It was a challenge because the number of people working in the field is small compared with those focusing on larger countries, and because significant areas of Scottish political life are still under-researched. For example, there is scant coverage of social movements. What was really encouraging was the enthusiasm shown by our contributors. With apologies to anybody inadvertently left out, every academic who is currently writing about politics in Scotland was approached and, almost without exception, they accepted. It is always difficult to draw the boundaries of politics but the contributors have defined the subject fairly tightly and start off with a part on understanding Scotland as a political unit and its place in the United Kingdom. Then comes a part on political behaviour, parties, and elections. The third part covers institutions and the policy process. The fourth part focuses on multilevel politics, from local government to the European Union, including the complex patterns of intergovernmental relations. The volume concludes with two more discursive chapters, assessing where Scotland stands and where it might be heading. Another challenge in the project was the timing. There were major referendums in and in on the constitutional future of Scotland and the United Kingdom. Neither the Scottish independence referendum of nor the referendum on membership of the European Union resolved the respective questions definitively and, as we go to press, much uncertainty remains. Had we waited for Scotland’s constitutional dilemmas to be resolved, however, we might have waited forever. Some of this material may be out of date before it appears in print but we believe that most of it is of continued relevance and that the critical issues we examine here will still be with us. I am grateful to Dominic Byatt of Oxford University Press for the invitation to produce the Handbook and to colleagues in the Centre on Constitutional Change, with whom I have had the good fortune to work in a series of projects since and who have been a source of constant inspiration. The CCC programme has also given us the opportunity to work with numerous government officials, parliamentarians and
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committees, civil society groups and journalists across these islands. Our philosophy is that, although these all have their own approaches and ways of thinking, it is vital that the world of academia and that of practice be in constant dialogue. This work is not only for academics but also for a broader public interested in the condition of the nation and its future. Michael Keating Edinburgh and Aberdeen September
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List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors
. Scotland as a Political Community
xi xiii xvii
M K
P A R T I UN D E R S T A N D I N G S C O T L A N D . Nationality and National Identity
D MC
. The Scottish Union in Historic Perspective
A J
. Women, Gender, and Politics in Scotland
M K F M
. Youth Politics in Scotland: Participation and Inclusion
I ML J E
. Multicultural Scotland
R B
. Understanding the Union
I ML
. The Scottish Constitution
A P
. Scotland’s Dual Public Sphere and the Media
P S
. Twin Tracks: Cultural and Political Nationalism after S H
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P A R T I I P A RTIE S A ND E LE C TIONS . Elections and Electoral Systems
J M A H
. Political Behaviour in Scotland
A H, R J, C C, J M
. The Scottish Conservative Party
A C
. The Scottish Labour Party
G H E S
. The Scottish National Party
L B C MA
. Smaller Parties
A C
. Religion and Political Parties
G W
. Ethnic Minorities and Political Citizenship in Scotland
E H N M
. Green Politics
A B
P A R T I I I I N S T I T U T I O N S A N D TH E POLICY PROCESS . Devolution
M H
. The Civil Service and Government Structures
R P
. The Leadership and Management of Public Services Reform in Scotland J C R P
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. Interest Groups and Policy Communities
ix
I ML D H
. Religion, Policy, and Politics
M R
. The ‘Scottish Approach’ to Policymaking
P C
. The Scottish Parliament
E D
. The Political Class in Scotland
M K, P C, S I
. The Politics of Scotland’s Public Finances
D H
P A R T I V M U L T I L E V E L PO L I T I C S . Local Government
N MG
. Intergovernmental Relations: Two Decades of Co-operation, Competition, and Constitutional Change
J G
. Scotland at Westminster
A E
. Scotland International: Understanding Scotland’s International Relations
P L
. Scotland and Europe
K H
. The Independence Question
C B S
. The Independence Referendum of : Issues and Outcome M K N ME
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PART V WHITHER SCOTLAND? . The State of Scotland
N A
. Scotland, Britain, and the Union
A M. A
Index of Names General Index
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. Support for Independence by National Identity
. Proportion of Women Amongst MSPs by Party, –
. Percentage Women Elected by Year and Type of Office
. Deviation from Proportionality under FPTP, Scottish Voting in UK Elections –
. Turnout in Elections and Referendums in Scotland, –
. Scottish Voting in UK Elections
. Voting in Scottish Parliament Elections (Constituency Vote) –
. Vote Switching from to by Independence Vote
. Intention to Vote SNP and Support for Independence (British Election Study –)
. Smaller Party Voteshare (%), Scottish Parliament Regional List
. Scottish Green Party Membership, –
. Asymmetrical Fiscal Decentralization
. Total and Devolved Public Expenditure in Scotland, – to –
. Public Expenditure as per cent of GDP, – to –
. Net Fiscal Balance: Scotland & UK, – to –
. Scottish Income Tax and UK National Insurance Contributions, –
. Lower or Higher Scottish Income Tax Paid, –
. How Should Scotland be Governed (Five Response Categories Collapsed to Three)
. ‘Moreno’ National Identity
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. National Identity Over Time
. National Identities within the UK
. National Identities in Scotland and England,
. Stated National Identity at Two Points in Time ( and )
. National Identity by Vote,
. National Identity by Independence Vote
. Relationship between National Identity and Support for Independence
. Brexit Vote in Scotland and England by National Identity
. Scottish Parliament by Party and Gender
. Country of Birth,
. Ethnic Structure of Populations,
. Change in Ethnic Structure of Population, Scotland –
. Ethnic Group by Birthplace, : % Born in UK [% born in nation of residence]
. Ethnic Diversity in Selected UK Cities,
. Selected Data for Pollokshields East, Glasgow City, and Scotland, Census
. Offshore Revenue and Net Fiscal Balance –: Scottish Government Projection and Outturn, £bn
. Electoral Systems in Scotland
. Election Polls between Dissolution and Election Day, –
. Use of STV Preferences, Local Elections, %
. Voting on Scottish Issues
. Political Interest Across Elections –
. Political Interest Before and After the Referendum
. Post-referendum Engagement in Politics
. Conservative Party Performance at UK General Elections in Scotland, –
. SNP Performance in UK General Elections –
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. SNP Performance in Scottish Parliamentary Elections
. Fifty Years of SNP Leadership (Chair, Convener, Leader)
. SNP Vote Share by Socio-demographic Characteristics
. Liberal Democrat Performance, Scottish Parliament Elections
. Green Party Regional List Performance, Scottish Parliament Elections
. Effective Number of Parties, Scottish Parliament
. Ethnic Minority Representation in Scottish Elections, –
. Projected Local Government Election Results/Ethnic Minority Candidates
. Ethnic Minority Representation by Area –
. Reserved Powers and Devolved Powers (Scotland Act )
. Key Underpinning Terms for Understanding Public Value Leadership
. Regionalization of Group Systems, Scotland (–) and Québec (–)
. Usual Suspects? Most Active Participants, Selected Scottish Parliament Committee Areas, –
. Mean Age of Religious Affiliation, –
. Religious Affiliation within Age Groups, –
. Claimed Religious Attendance by Religious Groups, –
. ‘Ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation’s wealth’
. ‘Government should redistribute income . . . ’
. Level of Benefits for Unemployed People
. Logistic Regression Model (extract) on Views on Unemployment Benefit
. ‘Sexual relations between two adults of the same sex’
. ‘Gay or lesbian couple should have the right to marry one another if they want to’
. Three Approaches to Evidence-based Service Improvement
. From Three to Four Approaches to Leadership and Change
. Women MSPs by Party, –
. Women MPs as Percentage of Total in Each Legislature (by Year)
. Formative Occupations amongst MPs, MEPs, and MSPs
. Formative Occupations amongst MSPs
. Formative Occupations of MSPs by Party,
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. Formative Occupations of MPs by Party,
. Education of MPs, MEPs, and MSPs
. Education of MPs by Party,
. Educational Background of Scottish MPs and MSPs, by Party
. Composition of Scottish Public Expenditure: –, –, and –
. Devolved and Assigned Taxes
. Scottish Income Tax Compared to Rest of United Kingdom, –
. Political Control of Scotland’s Local Councils ()
. Local Elections and Parties,
. Legislative Consent Motions since
. Joint Ministerial Committee meetings, – et seq.
. Meetings of Scottish Grand Committee
. EU Referendum Results Across the UK
. EU Referendum Results Across Big Cities in England and Scotland
. How Scotland’s Remain–Leave and Independence–UK Divides Interact
. Referendum Campaign Spending
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Ali M. Ansari is Professor of Iranian History at the University of St Andrews, and co-founder of These Islands. Neal Ascherson is a journalist and author, who has worked for The Observer and The Scotsman as foreign correspondent and columnist. Lynn Bennie is Reader in Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations, School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen. Ross Bond is Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. Antje Brown is Lecturer in the School of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews. Coree Brown Swan is Research Fellow at the Centre on Constitutional Change at the University of Edinburgh. Paul Cairney is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Stirling. Christopher Carman is Stevenson Professor of Citizenship and Head of Politics and International Relations at the University of Glasgow. Alistair Clark is Reader in Politics at Newcastle University. John Connolly is Professor of Public Policy at the University of the West of Scotland. Alan Convery is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh. Jan Eichhorn is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh and Research Director of the think tank d|part. Adam Evans is a Clerk in the House of Commons and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University. Jim Gallagher is Research Fellow at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. Darren Halpin is Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. Scott Hames is Lecturer in Scottish Literature at the University of Stirling. Malcolm Harvey is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Aberdeen.
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Gerry Hassan is a writer and commentator and Research Fellow in Contemporary Scottish History at the University of Dundee. David Heald is Professor of Public Sector Accounting at the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow. Ailsa Henderson is Professor of Politics at the University of Edinburgh and principal investigator for the Scottish Election Study. Emma Hill is Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. Kirsty Hughes is Director of the Scottish Centre on European Relations. Stefano Intropido is an MPhil student in International Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin. Alvin Jackson is Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh. Robert Johns is Professor of Politics at the University of Essex and has worked on the Scottish Election Study since . Michael Keating is Professor of Politics at the University of Aberdeen and Director of the Centre on Constitutional Change. Meryl Kenny is Senior Lecturer in Gender and Politics at the University of Edinburgh. Peter Lynch is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Stirling. Fiona Mackay is Professor of Politics at the University of Edinburgh and Director of genderED. Iain MacLeod is Lecturer in Policy and Strategy at the Aberdeen Business School, Robert Gordon University. Craig McAngus is Lecturer in Politics at the University of the West of Scotland. David McCrone is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. Nicola McEwen is Professor of Territorial Politics at the University of Edinburgh and Co-Director of the Centre on Constitutional Change. Neil McGarvey is Senior Teaching Fellow in Politics at the University of Strathclyde. Iain McLean is Professor of Politics at Oxford University and a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. Nasar Meer is Professor of Race, Identity, and Citizenship at the University of Edinburgh. James Mitchell is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Edinburgh. Alan Page is Professor of Public Law at the University of Dundee.
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Richard Parry is Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh and the Centre on Constitutional Change. Robert Pyper is Emeritus Professor of Government and Public Policy at the University of the West of Scotland. Michael Rosie is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. Philip Schlesinger is Professor in Cultural Theory at the University of Glasgow and Deputy Director of CREATe, the UK Copyright and Creative Economy Centre. Eric Shaw is Honorary Research fellow in the division of History and Politics at the University of Stirling. Emily St Denny is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Stirling. Graham Walker is Professor of Political History in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast.
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.................................................................................................................................. T study of the politics, as opposed to the history or law, of Scotland, is a recent field. Fifty years ago, there was no book devoted to the subject and only rare, scattered references in the textbooks on British politics. James Kellas’s () The Scottish Political System was the first such book to appear; now there is a whole bookcase of texts, along with innumerable academic articles. Kellas’s title provoked a debate on whether there could be such a thing as a Scottish political system, when Scotland was an integral part of the United Kingdom lacking its own legislature and governed by British laws (Mackintosh ). What was undeniable, however, is that it occupied at least a very distinct place in the political order of the United Kingdom and was not, in spite of the widespread tendency outside the UK to confuse the two, part of England. Since devolution in , there is no denying that a Scottish political system exists, albeit connected with wider UK and international systems. There has long been agreement within Scotland and, mostly, across the United Kingdom, that Scotland is a nation. This distinguishes it from other places like Catalonia, the Basque Country, Brittany, or Quebec, where there have been vigorous debates on whether they constitute a nation or a mere region. On the other hand, it does not get us far if it just begs the question of what a nation is. Modern understandings of the nation, which have moved away from essentialist, or primordial, ideas help here. Two items are particularly important. First, a nation does not necessarily have to be a state. This idea does not come easily in some cultures, such as that of France, where the two are virtually synonyms. Nowadays, it is easier to dissociate two, with the nation as a cultural and political entity, whilst the state is a specific legal form.¹ Second, the
¹ Alain Diekhoff ’s () La Nation dans tous ses Etats has introduced even the French to the idea.
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nation is seen as something constructed sociologically and politically rather than resting on solid and unchanging foundations. It is not an objective entity, which can be scientifically verified. Nor is it a purely subjective idea, rooted in individuals’ own sense of identity since for one person to identify with a nation it is necessary that other people also do so. Rather, it is an inter-subjective category, a shared set of meanings and interpretations by which people make sense of the world. Benedict Anderson () famously described it as an ‘imagined community’, by which he did not mean that it was imaginary or somehow unreal, but that it brings together in a common sense of identity people who do know each other personally. Nations in this sense are never static but are malleable and changing, whilst their boundaries and membership are frequently contested, as is the political significance of the nation. Scholars have debated endlessly about whether nations are the product of modernity or rooted in ancient sentiments and attachments. The question really hinges on exactly how to define the nation and it will suffice here to note that even nations with long historic lineages have adapted in specific ways to the challenges of successive phases of social, economic, and political modernization. Scotland fits this expansive and open understanding of nation rather well, tracing its origins to the early medieval period but reconstructed in successive phases of modernity. It has sometimes been described as a ‘stateless nation’ to indicate that it has the cultural and political characteristics of a nation but does not have its own sovereign state. So David McCrone () published a book called Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation. The second edition (McCrone ), which came out after devolution, however, dropped the word ‘stateless’ on the grounds that Scotland had acquired key features of statehood in the form of a Parliament and government. The phrase ‘stateless nation’ has also been criticized for implying that Scotland is lacking something, that the normal fate of nations is to have their own state. That, indeed, was an idea that underlay writing on nationalism for a long time but, more recently, scholars have noted that the state itself is a rather loose concept, changing under the pressures of transformation, rescaling, and transnational integration (Keating ). In this perspective, Scotland is less an anomaly or an unfulfilled nation and more the harbinger of a new post-sovereign, complex, and multi-level political order in which nation, territory, and state are not necessarily coterminous but are in continual flux (Keating ).
P S
.................................................................................................................................. Political science perspectives on the United Kingdom in the middle years of the twentieth century were underpinned by the ‘homogenization thesis’. This was the local counterpart to the dominant modernization narratives across the social sciences, which conceived of the development of modern societies as a process of territorial integration and functional differentiation. Territorial differences were seen as the mark of traditional societies, with their particularist divisions of labour and modes of
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production, whilst functional division was the mark of modernity (Parsons ; Finer ). The sociologist Émile Durkheim (: ), writing in could declare that ‘we can almost say that a people is as much advanced as territorial divisions are more superficial.’ Rather curiously, in view of what has happened since, the United Kingdom was widely seen as the archetypal case of integration. In the early s, Blondel (: ) could write that ‘Britain is probably the most homogeneous of all industrial countries’ on the grounds that the non-English parts were too small to matter. Finer (: ) wrote that ‘Like many of the new states today, Britain too had its “nationalities” problem, its “language” problem, its “religious” problem, not to speak of its “constitutional” problem. These are problems no more.’ The rise of nationalism in Scotland from the s led some observers to the opposite conclusion, that Scotland was always different and that the United Kingdom had stuck together only because of contingent factors like the Empire or wars. Linda Colley (/) argued that Great Britain was forged by shared Protestant religion and war with France, with the implication that, once these ceased to be effective, it might revert back to the old identities. Scottish nationalists would often argue that Scotland had been coerced into union with England and, in many versions, betrayed by its own ruling classes. Michael Hechter (), in a highly contentious thesis, even argued that it had been colonized by England, adapting a theory developed in Latin America.² For some scholars, reversing the integrationist teleology, Scotland was an anomaly amongst nineteenth-century nations in not achieving its own state but its historical trajectory would lead there eventually (Nairn ). A perspective which commands broad support these days, is that of union, in which Scotland is a polity and society embedded into wider social, economic, and political systems in a shifting set of relationships. The constitutional principle of union goes back to the original bargain of under which Scotland united with England.³ There are endless debates about what happened in and how far it really was a voluntary union as opposed to a merger under duress or a sell-out by Burns’ ‘parcel of rogues’. Modern accounts show that there were multiple motives on both sides and that there was no clear constitutional design. Scotland’s ruling elites did preserve key elements of their pre-union polity, notably the established Church and the legal system, and kept their own systems of local government and education. There was a provision that matters of ‘public right’ could be uniform throughout Great Britain whilst matters of ‘private right’ would be managed in the ‘evident utility of the subjects within Scotland’ but no mechanism for defining and defending these. It was an ‘incorporating union’ in which the parliaments both of England and of Scotland were abolished in favour of a new Parliament of Great Britain but there was not even an election for the new Parliament, which carried on as though it were the continuation of the English Parliament with Scottish members added. There was no definition of where ² But which actually originated with Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and had already been imported into Europe by Robert Lafont (). ³ Although the origins of idea have been traced back further (Kidd ).
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sovereignty lay, although Westminster did assume the absolute sovereignty of its English predecessor. These issues are traced by Iain McLean (Chapter ) and Alvin Jackson (Chapter ). The concept of union has often been conflated with that of unionism, a political doctrine that had its modern origins in opposition to Irish and (by extension) Scottish Home Rule from the late nineteenth century. As ideas of the unitary nation state have come into question in recent years, the wider concept of union has made something of a come-back amongst historians, political scientists, and legal scholars. In this sense, a union is a polity formed from the merger of distinct entities, which have preserved and developed elements of their pre-union structures. The term may be employed to substate units, sometimes but not necessarily, within a federation. It also applies to suprastate entities like the European Union, which are more than international organizations but less than states. This understanding of union has a long pedigree in Scotland, which may in part explain Scotland’s easier relationship with the European Union than that of England. It also embraces a wide range of the political spectrum. Some unionists are deeply opposed to Scottish independence but jealously defend Scotland’s distinct prerogatives within the United Kingdom. At the other end there are nationalists like Alex Salmond who, during the independence referendum campaign of insisted that Scotland was currently in six unions—political, monetary, monarchical, social, defence, and European—and that he proposed to withdraw only from the first one. Where nations and nationalism are contested, the battleground frequently moves to history, as historiographical debates become proxies for arguments about the present. Professional historians are prone to revision and counter-revisionism. Scotland is no exception. The Whig historians of the nineteenth century praised the Union as a contribution to progress under wise and enlightened leadership from the south. Nationalists stressed constraint and sometimes portrayed Scotland as the perennial victim.⁴ Modern historiography has been more professional and balanced, tracing the evolution of union over time and emphasizing Scotland’s leading role in Empire, including the evils of colonialism and slavery, as part of the ‘normalization’ of Scottish history.
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.................................................................................................................................. There is a recurrent tendency in writing about Scotland to focus on how it is ‘different’. Most scholars working on Scottish issues are familiar with referees’ reports on grant applications or articles demanding to know why one is looking at Scotland at all, unless it is to show it is different or to draw lessons for somewhere else. The implicit reference
⁴ Although this image has come most often from the misplaced empathy of outsiders, whether scholars, romantic writers, or movie-makers.
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is almost inevitably to England.⁵ Another tendency is to interpret everything that happens in Scotland through the lens of nationalism, as though that is Scotland’s only distinguishing characteristic. It is as though Scotland needs to be different in order to exist. Recent work, however, treats Scotland as one European nation and society amongst others, with its own characteristics and internal differences. The work of David McCrone (, ) is notable for looking at Scotland as a nation in its own right, whilst placing it in a broader theoretical and comparative context. Paterson () showed how the Union abolished the Scottish Parliament in but left large swathes of Scottish civil society not only to remain but to develop on their own terms but interlinked with British and international networks. This sustained Scotland as a community although depriving it of the focus of political debate that a Parliament could provide. The homogeneity thesis had depended to a great extent on the idea of social, economic, and political integration, as Scotland was absorbed into a wider whole. The reality is more mixed. Scotland preserved its own enclaves, notably in the law, religion, and education, but otherwise was progressively folded into British structures of civil society. Its distinctive business class went into sharp decline after the First World War as Scottish firms were taken over by British and international corporations. It still lacks the tier of well-established medium-sized firms that might be found in the German regions and elsewhere in Europe. Business representative bodies remain London-centred. Scotland’s trade unions merged into British or UK-wide unions in the course of the twentieth century. The voluntary sector, on the other hand, maintained more of a distinct identity and was close to local government and the Scottish Office. Since the s there has been a tendency for civil society bodies, especially newly formed ones, to take a Scottish rather than a British form. MacLeod and Halpin (Chapter ) discuss the pattern of interest representation in post-devolution Scotland. Broader social trends show a continued integration of economic and social structures, even in the face of increasing political differentiation. Scotland has sometimes been portrayed as a poor relation of the United Kingdom. It did suffer economic downturns in the s and s but by the early twentieth century its GDP per capita was close to the UK average and above most English regions, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Its sectoral and industrial structure was also close to the UK average (McCrone ). Scotland also resembles England and Wales in the class structure, as measured by the balance of occupations, although a tendency has been reported for Scots, whatever their social class, to identify as working class (McCrone ) so that the image of the nation itself is based in the masses. This itself draws on a historic Scottish trope about egalitarianism, summed up the image of the ‘lad o pairts’, the person of humble background who gets on by their own ability and the distinct Scottish educational system. Social attitudes have also, if anything, been harmonizing. At one time Scotland was assumed to be socially conservative but attitudes to matters like sexual orientation, ⁵ There is an equally annoying tendency to assume that if one is taking Scotland seriously one must be a Scottish nationalist.
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divorce, and abortion are now in line with other western European countries. Sectors of the nationalist movement have, back to the nineteenth century, liked to portray Scotland as more left-wing but surveys provide little evidence for this. There is a consistent tendency for Scottish voters to be to the left on issues of distribution, welfare and immigration but it is a very small difference (Curtice and Ormston ; Keating and Liñeira ). If there is a dividing line, it may not be between England and Scotland but between southern England and the rest of the UK (Rosie and Bond ). Yet this apparent homogenization, which can also be seen as part of a broader European trend (Keating ), provides a striking contrast with voting and party competition in Scotland, which have diverged markedly from England since the s. That, in turn, depends on the political agenda in Scotland, its political traditions and the way that issues have been shaped in the course of political competition. This is further evidence that Scotland does not need to be different to exist but should be taken seriously as a society on its own account. Whilst differences from the rest of the United Kingdom are interesting and relevant, they do not define our field.
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.................................................................................................................................. Part of the homogenization thesis and of the broader argument about national integration was that party systems and political competition would even out across the territory of the nation state (Lipset and Rokkan ). This would reflect social and economic integration but also the need for political parties to compete across the whole state in order to gain power. In the United Kingdom (or at least Great Britain), class was understood to be the basis of party competition and voting, with the two-party duopoly of Conservative and Labour firmly established by the s. It is now clear that matters were more complicated than this, that religion was an important factor well into the twentieth century, and that since the s the link between class and voting has so weakened as to have virtually disappeared in the twenty-first century. Michael Rosie (Chapter ) examines the extent of continuing religious influences on attitudes. Scotland has broadly shared these British and international trends but with some distinctive features. As elsewhere in Europe, religion remained an important element in voting into the twentieth century but the cleavage took a particular form. Since the Catholic community was largely Irish in origin, it constituted an ethnic rather than purely religious cleavage. Middle-class Catholics tended towards the Labour Party. Protestantism and anti-Irish sentiment, in turn, brought significant sections of the working class into the Conservative camp. Sectarianism became a source of social and political conflict in parts of Scotland, as it did in Liverpool. Walker in Chapter shows how the issue was managed by the Labour Party and movement. By the twenty-first century, the sectarian factor in voting had largely disappeared but there has been
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a vigorous debate in recent years about the historical and current importance of sectarianism within Scottish society. Another feature has been the weakness of Scottish Conservatism except for a period in the middle of the twentieth century. Liberalism dominated nineteenth-century Scotland before Labour made a breakthrough after the First World War. Conservatism became competitive only after the splits in liberalism, starting with the break over Liberal Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone’s Home Rule proposals for Ireland in . The Liberal Unionists in Scotland were actually more numerous than the Conservatives and when the two forces merged in , they took the name of Scottish Unionist Party, only reverting to Conservative in . It was this party, occupying the centre-right ground with a socially conscious conservatism, that thrived in the mid-twentieth century, winning an absolute majority of the vote in before going into decline. The revival of conservatism in the s under Margaret Thatcher passed Scotland by and the party lost all its parliamentary seats in , only recovering somewhat in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Alan Convery (Chapter ) argues that its late twentieth-century failure stemmed from its abandoning its older, distinctively Scottish, tradition. On the left the main force had long been the Labour Party, which came to dominate the industrial areas and over time, the cities. Glasgow was not won until , later than most British cities but, with short interludes, remained under Labour control until . Aberdeen, Dundee and the Clyde valley towns were Labour strongholds although Edinburgh held out against Labour until the s. Labour’s implantation in the cities was sustained by a wider subculture of trade unions and tenants’ associations and the distribution of patronage in the form of council house tenancies (at a time when most urban Scots were council tenants) and jobs in direct labour departments and teaching. Its grass-roots organization as a party, however, was always weak and membership levels were low compared with England and Wales (Keating ). The organizational weakness of Labour in Scotland often left space for competing forces on its left. The Communist Party only held one parliamentary seat in the twentieth century but was a force in the trade union movement and in civil society. The Independent Labour Party, after disaffiliating from Labour in the s, held onto several seats in Scotland until the s. In the early s, the Scottish Socialist Party, taking advantage of the proportional electoral system, won a clutch of seats in the Scottish Parliament. Since the s, the Scottish National Party, a catch-all party with a social democratic core, provided competition on the centre-left although it was not until the aftermath of the independence referendum of that it achieved its long ambition of conquering Labour’s strongholds in the industrial working class of westcentral Scotland. Garry Hassan and Eric Shaw (Chapter ) argue that the SNP challenge exposed long-standing weaknesses in Scottish Labour, which, after the independence referendum, struggled for position in the face of new challengers, including a revived Conservative Party. For much of the twentieth century, the class politics of industrial society prevailed in Scotland. Industrial conflict and distributional politics was mostly played out at a UK
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level but at the local level, working class politics was focused to a considerable extent on the issue of housing. Housing conditions in Scotland’s cities were notoriously poor and the main response, under both Conservative and Labour governments was the provision of publicly owned rental accommodation or ‘council housing’. By the s, a majority of Scotland’s housing stock was municipally owned. The rent and subsidy system differed from that in England and the provision of public housing became a source of collective and individual patronage for local politicians. Housing was part of a wider strategy of urban renewal, along with ambitious plans for urban renewal and population movement, including the ‘comprehensive redevelopment’⁶, new housing estates, and the new towns programme. Within the Scottish Office, there was a preoccupation with what was seen as the intractable problem of Glasgow, with its combination of social, economic, and environmental ailments. Since the s, the housing stock has largely been sold off to tenants under the (now abandoned) right to buy, or transferred to housing associations. Massive redevelopment has given way to more piecemeal forms of urban renewal. Although Scotland urbanized at an early date, the land issue has remained an important legacy of nineteenth-century struggles against landlordism. These confrontations were an important element in the early Labour and Home Rule movements and have helped to define the Scottish left, especially given the concentration of land ownership in Scotland. It is not surprising that one of the earliest legislative acts of the new Scottish Parliament after was a land reform bill. At the same time, in Scotland as elsewhere, the environment has become a significant political issue, generating new forms of politics discussed by Antje Brown (Chapter ). The most obvious distinctive element in the Scottish political agenda is, of course, the national question, which has two components: national identity, and constitutional preferences. Surveys since the s have traced the evolution of national identities, often using the Linz/Moreno Question which asks people in Scotland how Scottish or British they feel. Constitutional preferences have usually been measured by asking people’s preferences on a scale from centralization through devolution to independence. The relationship between the two is complex. Identifying as Scottish is so pervasive that, in itself, it tells us little about political preferences. There has been a shift since the s in the balance between feeling British and feeling Scottish in favour of the latter but this long preceded the rise in support for independence. Both unionists and nationalists have their own versions of Scottishness, deployed for different purposes but in the referendum vote the independence side did capitalize on the sense of Scottish as opposed to British identity (Liñeira et al. ). David McCrone (Chapter ) explores the complexities of these questions, including the meaning and strength of identities and their links to political attitudes. There has always been opposition to the Union but demands for a Scottish Parliament date from the s, in the wake of the Irish movement. There were
⁶ In which whole neighbourhoods were demolished and rebuilt.
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recurrent campaigns in the s, before and just after the First World War and after the Second World War (Mitchell ). These did not, before the s, challenge the Union itself but rather aimed at Home Rule (or devolution as it is now called) and eventually a federal United Kingdom. The Labour Party in Scotland was theoretically in favour of Home Rule for its entire history except for the period – (Keating and Bleiman ). In government, however, it had other priorities. The Liberal Party supported a federal United Kingdom, whilst the Conservatives were generally opposed to Home Rule. It was disillusionment with the failure of the centre-left parties to act on self-government that led to the formation of the SNP in the s and the full articulation of a case for independence, although the dividing line between Home Rule and independence was always rather fluid. It was not until the s that this posed any threat to the UK parties. By , holding the balance of power in Parliament, the SNP was able to force Labour back to its historic Home Rule policy, which the SNP supported as a stepping stone to independence. After the failure of the devolution bills in the s, the issue was shelved by the succeeding Conservative Government. The experience of eighteen years (–) of a government for which Scotland had not voted, however, consolidated support for devolution within the Labour Party and across Scottish society, fuelling the largest and most sustained of the many self-government movements. The incoming Labour Government of , after a referendum had overwhelmingly supported it, established the Scottish Parliament. The Conservatives, and most Labour opponents of devolution, came around to accept it and the principle of devolution has hardly been in contention since. The national question, however, did not go away. It continues to be the raison dêtre of the Scottish National Party (SNP) examined by Lynn Bennie and Craig McAngus (Chapter ), which remains the dominant exponent of the case for independence; unlike Catalonia or the Basque Country, there are not rival nationalist parties, so that the SNP has to cover a wide swathe of opinion. After , with the unionists accepting devolution, the main constitutional division was now between devolutionists and supporters of independence. After the SNP won power in the Scottish Parliament in and gained an absolute majority in , independence became the dominant issue. It was, however, far from a clear-cut matter. Surveys showed that, given a menu of options, a large part of the electorate favoured stronger devolution, short of independence. Coree Brown Swan (Chapter ) examines the meaning of independence and the ways in which it has been framed. The Edinburgh Agreement of between the UK and Scottish Governments allowed for a referendum on independence, but on condition that it would take place before the end of and that there would only be one question on the ballot, yes or no to independence. Yet when the SNP unveiled their proposals, they included a close continuing relationship with the United Kingdom (Alex Salmond’s five unions). For their part, the unionist parties, in the last stages of the campaign, promised sweeping additional powers for the Scottish Parliament. The choice, then, appeared to be between ‘independence-lite’ and ‘devolution-max’. Michael Keating and Nicola McEwen (Chapter ) chart the issues in the campaign and the outcome.
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Both sides in the referendum campaign promised to keep Scotland in the European Union (EU). The unionists warned that an independent Scotland might not be allowed in the EU, whilst the nationalists raised fears that, without independence, Scotland could be dragged out of the EU without its consent. In the EU referendum of , the UK as a whole did vote to leave, whilst Scotland, by a considerably larger majority, voted to remain. This exposed another cleavage between Scotland and England, although once again matters are more complex. In the referendum on membership of the European Union, Scots voted to remain but by a smaller margin than England. Since the s, both the SNP and Labour have moved to a pro-European position, taking most of their voters with them. Surveys since the s have shown that Scots, although far from being Europhile, are rather less Eurosceptic than English voters (Keating ). The issue, moreover, has been much less salient in Scotland. Since the s the SNP have made a connection between Europe and independence, arguing that the EU provides an external support system for an independent Scotland. Voters, however, have not generally bought this idea so that attitudes to independence and to Europe were weakly related, at least until the aftermath of the European referendum. Although Scotland voted to remain in the EU by per cent, whilst majorities in England and Wales voted to leave, this did not boost support for independence. Moreover, about a third of SNP and independence voters opted to leave. There is, however, evidence that, after the referendum, favourable attitudes to independence and to Europe began to align as the SNP lost its pro-Brexit supporters to the Conservatives. Kirsty Hughes (Chapter ) shows how the politics of Brexit thus took a distinct form in Scotland. One issue that has become entangled with the European question is that of immigration. Once again, Scottish public opinion, as measured by surveys, is only slightly more liberal than that in England but the issue has been managed quite differently. All the parties in the Scottish Parliament have defined migration not as a threat but as an opportunity, given the demographic problem. Population stagnated for much of the twentieth century and actually fell towards the end, threatening economic growth and the age balance of the population. It was inward migration that was responsible for reversing the trend and avoiding the population falling below the five million level. Because the parties have declined to compete over immigration, the issue has been less salient than south of the border and the pro-migration consensus has largely held. This is not to say that questions of multiculturalism and community relations have not been present in Scotland but, as Emma Hill and Nasar Meer (Chapter ) and Ross Bond (Chapter ) show they have been manifested and addressed in a Scottish as well as a UK context. These cross-cutting issues have produced a varied supply of political options in Scotland, which are given expression thanks to the proportional system for Scottish Parliament and local elections. Stability in electoral politics has given way to high levels of competition and volatility. James Mitchell and Ailsa Henderson (Chapter ) analyse the way in which the electoral system and rules shape the patterns of party competition. Ailsa Henderson et al. (Chapter ) look at electoral behaviour. Whilst
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the two-party pattern of competition appears to come back at the UK level in the elections, small parties continued to be important in Scotland as Alistair Clark (Chapter ) shows. Politically, Scotland remains part of the United Kingdom but it is also a political arena in its own right. It is a mistake to essentialize differences between Scotland and England or to generalize about Scottish political attitudes and there is a lot of internal variation. Both nationalists and unionists are prone to attribute intrinsic merits to the Scottish or the British perspective, seeing Scotland as inherently progressive or the UK as ‘caring and sharing’. Yet, as Scotland has been reinforced as a political space, a distinct agenda and pattern of political competition of politics has become more noticeable.
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.................................................................................................................................. Devolution in represented the most radical change in the way Scotland is governed since . It broke with a fundamental premise of unionist thought since the debates on Gladstone’s Irish proposals in the s, that it is not possible to have national legislatures within a unitary state. Such bodies, unionists argued, would inevitably make sovereignty claims incompatible with the principle of the supremacy of Parliament and thus lead to the break-up of the Union. This would be even more of a danger if the settlement were asymmetrical, applying only to the peripheral nations. A federal settlement for the UK (which used to be called ‘Home Rule All Round’) might avoid the problem of asymmetry, but federalism would itself undermine the absolute sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament. Labour’s settlement, like Gladstone’s abortive proposals, resolved the dilemma at a stroke by providing the Scottish Parliament with extensive legislative powers over everything that is not explicitly reserved, but declaring that nothing in this affected the power of Westminster, which could still legislate on devolved matters. The circle was squared by adopting a convention (the Sewel Convention⁷) to the effect that it would not ‘normally’ do so. Devolution was thus defined as power lent to the new institutions but which could be taken back. After the independence referendum of , the convention was written into law (Scotland Act, ) but this had no practical effect, since it was still not binding on Westminster and there is no definition of what ‘normally’ means. It was also stipulated that the Scottish Parliament was a permanent institution, which could be abolished only by a referendum in Scotland. Scottish devolution is now a part of the UK constitution but, as Alan Page (Chapter ) argues, it does not quite have a constitution of its own. There is nothing unusual in the idea of conventions, as these underpin much of the British constitution but they occupy an ambiguous space between mere political practice and binding law. In practice, the Sewel Convention has worked smoothly, as
⁷ Lord Sewel was one of the ministers responsible for the legislation.
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neither Parliament has sought to trespass on the prerogatives of the other but without resolving the issue of principle. Withdrawal from the European Union, however, did provoke a conflict, first over whether Brexit itself would trigger the legislative consent provision and then over the allocation of powers coming back from Europe. The UK government, supported by the Supreme Court, ruled that Sewel was merely a ‘political’ convention and not binding. That it was not legally binding was already known but the dismissal of conventions as ‘political’ rather than a foundation of the constitution was significant and showed that the UK was far from becoming a federal system. In , the UK Parliament, for the first time, passed a law (the EU Withdrawal Act) in spite of the refusal of the Scottish Parliament to give legislative consent. Unlike, for example, the establishment of autonomous communities in Spain, Scottish devolution did not start from an institutional vacuum. There was a long history of differentiated administration dating back to the Union of . In , various administrative bodies were consolidated in the Scottish Office, a department of the UK government with its own minister, the Secretary of State for Scotland.⁸ Over the succeeding hundred years, the Scottish Office came to take over most domestic administration in Scotland, with the notable exception of taxation and the social security system. The Secretary of State had three roles: to administer Scotland; to represent the UK government in Scotland; and to represent Scotland in the UK Cabinet. He⁹ was always a Scottish MP of the governing party but, under Conservative Governments, did not always command a majority amongst the Scottish MPs. Within the Union Scotland had its own laws, often adaptations of laws adopted for England and Wales but sometimes addressing distinct Scottish issues. Scotland was represented in Parliament by up to MPs. This was more than its population share as it was not adjusted for Scotland’s stagnant population, but in time it was seen as part of the accommodation of Scotland within the union. Scottish MPs tended to remain within their own domain of Scottish politics and legislation, with the marked exception of a few who chose to enter the wider UK arena (Keating ). From the Second World War until the s, the presence of Scottish MPs in government was below their proportion in Parliament and there was little sense of a distinct Scottish presence at Westminster. What did exist was a Scottish lobby, uniting ministers, civil servants, MPs, and interest groups, which worked to advance the nation’s material interests, especially in the era of active government, big public spending, and regional policy. Indeed, the importance of this lobby and of Scotland’s presence in London was regularly stressed to argue the case against devolution, which could cut off these networks. From the s there was a generation of Scottish politicians who gained high office at Westminster, including Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer (twice), Foreign Secretary, and Home Secretary. Even the diminished ranks of the Scottish Conservatives provided cabinet ministers out of proportion to their numbers in the s and s. In the post-devolution era, ⁸ Initially just Secretary but later raised to Secretary of State with full Cabinet rank. ⁹ Before devolution, they were all male.
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however, this cohort was not renewed¹⁰ and questions were being asked about the likelihood of another Scottish Prime Minister. There was a debate within academia about how much autonomy Scotland enjoyed in these times. Paterson () emphasized the importance of civil society, agencies, and local administration to argue that it had (before the s) at least as much autonomy as comparable territories in Europe. Others (Midwinter et al. ) stressed the status of the Scottish Office as a department of UK government and the way that the main lines of economic and social policy were very similar across Great Britain.¹¹ Indeed, the fact that Scottish MPs could not on their own stop Scottish legislation meant that UK policy could be imposed more easily there, the poll tax of the late s being the obvious example. Yet, whilst all the main measures of the post- Conservative Government were adopted in Scotland, they did not always work out the same way. Opting out of schools from local authority control and GP fundholding in the health service failed because of lack of take up by stakeholders in Scotland (Keating ). From the s, there was a decline in the capacity of the Scottish Office from the glory days of the s, when it pioneered important developments in social services and regional planning. By the s, lacking a popular mandate in Scotland, it tended to follow UK policy initiatives with only minor local adaptations. Devolution in built on these foundations as Malcolm Harvey (Chapter ) shows. Even the ministerial team moved from the Scottish Office to the new Scottish Executive (later rebranded as the Scottish Government). There was thus a strong path dependency from one system to the other. The Scottish Government inherited the old structures, based on the Whitehall model, as well as a curtailed policy capacity. It had to insert itself into a complex, multilevel institutional structure alongside local government, UK government and the European Union. In the initial design, it received almost all its funding from the UK Treasury and then passed some two-thirds on to local government and the health boards, leaving limited room for discretion. Much of the early legislation of the Scottish Parliament consisted of adaptations of laws made at Westminster for England or England and Wales (Keating et al. ). Compared with the attention given to the design of the Parliament in the preparation for devolution, much less work was done on how the executive function would be managed. The years since devolution have seen repeated efforts to enhance the policy capacity of the Scottish Government and enable it to come to grips with strategic issues and longterm concerns. Paul Cairney (Chapter ) and John Connolly and Robert Pyper (Chapter ) examine the way in which the Scottish institutions have grown from administrations to policymakers in their own right. Parry (Chapter ) looks at the way the civil service, which remains part of a Britain-wide system but answers to Scottish ministers, has adapted.
¹⁰ They had all been elected to Parliament before . ¹¹ In spite of devolution, Northern Ireland also followed similar policy lines as the welfare state expanded.
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Initially, the Scottish Parliament enjoyed wide legislative autonomy but almost no tax-raising capacity. It depended on transfers from Westminster, under the Barnett Formula, which itself dates from the s. David Heald (Chapter ) explores the issues of taxation and fiscal transfers and how the system has evolved to the point at which the Scottish Parliament has very significant tax-raising powers.
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.................................................................................................................................. At the time of devolution, there was much talk of a ‘new politics’. Not only would government be devolved to Scotland but it would work differently. The idea was always a little vague and sometimes naïve but the general thrust was to get away from the old Westminster model of confrontational, partisan politics, to engage the public more and to foster transparency and accountability. There were efforts to broaden representation and bring new groups of people into politics. Meryl Kenny and Fiona Mackay (Chapter ) show that there was an initial improvement in the representation of women, but this has stalled recently. On the other hand, Michael Keating, Paul Cairney and Stefano Intropido (Chapter ) demonstrate that Scotland has followed the rest of the UK towards the model of the professional politician, often coming from ‘politicsfacilitating’ occupations. The procedures of the Parliament were designed to be less partisan and executive-dominated but, as Emily St Denny (Chapter ) shows, there has been a tendency to relapse to the Westminster mode. Another direction in which there has been an effort to extend politics is to young people. Following the experience of the independence referendum, the Scottish Parliament voted by cross-party consensus to reduce the voting age for Scottish and local elections to sixteen. Iain MacLeod and Jan Eichhorn (Chapter ) discuss the degree to which young people have been incorporated into the post-devolution political system. Scotland has long constituted a political space, strengthened by devolution, within which issues are defined and debated, albeit nested in a wider UK political space. Devolution has occurred at a time of profound change in the media of political communication. Scotland’s indigenous press is in serious decline and both the UK papers and BBC radio and television devote large amounts of time to discussing issues that affect only England, whilst neglecting Scottish policy issues. Philip Schlesinger (Chapter ) explores these issues and the rise of digital media in the reshaping of the Scottish public sphere.
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.................................................................................................................................. The Scottish Government and Parliament form one level in a complex multilevel system of politics and government. Scottish politicians still operate at Westminster,
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although much of their old business has been transferred to Edinburgh. Adam Evans (Chapter ) looks at the importance of the Scottish presence there. Devolution introduced what was, compared to some other federal and devolved countries, a fairly clear division of competences between Westminster and Holyrood, but there are still substantial areas of overlap. The concept of intergovernmental relations, imported from the study of federal systems, has come into use to analyse the new relationships, which are explored by Jim Gallagher (Chapter ). There have been repeated criticisms that the instruments are not up to the task assigned to them, a matter that came into stark focus in the debates around Brexit. Within Scotland, there are thirty-six local authorities, established in the s in a structure that has come under sustained criticism. Given the political difficulty entailed in wholesale reorganization, Scottish governments have sought new forms of partnership with the local level, but Neil McGarvey (Chapter ) shows how they, like British governments have failed to come up with a coherent vision of the place of local government in the system. The devolution settlement was profoundly affected by membership of the European Union. The EU, in which sovereignty is shared at two levels, fits well with that Scottish tradition that questions the absolute sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament (discussed by Iain McLean, Chapter ). Scots, to put it differently, were used to living in a union as opposed to a unitary state. The Scottish Parliament and Government were bound to work within European law, which provided a framework to ensure market integration within the UK itself. This allowed a more generous devolution settlement than would otherwise have been possible. Brexit thus raised the question of whether new UK frameworks would be needed and how far this would mean taking powers back to Westminster. It also sparked a debate as to how far Scotland could, within its devolved powers, look to European rather than UK regulations for guidance. Europe has also affected Scottish devolution through the European Convention on Human Rights, under the Council of Europe. As Alan Page (Chapter ) notes, this is directly binding on the devolved governments and legislatures in a way that does not apply to Westminster law. Much of the jurisprudence around devolution issues, indeed, has come from the ECHR rather than from conflicts with Westminster.
S W
.................................................................................................................................. There has been a certain tendency in writing about Scotland, as about the UK, as something unusual or exceptional.¹² Its history and politics were examined from the inside, or by reference to England. There is a greater appreciation now that it is one of a family of stateless nations, with regular comparisons made to Catalonia, Quebec, the Basque Country, Flanders and sometimes other cases. The plurinational state is not an ¹² It should be said that one thing that almost all nations (ironically) have in common is a myth of exceptionalism.
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anomaly defying the modernist teleology of integration or statehood, but a rather common form of polity, in history and in the present. In Scotland are focused many of the issues facing political order in the modern world, including global pressures, rescaling, identity politics, and complexity. In the s, historians were challenged to move away from purely national histories towards an ‘islands approach’ (Pocock ), focused on the interrelated histories of the ‘peoples of these islands’, an expression that made its way into the Northern Ireland peace settlement. There is more interest in ‘horizontal connections’, and not just the ‘vertical’ relationship with England. There have been comparisons with other small nations, some of which are independent states but also face both the limitations and the opportunities that come with being small (Keating and Harvey ). The Nordic countries are a favoured point of reference. Transatlantic relationships and the Scottish diaspora in North America are another. Post-devolution Scottish governments have sought to position Scotland within wider international networks, as Peter Lynch (Chapter ) shows, in order to match their internal responsibilities with some external capacity. Post-Brexit, much of the European policy framework will disappear but will be replaced by other international agreements in trade and other issues, whether with the EU or with third countries. The question then arises as to how Scotland might influence these agreements where they cover devolved matters or where there is a distinct Scottish interest.
I S
.................................................................................................................................. All national communities are built upon myths. A myth is not, as commonly thought, a falsehood but a belief whose power is independent of whether it is empirically true or not. These are stories constructed within communities that give meaning to their common identity; they usually include a strong historical component, linking past, present, and future. Scotland is no exception. One such myth is that of egalitarianism, summed up in the slogan ‘we’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns’ and linked to the early spread of universal education, in common with other northern European nations but not with England. Another is the legend of Red Clydeside, a story of industrial and urban militancy during the First World War. Another available idea is that Scotland is on the progressive side of social and political issues, or that it is welcoming to immigrants, or pro-European and cosmopolitan. These ideas are readily pressed into service in modern debates about social cohesion, resistance to austerity, welfare, and universal coverage of public services. These coexist with clichéd visions of Scotland reproduced in films and series such as Braveheart and Outlander in which the chief line of Scottish history is about resisting the English, as though the Scots existed only as victims rather than having a history of their own. It is easy to explode these ideas and a great deal of effort has been expended in recent years in doing so. The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper () was fond of pricking Scots’ historical conceits. Hobsbawm and Ranger () took aim at what they called the
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‘invention of tradition’ in a number of places, including Scotland. In the s, a television series was devoted to exposing Scotch Myths. In the s, Tom Nairn () took aim at the Tartan Monster vision of Scotland. The ‘kailyard’ school of literature, popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which presented a couthy vision of small-town Scotland, has been widely ridiculed. Red Clydeside has been critically explored and put in perspective (McLean ). More recently, the role of the Scots in the slave trade and the more brutal aspects of imperialism have been widely rehearsed (Devine ). In the s, there was a debate on the ‘Scots crisis of Self Confidence’ (Craig ) which resurrected an old trope about Scots lacking self-esteem and social confidence, the counterpart to a supposed ‘wha’s like us’ braggadocio. This kind of revisionism is a normal feature of public debates in most nations and we can almost say that it is these debates rather than notions of homogeneity and harmony that define the boundaries and contours of the nation. Indeed, a recurrent theme in Scottish self-representation is Manichean, the clash of good and evil, memorably in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jeckel and Hyde or Gregory Smith’s () Caledonian Antisizigy. Some of the revisionist accounts have themselves become clichés, on the lines of ‘Scots believe that they have all the virtues, but the truth is they are just as bad as (or worse than) anyone else.’ Such stories and historical myths are found widely across Europe (Nora ) and, indeed, Trevor-Roper () in his late career acknowledged that perhaps it was the English who were unusual in their lack of historical curiosity and debates. An earlier study about the harnessing of collective belief to public policy at the sub-state level in European countries found a recurrent set of tropes, usually taking one of two forms: that the community in question is endowed with the virtues of enterprise, social conscience, and adaptability; or that it is hopelessly unable to cope with the challenges of collective life. What is interesting is that the factors credited in both cases are often exactly the same but interpreted differently (Keating et al. ). So individualism may be a capitalist virtue of evidence of a lack of collective enterprise. Collectivist ideas may be blamed for a lack of entrepreneurship, or credited as a source of social capital. A political culture is not something that is rooted in timeless tradition; neither is it based purely in the subjective feelings of individuals, as measured in surveys. It is, rather, an intersubjective understanding, never homogeneous or hegemonic but always open to question. Similarly, the relationship of culture in the broadest sense to politics cannot be reduced to supposedly inherent or fixed characteristics. Culture and the arts, rather, are ways of addressing themes of society and belonging and, as Scott Hames (Chapter ) shows, they have in recent years become central to the Scottish national debate. There is no essential Scotland but a complex and multi-tiered society, stratified by class, gender, religion, ethnicity, and the other divisions of modernity and facing the challenges of a changing world. As this book went to press, there was great uncertainty about Scotland’s position in the UK, in Europe and in the world. The book concludes with some thoughts from two engaged thinkers, Neal Ascherson (Chapter ) and Ali
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Ansari (Chapter ), on where the nation stands and where it may be heading. Coming from different political and analytical perspectives, they agree that things must and will continue to change.
R Anderson, B. . Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Blondel, J. . Voters, Parties, and Leaders. The Social Fabric of British Politics, revised edition. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Colley, L. /. Britons. Forging the Nation –, st edition, nd edition. London: Pimlico. Craig, C. . The Scots’ Crisis of Self-Confidence. Glasgow: Big Thinking. Curtice, J. and Ormston, R. . Is Scotland More Left Wing than England?, British Social Attitudes Survey, special edition, no. . Devine, T. (ed.) . Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Durkheim, E. . The Division of Labour in Society. New York: Free Press. Finer, S. . Comparative Government. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Finer, S.E. . The History of Government, III. Empires, Monarchies and the Modern State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hechter, M. . Internal Colonialism. The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, –. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds). . The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keating, M. . ‘The Role of the Scottish MP’, PhD thesis, Glasgow College of Technology and CNAA. Keating, M. . ‘Labour in Scotland, –’, in I. Donnachie, C. Harvie, and I.S. Wood (eds), Forward! Labour Politics in Scotland, –. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Keating, M. . Plurinational Democracy: Stateless Nations in a Post-Sovereignty Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keating, M. . The Independence of Scotland: Self-Government and the Shifting Politics of Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keating, M. . The Government of Scotland. Public Policy Making after Devolution, nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Keating, M. . Rescaling the European State. The Making of Territory and the Rise of the Meso. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keating, M. and Bleiman, D. . Labour and Scottish Nationalism. London: Macmillan. Keating, M. and Harvey, M. . Small Nations in a Big World. What Scotland Can Learn. Edinburgh: Luath. Keating, M. and Liñeira, R. . ‘Getting to a Wealthier and Fairer Scotland’, in M. Keating (ed.), A Wealthier, Fairer Scotland. The Political Economy of Constitutional Change. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Keating, M. and McEwen, N. . ‘The Referendum Debate’, in M. Keating (ed.), Debating Scotland: Issues of Independence and Union in the Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Keating, M., Loughlin, J., and Deschouwer, K. . Culture, Institutions and Economic Development. A Study of Eight European Regions. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Keating, M., Stevenson, L., Cairney, P., and Taylor, K. . ‘Does Devolution Make a Difference? Legislative Output and Policy Divergence in Scotland’, Journal of Legislative Studies, /: –. Kellas, J.G. . The Scottish Political System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liñeira, R., Henderson, A., and Delaney, L. . ‘Public Opinion and the Issues’, in M. Keating (ed.), Debating Scotland: Issues of Independence and Union in the Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lipset, S.M. and Rokkan, S. . ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments’, in S. Lipset and S. Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments. New York: Free Press. Mackintosh, J. . ‘Review of Kellas, The Scottish Political System’, Political Quarterly, /: –. McCrone, D. . Understanding Scotland. The Sociology of a Stateless Nation. London: Routledge. McCrone, D. . Understanding Scotland. The Sociology of a Nation, nd edition. London: Routledge. McCrone, D. . The New Sociology of Scotland. London: Sage. McLean, I. . The Myth of Red Clydeside. Edinburgh: John Donald. Midwinter, A., Keating, M., and Mitchell, J. . Politics and Public Policy in Scotland. London: Macmillan. Mitchell, J. . Strategies for Self-government. The Campaigns for a Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: Polygon. Nairn, T. . The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neonationalism. London: New Left Books. Nora, P. (ed.) . Lieux de Mémoire, . La République. Paris: Gallimard. Parsons, T. . The Systems of Modern Societies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Paterson, L. . The Autonomy of Modern Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pocock, J.G.A. . ‘British History: A Plea for a New Subject’, Journal of Modern History, /: –. Rosie, M. and Bond, R. . ‘Social Democratic Scotland?’, in M. Keating (ed.), Scottish Social Democracy. Brussels: Presses interuniversitaires européennes/Peter Lang. Trevor-Roper, H. . The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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UNDERSTANDING SCOTLAND .............................................................................................................
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I
.................................................................................................................................. I would seem a truism that understanding politics in Scotland is framed by national identity. After all, Scottish politics is manifestly ‘different’ from that in England, and has become more pronounced since the s. There is an older story to be told about the nineteenth century where, if anything, Scottish politics was far more ‘different’— simply put, Liberal party domination—than anything in the last century. Taking as our benchmark, people in Scotland and England voted for Labour or Conservatives in the post-war period in much the same proportions. To take a simple measure of that, between and , Labour did marginally less well in Scotland at general elections, and the Tories marginally better than in England, but the differences were marginal. Only from the late s did Scotland and England begin to diverge in electoral terms, and by the mid-s, the voting gap between the two countries, expressed as Labour’s differential advantage in Scotland plus the Conservative shortfall north of the border, was substantial, and has remained there ever since. It is significant to note that this voting gap occurred before the Scottish National Party made its mark in the s, which was not so much its cause as its effect. Furthermore, we could be forgiven for assuming that what drove this were shifts in national identities, in particular that electors were becoming less British and more Scottish. It seemed not unreasonable to assume that electoral shifts were driven by people in Scotland thinking of themselves as Scots to the detriment of British. Conversely, there was no straightforward shift from ‘British’ to ‘Scottish’ in terms of self-defining national identity, and in any case, both Conservative and Labour parties had deep roots in Scotland, and were, for much of their history, Scottish parties. In like manner, juxtaposing ‘Nationalism’ and ‘Unionism’ in Scotland fails to take account of the nuances that, as the historian Colin Kidd () pointed out, ‘unionists’ went to
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great lengths to assert the autonomy of Scotland and ‘nationalists’ did likewise in arguing for equal treatment for Scotland under the Union. As a result, much of unionism is tinged with nationalism, and much of nationalism with unionism (Chapter in this Handbook). Take the term ‘nationality’. It is less than helpful because it is ambiguous. If, for example, you are faced with entering ‘nationality’ in a hotel register, what do you write? You might equate it with citizenship—what kind of passport you have—in which case, ‘British’. On the other hand, you might assume it is asking for your national identity, and you would enter ‘Scottish’ (or English, or Welsh, or (Northern) Irish¹). If, on the other hand, you were filling in a UK government form, you might enter ‘British’ to be on the safe side, lest it deprive you of your rights to reside in the UK. In other words, much depends on the context, and why you are being asked the question. In this chapter we will equate ‘nationality’ with citizenship for analytical purposes, namely, to get some purchase on the relationship, if any, between being ‘Scottish’ and being ‘British’. In any case, there is no simple extrapolation of ‘national identity’ onto ‘politics’. We cannot read off one from the other in any simple way. This chapter focuses on ways of measuring national identity, and in particular the relationship between politics and national identity in Scotland over time. Looking particularly at recent elections, as well as the Scottish Independence referendum and the ‘Brexit’ referendum, the argument is that whilst there has been a tightening up of the relationship between them in recent years, they remain relative autonomous. National identity can be thought of as an important prism through which politics is interpreted.
W N I?
.................................................................................................................................. Nor does the academic literature on ‘national identity’ help very much. Vis-à-vis terms such as ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’, ‘national identity’ can be considered as the weakest link. Many academic writers, when asked to define national identity, interpret the question in terms of what a ‘nation’ is, and/or the components of a political ideology of ‘nationalism’. Consider how national identity is treated by three seminal writers on nationalism. Anthony Smith () defined it as a mechanism for giving people a sense of individual and collective worth, without which they cannot function socially and psychologically lest they are in danger of suffering from alienation. In other words, national identity is an adjunct to what a nation is. Benedict Anderson () defined a nation as an ‘imagined community’, having four defining features: a nation is ‘imagined’ (not imaginary), limited territorially, sovereign, and a community. He had ¹ Being from Northern Ireland is the most intriguing of all. If you are a Unionist, you might write down ‘British’, if a Nationalist, ‘Irish’, and you would be making an important point to enter ‘Northern Irish’.
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little to say about ‘national identity’ per se. Ernest Gellner () adopted a more functionalist view of national identity, seeing it as the way of suturing people into being members of the nation, as a means of binding people culturally and socially into the nation (that is, the state). By and large, social scientists have not been very interested in national identity, preferring to think of it as a by-product of citizenship, a means of belonging which we are required to have. If that is so, then the process is less than successful, for there are many states, notably the UK, Spain, Belgium, Canada, that are multi-national, where ‘nation-ness’ and ‘state-ness’ are not the same thing. Some writers take the view that ‘national identity’ is unknowable or even non-existent. David Miller (: ), for example, locates national identity ‘in the deeper recesses of the mind’, belonging in the subconscious or unconscious, and hence inaccessible to social enquiry. Brubaker and Cooper () reject the whole notion of ‘identity’, and, by inference, national identity. Identity is not a ‘thing’ which people have or do not have, or aspire to, and cannot make them ‘do’ anything. In other words, in their view identity is not a cause but an effect, a dependent, not an independent, variable. Reducing national identity to a ‘variable’ perhaps implies that it is fixed (indeed, not very ‘variable’), but we might better think of it as akin to ‘the practical accomplishment of ordinary people engaging in routine activities’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss : ). In other words, it is something which people construct for themselves, not a given. What Fox and Miller-Idriss are implying here is the idea of ‘everyday nationhood’, the sense in which people have an active part in manufacturing who they are, and that includes construing national identity. In that regard it is a ‘bottom-up’ notion, rather than (simply) a ‘top-down’ one wished upon people by the state. There is, then, a ‘manufacturing’ process in which people are active participants, rather than inactive citizens who conform to what the state asks of them. We may think people are mistaken in their national identification, but acting out the consequences of our beliefs ‘as if ’ is a perfectly acceptable way of understanding people’s behaviour and attitudes. Much depends on ways of ‘getting at’ people’s sense of their national identity. We would be hard pushed, for example, to deny people’s sense of Scottishness, for they raise it quite readily in informal conversations, intensive interviews, and in social surveys. Our research on understanding national identity makes that clear (McCrone and Bechhofer ). It is also clear that national identity is not a badge fixed upon people at birth; rather, it is a flexible means of understanding which they are able to manipulate and mobilize as needs arise. It is best thought of as a flexible frame of understanding depending on context (McIlvanney’s insurance policy once more). National identity has key features: • It is a comparative concept, made according to context. It involves the notion of ‘othering’, best thought of vis-à-vis some other identity (being Scottish rather than English, for example; Catalan rather than Spanish); • It is relatively stable. Asking people at different time-points elicits the same or similar answers. The context might vary, but there is broad stability in how they respond;
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• We can explore different measures of national identity, and examine how well (or badly) they correlate, and why; • National identity relates to political behaviour and attitudes, but not in a straightforward way. It is not as if we can read one off the other. We should think of national identity as a frame for understanding, not as a determinant of how people vote.
Before we examine systematically the relationship between ‘politics’ and national identity, we need to clarify our ideas further. Anyone coming new to the study of Scottish politics has to confront a number of assumptions that are often taken for granted. One of the most powerful ideas is that ‘identity politics’ and ‘material’ (‘real’) politics are juxtaposed. By the former is meant the politics of identity groups, such as ‘race’, ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality, and of course, ‘nation’. ‘Identity politics’ assumes that people derive their politics from belonging groups, rather than a set of material interests, such as social class. Identity politics is deemed to derive from who people are or aspire to be, rather than imposed upon them by material interests. Put simply, the politics of emotions is thought to outweigh those of reason and interests. The most obvious riposte to this is that there is no such simple distinction, for ‘identity’ politics often provides a frame for making sense of social and material inequalities. It is something of a false distinction; all involve the operations of power. This distinction between identity politics and material politics has a particular Scottish variant. Much writing on Scottish politics and culture makes use of this trope: Scottish versus British, emotion versus reason, heart versus head. It is held to account for divisions in Scotland, and assumes that people are ambivalently pulled between head and heart. The distinction is periodically resurrected, as it was at the time of the Scottish Independence referendum in .² This notion of head/heart divisions is referred to as the Caledonian Antisyzygy: ‘the presence of duelling polarities within one entity, considered to be characteristic of the Scottish temperament sometimes shortened to antisyzygy’.³ Tom Nairn used it to good effect in his seminal book The Break-Up of Britain () to explain why, in his view, Scottish culture failed to be an ‘organic whole’. This distinction between heart and head has proved to be a powerful trope, especially in the context of Scotland’s failure to be ‘Independent’, but somewhat losing its ideational force as a Scottish parliament garnered greater powers.
T N I
.................................................................................................................................. So how do people in Scotland see themselves in terms of national identity, and how has it changed over time? In this section, we explore trends in national identity in Scotland, ² The following blog piece is a good example of this: https://www.psa.ac.uk/insight-plus/ blog/scottish-independence-why-head-matters-because-heart-divided. ³ https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/view/id/ (accessed April ).
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and examine, by means of social surveys (mainly Scottish Social Attitudes surveys), whether or not people have become ‘more Scottish’. We will then look at the relationship between these trends and political behaviour and attitudes. In British and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys, the longest-running question relates to ‘multiple choice’ and ‘forced choice’. Thus, the former asks: ‘Please say which, if any, of the words on this [show] card describes the way you think of yourself ’. The list of ten items includes ‘British’, ‘Scottish’ ‘English’ ‘European’, and allows for multiple choice. A follow-up (‘forced’) question asks ‘And if you had to choose, which one best describes the way you think of yourself?’. These trend data (systematic since ) show that over per cent of people living in Scotland say they are ‘Scottish’, and about per cent say they are ‘British’. If forced to choose, around three-quarters say they are ‘Scottish’ and about per cent ‘British’. The survey questions have been running, using similar wording, since the s, but earlier data from the s ( and ) showed around one-third choosing ‘British’ as their forced choice. Since the late s, dating roughly from the setting up of the Scottish Parliament, that figure fell to below onefifth, but recovered to just under one-quarter in in the context of the Scottish Independence Referendum, whilst in terms of forced choice, ‘Scottish’ settled at twothirds. That raised the possibility that national identity was responsive to changing political context, something we will explore in the next section. From the beginning of survey work on national identity, most people gave priority to being Scottish, and a minority to being British, but the key question was how to relate the two. In the s, the political scientist Juan Linz explored how people in Catalonia related being Catalan to being Spanish. This used a scale with five points: Catalan not Spanish; more Catalan than Spanish; equally Catalan and Spanish; more Spanish than Catalan; and Spanish not Catalan. In the late s, Luis Moreno applied a similar scale to Scottish/British, which has become known, by way of shorthand, as the ‘Moreno question’. Here is a summary of those data asked in Scottish Social Attitudes crosssectional surveys (Table ..): These data tell us that • There is no simple shift across those years, rather one of trendless fluctuation. Nevertheless, ‘mainly Scottish’ is more important than being ‘mainly British’⁴; • By , around one-third say they are ‘equally Scottish and British’ substantially up from the proportion in the mid-s, suggesting once more the effect of heightened political-constitutional contexts; • Nevertheless, only one person in ten gives priority to being ‘British’ over the period. These data reinforce the point that ‘national identity’ in Scotland, when compared to other national identities within the UK, is proportionately more important than elsewhere in the UK. In England, for example, almost half said they were equally ⁴ ‘Mainly Scottish/British’ refer to the ‘only’ and ‘more than’ categories taken together, as reflected in the ratio in the final row of the table.
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Table 2.1 National Identity Over Time % by column
1992
1999
2003
2006
2009
2011
2014
2016
19 40
32 35
31 34
33 32
27 31
31 34
23 26
27 31
33
22
22
21
26
24
32
33
3
3
4
4
4
4
5
4
3 9:1
4 9:1
4 8:1
5 7:1
4 7:1
3 9:1
6 4:1
6 6:1
Scottish not British More Scottish than British Equally Scottish & British More British than Scottish British not Scottish Ratio of ‘mainly Scottish’ to ‘mainly British’
Source: Scottish Social Attitudes surveys and election surveys.
Table 2.2 National Identities within the UK % by column Only ‘national’ National>state National=state State>national Only state Ratio of national to state
Scotland 2006
England 2006
35 32 22 4 4 8:1
22 17 47 8 6 3:1
Wales 2007 24 20 32 9 9 2.5:1
N. Ireland5 2007 19 17 17 24 19 1:1
Source: Scottish and British Social Attitudes surveys.
English and British. In , the year of the Brexit referendum in which Scotland voted to Remain ( per cent) and England to Leave ( per cent), we can compare national identity in the two countries (Table ..). Note that the English and figures (Tables . and .) are quite similar in that almost half say they are equally English and British, and that claims that there has been a significant rise in the proportions saying they are ‘English’ to ‘British’ are not borne out by the data. We will explore the significance (or not) of national identity for the Brexit vote in the two countries later in this chapter. How consistent are people in their national identities? Consider how the same people responded one year apart. ⁵ N. Ireland is included for completeness; where ‘national’ is Irish, and ‘state’ is British, and hence, not strictly comparable to the rest of the UK.
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Table 2.3 National Identities in Scotland and England, 2016 % by column Only national (Scottish/English) National>state National=state State>national Only state (British) Ratio of national to state
Scotland 2016
England 2016
27 31 33 4 6 6:1
16 12 48 9 14 1:1
Source: Scottish and British Social Attitudes surveys, 2006 and 2016.
Table 2.4 Stated National Identity at Two Points in Time (2014 and 2015) % by row 2014 Sc not Br Sc>Br Sc=Br Br> or not Sc all
2015 Sc not Br
Sc>Br
Sc=Br
Br> or not Sc
N
69% 29% 5% 5% 27%
17 35 15 1 20%
8 30 70 26 39%
6 6 9 68 14%
169 199 246 76 692
Note: ‘British not Scottish’, and ‘more British than Scottish’ categories have been amalgamated because the cell sizes are small. Source: Scottish Social Attitudes surveys, 2014 and 2015.
The key figures in Table . are those shown in the diagonals, those who give the same national identity responses each time such that around out of people do so with regard to Scottish not British, equally Scottish and British, and mainly British. The exceptions are the ‘more Scottish than British’ where the figure drops to per cent. There is considerable ‘leakage’ amongst this group reflected in the categories on either side, such that around per cent of people who described themselves as ‘more Scottish than British’ in were saying one year later that they were ‘Scottish not British’, and a similar proportion ‘equally Scottish and British’. Why might that be so? To flag a later argument in this chapter, these were people who were pulled in two directions in the Scottish Independence Referendum, splitting roughly : in favour of No to Yes. In other words, they were especially susceptible, in a binary Yes/No divide, to altering their ‘identity’ to bring it into line with how they had voted. They were also an identity group where ‘devolution-max’ had a particular appeal, and they were faced with a choice of independence on the one hand, and the devolution status quo on the other, neither of which was their first constitutional preference. We might also consider them to be the most significant ‘swing’ group in future debates about Scotland’s constitutional future.
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R- N I
.................................................................................................................................. Before we consider the relationship between national identity and politicalconstitutional preferences, we need to be circumspect about the Linz/Moreno national identity scale. It is an improvement on a simple multiple/forced choice category system, because it relates explicitly to Scottish and British identities. Nevertheless, we cannot be sure that these matter to people. Take two notional respondents. Both say that they are ‘more Scottish than British’, but one person feels strongly about both identities but that being Scottish is more important, whilst a second person does not care much either way, but responds similarly. As such the -point scale does not allow us to judge the overall importance, merely that one is greater than the other, however strongly or lukewarm the person feels. Furthermore, the -point identity scale shows consistently low scores for the ‘British’ categories, leading us to assume that Scots have ceased, to all intents and purposes, to be British. Consider, however, the older and more restrictive multiple and forced identity questions. Their drawback was that they were either/or questions, or that they gave little indication of how national and state, Scottish and British, related to each other. True, you could be both, and anything between one-fifth and one-third of Scots said they were, but ‘being Scottish’ was dominant. One way round the puzzle is to provide separate scales for strength/weakness of being Scottish and similarly for British. When we do that, we get an intriguing response. Unsurprisingly, on a seven-point scale where is very weak through to as very strong, out of Scots put themselves on points , or . They are ‘strongly Scottish’. On the other hand, over half of Scots also put themselves on points , or on the British scale. What is even more intriguing is that half of Scots place themselves at the high ends (, or ) on both scales. They—let us call them ‘dualists⁶’—are strongly Scottish but also strongly British. They represent around per cent of people in Scotland, according to the survey data, the largest number. There is also a group we can call ‘nationalists’, who are strongly Scottish, but weakly British (, or on the British scale). They number around per cent. The dualists and nationalists, then, are the two main identity blocs in Scotland, whilst there is a further per cent who are strongly Scottish, but less strongly British (mid-point on the -point scale). This relatively straightforward way of relating ‘national’ to ‘state’, Scottish to British, identities means that we have a much better handle on strengths and weaknesses, and by implication on political-constitutional matters. We also get a better understanding of the No vote in the Independence campaign, especially why Yes could not simply play an anti-British card. If around one-third of the Scottish electorate at best were strongly Scottish and weakly British, then it seems more remarkable that the Yes vote was as high as per cent.
⁶ It is inappropriate to describe ‘dualists’ as ‘unionists’ because it pre-empts the question of their constitutional politics.
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Who are those people who formed the ‘dualist’ and ‘nationalist’ blocs? ‘Dualists’ tend to be women rather than men, to be older, and to have had higher education and to be in middle class employment, but the differences as regards education and social class are not as strong as age and sex. ‘Nationalists’ tend to be younger and male. These are, however, relatively modest differences compared with political and constitutional preferences. ‘Dualists’ are less likely to vote SNP, and less likely to be in favour of Scottish Independence. ‘Nationalists’ were more likely to vote SNP and to be in favour of Independence.⁷ That may seem obvious, but we cannot take it for granted a priori. That has to be proved, not asserted, and in any case, we cannot assume that ‘being Scottish’ is ‘political’ rather than ‘cultural’. Indeed, in previous work (, and again in / for further validation) we tested out this common-sense proposition, comparing England and Scotland. Contrary to conventional expectations, and using a suite of questions,⁸ we found that both Scots and English were at the ‘cultural’ end of the scale, and if anything, Scots took a more ‘cultural’ and less ‘political’ view of national identity than English people. Such findings, both north and south of the border, were confirmed by using methods of intensive interviewing which encouraged people to talk in their own terms about national identity. Such confirmation—what social scientists call ‘triangulation’ (looking at social phenomena from diverse standpoints/data sources)—does run counter to ‘statements of the obvious’, such that Scots are making ‘political’ assertions when they talk about national identity, and the English are deemed to be confused or in denial about theirs. It is the duty of social scientists not to take such ‘common sense’ for granted.
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.................................................................................................................................. Having explored measures of national identity, we now examine more systematically the relationship between Scottish national identity and politics. Let us focus on , the most successful Scottish parliament election in the SNP’s history, where they won an overall majority. We have partitioned these data into national identity categories so we can see how each voted in the election (Table .). We can see that most ‘exclusive’ Scots (‘Scottish not British’) voted SNP, but so too, in similar proportion, did those who said they were ‘more Scottish than British’. At the other end of the scale, the ‘British’ identifiers were evenly divided between Labour and ⁷ We used these -point Scottish and British scales for the first time in the Scottish Social Attitudes surveys of and , whereas much of our earlier work used the -point Linz/Moreno scales, and earlier analysis was dependent on that. ⁸ ‘Some people say that being [English/Scottish] is mainly about countryside [‘landscape’ in Scotland] music, English/Scottish sporting teams, language and literature and so on. Others say that being [English/ Scottish] is mainly about, for example, the way England/Scotland is governed, the parliament, and how [England/Scotland] runs its affairs. Whereabouts would you put yourself on a scale between these two positions?’
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Table 2.5 National Identity by Vote, 2011 % by col.
Sc not Br
Sc>Br
Sc=Br
Br not or >Sc
SNP Lab Cons Lib Dem other
64% 28 4 3 1
66% 24 4 6 1
29% 47 12 11 1
21% 32 32 5 10
Source: Scottish Social Attitudes survey, 2011.
Conservative, but as many as one-fifth of them voted SNP, possibly confirming the view that when parties win, they pull in votes across the political spectrum (see Carman et al. , for an analysis of the Scottish election). In any case, one of the orthodoxies—at least in the election where the SNP came to (minority) power for the first time—providing competent government was at least as important, in the eyes of voters, as the Scottish constitutional question. Indeed, comparing and , we find that the major percentage gains for the SNP came from the ‘more Scottish than British’ group (rising from per cent in , to per cent in ). The percentage of ‘exclusive Scots’ voting SNP rose more modestly from per cent to per cent, and even amongst ‘equally Scottish and British’, the gain was percentage points (from per cent to per cent). And how does each party’s vote align with national identity categories?⁹ Are Tories ‘British’? Are Nationalists ‘Scottish’? And what of Labour voters in national identity terms? In , there was broad, but no simple, correspondence. For example, more than three-quarters ( per cent) of SNP voters said they were ‘mainly Scottish’ (almost half ( per cent) said they were ‘more Scottish than British’, and one-third ‘Scottish not British’). We might expect the Tory vote to be stoutly British, but it splits three ways: one-third ‘equally Scottish and British’, one-quarter ‘mainly British’, but as many as out of said they were ‘mainly Scottish’. This helps to reinforce the point that there is no simple correspondence between vote and national identity; rather, there are broad tendencies. And Labour’s vote? Half of it in came from ‘mainly Scots’ (dividing broadly between ‘only Scottish’ and ‘more Scottish than British’), and just over one-third ‘equally Scottish and British’. Only one in ten Labour voters, at least in , were ‘mainly British’. We can see from Table . that there is confirmation that ‘exclusive Scots’ tend to vote SNP, but that is not sufficient of itself to win power. To be electorally successful, the SNP broadens its appeal to those for whom ‘competence’ rather than ‘constitution’ matters most. Nor, at the Unionist end of things, is the picture very different. Labour ⁹ Whilst Table . is percentaged in the direction of national identity categories on the reasonable assumption that vote is the effect not the cause, it is also instructive to percentage the data by vote so we can see the ‘national identity’ composition for each party. To avoid confusion, nevertheless, only Table . is shown.
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Table 2.6 National Identity by 2014 Independence Vote % by row
YES
NO
Scottish not British More Scottish than British Equally Scottish and British British more than/not Scottish
84 61 26 13
16 39 74 87
Source: IPSOS MORI, 18–19 September 2014.
provided a substantial minority in all national identity groups, especially those who were ‘equally Scottish and British’ where around half voted Labour in . Around a third of the mainly or only British voted Labour, on a par with the Tories, but this ‘spread’ of Labour’s vote amongst diverse identity categories is its weakness as well as its strength. Labour has a spread amongst all identities, but this makes it difficult to mobilize support by pressing an identity button, Scottish or British. The Conservatives have fewer problems in that regard because their vote clusters much more at the British end, but, as a result, simply appealing to ‘the British’ leaves them a long way short of power in Scotland. The relative success of the Tories in collecting up votes amongst No voters, and amongst Brexit Leavers, also present a ceiling (around per cent) above which it is hard to go.¹⁰ Playing a national identity card has complications for all the major parties in Scotland, linked as it is to constitutional preferences but not in a straightforward way. Take, for example, the relationship between the Linz/Moreno national identity category and how people voted in the Independence referendum (Table .). There is a nice symmetry in that the more Scottish that people felt, the more likely they were to vote Yes, and the British, to vote No. Note, however, that the identity dividing line comes between people who are ‘more Scottish than British’, and those who are ‘equally Scottish and British’. The threshold between nationalists and unionists falls between the two. As the slightly odd-sounding campaign slogan for the Better Together campaign had it: ‘Proud to be Scottish, Delighted to be British’, somehow conveying the sense that ‘delight’ was a more powerful emotion than ‘pride’. How does party support stack up in this set of associations? Consider the following from , the year of the referendum: less than half ( per cent) of the ‘Scottish not British’ support the SNP; a similar proportion ( per cent) of SNP supporters say they are ‘Scottish not British’; around two-thirds ( per cent) of those who are ‘Scottish not British’ support independence; and around half ( per cent) of people in favour of independence say they are ‘Scottish not British’. The simple way to make sense of that is to conclude that fewer than half of ‘exclusive Scots’ support the SNP, and inversely, that less than half of SNP supporters are ‘exclusive Scots’, which means that most SNP ¹⁰ http://blog.whatscotlandthinks.org///the-three-characteristics-of-the-scottish-conservativerevival/ (accessed April ).
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60 60 50
53
51 46
40
43 32
% 30
34
2011 2012
23
20
14 1211 11
10 0
18 1112 11 8
9 4
Sc not Br
Sc>Br
Sc=Br
Br>Sc
2013 2014
6
Br not Sc
. Support for Independence by National Identity Source: Scottish Social Attitudes, to .
supporters think of themselves as ‘British’ to some degree. Just to complete the picture, around out of in favour of independence supported the SNP in , and inversely, out of SNP supporters backed independence. The point of those figures is not to suggest that either the political parties or people in Scotland are confused, or in the wrong, or have not noticed what parties stand for. It is that there is no simple alignment between national identity, party support, and constitutional preference. The point can be made more simply: only per cent, one person in eight, are exclusive Scots, also vote SNP and want Independence (in , the figure was one in ten). That loose relationship was maintained during the most successful period in SNP history. Has the relationship changed much over the years? What evidence do we have that there has been a tightening up of the relationship between national identity and constitutional preferences? Consider Figure .: it shows the extent to which each national identity category was in favour of Independence at time-points between and . The strongest alignment between being ‘Scottish not British’ and support for Independence ( per cent) occurred in , with a similar rise amongst the ‘more Scottish than British’ (to per cent), but, by and large, there is trendless fluctuation over the four-year period.¹¹ Taking a longer view, what evidence is there of a tightening association between being in favour of Independence and being Scottish not British? ¹¹ In , per cent of the ‘British not Scottish’ category were in favour of Independence, a significant rise over the previous years. One way to interpret that is to infer that these were people not born in Scotland who felt they could not claim to be Scottish, but nevertheless voted YES in the referendum the most proximate event to the survey. This reinforces the point that political/ constitutional choices do not derive in a simple way from ‘national identity’.
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Table 2.7 Relationship between National Identity and Support for Independence Elections
% Scottish not British
1997 (UK election) 1999 (Scottish election) 2001 (UK election) 2003 (Scottish election) 2005 (UK election) 2007 (Scottish election) 2010 (UK election) 2011 (Scottish election) 2014 (Scottish Referendum) 2015 (UK election) 2016 (Scottish election)
24 34 36 35 33 28 29 32 27 25 27
% proIndependence
% of ‘Scottish not British’ who are pro-Independence
28 28 27 27 38 25 25 32 35 36 46
48 46 41 46 57 48 46 53 60 72 73
Source: British and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys, 1997–2016.
Table . examines the relationship between the two since , when the election of Labour at Westminster ushered in devolution and a Scottish parliament. Once more, we see in Table . a degree of trendless fluctuation, but the steady rise in support for independence (from per cent in , to per cent in ) also shows a greater alignment (in the final column of Table .) whereby ‘exclusive Scots’ are now more likely to favour independence ( per cent of them in , compared with only per cent in ). Almost twenty years of devolution, and latterly, the electoral success of the SNP, suggest that the ‘politics of nationalism’ has had an effect.
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.................................................................................................................................. Scotland voted per cent to Remain in the EU, whilst England voted per cent to Leave (Chapter in this Handbook). Perhaps nothing makes the point better that England and Scotland are ‘different’, and we might be tempted to reach for national identity to explain the difference. It is not so straightforward. Table . makes the point. Whereas in England, saying you are English made you less likely to vote Remain, and more likely to vote Leave, the same could not be said in Scotland (McCrone ). Both ‘Scots’ and ‘British’ identifiers voted Remain in equal proportions, per cent. In other words, whilst national identity was a significant discriminator in England, this was not the case in Scotland; there was no significant variation between ‘Scottish’ and ‘British’. In comparative terms, religion (being a member of the Kirk), age (being older) and national identity were weaker predictors of a Brexit vote in Scotland, whilst sex (male) and (low) education are stronger than in England. In both countries, having
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Table 2.8 Brexit Vote in Scotland and England by National Identity % voting Remain National (Scottish/English) not British British > or not national
Scotland
England
61 61
27 64
Source: Scottish and British Social Attitudes surveys, 2016.
authoritarian attitudes about censorship, law-breaking and children’s behaviour tended to be more common amongst Leavers, all things being equal. In England, however, it was not so much ‘being British’ that led people to vote Remain so much as ‘being English’ which led people to vote Leave.¹² In Scotland, those who said they were ‘British’ did not differ very much from those who chose ‘Scottish’: both identity groups were strong Remainers. It seems that the Leave campaign (‘Take Back Control’) caught the mood of ‘being English’, whilst in Scotland ‘being Scottish’ had, if anything, the opposite effect by reinforcing Remain. Here is a nice example of the ways national identity operate differently in the politics of Scotland and England. It would be reasonable to infer that the political process mediated the effects of national identity. In Scotland, supporters of all the main political parties voted Remain (albeit with significant minorities for Leave amongst Conservatives ( per cent), and SNP ( per cent), whilst in England a majority of Tories ( per cent) and of course UKIP ( per cent) voted Leave). The way to make sense of the Brexit vote with regard to national identity is to say that it did not have a discriminating effect in Scotland (whether you thought of yourself as Scottish or British); it made no difference to how you voted. In England, national identity amplified how you voted, reflected in the strong statistical association between being English and voting Leave. Like many things in politics, it was not an inevitable relationship but a contingent one, and the association became embedded in how people identified themselves. That is perhaps a good way to think about national identity vis-à-vis politics. It acts as a prism through which political, economic, and cultural processes are refracted, and takes on meaning which can become ‘naturalized’, taken for granted. We cannot, furthermore, simply read off ‘being British’ in Scotland and England as if that means the same thing. Put simply, the same descriptor can take on quite different meanings depending on context. In our studies of national identity in Scotland and England, we found that many who said they were ‘British’ were using quite different pools of association. Brits who were ‘empire loyalists’ differed from those who associated being British with liberal-multicultural views. Furthermore, people who described themselves as ‘British’ in Scotland were more right-of-centre, and more likely to use
¹² In other words, the relationship between being British and voting Remain was less significant than being English and voting Leave.
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‘being British’ as a statement of support for the Union (McCrone and Bechhofer, : chapter ). Just to complicate matters, even those who thought of themselves as ‘Scottish not British’ were not expressing antipathy to symbols of British culture such as British democracy, the monarchy, a sense of fair play. In other words, ‘Britain’ remains a salient and meaningful frame of reference even where individuals do not think of themselves as British. ‘Being British does have content and meaning in terms of important symbols of British culture which are widely and normatively held’, even where they themselves do not claim to be British (McCrone and Bechhofer : ).
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.................................................................................................................................. Michael Billig has described the ‘banal’ nature of nationalism (more precisely, national identity). He focuses on its taken-for-granted nature, in his example, the flag flying on the public building which we do not actively notice but which embeds our sense of self and nation (Billig : ). Thomas Eriksen, the Norwegian social anthropologist, has observed that ‘“nation” is the metaphysical space in which people locate their personal histories, and thereby their identities’ (quoted in Cohen : ). It is not the case that people simply buy passively into what is handed down to them by institutions, but actively construct who they are out of the materials available to them, to construct ‘everyday nationhood’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss ). We should avoid two sets of unsustainable assumptions: first, that national identity is simply handed down from on high by state authorities such that we know no other; second, that national identity is so unknowable, mysterious, and subconscious that social analysis cannot research it. National identity is neither of these; it is not rigidly fixed, but varies according to circumstances and contexts and is insinuated into people’s sense of themselves, often implicitly. Anthony Cohen (: ) observed that it is ‘something which simply does not require to be well defined, first, because people presume that they know what they are talking about when they refer to it; and second, because the lack of definition allows them scope for interpretive manoeuvre in formulating or inventing or imagining the nation in terms of their selves for the purposes of personal identity’. The key lies in that term ‘interpretive manoeuvres’, for we not only adopt a national identity persona, but also judge the claims of others, seeking out markers such as place of birth, residence, ancestry, ‘race’ (to the extent that we can judge from skin colour) to have a working model about who is ‘one of us’ and who is not. Does it matter? Surely, in the sense that we carry with us a calculus about who should get social, cultural, and economic resources, whether they are ‘deserving’ or not. The essence is who is included, and who excluded, in that calculus. History is littered with examples where
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‘not belonging’ can be a sentence of death. Steve Reicher and Nick Hopkins () have pointed out that not a single Jew was deported from Bulgaria in the history of the Holocaust because people asked themselves: ‘To the question “should we help them?”, we may or may not answer yes. However, to ask “should we help us?” seems almost absurd. Of course we should. That is what being “us” is all about’. Furthermore, national identity has the power to move, even to self-immolation for the nation in the case of war. Dying for the nation—pro patria mori—is an act of unnerving self-sacrifice. ‘Thinking with the blood’ is how critics of nationalism construe it, an emotive, almost irrational, act but one reflecting the power of national identification. Critics like Eric Hobsbawm () feared opening the Pandora’s box of ‘ethnic irrationalism’, and Ernest Gellner () spoke critically of the ‘dark gods’ theory of nationalism whereby powerful emotions were released in the national cause. The point is clear. National identity is not simply a manner of speaking, but a matter of feeling. And what of Scottish national identity? Think back to the juxtaposition of ‘head’ versus ‘heart’, reason versus emotion, said to characterize ‘Scottish character’. It is a trope, but a powerful one, however misplaced. It accepts that ‘being Scottish’ conjures up powerful emotions, but set against rational self-interest. So, back to our question, where does this sense of national identity come from? It is not conjured out of the air; it derives from a long-standing institutional base. The Treaty of Union in saw Scotland retain (and develop) its ‘holy trinity’ of law, religion, and education, and more generally, its ‘low politics’ around domestic affairs. Scots were to be judged by procedures in Scottish courts, worshipped their deities in Scottish churches, and celebrated learning (‘the lad o’pairts’) as if it was an essence of being Scottish. Even the high noon of British imperial politics conferred on Scotland undue influence (think of complaints about ‘Scots on the make’; and the notion of the ‘Scottish empire’). Being Scottish could be seen as complementary rather than antithetical to being British for much of the period of Union. The point is this: one could be Scottish and British, but never not Scottish. So the key point is that being (and feeling) Scottish never disappeared, but took on new meanings and amplifications within the Union. The key crisis moments came about when Union seemed to cut against the Scottish grain in the second half of the twentieth century, when, for example, Scottish institutional autonomy was perceived to be threatened by the British state (Paterson ), and as Scotland systematically got governments it had not voted for. Remember that this happened per cent of the period between and , and for England, only three per cent of the time.¹³ The important point to make is that there was no singular and accepted meaning to ‘Scottish national identity’. It was always a melange of markers and icons. Many of these waxed and waned. Two examples: being Protestant is a far less important marker ¹³ This is calculated on the basis that Scotland (and England) did not vote (in terms of seats) for the party forming a government at Westminster. Scotland got a UK government it did not thereby elect in , , , ,, , , , , , and ; England, in and February .
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in a secular and pluralistic Scotland than it was a century ago. It is impossible to imagine the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland receiving a committee report notoriously accusing the Irish of being the ethnic enemy as they did in with the notorious The Menace of the Irish Race to our Scottish Nationality. David Livingstone, missionary and explorer of Africa, is a historic figure for most, if he is remembered at all. The ‘Scottish soldier’ and his contribution to imperial conquest is a historic icon. That era of what Graeme Morton () called ‘unionist nationalism’ now seems a contradiction in terms. Drawing a straight line from Wallace, Bruce and the wars of Independence in the fourteenth century is both too far away to remember accurately, but yet a powerful origin-myth remade for the twenty-first century. Winnie Ewing’s comment at the opening session of the Scottish Parliament on May that ‘the Scottish Parliament, which adjourned on March , , is hereby reconvened’ may make inaccurate history but powerful politics.
C
.................................................................................................................................. History matters in that a territorial sense of ‘being Scottish’ is faute de mieux. Claims that national identity in Scotland is based on ‘civic’ rather than ‘ethnic’ criteria is not a claim for moral superiority so much as a fact of historic life. There was little point in emphasizing linguistic, religious, or other cultural criteria if in the process large numbers of people were excluded from ‘belonging’. Christopher Smout () memorably spoke of Scots historically having a ‘sense of place’ rather than a ‘sense of tribe’, because the realpolitik of Scotland demanded it. Loyalty to the monarch, then the crown and so the state, could only be commanded if ‘being Scottish’ was adduced territorially. Defining Scots as a ‘mongrel nation’ is attributed to Willie McIlvanney in (McCrone ), but it has a more ancient pedigree—king, and queen, of Scots (plural)—thus recognizing the diversity of Scotland’s inhabitants. And so the mongrel trope could be applied to modern times. Our own work, and that of Asifa Hussain and William Miller (), on multicultural nationalism in Scotland led us to conclude: ‘ . . . the religious beliefs of Muslims do not place them beyond the limits of national identity, such that the Scottish nation cannot be easily imagined as “white” by definition. Accent is a key code of Scottishness, and culture cannot operate unproblematically as a homologue of “race”, at least as soon as people open their mouths to speak’ (McCrone : ). This is not to deny that ‘street-level’ racism continues to exist, but that there is no official and ideological support. It is not given oxygen by the political class and their institutions. Elsewhere, institutional racism is sustained by back-of-the-hand ‘common-sense’ talk by politicians and right-wing media. The key point is that ‘politics’ is not a passive process, simply the expression of social and cultural attitudes, nor does politics determine them. We might assume, for example, that people in Scotland are much more ‘left-wing’ than in England because far fewer vote for the Conservative party north of the border. However, comparing
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Scotland and England in terms of social attitudes reveals that similarities outweigh the differences, and therefore do not account for the substantial differences in voting patterns (McCrone : ). In like manner, people in Scotland on the one hand, and England and Wales on the other, have very similar, and positive, views about the impact of migration (Curtice and Montagu ). So why the perceived difference? How issues of migration and ‘race’ are framed by the politics north and south of the border is what matters. Curtice and Montagu (: ) observe: ‘The SNP has gathered for itself an electorate that is relatively positive about immigration, an electorate whose views are then counterbalanced to some degree by a pattern of support for other parties in Scotland that is somewhat less positive towards migration than is found in England and Wales who back such parties’ (see also Chapters and in this Handbook). Thus has Scottish national identity (‘identities’ may be more accurate) become latitudinarian by default as well as by choice? Politics in the Scottish Parliament largely squeezes out the oxygen necessary for institutional racism to thrive, drawing as it does on an older pedigree of talking about national identity in Scotland. Satnam Virdee and colleagues () have called the ‘racialization’ of the political process the touchstone of difference between Scotland and England. The raw materials of racism reflected in people’s attitudes to incomers and ethnic minorities and on-street behaviour always have the potential to ignite under the right conditions, but the political sparks are absent, and the oxygen lacking. Being Scottish is construed as such. National identity matters.
R Anderson, B. . Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Billig, M. . Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publications. Brubaker, R. and Cooper, F. . ‘Beyond “Identity” ’, Theory and Society, /: –. Carman, C., Johns, R., and Mitchell, J. . More Scottish than British: The Scottish Parliament Election. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cohen, A. . Signifying Identities: Anthropological Perspectives on Boundaries and Contested Values. London: Routledge. Curtice, J. and Montagu, I. . ‘Do Scotland and England and Wales have different views about immigration?’. Available at: http://natcen.ac.uk/our-research/research/do-scotlandand-england-wales-have-different-views-about-immigration/. Fox, J.E. and Miller-Idriss, C. . ‘Everyday Nationhood’, Ethnicities, /: –. Gellner, E. . Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hobsbawm, E. . ‘Some Reflections on “The Break-Up of Britain” ’, New Left Review, /September–October: –. Hussain, A. and Miller, W. . Multicultural Nationalism: Islamophobia, Anglophobia, and Devolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kidd, C. . Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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McCrone, D. . The New Sociology of Scotland. London: Sage Publications, . McCrone, D. . ‘Explaining Brexit North and South of the Border’. Scottish Affairs, /: –. McCrone, D. and Bechhofer, F. . Understanding National Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miller, D. . On Nationality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Morton, G. . Unionist Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, –. Edinburgh: Tuckwell Press. Nairn, T. . The Break-Up of Britain. London: Verso. Paterson, L. . The Autonomy of Modern Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Reicher, S., McCrone, D., and Hopkins, N. . ‘A Strong, Fair and Inclusive National Identity’: A Viewpoint on the Scottish Government’s Outcome , Equality and Human Rights Commission Research Report . Available at: http://www. equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/research/national_identity_viewpoint_research_ report_.pdf, accessed May . Smith, A. . National Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Smout, T.C. . ‘Perspectives on the Scottish Identity’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Virdee, S., Kyriakides, C., and Modood, T. . ‘Codes of Cultural Belonging: Racialised National Identities in a Multi-Ethnic Scottish Neighbourhood’, Sociological Research Online, /. Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/./sro., accessed May .
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.................................................................................................................................. T ‘united kingdom of Great Britain’, forged in , was originally, and fundamentally, a bargain, concerned less with universal truths or aspirations or future possibilities, than with immediate commercial and military realities.¹ The union was about pragmatism, necessity, and hybridity, the delicate negotiation of Scottish—together with English and Welsh (and later Irish) identities—into new political and cultural formations. Whilst the attendant compromises ultimately illuminate some of the union’s weaknesses, they also go a long way to explaining its relative successes and longevity. The modern United Kingdom was created through the unions of (on the one hand) England, Wales, and Scotland in , and (on the other) Great Britain and Ireland in . There were differences between these two contracts, but each was rooted in the economic and military concerns of the day. Each was overwhelmingly concerned with the intricate details of trading relationships. Neither union was the fruit of protracted, still less popular, campaigning. Neither union embodied any wide or mature consideration of future possibilities. Whilst each (and particularly the Scots) had a lengthy prehistory, the two unions were swiftly (if shrewdly) formulated responses to immediate crises. Each, however, requires comparison and contextualization—both in temporal and spatial terms—whether within wider imperial and European diplomatic and economic horizons, or in relation to each other. The history of the Scots and Irish unions was in
¹ Some of the themes in this chapter are explored in greater length in my Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland and the Survival of the United Kingdom, –, paperback edition (Oxford, ). Other themes are drawn from my ongoing comparative research on multinational union states. I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for its support of this work through the award of a Major Research Fellowship.
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fact deeply interconnected, with Irish parliamentarians of the s identifying with Scottish patriotic grievances and with the aspiration of union as a possible corrective. Similarly, the Scots union of , and its attendant debates, supplied templates for the disputes over an Irish union in —as well as for the resultant measures, British and Irish, promulgated in . Leading Scots unionists, such as Henry Dundas or Lord Loughborough, were decisive influences over the shape of Ireland’s union. Each union also needs to be placed within a wider pattern of early modern composite monarchies as well as nineteenth century ‘united kingdoms’. However, taken in the round, work which links the survival and fate of Great Britain and the United Kingdom to the wider experience of union states is still very thin on the ground. As John Robertson has said, ‘the belief that the British problem was exceptional and that its solution, a negotiated union, was unique, can no longer be sustained’. But in fact insular approaches to the problem of union remain very deeply embedded within the historiography of Scotland and indeed the wider United Kingdom (Mackillop and Ó Siochrú : ). There have been notable exceptions to this insular rule, however. Some early modern historians have (partly in the light of the connections forged through the European Union) begun to look at Scotland (and Ireland) in the contexts supplied by continental Europe. Underlying much of the early modern literature on comparative ‘unions’ is Sir John Elliott’s influential taxonomy of the composite monarchies of the period (Elliott , ). Some—like Andrew Mackillop and Michéal Ó Siochrú—have used Elliott’s work to pioneer the comparative study of the creation of Great Britain in : Mackillop and Ó Siochrú () have assessed this epiphany by looking at the wider phenomenon of the extinction of small representative assemblies across contemporary Europe, and the formation of a recognizably modern pattern of states on the basis of ‘the composite, conglomerate, or multiple monarchy’. As a result of this endeavour, Scotland’s experience appears to chime with that of other small polities, except (perhaps) in so far as the demise of its parliament was the product of a sustained negotiation between ostensible co-equals rather than a crude imposition (Mackillop and Ó Siochrú : ). This work rightly emphasizes the notion of unions as processes rather than as discrete events, and highlights, too, the central role of the nobility in both delivering and moulding union—invoking comparisons between the ‘indigenous brokers’ of greater Austrian-Hungarian unity in the eighteenth century and Scots magnates like John Campbell, second duke of Argyll (–), or James Douglas, second duke of Queensberry (–) (Mackillop and Ó Siochrú : , ). Turning from continental to chronological contexts and analogies, union between Scotland and England was variously prefigured and envisioned in the seventeenth century as a shared religious and imperial enterprise (by King James VI and I), a holy Presbyterian confederation (the Scots Covenanters of the s), an English political and military ascendancy (Oliver Cromwell), and as a loose, or confederal parliamentary structure (Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun). The idea of the British union as a spiritual and material partnership was essentially a Scots (rather than an English)
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invention, however, with successive sixteenth-century Caledonian thinkers, from James Henrisoun (d. ca. ), and Thomas Craig (–) to David Hume of Godscroft (–) positing the idea of a shared and equal enterprise—and one in which Scots interests might effectively be sustained (Sanford Terry ; Brown ; Szechi ). A critical motivation for the elaboration of Jacobean unionism was of course the elevation of James VI of Scotland to the English throne and the creation (in ) of the British composite monarchy, or ‘union of the crowns’. Whilst a variety of religious and historical images informed his outlook, James cast himself as a new Constantine the Great, uniting his (British) empire in his person whilst propagating one reformed Christian faith. James, however, was distinctive in the passion and vitality of his unionism: subsequent Stuart monarchs (even Charles I, born in Dunfermline) were less actively interested or enthusiastic. Moreover, whether in or , the idea of a union partnership was looked upon with scepticism by many English parliamentarians, on the grounds that, as the richer and stronger power, more sacrifice would be required from them than from the Scots. Whilst, in the early seventeenth century, and through the Solemn League and Covenant of , pious Scots wondered whether a shared Britain might be providentially ordained for the purpose of delivering a universal Presbyterianism, English parliamentarians feared for their markets and English antiquarians celebrated the distinctive (Anglo-Saxon) origins of their own nation (Brown : –; Kidd : , ). One militant English definition of union was supplied by Oliver Cromwell after , when Scotland and Ireland were effectively incorporated into what was seen as ‘an English empire’ (Brown : ). For their part Scots political thinkers, such as Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, continued into the late seventeenth century to hold onto the possibility of a confederal union (Scott : ). By the end of the seventeenth century, therefore, there were at least three competing—religio-imperial, English or accessory and confederal—definitions of union. And whilst none of these individually or wholly supplied a precedent for the parliamentary union of , it is hard to deny that Scottish susceptibility to a unifying British project as well as profound English scepticism and the Cromwellian notion of a greater England were all significant and long-standing influences.
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.................................................................................................................................. Given the initial strength of opposition—negotiations for a parliamentary union foundered in – in the wake of English resistance to Scottish terms—and the ultimately quiet diminuendo to the Scots parliament in –, much learned effort has been expended in seeking to understand why the union was successfully attained. Popular narratives in Scotland, as with the Irish union, have tended to focus upon the allegation of corruption; but on the whole historians and political scientists have returned to endorse the motives which contemporaries themselves identified as central.
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Two of the most conspicuous of these contemporary reflections were provided by the earls of Seafield and Roxburgh. Seafield explained that his: reasons for conjoining with England on good termes were these: that the kingdome of England is a Protestant kingdome and that, therefor, the joyneing with them was a security for our religion. nd, England has trade and other advantages to give us, which no other kingdome could affoord; rd, England has freedome and liberty, and that the joining with it was the best way to secure that to us; and th, that I saw no other method for secureing our peace, the two kingdomes being in the same island, and forreign assistance was both dangerous to ourselves and England and that, therefor, I was for a treatty.
Roxburgh provided a famously more pithy insight, which has on the whole been endorsed by recent research into the voting records of the last Scots parliament: ‘the motives will be, trade with most, Hanover with some, ease and security with others’ (Hume Brown : ; McLean and McMillan ). Taking each of Roxburgh’s explanations in turn, the state of the Scottish economy and trade in the immediate prelude to union was parlous. Whilst there has been an understandable patriotic emphasis on the positive features of the pre-union Scottish economy in much of the recent historiography, and whilst there is evidence of courage, entrepreneurship, and some economic advance in the decades before Union, Scotland in was indisputably in turmoil. The harvest failures of – brought famine, starvation, and disease, together with enhanced migration—with the consequence that the Scots population may have fallen by around per cent between the Revolution and the renewal of the debate on union (Rossner ; Cullen ). This agricultural disaster had a manifold significance. The London parliament, dealing with a paler version of the crisis in England, banned the export of grain in , including grain destined for the relief of the Scots. This evident disregard (together with later and unflattering evidence of Westminster’s priorities) fed into Scots resentments, but it also underpinned a renewed interest in a commercial or trade union. It is striking that the Scots famine of the s simultaneously exacerbated patriotic anger, whilst undermining confidence in the existing constitutional settlement, and stimulating support for ‘ane union of traid’ (Devine ; Cullen ). If Scots agriculture was in a desperate condition, then the nation’s trade (allowing for the evidence of earlier growth and entrepreneurship) was also suffering in the s. In the English and the Scots had acquired not only a new king, but also his conflict with France. The course of this—the Nine Years War or War of the Grand Alliance— dominated the politics of the s, creating tensions within the Anglo–Scots relationship, and disrupting Scotland’s commerce with continental Europe. Trade with France was now of course illegal, and those suspected of dealing with the enemy were likely to have their vessels and cargo impounded by the Royal Navy: the war brought the ever more intrusive presence of English naval vessels in Scottish waters. Scotland’s trade had long been curtailed both by the English Navigation Act of , and the related Staple Act of , which essentially sought to restrict England’s
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trade to English vessels. Though there were wheezes and dodges through which this legislation could be circumvented, on the whole it constrained Scots’ access to England’s colonial markets, and thus represented a brake upon Scots commercial growth. There was, however, a radical and ambitious means of addressing exclusion from the trade of England’s colonies—and this was to create a separate Scots colonial trade by creating a separate Scots trading empire. This goal lay behind the creation, in , of the Company of Scotland (or, more fully, the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies); and one of its key objectives was to resurrect Scotland’s economy and national dignity by establishing a Scots colony at Darien, on the isthmus of Panama in central America. It has been sometimes said that the calamitous Darien Scheme ‘was not quite as wild as it is usually made out to be’, or that ‘it cannot be viewed simply as a catastrophic eccentricity’ (Ferguson : ). It has also been argued forcefully that Darien ‘has to be seen not as an isolated and over-ambitious adventure, but as an integral part of a general drive to the west’ (Devine : ). It is certainly the case that Darien illustrates with brutal clarity the parlous condition of the Anglo–Scots relationship, and indeed of the Scots economy. The hapless adventurers who headed off in – to central America under the sponsorship of the Company of Scotland were woefully under-resourced and under-prepared; and by the summer of the first desertions from the colony came, presaging its wider collapse. By the early summer of ‘the Company was basically moribund in financial terms’ (Watt : –). Darien was ‘the final straw’ in Scotland’s economic ill-fortune at the end of the seventeenth century—and indeed the fact that a total of thirteen vessels and their unimpressive cargoes represented perhaps one-quarter of the available capital of Scotland says much about (the limits of) contemporary Scots wealth and liquidity (Whatley : ). The affair also says much about the Anglo–Scots relationship: Scots wanted, and expected, the united monarchy to work for them; but in reality their concerns were regularly overwhelmed by English commercial and military interests. From the Commonwealth until the s the united monarchy triumphantly served England’s needs—in so far as it delivered both a largely quiescent and subjugated Scotland and stable borderlands, and ensured Scots military support for England’s many wars. Investment in Darien, and the prospect of compensation from London for the attendant losses, did not (it has now been established) directly influence votes for union in the Scottish parliament of – (McLean and McMillan ). But, given that Scotland and England’s king had had to choose between Scottish and English interests, Darien underscored a lesson in the realpolitik of the regal union that should, perhaps, have been learned by the Scots many decades before (Levack : ). But contemporaries emphasized not only the issues arising from Scotland’s economy and trade: there was also a range of critical matters broached by the renewal of war in . The War of the Spanish Succession was in some senses a revival of the conflict of –, with many of the same combatants, and the same allied ambition to constrain the territorial ambition of Louis XIV’s France. It has been said that the War of the Spanish Succession ‘was also the war of the English succession’, in so far as any
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decisive defeat for William or Anne’s forces on the continent would in all likelihood have undermined the newly determined () Hanoverian succession, and augmented the chances of a second Stuart restoration (Ferguson : ). The war underpinned a general English desire to copper-fasten the future of the monarchy, and also (more patchily or inconsistently) a desire to secure Scotland through a revised union. The war, therefore, created constitutional uncertainty—just as a century later, in the s, the victories of the French augmented republicanism as well as political instability in Ireland. The debate on union in Scotland was played out against the backdrop of this European conflict. The implications for the Scots were complex, but clearly discernible. This was a war which brought higher taxation, and the further disruption of Scotland’s already ailing trade networks (not least through the English parliament’s Alien Act of ). It was also a conflict which underlined the effectively secondary condition of the formally co-equal Scots parliament, in so far as the decision to go to war was taken without consultation in London, and only later rubber-stamped in Edinburgh. War, in other words, vindicated the arguments against the union of the crowns, and (at the very least) for a revisiting of the commercial relationships between Scotland and England (Levack : , ). If the European war served to underline the limitations of the regal union, to encourage Scots’ thoughts of a commercial union, and to reconnect some Scots to the British Protestant project, then the instability which it generated finally encouraged greater English interest in union. The successive monarchs, William (r. –) and Anne (r. –), were supportive of union, and indeed Anne’s commitment was one of the relatively few constants throughout the debates on the issue. There were also unionist influences among, or connected to, Anne’s ministers: those chiefly concerned with prosecuting the war tended to be unionist. The Whig and moderate Tory interest tended to be more sympathetic to the military campaign, and to union, than the high Tories, who were less interested in war and union. But these were, admittedly, no more than tendencies. Older antipathies to union died hard, English interest in – (when the issue was first discussed in commission) was cool, and the overall standing of union in the years to was relatively uncertain, caught as it was in the intricacies of parliamentary power-play. The determinism of older interpretations has now rightly been replaced by emphases on fluidity and contingency: as William Ferguson has argued, attitudes ‘varied as expedience dictated, and were not determined by conviction of the merits or demerits of union, but by tactical considerations’ (Ferguson : ; Riley ). Were the members of the last Scottish parliament hopelessly venal in finally embracing union in ? Traditionally popular readings of both the Scots and Irish unions have emphasized the themes of corruption and venality (‘bought and sold for English gold’ in Robert Burns’ well-known formulation). Historians and political scientists now argue that few of the Scots parliamentarians (only perhaps nineteen) moved from opposing to supporting union; and the evidence suggests that (whilst there was certainly very little accountability) any English cash distributed was for broadly
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legitimate purposes. The honours system was of course lavishly deployed as an instrument of government and of Union in the run-up to (as it has been ever since); although titles tended, conventionally, to be rewards for the loyal rather than the currency of vote-gathering (McLean and McMillan : ; Jackson : –). The union passed then, not because of overt venality, but rather because the patriots of the Scottish parliament were subject, after , to sterner and more vigorous political management than hitherto (Hume Brown : ). In addition, as will be seen, the Scots were now getting more of what they wanted from the deal: the first attempts at union had misfired largely because the English would not deliver compensation for Darien, and this recalcitrance stoked those Scottish national resentments and sensitivities which were never far below the surface even of active unionists. It was in fact this national pride which helped to deliver both the treaty of (in so far as it compelled an increase in the price that the English were willing to pay for Scots co-operation) and the patriotic unionism which helped to ensure its long-term survival. As William Law Mathieson wrote in , ‘the real power of Scottish nationality . . . is seen most conspicuously in the apparent paradox that a sentiment, which had proved its efficacy as a motive of separation was to be equally efficacious as an incentive to union’ (Mathieson : ).
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.................................................................................................................................. Whilst issues of management and corruption have dominated the popular perspective on union, both in Scotland (and also, later, in Ireland), the architecture of the two measures was also carefully crafted with a view to delivering and sustaining support. Debate on the unions has tended to be interpreted patriotically and retrospectively as a zero-sum game; but of course it mattered to contemporaries (and has continued to matter) not only whether a union was in place, but also what type of union emerged. It is all too easy to forget that in some of the most advanced Scots parliamentary opponents of English policy in fact supported the notion of a ‘federative’ (as opposed to a parliamentary) union, just as in the most trenchant Irish opponents of union often wanted both to retain and eat their constitutional cake by maintaining legislative independence as well as a strong connection to the British Crown and its ministers. The practice of union was therefore as important as its principle (in some respects rather more so) and the shape and content of the union measures in and in were of course vital to contemporaries, and vital, too, in influencing the fate of union in these islands. The acts of union achieved in and were in practice (as opposed to the theory of the treaties and legislation) not so much about the union of parliaments, as about the incorporation of the Scots and Irish legislatures within those of England and Great Britain. Not only did Scots have to abandon the traditions of their -year-old parliament, and adapt to English parliamentary cultures, they also had to accept a
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highly exiguous presence in the new union legislature. In , Scots representation was reduced from the members, nobles, shire, and burgh representatives who served in the old Edinburgh parliament to a mere sixteen peers and forty-five MPs (out of a total of ) at Westminster. These proportions followed a formula based upon the relative taxable capacity of England and Scotland (thirty-eight to one), rather than population (five to one), but generated accusations then (and later) that Scotland had been disfranchised. Indeed, given that current wealth was not the principle governing the distribution of seats in the unreformed Commons of , and that some relatively poor areas of England were exceptionally well represented, these accusations had some force. Each union passed because each carefully addressed, whether in presentation or substance, the concerns of key existing interests, and this has given rise to the charge that, whatever their ostensible novelty or radicalism, the unions were fundamentally ‘reactionary’ enterprises. William Ferguson has expressed this point (in relation to Scotland) with characteristic directness: ‘in many respects the Treaty and Act of Union of was demonstrably a triumph of reaction, granting as it did a fresh lease of life to the sinister heritable jurisdictions and oppressive feudal superiorities in Scotland. In the making of the Treaty of Union in the ‘meaner sort’ were not considered’ (Ferguson : ). Heritable jurisdictions, the traditional rights of legal jurisdiction exercised by some landowners and clan chiefs, were explicitly protected by the Scots union, and survived until (clause ). The rights of the royal boroughs were protected (clause ). The claims of the many creditors of the Company of Scotland were explicitly recognized with the definition of a compensation mechanism termed ‘the Equivalent’ (clause ). The rights and interests of the increasingly powerful Scots legal community were effectively underwritten by the continuity of Scots law (particularly relating to private right) and the Scots judiciary (clauses and ). It need hardly be said that Ferguson’s astringent view of the Scots union is mirrored in popular Irish nationalist readings of the Union of . Established or vested interests included, pre-eminently, the Church (Hoppit : ). In , Mathieson argued that ‘the Irish and Scottish Churches were treated alike—both were to have been excluded from the Union, and both insisted that their continuance should be made a positive condition’ (Mathieson : ). But in fact the Crown’s varied handling of this critical issue highlights a classic distinction between the success of the two unions. In Scotland, the Kirk was originally an opponent of union (‘if the Union fail, it is owing to them’, wrote the Earl of Mar of the Kirk), until its established status and Presbyterian government were guaranteed by an act of parliament, which was passed alongside the union itself (Hume Brown : n; Szechi : ). The ‘Act for the Security of the Protestant Religion and the Government of the Church’ () promoted by William Carstares, William III’s chaplain and Principal of the University of Edinburgh, effectively silenced, if it did not remove, opposition to union within the Church. In essence, the Church of Scotland was one of the key interest groups which was successfully squared in the prelude to the enactment of the Scots union. But, whilst the Crown dealt well (in this instance) with the sensitivities of the
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Kirk, and whilst this provided the foundations on which the Kirk would be successfully accommodated within the institutions of the British state, including (by the nineteenth century) the monarchy, it handled the challenge of other majority faiths with much less dexterity (Stephen ). The success of union in , and afterwards, owed much to Carstares and his ‘Act for the Security of the Protestant Religion’. In Ireland, the central architects of union in —William Pitt, Henry Dundas, Viscount Castlereagh (all of whom, but in particular the Scot, Dundas, were influenced by their readings of )—sought a related accommodation between the new United Kingdom state and the predominant faith community in Ireland, the Catholics. Dundas had a long history of commitment to the easing of Catholic legal disabilities in Scotland, and was keen to combine what was now becoming known as ‘Catholic emancipation’ and union. In Scotland, the support of the Kirk for union had been an essential stabilizing force; and it was expected that interlinking Catholic interests and union would promote a similar constitutional stability in Ireland. But, in the event, union entered the statute books in , not (as in Scotland) as part of a complex and controversial but basically honest deal with a range of interest groups, including the Kirk, but instead on the back of popular Catholic disappointment and betrayal (Rafferty : ). Presbyterians in Scotland had the dominance and government of their Kirk confirmed and protected; Irish Catholics were simultaneously denied emancipation (partly at the hands of a Scot, the lord chancellor, Lord Loughborough), and presented with an augmented Protestant religious establishment (Brown ). As in Scotland, so in Ireland a central concern of union was with the creation of a free trade area within the British Isles: as in Scotland, so in Ireland a substantial element in each union measure was devoted to the issue of cushioning the commercial and industrial impact of union through assigning timetables or relief on taxation. However, unlike Scotland and England in , full fiscal union between Britain and Ireland was delayed for over twenty years after in order to allow a lengthy period of adjustment (the dangerously swift fiscal incorporation of Scotland may well have provided lessons for the architects of Union in ). Where the English and Scottish exchequers were aligned by legislation in , the Irish and British exchequers were only united in , and protective tariffs on a range of Irish manufactures were only finally removed in . Essentially, though, the taxation regimes in Scotland and Ireland were to be reconciled, through union, with the rest of the kingdom. In Scotland, compensation for higher burdens of taxation was provided through the ‘Equivalent’ which went mostly to the shareholders and creditors of the Company of Scotland. In Ireland, the imposition of union meant higher taxation and also the acquisition of twoseventeenths of the new United Kingdom’s huge (and rising) burden of debt. But there was no compensatory ‘Equivalent’, unless a comparison is sought (as well it might be) between this and the compensation doled out to the borough owners of the defunct Irish parliament. It has been argued eloquently that the Scots effectively paid for their own compensation, the Equivalent, through raised taxes: it might equally be argued that the Irish effectively paid for the compensation of others, the landed interest,
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through raised taxes (MacInnes ). But the subsequent industrial and commercial growth of Scotland meant that these impositions appeared much less painful than in Ireland, where the Great Famine occupied the place of the Industrial Revolution: and in Scotland there was no sustained complaint about over-taxation such as characterized the British–Irish relationship for most of the nineteenth century, and certainly after the s.
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.................................................................................................................................. How and why did the union of work? The question of the ‘success’ of the Scottish (and Irish) unions is rather less clear cut than for most of the other union polities forged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: after all, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands came to grief in , the united province of Canada effectively foundered in , Sweden–Norway followed in , whilst the Grand Duchy of Finland and Austria–Hungary dissolved in and respectively. For its part the British state was rocked by serious revolt in and particularly in – when Stuart legitimists sought to reclaim the throne lost to them in : these two Jacobite revolts drew upon anti-union sentiment, and, certainly in the case of , rocked the Hanoverian establishment to its foundations. In Ireland, the union state was challenged in , , and through the revolutionaries of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the not-so-revolutionary but trenchant parliamentary action of the Home Rulers at Westminster. British rule in the twenty-six southern counties of Ireland was eventually ended in , though the extent of the failure was masked by the (almost) theological intricacies of ‘dominion’ status and by the divisions within the separatist camp over the details of independence, and in particular the absence of the desired republic. On the other hand, Great Britain and a truncated United Kingdom are (for the moment) still with us, albeit in an obviously shaky condition; and any political configuration which survives for over years (as in the case of Great Britain) has to be credited with some measure of ‘success’ or, at the very least, resilience. The compromises and bargains embodied in both the Scots and Irish unions had a lasting importance; and on the whole these—together with the different content of the two measures—illuminate their subsequent and divergent fates. From the beginning the relationship of Scotland (and Ireland) towards the union hinged upon perceptions of local or national justice, or even advantage (as indeed was true for other union polities in nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe). But, if the Scottish and Irish unions were fundamentally about local commercial prosperity and England’s military security, then they were simultaneously vulnerable to economic downturn, to the revised calculation of English interests, or to the perception of inequity. Each, of course, was an incomplete or imperfect union. The Scots and Irish parliaments were dissolved, a common Protestant monarchy guaranteed, and tariff
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regimes were (eventually, in the case of Ireland) reconciled. But separate Scots and Irish judiciaries remained, as did the Scots system of private law, derived from Roman roots (Irish practice followed English common law precedents). The argument is sometimes made in Scotland that the incompleteness of the union made (paradoxically) for its success and survival, since Scots had local focuses for their patriotism, whilst being able to retain participation in the union state (Morton ; McLean and McMillan ). These focuses included not just the Scottish institutions which survived union, but also the vibrant associational culture which flourished in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This combination of (what might be deemed) a vestigial Scottish state together with a patriotically charged civil society helped to reconcile Scots to the union, and to compensate for the partial disfranchisement which had occurred in . The argument needs to be modified in an Irish context. The incompleteness of the Irish union arose partly because of the compromises between the old Ascendancy elite, which had dominated the Irish parliament, and the new United Kingdom state: the relics of Irish autonomy which survived tended, therefore, to be the preserve of the Ascendancy interest. For example, the separate Irish administration, centred on Dublin Castle, and the separate judiciary, focused on the Four Courts, were generally peopled by members of the Ascendancy, or their sympathizers (Campbell ). So, unlike in Scotland, the incompleteness of union ultimately militated against its survival in Ireland—for the survival of Irish institutions tended to mean the survival of Ascendancy institutions. They were also, structurally, different forms of union. The Scots union preserved Scottish institutions at the cost, initially, of administrative incorporation: the Irish union preserved Irish institutions at the cost of some administrative decentralization. After , and particularly with the abolition of the Scottish privy council, it has been observed that ‘there was not much of an executive centre in Scotland’ (Innes : ; McDowell ). Until the s, and fleetingly in the s, there was a Londonbased Secretary of State for Scotland: but, as Joanna Innes (: ) has remarked, ‘this office never amounted to much’. From until Scotland was administered through the Home Department and the Secretary of State for Home Affairs in London whereas between and Ireland was overseen through an Irish Office, a Chief Secretary for Ireland, and a Lord Lieutenant. Where the Scottish privy council was swiftly axed, the Irish privy council survived until , and indeed enjoyed a form of afterlife in the shape of the privy council of Northern Ireland (Gray : –). London was the administrative focal point for Scottish affairs until the governance reforms of the s and s, and the creation of St. Andrew’s House: Dublin, and in particular Dublin Castle, were the administrative focuses of British rule in Ireland. But here again the survival of distinctively Irish forms of rule and administration served, not as a safety valve for patriotic resentments, but often rather as catalysts to this separatist ardour. For here, too, were institutions which were in the hands, not of Irish Catholics, but rather Irish Protestants, or (worse) Englishmen. No Irish Catholic, and only one English Catholic (Viscount Fitzalan, at the very end of the union) held the Lord Lieutenancy: no Catholic, Irish or otherwise,
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held the Chief Secretaryship in the same period (O’Brien : ). Once again, therefore, distinctive Irish institutions which might have worked to ease the shock of Union were continuously in the hands of the ‘enemy’ (McDowell ; Gray ). Nevertheless, the critical distinction between the two unions was not simply one of inclusivity. Both unions were in fact exclusive in particular ways, for both primarily addressed the needs of existing vested interests in their respective societies. The distinction between the unions arose rather from the fact that the Scots combined social and economic exclusivity with a degree of spiritual and confessional embrace. The Scots union, from the start, was tied to the faith of the people (McCarthy : ). Turning briefly to the economic history of union, its short-term impact on the Scots was on balance detrimental, with improvements in some trades (black cattle, grain) offset by generally heavier taxation and competition. But, critically, from the mideighteenth century onwards there was a massive surge towards industrialization and urban growth, focused primarily (but by no means exclusively) in the Central Belt and in Fife. In explaining this dramatic expansion Tom Devine has emphasized Scotland’s long traditions of developing overseas (as opposed to British and domestic) markets, the benefits of geology and geography (large-scale coal and metal ore deposits), the availability of capital, a skilled and mobile labour force (for long acclimatized to economic migration), as well as a high standard of entrepreneurship. In Devine’s influential characterization, union was helpful and catalytic, but certainly not the whole story. Newly eased access to colonial markets (through union) unquestionably bolstered the developing re-export trades in tobacco and sugar, which were focused on Glasgow, and which also necessitated the development of new financial institutions, procedures and techniques in that city (Devine ). The union delivered military and naval protection for Scots trade (in the shape of the new standing armies and the Royal Navy); and it made the spread and transfer of capital and technological innovation from the South easier than hitherto. But it did not create Scotland’s international trading connections: nor did it create Scotland’s transatlantic commerce, or Scottish entrepreneurial zeal, still less endow North Lanarkshire with ironstone, or Ayrshire and the Lothians with coal streams. Moreover, as in Ireland, there was a real danger that a combination of union and the different histories of economic development in England and Scotland would have had blighting consequences for the latter (Devine : ). In fact it is clear that a turning point in the British–Irish Union occurred with the catastrophic Famine of –, when the Union state showed itself unable (or, in some arguments, unwilling) to rescue the lives and welfare of its Irish citizens. Equally, the security of the Anglo–Scots Union could become shaky at times of economic downturn or in the context of perceived inequality. Opposition to Union remained entrenched throughout most of the first half of the eighteenth century, when the economic costs of union (for example, enhanced taxation) were not yet clearly offset by the benefits—and this fed into Jacobite insurgency in and . In the mid-s, Scottish home rule was born partly from the perception that Irish needs were commanding more attention and expenditure than those of Scotland—just as
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national movements within other union polities (Austria–Hungary, the Netherlands) derived support and strength from the perception that (regardless of overall economic health) rival constituent nations were being relatively advantaged. Indeed, no crude correlation can be readily sustained: the relationship between union and the economy was ultimately and intricately dependent upon the vagaries of context—of chronology, national perception, and the relativities between the component polities of the union state. At the same time, however, union became part of the metanarrative of Scotland’s success, rather than an explanation for subjugation and failure. Indeed, from the Victorian perspective, Scotland’s economic efflorescence looked as if it was wholly founded upon union; and to some extent the subsequent economic health (or otherwise) of the nation has played a role in determining the balance of support for the Union, as against the range of alternatives. Equally, from the Victorian perspective, eastern Ulster’s economic growth looked as if it was wholly founded upon Union; and the disaster of the Great Famine (–) played a decisive role in determining the spread of militant opposition to the connection with Britain. Other explanations for the survival (and vulnerability) of union are commonly identified but—certainly taken crudely, or in isolation—are problematic. Scotland’s connection with England’s, later the British, empire was largely achieved by union, and opened the way to a disproportionate Scots administrative, economic, and military engagement throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this way the union was linked to a shared English and Scots imperial project, and indeed to an imperial definition of Britishness. The corollary has been (in some arguments) that the advent of decolonization, especially in the post-war era, has necessarily brought Scots disengagement from union. Whilst there is an appealing symmetry to this proposition, the evidence suggests that Scots adherence to the union and indeed to unionism remained strong even when the tide of decolonization was flowing most fiercely—in the s: Scottish support for Conservatism and Unionism (the party was thoroughly engaged with the decolonization project) peaked in , when the Scots Tories achieved (just) a majority of the total ballot, their highest ever proportion of the vote (Nairn , , ). Equally, secularization has been seen as a subversion of union. The Church of Scotland’s sanction of union was important to its passage in –, and—given that Scottish Presbyterianism and unionism swiftly became interconnected, with the Kirk central to the union establishment—the corollary has logically seemed to be that the retreat of the Kirk in the second half of the twentieth century has been intimately connected with the retreat of union. The argument has some force, especially in terms of the interlinkages between the Kirk and Scottish Toryism; but perhaps the key agent of unionism in Scotland in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, has been the Labour party, one of whose historic achievements has been to bind together at least sections of the Catholic and Presbyterian working classes within the one political enterprise (see Chapter in this Handbook). If the decline of union is in fact linked with secularization, then the chronologies of each are clearly not in
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harmony; and this decline is also linked with the reorientation of Catholic voters in the west of Scotland away from the unionism of Labour towards the civic nationalism of the SNP (Devine ). In short, predictions of the fall of union based on monocausal explanations remain unpersuasive, not least because the success of union cannot be explained monocausally. The union survived because of a very broad and complex array of forces, relationships, and institutions, and it has been stalling at the beginning of the twenty-first century partly because these individual forces, relationships, and institutions have all been failing simultaneously. The end of empire has certainly removed one of the motor forces of British identity, and weakened the union accordingly (though not in itself irretrievably). Secularization, and especially the rapid retreat of the Kirk and its influence, may also have helped to weaken union—though, again, not irretrievably. Similarly the end of British global economic ascendancy in the nineteenth century, and the final collapse of Scotland’s Victorian industrial infrastructure in the inter-war years, threatened, but did not overturn, union. War has long been seen as a foundation of Britishness and, by extension, union, particularly in the key work of Linda Colley (), and served as such in – and –; but more recent conflicts, in particular the Iraq and Afghan wars, have tended in fact to underline the chasm between Scottish public opinion and the union state. Indeed, the army, for long a link between Scottish patriotism and the union state, has also effectively served to alienate Scots: the amalgamation or disbanding of historic Scottish regiments from the s has been a severe affront to Scots patriotism. The monarchy, also a key binding agent within the Union, has seemed at times like a relentless tragi-comedy: a younger generation of royals (unlike Queen Victoria or Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother or Queen Elizabeth I and II) appear far removed from the concerns of the Scots and Scotland, although the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge may have succeeded in, at least temporarily, relaunching the royal brand (Finlay , ). The integration of Scotland within Westminster, and the effective representation of Scots interests in London, for so long a lubricant of union, appeared to falter during the long years of Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher (–) and John Major (–). Devolution, installed by the Labour government in , has also critically affected the ways in which Scottish national feeling is mediated within the union: the creation of a Scottish parliament has provided a key focus for patriotism far removed from the British state, whilst (arguably) overstretching the political and intellectual resources of the Scottish Labour movement, historically (as has been seen) one of the great bulwarks of union. The concentration of Scots within the Gordon Brown government may therefore have represented a threat to the union, because it denuded Labour benches at Holyrood of unionist talent, and provoked mild (but telling) Scotophobia amongst some English observers. In general, however, the Anglo–Scots union has been a hardy organism. It has thrived on the strength of a great range of relationships and institutions, spreading its roots and its liabilities widely and intricately. It has, in its time, successfully attached
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Scottish patriotism to the broader British and union cause. It has provided a framework within which an effective and lasting British identity has emerged. The union has survived individual blows of devastating proportions: epically bloody wars, economic freefall, the dissolution of empire. This survival and longevity is ultimately to be explained by the diversity of its support. The union can, and has been able to, ride out the individual failure of any of these forces and institutions; but it is the combination of failures that has caused its crisis at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Moreover, if the integrity of Britishness has been comprehensively challenged in these ways, then it has also been affected by the retreat, since the s, of the British state. Reductions in the number of United Kingdom civil servants, the liquidation of nationalized ‘British’ industries and services, and the paring back and diversification of national health and welfare provision, have all been sanctioned by radical reformers, who have simultaneously underlined their devotion to the United Kingdom. Some, in addition, have sought to argue for one supranational union whilst repudiating another—even though in so doing they may have inflicted more damage on the integrity of their United Kingdom than on that of the European Union. But, as Oscar Wilde famously remarked, ‘all men kill the thing they love’.
R Bolton, G.C. . Passing of the Irish Act of Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, K. . Kingdom or Province? Scotland and the Regal Union –. London: Macmillan. Brown, S.J. . The National Churches of England, Ireland and Scotland, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Campbell, F. . The Irish Establishment, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Colley, L. . Britons: Forging the Nation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cullen, K. . Famine in Scotland: The ‘Ill Years’ of the s. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Devine, T.M. . The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and their Trading Activities, –. Edinburgh: John Donald. Devine, T.M. . The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh: John Donald. Devine, T.M. . The Scottish Nation, –. London: Penguin. Devine, T.M. . Independence or Union? Scotland’s Past and Scotland’s Present, paperback edition. London: Penguin. Elliott, J.H. . ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’, Past & Present, : –. Elliott, J.H. . Scots and Catalans: Union and Disunion. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. Ferguson, W. . Scotland’s Relations with England: A Survey to . Edinburgh: John Donald. Finlay, R. . ‘Queen Victoria and the Cult of Scottish Monarchy’, in E.J. Cowan and R.J. Finlay (eds), Scottish History: The Power of the Past. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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Finlay, R. . ‘Scotland and the Monarchy in the Twentieth Century’, in W. Miller (ed.), Anglo-Scottish Relations from to Devolution and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gray, P. . ‘ “Ireland’s Last Fetter Struck Off”: The Lord Lieutenancy Debate, –’, in T. McDonough (ed.), Was Ireland a Colony? Economics, Politics and Culture in Nineteenth Century Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. Hoppit, J. (ed.) . Parliaments, Nations and Identities in Britain and Ireland, –. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hume Brown, P. (ed.) . Letters Relating to Scotland in the Reign of Queen Anne by James Ogilvy, First Earl of Seafield and Others. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society. Innes, J. . ‘Legislating for Three Kingdoms: How the Westminster Parliament Legislated for England, Scotland and Ireland, –’, in J. Hoppit (ed.), Parliaments, Nations and Identities in Britain and Ireland, –. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Jackson, A. . The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland and the Survival of the United Kingdom, –, paperback edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kidd, C. . Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levack, B. . The Formation of the British State, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MacInnes, A. . Union and Empire: The Making of the United Kingdom in . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacKillop, A. and Ó Siochrú, M. (eds) . Forging the State: European State Formation and the Anglo-Scottish Union of . Dundee: Dundee University Press. Mathieson, W.L. . Scotland and the Union, –. Glasgow: James Macleshose & Sons. Mathieson, W.L. . ‘The Scottish and the Irish Union’, in P. Hume Brown (ed.), The Union of : A Survey of Events. Glasgow: George Outram & Co. McCarthy, J. . The Reign of Queen Anne, st edition . London: Chatto & Windus. McDowell, R.B. . The Irish Administration, –. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. McLean, I. and McMillan, A. . State of the Union: Unionism and the Alternatives in the United Kingdom since . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morton, G. . Unionist Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, –. East Linton: Tuckwell Press. Nairn, T. . The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neonationalism. London: New Left Books. Nairn, T. . The Enchanted Glass: Britain and Its Monarchy. London: Radius. Nairn, T. . After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland. London: Granta. O’Brien, R.B. . Dublin Castle and the Irish People. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Rafferty, O. . The Catholic Church and the Protestant State: Nineteenth Century Realities. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Riley, P.W.J. . The Union of England and Scotland. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rossner, P.R. . Scottish Trade in the Wake of Union, –. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Sanford Terry, C. (ed.). . De Unione Regnorum Britanniae Tractatus by Sir Thomas Craig. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society. Scott, P.H. . Andrew Fletcher and the Treaty of Union. Edinburgh: Saltire Society.
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Stephen, J. . Scottish Presbyterians and the Act of Union, . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Szechi, D. (ed.) . Letters of George Lockhart of Carnwath, –. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society. Szechi, D. . George Lockhart of Carnwath, –: A Study in Jacobitism. Edinburgh: Birlinn. Watt, D. . Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations. Edinburgh: Luath Press. Whatley, C. . The Scots and the Union. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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I
.................................................................................................................................. T image of Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon standing on the steps of Bute House with her : Cabinet in (and subsequent : cabinets) provided a powerful image of an apparent breakthrough for women in Scottish politics, and the normalization of equal sharing of executive power. Sturgeon’s rise, though, was not an isolated occurrence. Women have been exercising significant political power since devolution and are, or have been, leaders of almost all the major Scottish parties since the creation of the Scottish Parliament in . In addition, there have been a number of high-profile female ministers—both in the coalition governments of –, and in the SNP minority and majority governments post-. This chapter¹ places this ‘female face’—or equality norm—of Scottish politics within a broader context, asking how much has changed for women in politics postdevolution? To what extent has devolution opened up new opportunities for genderfriendly policy? How important is gender to the study of developments in Scottish politics and the exercise of political power? Scotland offers an interesting laboratory to chart change over time. We now have two decades of devolved politics with which to examine the developments in the descriptive and substantive representation of women. By descriptive representation, we mean the numerical representation of women in politics, whilst substantive representation refers to the representation of women’s (diverse) needs, policy preferences, and political interests in policy development and legislative activities, leading to more equal outcomes. As Keating (Chapter in this Handbook) notes, sustained movements for home rule at the end of the twentieth century massively changed previous perspectives on Scottish ¹ Our thanks to Claire Houghton and Leah McCabe for advice on earlier drafts of the second section; and to editors Michael Keating and Craig McAngus for their feedback.
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politics. The initial campaign for devolution and the more recent Independence Referendum have each provided a critical juncture to engender mainstream debates around political participation, representation, and power. Arguments for a ‘new’ Scottish politics—one that was modern, democratic, and distinct from Westminster ‘politics as usual’—provided space for organized women’s demands for new political institutions, principles, provision, and practices that were more responsive to women’s concerns, more likely to tackle structural discrimination, and in which women could play an equal role (Brown /). We explore these dynamics through several dimensions of representation and power over time, focusing on opportunities for change, but also highlighting underlying continuities and resistances. Drawing on insights from feminist institutionalism (Mackay et al. ; Krook and Mackay ; Kenny ), we argue that reformers—including women’s movement activists—can take advantage of critical junctures presented by constitutional and other change processes to ‘lock in’ elements that promote gender equality and gender justice at the stage of institutional design, guiding young institutions along progressive paths, thus counteracting historic gender bias and gendered power imbalances found in most traditional political institutions. We highlight the ways in which women’s movement actors and allies have been able to ‘re-gender’ Scottish politics with varying degrees of success—in both the descriptive and substantive representation of women—pointing to possibilities for radical change and transformation. However, the process is by no means simple: new institutions like the Scottish Parliament are ‘nested institutions’, in that they are shaped and constrained by the gendered institutional legacies of Westminster, and the wider Scottish political environment (Mackay ). Elements of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ continue to exist in tension in post-devolution Scottish politics, limiting possibilities for innovation, and sometimes blunting or diluting the impact of gender equality reforms. We begin by asking the question of how we got here, arguing that the achievements of the Scottish Parliament on women’s representation and gender equality were not achieved by luck, or by incremental evolution. They were the result of a mass mobilization of an organized and diverse group of women in the run-up to devolution who successfully managed to engender narratives of a ‘new’ Scottish politics. The first section focuses on trends in women’s recruitment, representation, and leadership in Scottish politics over time; the second section examines the substantive representation of women post-devolution, drawing upon the case study of policies to tackle genderbased violence; the third section explores the extent to which institutional blueprints around gender equality or the promotion of a wider ‘new politics’ have been instantiated in practice post-devolution. We focus on institutional politics, and on parliamentary politics in particular, as an important site of representation and change. It is also the focus of the majority of published research in the area (for other dimensions see Engender ). We understand gender as a constitutive element of social relations based upon socially constructed and culturally variable differences between women and men, and as a primary way of signifying (and naturalizing) relationships of power
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and hierarchy (Scott ). Clearly, gender is an issue with relevance across all dimensions of Scottish politics. We conclude by reflecting on the uneven progress for women as political actors and gender as an issue in post-devolution Scottish politics, and consider the likely impact of current constitutional struggles around independence and Brexit for gender, politics, and power in Scotland.
T R R
.................................................................................................................................. On the day of the opening of the Scottish Parliament . . . nothing could have prepared me for the moment when the procession of MSPs and others who had marched up the High Street to the sound of pipe bands reached the parliament building. The doors burst open and in came the first cohort of MSPs. Suddenly the result of all the work and campaigning was evident as a sea of colour entered the chamber and the first women to be elected to the Scottish Parliament proudly took their seats. (Brown : )²
The run-up to devolution was a critical juncture that significantly shaped trends in gender, politics, and power in Scotland. Of the MSPs elected to the Scottish Parliament for the first time in , forty-eight were women (. per cent). This ‘gender coup’ was all the more dramatic in that both Scotland and the rest of the UK at this point had a relatively poor record with regards to women’s descriptive representation. Indeed, to put these results in context, on May , Holyrood elected more women in one day than had been elected to represent Scotland in the House of Commons since when women were first eligible to become MPs. Before devolution and the first elections to the Scottish Parliament in , women’s movement activists and party women (grass-roots activists, party office-holders, aspirant candidates, and elected politicians) in Scotland mobilized around their feminist and gender identities—sometimes across other significant social divisions and identity claims—in order to insert their gendered claims for inclusion into the constitutional reform process. A broad-based and pluralistic coalition of women’s organizations and activists explicitly campaigned for equal political representation under the banner of : (Brown /; Breitenbach and Mackay ; Russell et al. ). The equal representation of women and men was a key galvanizing claim but it was part of a broader set of demands around more open and inclusive politics and policy making, and improvements in women’s substantive representation. ² Academic and activist, Alice Brown was a key ‘architect’ of devolution, including serving on the Consultative Steering Group on the Scottish Parliament. She was also leading member of the : Campaign and designed the ‘twinning’ quota mechanism.
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Working within these reform trajectories, women activists were able successfully to introduce a gendered perspective to the devolution process. Internal and external pressure was exerted on Scottish political parties—particularly Scottish Labour—to ensure gender balance in representation. There was general political agreement across most of the political spectrum that parties should take measures to improve women’s representation and, in the case of political parties who were members of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, this involved a commitment to field equal numbers of female and male candidates as part of a wider electoral contract (Brown /). Similarly, the White Paper on devolution and subsequent founding legislation of the parliament also stressed the need for inclusion and equal opportunities. Political parties can use a range of measures to increase women’s political presence (Lovenduski ). Equality rhetoric involves the public acceptance of claims for women’s representation, evidenced in party platforms, manifestos and speeches. Equality promotion attempts to bring more women into politics through measures such as special training, financial assistance, or mentoring, aimed at getting women to the starting line. Equality guarantees involve the use of measures such as legal or party gender quotas to secure places for aspiring women candidates. Comparative evidence suggests that this third group of strategies is the most likely to result in substantial improvements in women’s numerical representation (Lovenduski ; Dahlerup ), and also that the adoption of quota-type measures by one political party may lead to a ‘contagion’ effect in which other parties respond by actively promoting women as well (Matland and Studlar ). In Scotland, there were several favourable institutional, electoral, and party political conditions theoretically conducive to processes of quota contagion (Kenny and Mackay ). Whilst elections to Westminster remain under the first-past-the-post system, elections to the Scottish Parliament take place through the more proportional Additional Member System (AMS) (Chapter in this Handbook). European Parliament elections used a closed party-list proportional system from , and, Scottish local government elections used the Single Transferable Vote system from . The comparative literature highlights electoral systems as an important variable for explaining variations in women’s political representation, with PR systems facilitating an increase in the number of women elected (Krook ). For all the Scottish political parties, a clean slate of candidacies with no incumbents as well as the new, more proportional AMS electoral system opened up possibilities for far-reaching change and reform in established recruitment and selection procedures (Kenny ). These innovations were also ‘nested’ within wider contexts, including quota reforms in the British-wide Labour Party (Lovenduski ) and the widespread adoption of gender quotas in what has been dubbed ‘quota fever’, or a process of international norm diffusion (Dahlerup ). However, only Scottish Labour ended up using strong equality guarantees prior to the first elections to the Scottish Parliament in , implementing quotas on both parts of the ballot (‘twinning’ constituencies, and using a placement policy on the regional lists). In the first elections, the SNP—Scottish Labour’s main electoral rival—responded to
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internal pressure from party activists and the perceived electoral pressure on the issue and implemented informal measures which ensured that female candidates were placed in favourable positions on regional lists (Russell et al. ). As highlighted above, whilst campaigners did not get their demand of : representation, of the MSPs elected to the parliament for the first time in were women (. per cent). Notably, women made up per cent of Scottish Labour MSPs and . per cent of SNP MSPs.
W C C: W’ R –
.................................................................................................................................. Did these first efforts set the parliament, and indeed other political institutions, on the path of gender equality of representation? Post-, progress on women’s representation has been neither straightforward nor linear, with mixed evidence of quota contagion across the party system, and across different party or political levels (Kenny ; Kenny and Mackay ). From to , there was little obvious contagion in the sense of political parties adopting quota measures in order to compete with a rival party on the issue of women’s representation at Holyrood. Only Scottish Labour consistently implemented strong equality guarantees (applied to party lists for regional seats) during this period. However, such measures were ‘low cost’ for the party, as (until ) the party gained the majority of its seats from the constituency contests rather than the regional lists. The SNP—its main electoral competitor— adopted no measures (formal or informal) until the elections. We can see these trajectories reflected in each party’s performance on women’s representation over time³ (Figure .). Trends over time in the percentage of women elected at different political levels in a multi-level polity (–) also suggest that gains made at the level of the Scottish Parliament have not ‘caught on’ in any straightforward sense of leading to improved performance on women’s representation across the board, despite the same demands made and many similarities in political and institutional opportunity structures. As Figure . highlights, Holyrood continues to lead on women’s representation in Scottish politics, though it falls well short of parity. Again, progress has not been linear: trends since have seen incremental change at best, or stagnation and setbacks at worst. Whilst the proportion of women MSPs rose in from . per cent to a high point of . per cent; this was followed by a drop to per cent women in , and a subsequent stalling at per cent women in and .
³ These figures reflect immediate post-election results.
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60
Percentage Women
50 40 Labour
30
SNP
20
Conservative
10
Greens
Lib Dem
0
1999
2003
2007 Election Year
2011
2016
. Proportion of Women Amongst MSPs by Party, – 70
60
Percentage Women
50
40 Scottish MPs MSPs
30
Scottish MEPs Scottish Councillors
20
2019
2017
2016
2015
2012
2011
2010
2009
2007
2005
2004
2003
2001
1999
1997
1995
1994
0
1992
10
Election Year
. Percentage Women Elected by Year and Type of Office
Looking beyond the Scottish Parliament, of particular note is the local government level, where the percentage of women has remained relatively static over time, with small gains made in and . This stagnation in women’s representation has occurred despite a change in the electoral system to the more proportional Single Transferable Vote in , demonstrating that proportional representation electoral systems may
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facilitate, but do not guarantee, higher numbers of women in politics. Indeed, in Scottish Parliament elections under AMS, the general trend over time (with some exceptions) has been that more women have been elected through first-past-the-post constituency seats, rather than the proportional regional lists, due to the use of gender quotas by Scottish Labour, and subsequently the SNP, in constituency seat contests.
W’ R : C A?
.................................................................................................................................. As other chapters in this volume highlight, the Independence Referendum, and subsequent elections at Westminster and Holyrood shifted the political contours of Scotland. Crucially, they also offered another ‘critical juncture’ in debates over gender, politics, and power in Scotland. Change came not only from the top-down—evidenced in the ‘female face’ of political leadership at Holyrood, with three of the largest parties led by women—but also from the bottom-up, through the civic awakening that had accompanied the referendum and the surge in women’s grass-roots activism through groups like Women for Independence (WfI) (Kenny ; Alonso ; McAngus and Rummery ), and the Radical Independence Campaign (Boyd and Morrison ). This groundswell saw many women make the transition from ‘small p’ to ‘big P’ Politics, with several members of WfI selected as candidates in the UK and Scottish Parliament elections for pro-independence parties (Kenny et al. ). Notably, for the first time since , the main parties were competing on the issue of women’s representation, with the SNP, Labour, and the Greens implementing gender quota measures in the run-up to the elections, and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon publicly pledging support for the new cross-party Women : campaign for gender quotas in Scotland. All the parties (except the Conservatives) saw improvements in their share of women candidates in the Scottish Parliament election. In the case of the SNP, over per cent of their constituency and list candidates were women, an increase that reflected the party’s implementation (for the first time) of equality guarantees in the form of all-women shortlists in constituencies with retiring SNP MSPs. In the end, however, the results of the Scottish Parliament elections were disappointing. Although the SNP substantially improved their performance, only women MSPs ( per cent) were elected, unchanged from (see Table .). The Scottish Parliament elections remain the ‘high tide’ of women’s representation in Scotland across all political levels. Looking at diversity of representation more broadly, there was a notable increase in in the number of LGBT MSPs. Notably three of the (then) party leaders elected in identified as LGB—Kezia Dugdale (Labour), Patrick Harvie (Green) and Ruth Davidson (Conservative). However, only two black and minority ethnic (BME) MSPs were elected in —SNP Minister Humza Yousaf, who defeated Johann Lamont in Glasgow Pollok, and former Labour
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Table 4.1 Scottish Parliament 2016 by Party and Gender Party SNP Con Lab Green Lib Dem Total
Women
Men
Total
% Women
27 6 11 1 0 45
36 25 13 5 5 84
63 31 24 6 5 129
42.9 19.4 45.8 16.7 0 34.9
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
MP Anas Sarwar, who was elected to the Scottish Parliament for the first time in the Glasgow region (Chapter in this Handbook). To date, there has not been a BME female MSP elected to the Scottish Parliament. Despite all of the main political parties signing up to the One in Five Campaign (which aims to increase political participation amongst people with disabilities), only one openly disabled MSP was elected in . What explains these trends? The overall percentage of women at Holyrood masks significant differences amongst the parties—some parties have taken women’s representation seriously, whilst others continue to be ‘laggards’ (Kenny et al. ). Of particular note are the Scottish Conservatives, whose laissez faire approach to women’s representation has had a significant impact on headline figures. The party remains firmly opposed to the use of quotas, arguing instead for ‘softer’ supply-side measures to encourage women to come forward, like the WomenWin campaign. Despite having had a prominent woman leader in Ruth Davidson, as the party’s electoral fortunes have markedly improved in Scotland, there has not been a significant breakthrough—less than twenty per cent of Conservative MSPs and councillors in are women. Contrary to assumptions that innovations at one level of a multi-level system might lead to gains in women’s representation across all levels of the system, trends over time in the percentage of women elected at different political levels (–) demonstrate limited impact, even when theoretically conducive conditions are in place (Chapter in this Handbook). Gains made at the level of the Scottish Parliament have not had a knock-on effect in any straightforward sense of leading to improved performance on women’s representation across the board at other levels of the political system, despite the same demands made and many similarities in the political and institutional opportunity structures.
S R C G- V
.................................................................................................................................. We move on now to examine the substantive representation of women in postdevolution politics, using the case study of gender-based violence. Gender-based
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violence—including domestic violence—is a significant policy area through which to examine the impact of political restructuring and innovation, especially in cases where there has been a self-conscious effort to design ‘women-friendly’ structures and to open up the policymaking process. A classic feminist issue, the exposure and elimination of violence against women was a key demand of the second wave women’s movement, and feminist anti-violence organizations have been mobilized in many countries to provide services and support for women who have experienced gender-based violence. Globally, examples of co-ordinated and strategic action by governments remain relatively rare (Weldon ; Htun and Weldon ). As in the rest of the UK, government action on domestic violence and gender-based violence in Scotland in the decades prior to devolution was piecemeal despite espoused political commitment (Mackay ). As a societal problem, gender-based violence affects women across boundaries of class, ethnicity, age, and ability. It blights lives and undermines the capacity and opportunity for women to exercise their full economic, social, political, and cultural citizenship. As a policy area, it touches many of the policy competences of the Scottish devolved institutions: civil and criminal justice, policing, health, housing, social work, education, local government, the third sector, and social justice. Post-devolution, Scotland is one of the few countries in the world to employ a feminist approach to policy on gender-based violence drawing explicitly on UN conventions (such as the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women ) and international norms. Policy developments to address genderbased violence, particularly domestic violence (termed domestic abuse in Scotland), have been regarded as a key early achievement of devolution (Cuthbert and Irving ; McKie and Hearn ), and as a continuing example of a distinctive and differentiated approach over the longer haul (Coy et al. ; Mackay ; Burman and Johnson ). Whilst there are similarities in the initiatives and policy tools employed in Scotland and other UK jurisdictions, the Scottish approach has been more strategic, more holistic (taking work forward across aspects of provision, protection, and prevention), and with a greater emphasis on core service provision through support for the women’s sector, such as Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis. Importantly the definition and framing of gender-based violence understands the phenomenon as rooted in wider structures of gender inequality (see, for example, Scottish Government ). Over time, government strategies and policymakers have attended to links between different forms of gender-based violence, and links between gender-based violence and wider gender inequalities. Children’s rights perspectives have been incorporated, as have issues of intersectional identities and inequalities. In addition, the Scottish Government has increasingly adopted participatory norms to involve survivors of gender-based violence, including children and young people in policymaking (Houghton , ). A strategic approach was adopted from the start through the National Strategy to Address Domestic Abuse in Scotland () (Scottish Partnership on Domestic Abuse ). The urgency with which domestic abuse has been tackled in Scotland in comparison with Westminster provides evidence of the difference devolution
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made: Scotland tackled the issue in a ‘joined up’ way early and first. It had a head start of at least three years on England in developing a national strategy, national refugebuilding programme and ring-fenced funding to tackle domestic abuse. In addition to the first national strategy in the UK, Scotland published the first national prevention strategy and the first national training strategy. Scotland has also pioneered improvements in data collection and service development as well as a national domestic abuse telephone helpline (Mackay ). From , the various aspects of gender-based violence (including rape, sexual assault, and ‘honour’-based crimes) had been consolidated into a ‘unified policy area’ (Burman and Johnson : ), with a joint framework of action in place from . Significant and sustained gains have been achieved in service provision, protection, and prevention (Burman and Johnson ). These include legislative developments such as the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act () which, as well as physical abuse, also addresses psychological abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour that hitherto have been difficult to prosecute under existing criminal laws. Commended by experts as ‘world leading’ and ‘gold standard’ (The Guardian, February ), the legislation also enables sentencing to recognize other aggravating factors such as the adverse impact of the abuse on children (Scottish Government ) and is informed by participatory action research projects with child and youth survivors (Houghton ). The current national strategy Equally Safe positions gender equality as a central goal of public policy (Scottish Government , updated ). More open decision-making has been an integral feature of the post-devolution political model (Keating ). Capitalizing on the opportunities afforded by inclusion in new ‘governance architecture’ and multi-agency partnership arrangements, and by the recognition of their policy expertise, Women’s Aid and other anti-violence women’s organizations exerted a significant influence over the shape and content of the first and subsequent national strategies, frameworks and action/delivery plans as well as service provision (Burman and Johnson : ). This included the unprecedented (at UK or Scottish level) secondment of an expert from the refuge movement into the government (Mackay ). Since , children’s rights organizations have joined women’s specialist organizations as privileged policy insiders (Houghton ) and have driven commitments to participatory approaches to policymaking in this area, and the amplification of the voices of adult and child survivors (Houghton , ). Indeed, with the passing of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act with its progressive definitions of coercive control (see earlier), members stood to applaud domestic abuse survivors in the public gallery (BBC News February , ). Devolution therefore provided a clear critical juncture to progress the agenda: ‘It is primarily devolution which is responsible for the trajectory of policy and legislative change in relation to gender-based violence in Scotland [ . . . ] Devolution led to new principles and accountability mechanisms, more gender balance in political institutions and significant new opportunities for women’s groups to shape and inform the policy and legislative process’ (Burman and Johnson : ; see also Mackay ). Whilst links between descriptive and substantive representation are not
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straightforward, this case demonstrates strong political leadership provided by women ministers and parliamentarians, many with strong relationships with women’s movement organizations and explicit feminist credentials, together with some key male allies, over the long haul. Domestic violence was the focus of the first piece of legislation to be initiated by a Scottish parliamentary committee. The Protection from Abuse (Scotland) Act (Scottish Executive ) was a modest piece of legislation but nonetheless plugged an important gap by extending the legal protection available to victims of domestic abuse and played a symbolic role in attesting to the new prioritization of tackling gender-based violence. It was driven forward by a cross-party group of feminist parliamentarians, and initiated by a Labour MSP who had been a founder member of Women’s Aid in the Highlands (Mackay ). Whilst there have been considerable advances in tackling gender-based violence, and cause for ‘quiet optimism’ (Burman and Johnson : ), there are continuities also in powerful informal norms and practices that limit the transformational potential of new rules and policies, highlighting the way in which innovations are ‘nested’ within wider institutional environments (Mackay , ). There are shortfalls in implementation, effectiveness of criminal justice response, resources, and provision of services. For example, despite formal commitments to a comprehensive approach, services for minority ethnic women remain under-resourced, and ‘considerably less attention and resources’ have been directed towards other forms of gender-based violence such as trafficking, forced marriage and female genital mutilation (Burman and Johnson : –). In this respect, it is worth noting the constraints of the wider UK austerity regime, and disproportionate impact of public spending cuts on women and marginalized social groups, such that inequalities along the lines of gender, race, and class have deepened since (Hankivsky et al. ).
N P?
.................................................................................................................................. We next address the extent to which institutional blueprints around gender equality and the promotion of a wider ‘new politics’ have developed in practice post-devolution, focusing on the development of equalities architecture and policy; the extent to which ‘new politics’ norms have been embedded in the Scottish Parliament (for example, through family-friendly policies and gender-sensitive ‘culture’); and how the promise of a ‘new politics’ of participation has unfolded in terms of what might be classed women’s or feminist ‘civil society’. Gender equality and the wider equalities agenda were part of the dominant politics of the centre-left and discourses of ‘new politics’ embodying values of accountability, openness and participation, power-sharing, and equal opportunities (Mackay et al. ). These values resonated with long-standing associations of Scottish national identity with values of social justice and welfare rather than issues of ethnicity and culture (Rosie and Bond ). Progressive gender policies can be said to have served as ‘shorthand’ for ‘new politics’—symbolizing the aims of the
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new Scottish institutions to present themselves as modern, inclusive, and relevant (Brown /). In addition to achieving high levels of descriptive representation for women as parliamentarians, activists also succeeded in building gender equity concerns into the fabric of the new parliamentary and governmental blueprints and structures. Key features included the adoption of equal opportunities as one of the key principles of the parliament (Consultative Steering Group ); the introduction of ‘familyfriendly’ working hours and sitting patterns, and the provision of a parliamentary crèche; the creation of equality policy machinery in government and a statutory equal opportunities committee in the parliament (renamed in as the Equalities and Human Rights Committee); and commitments to equality mainstreaming (including gender equality) (Hankivsky and Christoffersen ), and equalities budgeting (McKay et al. ; O’Hagan ). Opportunities for participation and influence were also created by the promotion of a more inclusive and responsive form of policymaking and decision-making (Mackay et al. ; Keating ) and efforts to achieve a ‘step-change’ in popular participation by citizens outside the parliament (Bonney : ). The comparative literature suggests that shaping constitutional and institutional blueprints is only the beginning of the process. The ‘constitutional moment’ is followed by a longer period of institutionalization and uncertainty as the new structures and practices outlined in constitutional settlements are either embedded and consolidated, or amended, neglected, and discarded. It is unsurprising that, as a higher order institution and a powerful legacy, the institutions and norms of the Westminster model have exerted a considerable drag, constraining the potential for new paths and limiting reform. Indeed, early assessments pronounced the demise of ‘new politics’, highlighting the extent to which post-devolution political practices resembled those of Westminster and critiquing the ‘unrealistic’ hopes and expectations of devolution campaigners (Mitchell ). However, looking through the lens of gender, we see a more complex picture. Whilst there have been shortfalls in implementation and policy effectiveness, the Scottish Government has from the outset of devolution prioritized equalities mainstreaming across the various characteristics protected in legislation (Hankivsky and Christoffersen ), and recognized the link between equal opportunities and democratic participation. It is considered a mainstreaming leader in equality impact assessment of policies and programmes, and government funding of projects addressing intersectional or cross-cutting inequalities (for example gender, race, and disability) (Hankivsky et al. ). Despite the constraints and legal uncertainty presented by the reservation of ‘equal opportunities’ and anti-discrimination legislation to Westminster in the devolution settlement, Scottish policymakers have creatively used permitted ‘exceptions’ to the reservations to promote equalities work, including mainstreaming (Mackay ). For example, the Scottish Government has responded to the weakening of UK legislation, such as the Equalities Act , by introducing additional requirements for Scottish public bodies including Scottish ministers (Hankivsky et al.
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) with an emphasis on mandatory equality impact assessments and reporting. The government also produces equality budget statements, as a result of long-term lobbying, and engagement through advisory structures, by organizations such as the Scottish Women’s Budget Group (O’Hagan ). Hankivsky and her colleagues report ‘cautious enthusiasm’ across government and equalities policy sector actors for the future of equalities mainstreaming whilst acknowledging the ‘devastating impact’ of UK-wide austerity cuts on the capacity of equality-seeking organizations to participate, scrutinize and hold public bodies to account (Burman and Brooks-Hay ; Hankivsky et al. ). One of the much-lauded features of the design of the Scottish Parliament was its ‘family-friendly’ policies, building on recommendations from institutional ‘architects’ that the sitting patterns of the parliament should be ‘family friendly’, the ‘arrangements for the operation of the parliament should be equally attractive to men and women’; and that the parliament should meet during ‘normal business hours’ on a regular programmed basis (Consultative Steering Group : ). In practice the parliament has endeavoured to avoid sitting into the evening, as is routine at Westminster, and to observe the Scottish school holidays (Brown et al. : ). In contrast to Westminster, where reformers avoided ‘feminist’ arguments for fear of a negative response to their efforts at modernizing sitting times (Lovenduski : ), the need to be ‘family friendly’ was explicitly referenced in the Scottish case and seen as a core plank of new politics (Allen et al. : ). Family-friendly working practices in political institutions have attracted little attention from researchers, but a recent study (Allen et al. ) concluded that there were high levels of support in the Scottish Parliament with almost three-quarters of MSPs agreeing that ‘family-friendly’ working hours had been implemented well. In , the parliament’s Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh confirmed that MSPs would be allowed to breastfeed in the chamber. Nonetheless, it should be noted that there remain no formal rules on parental leave. It is also the case that there has been sustained pressure on sitting hours, not least in the context of preparations for Brexit. Turning to parliamentary culture and new politics, early findings presented a picture of men and women ‘equally at home’ in the Scottish Parliament in contrast to the marginalization experienced by many female MPs at Westminster (Mackay et al. ). Comparing Westminster and Holyrood, studies suggest that the presence of women in the Scottish Parliament has, from the outset, had a substantial impact on norms and practices, and crucially, also on the meanings ascribed to behaviours. Debate in the Scottish Parliament, even aggressive and point-scoring styles, are not perceived as exclusionary in terms of gender or class. This suggests that although behaviour in the Holyrood debating chamber may at times appear similar to Westminster ‘yah boo’ politics, it does not necessarily contain the same gender norms nor is it experienced in the same way by its members (Malley ). Malley argues that the Scottish media and early academic consensus have too quickly dismissed ‘new politics’ aspirations of plural, participative, and consensual politics espoused during the campaign for devolution. She argues that ‘These accounts fail to acknowledge substantial differences
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between [Westminster and Holyrood] in terms of how they are experienced by representatives in an everyday sense’ (Malley : ). The last dimension of new politics we consider is the enhanced opportunity for civil society, including women’s organizations and ‘feminist civil society’, to participate and influence policy. Keating () and others observe that the style of policymaking at Holyrood is indeed more inclusive and consultative than its Westminster counterpart albeit with provisos as to which groups are included. Devolution has also enhanced the opportunity for central and local government to work together and for cross-cutting partnership working with third sector organizations (Cairney ). In this regard, the earlier example of policymaking around domestic abuse and gender-based violence provides an exemplar of tangible gains as a result of new structures, processes, points of access, and opportunities for influence; and the strategic ability of (some) women’s organizations to capitalize on these new access and accountability structures and relationships, and to offer concrete solutions. In the Scottish case, then, rules and practices associated with ‘new politics’—including gender reforms—have been partially institutionalized, depending upon context and issue. Reforms have best survived where political institutions and actors have been prompted and re-prompted to remember their promises by organized women’s movement groups. In short: pronouncements that new politics have failed belie the reality, which is more complex and nuanced. There is not a clear-cut case of one sort of politics eliminating the other, but rather a case that both coexist in tension (Kenny ; Mackay ).
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.................................................................................................................................. Scottish politics has been driven by constitutional and institutional restructuring, and territorial debates for the last three decades. These politics have had gendered dimensions. The campaign for devolution provided a critical juncture to engender mainstream debates around political participation, representation, and power, including the increased access and presence of women in elected politics, and changing state–society relations through more participatory policymaking. There have been gains for both the descriptive and the substantive representation of women. Political parties, governments, and other actors have sometimes made strategic deployment of the issues of women’s representation and gender equality, especially when the votes or support of women have been wanted or needed, but Scotland also bears many of the hallmarks of a case of successful feminist constitutional activism (Mackay ). Women and feminist civil society also ‘carved out space to participate in the Scottish Independence Referendum’ in , reinvigorating existing organizations and creating
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new groups and networks despite the marginalization of women’s voices and women’s concerns in the official campaigns (Kenny ; Ritch ). In doing so, activists were following the path created by devolution campaigners, and the experience of successful constitutional activism (Alonso ). They took advantage of the reported gender gap in support for independence (Ormston ) to press for the inclusion of women and their long-standing concerns into debates about the future of Scotland. Since the Independence Referendum there has been an influx of activists, many publicly supportive of women’s rights and the wider equalities agenda, into politics as well as continued grass-roots campaigning including around : equal representation in politics and public life. Women’s civil society organizations and feminist politicians have worked together to try to ensure that new social security powers devolved to Scotland reflect women’s experiences and gendered perspectives (O’Hagan ; Ritch ). Perhaps the most important symbolic impact has been the explicit embrace of a feminist ‘mantle’ by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. This has led some commentators to ask if ‘post IndyRef Scotland’ had become a ‘feminist paradise? (Khaleeli ). ‘Constitutional moments’ have provided critical junctures that have resulted in substantive political and policy gains and progressive new paths. However, as this chapter has demonstrated, progress has not been straightforward or linear: elements of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ continue to exist in tension in post-devolution Scottish politics, limiting possibilities for innovation, and sometimes blunting or diluting the impact of gender equality reforms. There are challenges also about advancing an equality agenda in the context of a prolonged period of austerity politics in which living standards have fallen or stalled for most, and where cuts have impacted disproportionately on women, particularly marginalized groups like black and minority ethnic women (UK Women’s Budget Group and Runnymede Trust ). We might speculate as to whether Brexit provides a third critical juncture? In contrast to the devolution and the Independence Referendum processes, feminist civil society leaders argue that they ‘could not find a toe-hold in the debate about Brexit’, nor do they anticipate progressive possibilities for change. Instead there are fears of what Engender’s Emma Ritch () calls ‘foreboding newness’ in the form of regressive politics; more austerity exacerbated by economic recession; and the potential rolling back of equalities protections and workers’ rights, including for women workers (Dustin et al. ). Brexit has dominated political agendas north and south of the border, crowding out pressing social, economic, and political issues including the gendered impacts of austerity, and progress on gender quotas. Nor is there evidence to date that women’s organizations have been able to work beyond their ‘national silos’ to work across the UK to identify a response to Brexit proposals and their implications for women’s rights and gender equality (Ritch ), itself an indication of the centrifugal dynamics of devolution and the territorialization of women’s movements and gender politics (Celis et al. ). The challenges of post-Brexit UK and Scottish politics makes it all the more crucial that women’s voices and gender concerns remain at the table.
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R Allen, P., Cutts, D., and Winn, M. . ‘Understanding Legislator Experiences of Familyfriendly Working Practices in Political Institutions’, Politics & Gender, /: –. Alonso, A. . ‘Thriving or Dividing? The Women’s Movement and the Independence Referenda in Scotland and Catalonia’, Politics & Gender, /: –. BBC News. . ‘New domestic abuse law “could change Scotland” ’, BBC News, February. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-. Bonney, N. . ‘The Scottish Parliament and Participatory Democracy: Vision and Reality’, The Political Quarterly, /: –. Boyd, C. and Morrison, J. . Scottish Independence: A Feminist Response. Edinburgh: Word Power Press. Breitenbach, E. and Mackay, F. (eds) . Women and Contemporary Scottish Politics: An Anthology. Edinburgh: Polygon. Brown, A. /. ‘Women and Politics in Scotland’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: – (reprinted in E. Breitenbach and F. Mackay (eds) Women and Contemporary Scottish Politics: An Anthology. Edinburgh: Polygon, –. Brown, A. /. ‘Deepening Democracy: Women and the Scottish Parliament’, Regional and Federal Studies, /: – (reprinted in E. Breitenbach and F. Mackay (eds), Women and Contemporary Scottish Politics: An Anthology. Edinburgh: Polygon, –). Brown, A. . ‘Twinning: The Scottish Experience’, in R. Campbell and S. Childs (eds), Deeds and Words. Colchester: ECPR Press, –. Brown, A., Donaghy, T.B., Mackay, F., and Meehan, E. . ‘Women and Constitutional Change in Scotland and Northern Ireland’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Burman, M. and Johnson, J. . ‘High Hopes? The Gender Equality Duty and its Impact on Responses to Gender-based Violence’, Policy & Politics, /: –. Burman, M. and Brooks-Hay, O. . ‘Aligning Policy and Law: The Creation of a Domestic Abuse Offence Incorporating Coercive Control’, Criminology & Criminal Justice, /: –. Cairney, P. . ‘Has Devolution Changed the British Policy Style?’, British Politics, /: –. Celis, K., Mackay, F., and Meier, P. . ‘Social Movement Organizations and Changing State Architectures: Comparing Women’s Movement Organizing in Flanders and Scotland’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, /: –. Consultative Steering Group (CSG). . Shaping Scotland’s Parliament: Report of the Consultative Steering Group of the Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: The Scotland Office. Coy, M., Kelly, L., and Foord, J. . Map of Gaps: The Postcode Lottery of Violence against Women Support Services. London: End Violence Against Women and Equalities with Human Rights Commission. Available at: http://www.refuge.org.uk/files/Map-ofGapsreport-.pdf Cuthbert, J. and Irving, L. . ‘Women’s Aid in Scotland: Purity versus Pragmatism?’, in E. Breitenbach and F. Mackay (eds), Women and Contemporary Scottish Politics: An Anthology. Edinburgh: Polygon, –. Dahlerup, D. . (ed.) Women, Quotas and Politics. London: Routledge. Dustin, M., Ferreira, N., and Millns, S. (eds) . Gender and Queer Perspectives on Brexit. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Engender. . Sex & Power in Scotland. Edinburgh: Engender.
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Hankivsky, O., and Christoffersen, A. . ‘Gender Mainstreaming in the United Kingdom: Current Issues and Future Challenges’, British Politics, /: –. Hankivsky, O.D., deMench, D., and Christoffersen, A. . ‘Equalities Devolved: Experiences of Mainstreaming across the UK Devolved Powers Post-Equality Act ’, British Politics. Published online January . Available at: https://doi.org/./s--. Houghton, C. . Voice Against Violence: Young People’s Experiences of Domestic Abuse Policy-Making in Scotland. Unpublished PhD thesis, Warwick: University of Warwick. Houghton, C. . ‘Young People’s Perspectives on Participatory Ethics: Agency, Power and Impact in Domestic Abuse Research and Policy-Making’, Child Abuse Review, : –. Houghton, C. . ‘Voice, Agency, Power: A Framework for Young Survivors’ Participation in National Domestic Abuse Policy-making’, in S. Holt, C. Overlien, J. Devaney (eds), Responding to Domestic Violence: Emerging Challenges for Policy, Practice and Research in Europe. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Htun, M. and Weldon, S.L. . The Logics of Gender Justice: State Action on Women’s Rights Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keating, M. . The Government of Scotland: Public Policy Making after Devolution. nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kenny, M. . Gender and Political Recruitment. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kenny, M. . ‘Engendering the Independence Debate’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Kenny, M. and Mackay, F. . ‘When is Contagion not very Contagious? Dynamics of Women’s Political Representation in Scotland’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Kenny, M., Mackay, F., and Murtagh, C. . ‘Nil Nada Zilch: The Change in Women’s Representation in ’, May. University of Edinburgh Gender Politics blog. Available at: https://genderpoliticsatedinburgh.wordpress.com////nil-nada-zilch-the-changein-womens-representation-in-/. Khaleeli, H. . ‘Is post-referendum Scotland a feminist paradise?’, The Guardian, September . Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics//sep//postreferendum-scotland-feminist-paradise, accessed November . Krook, M.L. . ‘Electoral Systems and Women’s Representation’, in E.S. Herron, R. J. Pekkanen, and M.S. Shugart (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Krook, M.L. and Mackay, F. (eds) . Gender, Politics and Institutions: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Lovenduski, J. . Feminizing Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mackay, F. . ‘Travelling the Distance? Equal Opportunities and the Scottish Parliament’, in C. Jeffery and J. Mitchell (eds), The Scottish Parliament –: The First Decade. Edinburgh: Luath Press, –. Mackay, F. . ‘Gendering Constitutional Change and Policy Outcomes: Substantive Representation and Domestic Violence Policy in Scotland’, Policy & Politics, : –. Mackay, F. . ‘Nested Newness, Institutional Innovation and the Gendered Limits of Change’, Politics & Gender, /: –. Mackay, F., Kenny, M., and Chappell, L. . ‘New Institutionalism through a Gender Lens: Towards a Feminist Institutionalism?’, International Political Science Review, : –. Mackay, F., Kenny, M., and Pollot Thompson, E. . Access, Voice . . . Influence? Women’s Organisations in Post-devolution Scotland. Gradus Case Study . Edinburgh: Engender.
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Mackay, F., Myers, F., and Brown, A. . ‘Towards a New Politics? Women and Constitutional Change in Scotland’, in A. Dobrowolsky and V. Hart (eds), Women Making Constitutions. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Malley, R. . ‘Feeling at Home: Inclusion at Westminster and in the Scottish Parliament’, Political Quarterly, /: –. Matland, R.E. and Studlar, D.T. . ‘The Contagion of Women Candidates in SingleMember District and Proportional Representation Electoral Systems: Canada and Norway’, Journal of Politics, /: –. McAngus, C. and Rummery, K. . ‘Campaigning for the Female Vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum: Comparing Women for Independence and Women Together’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. McKay, A., Fitzgerald, A.R., Gillespie, M., and O’Hagan, A. . ‘Scotland: Using Political Change to Advance Gender Concerns’, in D. Budlender and G. Hewitt (eds), Gender Budgets Make More Cents. London: Commonwealth Secretariat, –. McKie, L. and Hearn, J. . ‘Gender Neutrality and Gender Equality: Comparing and Contrasting Policy Responses to Domestic Violence in Finland and Scotland’, Scottish Affairs, , Summer. Mitchell, J. . ‘New Parliament, New Politics in Scotland’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. O’Hagan, A. . ‘Redefining Welfare in Scotland – With or Without Women?’, Critical Social Policy, : –. O’Hagan, A. . ‘Gender Budgeting in Scotland: A Work in Progress’, Administration: Journal of the Institute of Administration of Ireland, /. Ormston, R. . ‘Why Don’t More Women Support Independence?’, Edinburgh: ScotCen Social Research. Available at: www.scotcen.org.uk/media//gender-and-%indeppaper-final-.pdf. Ritch, E. . ‘Foreboding Newness: Brexit and Feminist Civil Society in Scotland’, in M. Dustin, N. Ferreira, and S. Millns (eds), Gender and Queer Perspectives on Brexit. Basingstoke: Palgrave, –. Rosie, M. and Bond, R. . ‘Social Democratic Scotland?’, in M. Keating (ed.), Scottish Social Democracy: Progressive Ideas for Public Policy. Brussels: Peter Lang, –. Russell, M., Mackay, F., and McAllister, L. . ‘Women’s Representation in the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales: Party Dynamics for Achieving Critical Mass’, Journal of Legislative Studies, /: –. Scott, J.W. . ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, American Historical Review, /: –. Scottish Executive. . Protection from Abuse (Scotland) Act. Available at: https://www. legislation.gov.uk/asp///introduction, accessed December . Scottish Government. . Equally Safe: National Strategy. Available at: https://www.gov. scot/Publications///, accessed December . Scottish Government. . Equally Safe: National Strategy. Available at: https://www.gov. scot/publications/equally-safe/, accessed December . Scottish Government. . Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act . Available at: http://www. legislation.gov.uk/asp///contents/enacted, accessed December . Scottish Partnership on Domestic Abuse (SPDA). . National Strategy to Address Domestic Abuse in Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive.
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The Guardian. . ‘Scotland set to pass “gold standard” domestic abuse law’, February. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society//feb//scotland-set-to-pass-goldstandard-domestic-abuse-law. UK Women’s Budget Group and Runnymede Trust. . Intersecting Inequalities: The Impact of Austerity on Black and Minority Ethnic Women in the UK. Available at: https://wbg.org.uk/analysis/intersecting-inequalities/. Weldon, S.L. . Protest, Policy and the Problem of Violence Against Women. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
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.................................................................................................................................. W should we have a particular interest in young people’s politics in a volume like this? The simple answer is that since the Scottish institutions have suggested solutions to questions which are of concern to governance institutions in many parts of the world. Over the past few decades, it has become an oft-repeated mantra that advanced democracies are suffering a crisis of political participation. Studies across numerous countries appear to show something of a common trend: a move away from formal modes of political participation such as voting, and a concurrent trend towards greater levels of involvement in more informal modes of political participation such as boycotting (Dalton , ; Pattie et al. , ). These studies also tend to show that the drop-off in conventional political participation is most pronounced amongst younger adults. Young people’s role in politics has often been problematic, with the age qualification for voting regularly facing criticism for disenfranchising enthusiastic and engaged youngsters. In reality, the focus upon the legal age at which young people can vote often masks a significant degree of alternative political activity. This notwithstanding, young people have traditionally been conceived of as outsiders to formal politics, and are usually seen as participants only in the private, family sphere rather than the public, civic sphere. Their contradictory position is exemplified by the fact that they are typically seen as a social group which is at once under threat and in need of protection, yet one which often poses a distinct threat from which society itself needs to be protected (see Roche ; Hallet and Prout ; Prout ). Whatever the conceptualization of young people, the result has traditionally been the same: that adults legislate in their best interests, compounding their lack of standing as independent social actors: Qvortrup
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() describes these processes as ‘familialization’ whilst Dalrymple and Burke () favour the term ‘adultism’ (see also Barford and Wattam ). However, recent years have borne witness to a surge in interest and support for efforts to better engage young people in political processes. What, then, has changed? Numerous arguments exist as to why young people should now be seen as important contributors to decision-making processes. These arguments have been marshalled in different ways (see Lansdown ; Wade et al. ; McNeish and Newman ). The classification offered by Willow () and Fahmy () distinguishes elegantly between three separate but related dimensions to the broader body of arguments: the political, the legal, and the social. Political arguments tend to focus on the participation crisis. Based upon evidence of declining participation in more formal modes of politics (Fahmy ) and claims of a shift in the traditional lifecycle model of political socialization (Phelps , ; Smets ), there has been a focus on addressing shortcomings in young people’s political knowledge, interest, trust, and efficacy by providing them with access to more information, most notably in the form of citizenship education, as set out in a UK context in the Crick Report (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority ). However, the Scottish case provides an interesting counterpoint. Since the s, the subject of Modern Studies (Clark et al. ) has been taught in an increasing number of Scottish schools. As a result, ‘Scottish schools argued that they were already actively teaching much of the relevant knowledge and skills for education for citizenship’ before the wider UK agenda for citizenship emerged in the late s (Cowan and McMurtry ), with no apparent positive impact upon young people’s levels of engagement and participation relative to other parts of the UK previously (see Munn and Arnott ). Whilst greater knowledge is likely to be beneficial, this suggests that this alone is not the answer. As Fahmy (: –) argues: Reconnecting politics for young people therefore requires the development of new avenues of public participation [ . . . ] However, if such innovations are to be widely viewed as vehicles for genuine participation in policy formulation, rather than simply as essentially tokenistic consultative mechanisms, then far-reaching institutional changes in the political organisation of contemporary democracies are required.
Legal arguments for participation are typically based on the belief that young people have an entitlement to participate in decision-making processes. These draw heavily upon a body of (predominantly international) rights-based work conducted over the past thirty years, most notably embodied in the form of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).¹ The CRC sets out the right of children and young people to be involved in any decision or administrative process affecting them
¹ Other work at both UK and Scottish levels has also sought to institutionalize the normative legal element to youth participation in policy work in Scotland, for example the Children (Scotland) Act and the Human Rights Act .
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(Fahmy : ). As a devolved legislature of a signatory state, the Scottish Parliament shares a commitment to the Convention, with the Scottish Government announcing in September that it would formally incorporate its commitments into domestic statute (Scottish Government ). This legal argument has also prompted reconsideration of young people’s role as citizens more generally. Alongside the argument that the conditions of youth and childhood have undergone radical changes since the s (Prout , , ), this has generated a social argument that young people have a right to have their voices heard as valued actors in their own right (Hallet and Prout ).
T S C: T E Y
.................................................................................................................................. It was against a backdrop of democratic renewal, including concerns about declining political engagement and participation, that the Labour government in launched its programme of constitutional reform, including the creation of new governance institutions in Scotland. The emphasis was not simply on ‘governmental decentralization’ from Westminster (Winetrobe : ) but rather on delivering ‘new politics’ (Wright ). This built upon cross-party and civic work conducted during the s—based mainly around the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly (CSA) and the Scottish Constitutional Convention (SCC)—which argued that the new Parliament should promote a more participatory, inclusive, and civic-minded form of politics. As a result, the Consultative Steering Group (CSG), established to design the institutional blueprint of the new Parliament, based its recommendations around four founding principles: power-sharing, accountability, accessibility and participation, and equal opportunities (Consultative Steering Group ). With regard to participatory methodology, the CSG avoided specifying particulars, instead proposing a flexible and adaptive approach which should use a variety of context-appropriate methods (Consultative Steering Group : ., annex G). The CSG was also keen to specify that the new Parliament was one for the whole of Scotland. It should aim to overcome existing biases of participation and engagement, including socio-economic, geographical and age-related biases (Consultative Steering Group : ., ., .–., annex D). It was particularly keen for the Parliament to take a proactive approach to political inclusion, reaching out to groups and people who historically had been excluded from the political process. Groups explicitly identified included the elderly, disabled people, the BME community and young people (Consultative Steering Group : ., annex D..–D..). However, only children and young people are the subject of specific discussion within the body of the CSG report: Young people should be given every encouragement and opportunity to make their voices heard [ . . . ] Thought should also be given to the development of consultative
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structures both locally and nationally. One of the most exciting aspects of our consultation process was the workshops which we held with young people from around Scotland [ . . . ] The suggestions that they made included proposals for a Youth Parliament; a Scottish Parliament which addresses young people’s concerns; and the hope that information on the Scottish Parliament would be disseminated through a more imaginative use of media [ . . . ] We endorse these views, and very much hope that the Parliament will take heed of them. (Consultative Steering Group : .; emphasis ours)
So, the Scottish Parliament was established with an explicit commitment to greater engagement of previously disenfranchised groups of society. Inasmuch as the circumstances of young people’s exclusion are sufficiently distinct from those of other groups, their successful participation represents a particularly stiff test of the possibility of the CSG’s envisioned ‘new politics’ developing. Not only were policy choices expected to diverge from Westminster following devolution, policy processes were expected to do likewise. There are few instances in British politics of upheaval to match the programme of constitutional reform initiated in . However, the limitations of ‘designing’ democracy in this way have recently been subject to much critical analysis, with many examples resulting in little significant alteration to the status quo ante once the political dust has settled (Elster et al. ; Olsen ; Jones Luong ; Thelen ; Harty ; Streeck and Thelen ). It is helpful to bear this in mind in order to contextualize our discussion of the progress towards greater youth participation and engagement in Scotland.
Y I, I Y?
.................................................................................................................................. Bearing in mind the twin commitment which the Scottish Parliament made to a more participatory form of democracy and greater efforts to secure the involvement of young people, it is important to consider the extent to which, and the way(s) in which, such commitments have materialized in reality. In establishing the Parliament’s approach to public participation, the logical departure point is the formal framework on which the Parliament’s work was based: the Scotland Act , the UK government’s Transitional Standing Orders (SOs), and the Parliament’s own Standing Orders. Despite the apparent importance of embedding new political norms, neither the Transitional SOs nor the SOs ultimately adopted by the Parliament in December say much on participation, whether for young people or any other group. However, the possibility of participating as a committee adviser, a petitioner or an invitee to address Parliament is established. The Scotland Act also provides little guidance on the role of public participation in the Parliament’s work, focusing instead on ‘broad guidelines’ (McFadden
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and Lazarowicz : –). If anything, this has arguably undermined the lofty participatory ambitions of the CSG of broader (more people participating) and deeper participation (a greater degree of involvement than simply consultation/advice).² When the possibility of co-opting non-parliamentarians was raised by the Equal Opportunities Committee in response to the lack of ethnic minority representation in the Parliament,³ the resultant legal interpretation of the Scotland Act ruled such a move impossible (Procedures Committee : col. ). Guidance to committees on the role of public participation in their work suggests that participation becomes problematic if it reconfigures power dynamics between parliamentarians and nonparliamentarians, outlining acceptable participation as: [ . . . ] An active relationship and dialogue between people and the state [ . . . ] It is seen as a means of strengthening representative democracy rather than being in opposition to it, or offered as an alternative model. (The Scottish Parliament : ; emphasis ours)
As such, the various documents constituting the basis of the Scottish Parliament present a mixed message. The CSG was unequivocal in its belief that provision should be made for deeper participation than is typically the case at Westminster, both in general and for young people more specifically. However, the formal framework upon which the Scottish Parliament is based fails to support the implementation of the CSG’s participatory vision. It is still possible for organs of the Parliament—such as committees—to hold ostensibly ‘informal’ civic participation events on a specific issue. By holding such informal events but agreeing in advance to be guided or bound by their conclusions, committees can create opportunities for participants to exercise at least some of the decision-making power which characterizes more participatory democracy. Having established the general background to the limits of participation, we now consider the role of young people more specifically. The Scottish Parliament offers a number of access points for public participation. In particular, the committee system and the Public Petitions process offer an opportunity to play a role in the policy process. There are also other means of participating: for example, the Parliament has done significant amounts of work around its education and outreach activities. The former sees groups of young people from schools and colleges visiting the Parliament and learning about its work. The latter relates to the CSG’s desire to see the Parliament reaching reach out to communities around Scotland. Much of the Parliament’s effort in this respect has focused on young people, combining outreach and education in the MSPs in Schools scheme, for example. However, both of these areas fall short of the participatory ambitions of the CSG. Beyond this educative component, some
² This included relatively radical suggestions such as the co-option of non-parliamentarians as (non-voting) committee members. ³ The first elections to the Scottish Parliament returned no MSPs from BAME backgrounds.
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parliamentary committees have nevertheless also engaged in outreach activities when undertaking their legislative and inquiry work. We will consider elements of outreach activity in the context of committee work later. The Scottish Parliament also has a system of Cross-Party Groups which offer non-parliamentarians opportunities to interact with MSPs. Again, this offers no formal feed-in to the policy process so we do not consider it here. Whilst the Public Petitions process has been a considerable success of the Scottish Parliament, it often plays a symbolic role rather than a legislative one (for an overview of the early years see Carman ; for a youth-focused overview see MacLeod ). Nevertheless, we consider petitions as part of this chapter alongside the more substantive policy work of the Parliament’s committees.
P P Y P
.................................................................................................................................. Cavanagh et al. () consider the work of the Public Petitions Committee (PPC) during its first year, arguing that its operation represents a significant departure from Westminster practice (Cavanagh et al. : –), delivering ‘an increased pluralism and an extension of the boundaries of democratic participation’ and ostensibly providing clear evidence of new politics in action and a closing of the democratic deficit associated with Westminster politics. Thus, it is seen as a ‘vivid example’ of bottom-up democracy (in contrast with top-down Westminster practice) (Cavanagh et al. : –). Lynch and Birrell (: ) argue that its frequent use by individuals and infrequent use by business interests/organizations suggests that it is being used by those for whom it was intended, but to what extent does this include young people? The available evidence suggests that only a small and well-defined segment of the public typically uses the petition system (Carman ). In addition to commonly being middle-aged, petitioners are also disproportionately likely to be middle-class, male, and already active in civic networks (Carman ). Petitions submitted by or about young people accounted for around one in eight petitions in the first two parliamentary sessions (MacLeod ). This was higher than the equivalent proportion for other marginalized/disenfranchised social groups. In these other groups, the highest rate of representation was in the disabled community, which accounted for around one in fifteen petitions. However, only around one in fifty petitions was actually submitted by a young person (defined in this instance as aged below twenty-five), whilst around one in ten petitions was about young people’s issues (but not submitted by young people or their representatives). Nevertheless, this is still a higher proportion than for other marginalized/disenfranchised groups. However, research findings also provide some cause for optimism in relation to young people’s use of the petitions system. An important dimension beyond simply submitting a petition comes in being invited to present it to the PPC in formal session. This opportunity may be requested by petitioners, but it is at the discretion of the PPC
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whether it is granted or not.⁴ Around three-quarters of young petitioners were invited to present their petition to the PPC. In comparative terms, only the elderly and disabled communities approach this level of representation but still fall short, suggesting a degree of discretionary proactivity on the part of MSPs towards the involvement of young people when they do choose to submit petitions. This compares very favourably with the proportion of adult petitioners invited to present their petitions about young people (MacLeod ). A number of previous studies has shown that whilst the PPC is well-used by community groups, the majority of petitions have nevertheless been submitted by individuals (Cavanagh et al. ; Carman ; Ipsos MORI ). Thus, in attempting to understand the way in which the petitions system has been used by young people, consideration must also be given to the role of groups in facilitating participation. MacLeod () highlights the importance of groups for young people, demonstrating that only two of the petitions submitted by young people were the result of an individual initiative. The remainder came from some form of group background. Unsurprisingly, school, college, and university groups account for the vast majority of these. With professional charities and advocacy groups (working as mandated representatives of children or young people) accounting for the remainder, the apparent importance of formally constituted gatekeepers can be seen, raising questions about how much demand truly exists amongst individual young people for this type of participation.
C W Y P
.................................................................................................................................. The committees of the Scottish Parliament were expected by the CSG to serve as the engine of the new politics (Chapter in this Handbook), prompting questions about their role in promoting young people’s participation. Two key areas of committee work offer the potential for youth participation: legislative work and inquiries. In both cases, the process for involving non-parliamentarians is similar: a call is issued for written evidence to be submitted on the Bill or inquiry in question, and on the basis of the written evidence received, committees draw up a relatively short list of ‘witnesses’ to provide oral evidence to the committee. However, there is scope for working outside these standard parameters. Committees can invite witnesses to oral evidence sessions even if they have not provided written evidence; for example, if the committee wishes to hear from members of a community which is not represented in the written evidence. They can also choose to innovate around the format of evidencetaking. Most consultations, whether on Bills or inquiries, adopt the standardized ⁴ This discretionary approach to selecting petitioners has provoked criticism from some MSPs unhappy at decisions made by the Convener. See, for example, Petition (Public Petitions Committee, : col. ).
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approach described above. However, committees are free to adopt different methods of evidence-gathering. For example, where the committee wishes to hear from a hard-toreach group or community, they may commission a ‘gatekeeper’ organization to conduct research on the committee’s behalf. They may conduct a fact-finding mission to examine a particular issue in situ rather than hearing about it second-hand in a committee room at the Scottish Parliament. They might equally host a conference at the Parliament in order to hear from a wider range of witnesses than a standard Q&A session might provide. Given the already-established importance of flexibility and suitability of approach when working with young people, this has particular relevance to our discussion. The early years of the new Parliament saw the greatest level of interest in this aspect of its work (Borland et al. ; Hughes et al. ; Allan ; Cohen ) but attention seems to have dissipated in recent years, although there has been a considerable surge in interest in young people’s voting behaviour, as the second section of this chapter demonstrates. The early studies of the committees’ work with young people paint a similar picture. Whilst committees were generating ‘immense policy activity’ in relation to services for children and young people, there was also a sense that much more might have been done in terms of improving political support and opportunities for participation (Hughes et al. : ). The volume of legislation being processed by the committees which is of relevance to young people is borne out by Halpin et al. () and McLaverty and MacLeod (), who show that almost a quarter of all committee inquiries and Stage Bill reports from to concerned issues which had a direct and discernible impact on young people specifically (mostly focusing on education issues, youth justice issues, and care issues). Extending this methodology to cover the years – shows that these ratios have been broadly maintained. Furthermore, the proportion of legislation and inquiries on issues affecting young people is significantly higher than those affecting other disenfranchised and/or marginalized social groups, both in the published studies on the period – (Halpin et al. ; McLaverty and MacLeod ) and the follow-up analysis undertaken for this chapter. However, experience since suggests that despite the volume of activity with an impact on young people, youth participation has tended not to be systematic and mainstreamed, but has instead often been concentrated in a small number of committees with a remit closely linked to young people’s issues such as education, training, and social justice. Even within these more directly relevant committees, the direct inclusion of a young person’s perspective was not routinized despite the fact that the Education, Culture, and Sport Committee commissioned the University of Glasgow and Children st to produce a report on how committees could involve young people in their work, and the Scottish Executive commissioned Save the Children to produce a ‘participation toolkit’ (Borland et al. ). Overall, there has remained a strong tendency for committees to address even youth-related issues through an adult lens, and there has been more of a tendency to incorporate a youth voice in the committees’ advisory work than in their legislative role. In a study of youth participation in the work
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of the Parliament’s committees, MacLeod () distinguishes between direct participation (young people themselves); vicarious participation⁵ (adult representatives acting as a channel for young people’s views, such as the Children’s Commissioner); suppositious representation (adults suggesting what they think would be in young people’s best interests without actually acting as a conduit for young people’s voices, such as a parent–teacher council); and those with no representative claim towards young people whatsoever. Despite the Parliament’s earlier commitment to involving young people, direct youth participation accounted for less than per cent of all participation (MacLeod ). Even on youth-related Bills and inquiries the proportion of direct participation appears lower than might be expected at just . per cent. Additionally, almost two-thirds of this direct youth participation occurs in inquiry work rather than legislative work, where the stakes are arguably higher and time pressures are greater. There is also a considerable skewing of rates of direct youth participation across committees: applying the same methodology to the period of – shows that rates of youth participation are highest in those committees dealing with the sort of youth-relevant issues described above, and lowest within committees whose remits might not immediately be considered to be youth-relevant, despite the fact that issues such as transport and the environment may have a considerable degree of impact on young people. Where young people’s views are incorporated directly or vicariously, this is typically done in the shape of advocacy groups, most notably in the form of Children in Scotland, Barnardo’s Scotland, Children st, the Commissioner for Children and Young People in Scotland, Youthlink Scotland and Save the Children. Despite this lack of mainstreaming of a youth perspective across committee work, authors such as Allan () show that on specific pieces of work, committees have produced some impressive engagement with young people, to the point of putting their needs ahead of party political differences. Notable examples include the direct involvement of young people in the Education, Culture, and Sport Committee’s inquiries into Special Educational Needs Provision (Education, Culture, and Sport Committee ) and the need for a Children’s Commissioner (Education, Culture, and Sport Committee ). These earned praise from young participants on the basis that their views had been taken into account in innovative fashion, such as the use of a youth conference to inform the Children’s Commissioner inquiry (Allan ; Cohen ). However, participatory instances like these still tend to be relatively infrequent, with a greater tendency to rely on standard consultation techniques and adult advocates rather than young people themselves. This is the case despite there being clear opportunities for synergy between the Parliament and civic organizations which act as a channel for young people’s views in Scotland. The most obvious of these is the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP), a democratically elected body of around young people aged ⁵ Whilst not as normatively consistent with the CSG or UNCRC recommendations as is direct youth participation, the use of such ‘participation by proxy’ is nonetheless assumed to be more in line with the intentions of the CSG than is entirely ‘suppositious’ representation.
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to , with representation from all of Scotland’s parliamentary constituencies and also from several affiliated organizations (Patrikios and Shephard ). Although politically impartial, the Youth Parliament plays a prominent role in advocating for young people (and on issues which affect them) in Scotland: for example, a high-profile Votes at campaign was conducted in to feed into Westminster and Holyrood’s separate consultations on the process to be used for the independence referendum. More recently, the Youth Parliament has been very active on the issue of youth poverty, in response to both the UK government’s Child Poverty Act () and the Scottish Government’s Child Poverty Strategy (Scottish Youth Parliament ). The SYP has shown a clear willingness to engage in the work of the Scottish Parliament. It has submitted petitions on such diverse topics as the Young Carer’s Grant (PE), the living wage (PE), and hospital wards (PE). It has also submitted written evidence to a dozen committee inquiries and Stage Bill reports. However, it subsequently provided oral evidence to fewer than half of these. Whilst in some of these cases an invitation to do so may have been offered, evidence from the first two terms of the Parliament shows that some committee conveners held negative views about the SYP, leading to an unwillingness to try to involve them in committee work. These typically related to the SYP’s democratic credentials, its representativeness, and the perceived inability of SYP members to engage with traditional committee processes (MacLeod ). Since then the SYP has introduced more democratic structures and reduced the proportion of members appointed rather than elected. Along with the fact that its work is led by its membership, this means that greater engagement with the SYP would provide the most obvious means of increasing direct youth participation in the work of the Scottish Parliament’s committees. Similarly, the Children’s Parliament—which typically works with much younger children—has also fed into consultations in the past, despite lacking the sort of representative apparatus of the SYP. Even vicarious participation might be better mainstreamed through more consistent soliciting of a youth perspective from organizations such as Children st, Children in Scotland or Youthlink Scotland. The concerns expressed above around young people’s ability to contribute to traditional forms of ‘Q&A’ consultation bring us back to the issue of innovative approaches when seeking to involve young people directly. A small number of studies has considered the frequency with which committees break out of the standard consultation approach to adopt a ‘consultation plus’ (MacLeod ) or ‘civic participation’ approach (McLaverty and MacLeod ). Sessions and saw around a fifth of all Bills and inquiries doing this, and an extension of this methodology to cover the period from to suggests that this has actually increased. Encouragingly, issues with a particular relevance to young people enjoy a higher tendency to involve some degree of consultative innovation, to the point where a majority of ‘youth issues’ in Sessions and ⁶ involve some form of ‘consultation plus’. Again, when compared to other marginalized/disenfranchised
⁶ Data collection for Session only stretches to at time of writing.
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groups such as disabled people, elderly people or BAME communities, there is a very strongly elevated tendency to use these alternative techniques in youth issues (McLaverty and MacLeod : ). Of course, not every innovation necessarily implies a significantly higher degree of youth participation. The most popular ‘consultation plus’ initiative across the life of the Parliament has been fact-finding visits by committee members, followed by outreach meetings and events off the parliamentary campus, civic events, informal meetings, and round-table discussions. As such, the picture that the post- experience paints in terms of youth involvement is one in which young people’s issues are healthily represented in the work of the Parliament, but young people themselves tend not to be. Rather, there is a tendency for youth issues to be pursued vicariously on their behalf by adult representatives, or more commonly by adults with no directly representative claim on young people’s views. There is also a strong trend towards younger people’s direct participation being concentrated in youth issues, in inquiries, and in a very small number of committees. All of this points towards younger people’s participation being an unusual feature of policymaking in the work of the Parliament, with a youth perspective often absent. Where it is taken, this may be provided by adults whose mandate to speak on behalf of children and young people is entirely suppositious; or provided by ‘proxy participants’.
E —A O C?
.................................................................................................................................. Despite the institutional efforts in Scotland, youth political engagement suffered from similar problems as elsewhere in the UK relative to the rest of the population. Whilst there had been an active civil society with organizations representing young people successfully, such as the Scottish Youth Parliament, mainstream engagement in classic political processes, such as voting, remained low. In the Scottish Parliament elections, of those aged to only per cent said they had cast their vote (Eichhorn : ) compared with around half in the next older age group (–) and per cent amongst the oldest voter group ( and above). So whilst young people engaged in certain forms of political activities, this did not translate into mainstream engagement with established representative mechanisms after over a decade of devolution. It is unsurprising then that many were sceptical about the proposed reduction of the voting age to sixteen for the Scottish independence referendum. As recently as nearly half of all Scots were opposed to the lowering of the voting age ( per cent) and only about a third ( per cent) supported it (Nelson ). Those findings correspond to levels across the UK, where a clear majority of the population had been rejecting the idea of enfranchisement at sixteen for a while (Electoral Commission ). These figures stayed fairly stable over time and in still only about a third of people in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland supported the idea of allowing - and -yearolds to vote (Kenealy et al. : ). Views in Scotland, however, changed quite
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dramatically with up to per cent of the population now being supportive of allowing younger people to vote (Scottish Parliament : ). After the experience of young people taking part in the independence referendum, attitudes clearly shifted. The change was so extensive that a mainstream political consensus developed with the Scottish Parliament unanimously adopting the lowering of the voting age for all Scottish elections, including the votes of Conservative MSPs, who had opposed the change in the referendum context. Talking about youth political engagement is impossible without taking into account this special and still recent experience. It provides insights into the dynamics of youth engagement in Scotland, but also holds some bigger lessons to keep in mind when discussing young people’s political behaviour and attitudes in general. Fundamentally, we learn that we need to carefully consider the causality of arguments often employed in relation to youth engagement broadly and the reduction of the voting age specifically. Because of established findings on - to -year-olds being less likely to vote, it may appear plausible to think that - and -year-olds would also be unlikely to engage politically. Such backward extrapolations from the next older age group are indeed often the foundation of empirical critiques of allowing younger people to vote (Johnson and Marshall ; Chan and Clayton ). However, such analyses are inadequate to properly understand the behaviour of and -year-olds. This is for two dominant reasons, both of which also manifested in the Scottish context. First, we know from existing research that even amongst slightly older young voters, those closer to the age of enfranchisement (–) are more likely to participate in elections than those who are slightly older (–) (Bhatti and Hansen ). Voting itself is a social experience and potentially habit forming (Dinas ). Therefore, younger people who are still much more likely to live at home and be in schooling can experience their first vote in a potentially very different socializing context than slightly older young people. Indeed, Wagner et al. () have shown that the lower engagement willingness and voter maturity observed in young adults over was not found in - and -year-olds. This raises an important second point. We cannot infer how - and -year-olds would behave, if they were enfranchised, unless we observe them being allowed to vote, as this circumstance may alter their engagement. Whilst pessimistic commentary suggests that a reduction of the voting age would increase the group of disengaged young voters who are enfranchised, optimists would suggest that the enfranchisement itself may act as a catalyst to increase the engagement of those young people, thus suggesting the opposite causal direction.
Y E F E S
.................................................................................................................................. The referendum allowed us to study exactly that—how young Scots behaved once they became enfranchised. The change of views by many people across the Scottish public
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seems to suggest that something must have taken place to alter people’s perceptions. And indeed, when we looked into the research accompanying young people throughout the referendum we were able to observe many positive developments. Using research from two representative surveys of young Scots under the age of eighteen, we have been able to gain a rare deep insight into their behaviour and attitudes when given the right to vote at sixteen. Overall, the experiences were positive and were enhanced throughout the referendum process (Eichhorn a). Those newly enfranchised showed similar levels of political interest as the population overall and engaged extensively in discussions about the referendum, with only per cent of respondents in saying that they had not discussed it with parents, in class, with friends or others. Furthermore, over per cent reported a different view from a parent who was interviewed as well, suggesting that young people do not simply follow their parents’ views. Crucially, whilst levels of turnout were lower at per cent amongst - and -year-olds than in the general public (at just under per cent), substantially more under -year-olds are estimated to have voted than their slightly older peers at to years of whom only per cent took part according to the best estimates we have (Electoral Commission : ). Whilst there is some margin of error around such sample-based statistics, of course, the differences are so substantial that we can clearly identify a distinctive result for those newly enfranchised. Whilst the referendum process itself was important, it was even more crucial to see what happened subsequently to check whether some of these positive developments continued after the vote. In a broader study on constitutional change in the UK in the light of the experience in Scotland, Kenealy et al. (: –) were able to comprehensively study the attitudes of - and -year-old young Scots and contrast them with a comparable representative sample of their peers elsewhere in the UK ahead of the general election. They found that the newly enfranchised Scots (albeit without the ability to vote in the general election) reported much higher levels of hypothetical voting likelihood, if they were allowed to take part, higher levels of non-electoral forms of political participation, greater confidence in their age group to vote and a more varied use of information sources to find things out about politics. Crucially, even when we take into account socializing influences, such as parents and school effects, several differences between Scottish - and -year-olds and those in the rest of the country are greater than general differences we could observe in the wider population in Scotland, which was activated more overall following the referendum (Eichhorn b). In other words, whilst some of the differences in Scottish young people compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the UK could be attributed to the special situation of the referendum, something distinctive was happening that could not be explained with classic socialization factors or general population differences arising from the referendum activation. This indeed suggests that an enfranchisement effect could be observed, similar to those seen in other countries that saw the voting age lowered, such as Austria (Zeglovits and Zandonella ; Zeglovits and Aichholzer ). Having said this, it is important to note that factors traditionally identified as important were also shown to influence young people here and seemed to intersect
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positively with enfranchisement activities. There are discernible parental socialization effects. Young people who talk about politics with their parents are more likely to vote in Scotland (Kenealy et al. ). However, parental effects do not explain everything. Greater political engagement with the parents, for example, does not relate to greater self-confidence in one’s understanding of politics, whilst civic education in school plays an important role (Eichhorn b). Those who had formal civics classes (often Modern Studies) were more likely to appraise their own understanding of politics more positively. Crucially though, - and -year-olds only showed higher levels of hypothetical vote participation if they also engaged in active discussions about political issues in the classroom (rather than just passively learning about formal aspects of the political system). So the type of civic education, and in particular the inclusion of discursive elements, were important. To summarize, the substantial changes within the political engagement and attitudes of young Scots and the significant difference to their peers in the aftermath of the independence referendum were not simply a reflection of the presence of the referendum itself. The impact was most likely caused by an interplay of the overall referendum momentum and activation, classic socializing effects through parents and schools and, additionally, through the earlier enfranchisement at sixteen. It likely meant that the socialization effects could be enhanced, because the vote experience took place at a time when those young people largely were exposed to both school and parental effects.
R C: O Q
.................................................................................................................................. Our findings provide a positive picture overall. Young people in Scotland became more engaged during the referendum and particularly those enfranchised to vote at sixteen and seventeen showed much higher levels of political participation in various forms. However, there is no place for complacency. Several open questions remain that require further discussion. In particular, we focus on the distance between formal politics and young people, and the understanding of the practices involved in participation and the differences in civic education in Scotland are two important areas that we need to explore further. It is still not clear whether the degree of political engagement during and immediately after the independence referendum in Scotland can be maintained. A study by McLaverty et al. (; see also MacLeod et al. ) suggests that any lasting effect of the referendum on young people is unevenly distributed, with evidence of a drop in levels of engagement in the lead-up to the general election. Whilst there are still very active groups of people and organizations participating politically through various means, broad population trends have also changed. Whilst Scots disproportionately participated more in (. per cent compared to a UK average of . per cent) in Scots fell back to . per cent compared to an overall UK increase to . per cent. Whilst we do not have sufficient data on our core group of
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interest (the youngest eligible voters, including some who may have voted for the first time in the referendum and have turned since), there are no strong indications to suggest that they defy the overall trend drastically. Whilst we do need new data on - and -year-olds to specifically check how their views and behaviours may or may not have changed (also in relation to Scottish Parliament and local elections for which they are enfranchised), there are some areas of concern that may provide an insight into where the potential for political engagement of young people is underutilized. Civic education and experiences at school are key factors in enabling young people to participate politically. This finding holds at the intersection with early enfranchisement, but confirms more general research that has identified the importance of civic education in this domain (Torney-Purta et al. ; Torney-Purta and Wilkenfeld ; Quintelier ). This is particularly true when civics education incorporates political discussions in the classroom (Dassonneville et al. ). In Scotland, however, local authorities have the capacity to decide on the extent to which political issues may be thematized in schools. This has led to substantial inequalities in engagement with political discussions across regions, which, given the insights above, may result in very different preparations of young people and activation for political participation. This problem was noted by the Scottish Parliament’s Devolution (Further Powers) Committee (: ) ahead of the reduction of the voting age to sixteen: more should be done by EducationScotland, Local Authorities and the Electoral Commission to ensure that all local authorities across Scotland and the relevant education bodies are best supporting the discussion of election issues in schools and colleges. (...) Whilst recognising that the education is the primary responsibility of schools and education authorities, we endorse the views of the Deputy First Minister that no aspect of the education system should prevent young people from reaching a fair and dispassionate understanding of political process and choices.
Whilst several organizations, like Education Scotland, have made extensive efforts in providing materials and guidance, changes to the regulatory framework have not taken place. Therefore, the degree to which civics education in schools can achieve the positive outcomes research associated with it continues to vary greatly across Scotland. Seeing that being in schooling is one of the key differences for most - and -yearolds compared to their slightly older counterparts, it is highly problematic that this pathway for activation continues to be underutilized. These issues are also perceived by teachers who are engaged in citizenship teaching and who report being concerned about the existing materials and insecurities about what should and can be done in the classroom (Head et al. ). Scotland’s young people have shown great political engagement and an ability to convince extensive parts of the public that they should be permitted to take part in
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:
formal political processes. However, the underlying structural impediments to more political engagement of young people have not been solved yet and even whilst many newly enfranchised young people participated in , there were issues about confidence and understanding of processes and content, suggesting that more work is needed to enhance abilities and engagement (Stewart et al. ). The referendum provided a unique and specific opportunity. Whilst not all the changes can be attributed to it, we need to be cautious about longer-term developments and ensure that the structures that can support positive changes are in place and working for all young people across Scotland—especially in the absence of such a distinctive event as an independence referendum. At this stage, firm conclusions remain elusive, particularly in relation to the impact of the introduction of Votes at . Despite its positive impact on young people’s participation around the referendum, as yet there is little follow-up data investigating the impact beyond the referendum itself. Whilst the referendum experience demonstrates a clear desire to be involved in a debate around a major constitutional question such as Scottish independence, it is important to establish how well this enthusiasm for participation in what Fung () and Dryzek () would refer to as a ‘hot’ issue, translates into engagement with more mundane, lower-stakes political issues. It is at this stage that the two points of focus in our chapter converge, in a demonstration of the importance of both supply-side and demand-side factors in youth participation. If an appetite for increased participation exists, how well placed are political institutions to facilitate this? Whilst the Scottish Parliament has focused strongly on youth-related issues since and has engaged in some innovative work to better incorporate a youth voice in its work, this could be far better mainstreamed and could certainly give greater weight to the direct participation of young people themselves (through established youth organizations such as the Scottish Youth Parliament) rather than relying so heavily upon adult advocates for young people. This last point should be seen as a qualified criticism. Overcoming deeply entrenched ‘adultist’ tendencies poses considerable challenges in any social institution, far less one which has already been criticized for failing to live up to the lofty ambitions of its institutional designers in respect of accessibility and participation for the population more broadly. Under the circumstances, incremental improvements to young people’s participation probably represent the most feasible aspiration.
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I: T P O M
.................................................................................................................................. T chapter addresses the ways in which Scotland may be regarded as ‘multicultural’ and the political implications of this multicultural character. I do this through suggesting and interrelating three different perspectives. What I describe as a demographic perspective concerns the ways in which places may be described as multicultural by virtue of their diversity, most frequently with regard to indicators such as ethnic and national origins, religion and language. In this regard the chapter is mainly concerned with national territories (Scotland and England), but also considers some data at a subnational level. The second perspective, which I term sociological, is concerned with popular attitudes, identities and experiences relevant to multiculturally diverse societies. Important here is the degree to which those in cultural minority populations feel an affinity with the nation in which they reside, and the wider context represented by majority group attitudes towards these minorities. In addition, I consider what is sometimes called ‘everyday’ multiculturalism, which addresses the lived experiences and interactions of people from minority and majority groups. The political perspective concerns the extent to which policy, political rhetoric, and elite political discourse generally represents and promotes multicultural diversity as being normatively desirable as opposed to having deleterious social and/or political consequences. Because it is addressed by Hill and Meer (Chapter in this Handbook), evidence concerning this third perspective will not be discussed in depth in this chapter. However, a particular aim of the chapter is to address the question of why, although there is widespread evidence that people in minority groups in Scotland
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experience racism, Scottish politics is not racialized to the same extent as in some other parts of the UK. I suggest that this may be done by considering how the three perspectives outlined above might relate to one another. Scotland’s demographic structure and historic experience of migration are distinct from other parts of the UK, and this particularity may be related to further distinctiveness in popular attitudes to immigration and minorities, the ways in which national identities are understood and expressed, and the political context pertaining to multiculturalism. In the following sections evidence relating to the demographic and sociological perspectives will be presented in turn, and in each case the implications with regard to the political perspective will be discussed. This is also done in a comparative manner in which Scotland is examined alongside other parts of the UK, principally (although not exclusively) England.
T D P
.................................................................................................................................. This section draws mainly on data from the UK censuses conducted in . Separate censuses were carried out for Scotland, England and Wales, and Northern Ireland, albeit contemporaneously and with largely the same questions. Comparison in this chapter is limited to Scotland, England, and Wales; Northern Ireland is excluded mainly because of the character of its population and relevant differences in the structure of census data in that part of the UK. Unless otherwise stated, all figures are aggregate data downloaded from the Scotland’s Census website¹ or (for England and Wales) the Office for National Statistics.² All tabulated figures have been rounded to one decimal place. Insofar as its population is characterized by a significant (and increasing) degree of diversity in relation to national and ethnic origins, Scotland may be described as a multicultural place. However, in comparison to many other places, not least its southern neighbour, England, we might also say that Scotland is not particularly multicultural in this demographic sense. Multicultural diversity often has its origins in migration, and if we define migrants as people living in a nation that is different to the one in which they were born, then one way to assess and compare diversity is therefore by examining data for country of birth for the populations of Scotland, England, and Wales (Table .). If we focus on proportions of those born within and outside the UK, Scotland is more similar to Wales than to England, which clearly has a larger non-UK population by birthplace. But if we examine the percentages born in the specific nations (Scotland, England, and Wales), then Scotland is very similar to England, and Wales shows much higher levels of in-migration.
¹ See www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk.
² See also http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/.
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Table 6.1 Country of Birth, 2011
UK Other EU Other
Scotland
England
Wales
% 93.0 (Scotland: 83.3) 3.0 4.0
% 86.2 (England: 83.5) 4.5 9.4
% 94.5 (Wales: 72.7) 2.2 3.3
Sources: For Scotland—http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk; for England and Wales—http://www. nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011.
However, country of birth is not an entirely satisfactory measure of multicultural diversity. First, as the data suggest, the populations of Scotland and (especially) Wales are much more influenced (proportionately) by intra-UK migration than is the population of England. Not surprisingly, much of this migration is from England: . per cent of Scotland’s population and . per cent of Wales’s population in were born in England. Whilst these English ‘minorities’ may indeed be socially and politically significant, and have been addressed by some social scientific research (Watson ; Findlay et al. ; McIntosh et al. a, b, ; Bond et al. ; Day et al. ; Drakakis-Smith et al. ; Devine ), such intra-UK migrants are not commonly considered to contribute to the multicultural diversity of national populations. Second, some migrants from beyond the UK are similarly less significant to debates about multiculturalism. Such people are not (or are not perceived to be) significantly distinct from the majority population, usually by some combination of physical appearance (sometimes perceived as ‘race’), and key cultural practices such as religion and language. Whether or not such groups should be included in assessing the multicultural structure of Scotland is undoubtedly complex and subject to various social and historical contingencies. This may be illustrated through reference to two prominent examples. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, the Irish could be considered the most socially and politically significant minority in Scotland (Mitchell ) and to some extent they continue to be the object of social scientific interest (Boyle ; Walls and Williams ; Devine ). But this was to a large extent related to their predominantly Roman Catholic religion, and the discrimination and disadvantage that was associated with this religious distinctiveness has declined in significance in contemporary Scotland. Moreover, evidence suggests that Irish identity amongst descendants of Irish migrants to Britain is only weakly evident (Howard ), and this appears to be more specifically true in Scotland (Bond a). For these reasons, the Irish may be argued to be largely insignificant to analysis of multicultural Scotland. The same may be said of the Polish in Scotland, who represent a slightly more complex case, not least because they have arrived in historically distinct waves (Devine and Hesse ; Pietka-Nykaza ). Also a Roman Catholic minority, for Poles language is potentially an additionally significant indicator of cultural distinction, but
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the Scottish-domiciled descendants of Polish migrants easily acquire(d) English language (and Scottish accents) and this, in combination with their ‘White European’ appearance, again suggests they are not strongly significant to discussion of multicultural Scotland. That the appearance of the Polish in Scotland (and indeed the Irish and other white migrants) is significant highlights the third and final reason why country of birth is not a satisfactory measure of multicultural diversity: for some groups, ancestral origin as well as birthplace is significant. Although this might apply to people born overseas of white British parents, it is particularly relevant to minority groups amongst whom UK-born descendants remain distinct from the majority population as a result of physical appearance and often the strong inheritance of cultural practices, most prominently related to religion and language. Overall, multiculturalism in a Scottish and UK context is primarily concerned with those who we might describe as being of ‘non-European ancestry’ or as ‘visible minorities’ (Ballard : ). As an alternative to country of birth, self-identified ethnicity therefore provides an important tool for examining multicultural diversity, and this has been assessed in the UK censuses since . Table . shows the ethnic structure of the populations in Scotland, England, and Wales. Although, as suggested above, there may be significant differences between different White groups, because it is the non-White ethnic groups that are of most relevance in assessing multiculturalism, in the table all such groups that contain sufficiently substantial numbers have been differentiated, whereas the various White groups have been combined. Parentheses are used with the (Black) African and Caribbean categories to indicate differences in the naming of these groups in England and Wales (where the African and Caribbean categories are specifically labelled as ‘Black’) and Scotland (where ‘African’ ethnic groups are distinct from ‘Caribbean or Black’). Some caution is therefore required in comparing data from these groups.
Table 6.2 Ethnic Structure of Populations, 2011
White (all) Mixed/Multiple Pakistani Indian Bangladeshi Chinese (Black) African (Black) Caribbean
Scotland
England
Wales
% 96.0 0.4 0.9 0.6 0.1 0.6 0.6 0.1
% 85.4 2.3 2.1 2.6 0.8 0.7 1.8 1.1
% 95.6 1.0 0.4 0.6 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.1
Sources: For Scotland—http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk; for England and Wales—http://www. nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011.
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The overall proportion of people in White ethnic groups indicates that England is substantially more multiculturally diverse than are Scotland and Wales, which are broadly similar in this regard. This also applies to each of the individual minority groups, where proportions are invariably higher in England. But in relative terms there is some evident variation: proportionately the (Black) Caribbean population is much more prominent in England compared to the other nations, whereas differences for the Chinese group are much less marked. Similarly, there are some relative contrasts between Scotland and Wales: Pakistanis are the most prominent non-white ethnic group in Scotland, but this is not so in Wales. These figures also obscure temporal and geographical variation which, as we shall see later, are both likely to be socially and politically significant. Although only about per cent of Scotland’s contemporary population do not describe themselves as belonging to a White ethnic group, a closer examination of trends over the last three censuses (Table .) shows that Scotland is becoming more diverse and that the pace of change in this regard may be intensifying. A further indicator of this increasing diversity is that of all migrants (defined as those born outside the UK) living in Scotland at the time of the census, nearly two-thirds had arrived in the previous decade (Scottish Government ). Table . gives a more detailed picture of the structure of ethnic diversity in Scotland and the other nations, specifically regarding the extent to which these minority groups may be divided into three broad categories. The data on (UK) birthplace presents an obvious distinction between those who were born in the UK and immigrants, but the figures in brackets showing the proportion born in the specific nation in which they were living in suggests a further group born in the UK who have moved from one UK nation to another.
Table 6.3 Change in Ethnic Structure of Population, Scotland 1991–2011
White (all) Mixed/Multiple Pakistani Indian Bangladeshi Chinese African** Caribbean** Total non-White population
2011
2001
1991
% 96.0 0.4 0.9 0.6 0.1 0.6 0.6 0.1 210,996
% 98.0 0.3 0.6 0.3 * 0.3 0.1 * 101,677
% 98.7 N/A 0.4 0.2 * 0.2 0.1 * 62,634
Notes: * < 0.05; ** In 1991, these groups were ‘Black-African’ and ‘Black-Caribbean’. Source: http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk.
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Table 6.4 Ethnic Group by Birthplace, 2011: % Born in UK [% born in nation of residence]
Mixed/Multiple Pakistani Indian Bangladeshi Chinese (Black) African (Black) Caribbean
Scotland
England
Wales
73.6 [56.7] 57.5 [48.5] 33.0 [24.1] 42.0 [32.9] 23.2 [19.8] 20.5 [14.9] 52.7 [30.7]
80.3 [79.4] 56.2 [55.7] 43.1 [42.7] 51.9 [51.6] 23.7 [22.9] 32.8 [32.5] 60.2 [60.0]
86.1 [65.6] 54.0 [44.4] 29.0 [16.7] 51.2 [41.7] 24.9 [18.1] 20.0 [14.3] 55.6 [31.2]
Sources: For Scotland—http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk; for England and Wales—http://www. nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011.
The most striking differences in the table (especially with regard to UK birth) are between different ethnic groups rather than between nations: in some groups a majority were born in the UK but in others this applies only to quite a small minority. Although this will likely reflect differences in historical trajectories of migration between groups, other factors are also significant. For example, the growth of international markets in higher education together with fundamental socio-economic change in places such as China means that substantial minorities of people in the (Black) African and Chinese groups are in fact student migrants. But there is also some evident variation between the nations. In England the UK-born descendants of migrants make up a larger proportion of many ethnic groups compared to Scotland and Wales, again reflecting different historic migration trajectories. Further, in proportional terms UK-born people who have moved between substate nations are much more evident in Scotland and Wales than in England. This can be seen by comparing the figures outside and inside the brackets in each cell of the table. In Scotland, nearly one in ten in each of the South Asian ethnic groups (Pakistani, Indian, and Bangladeshi) were born in the UK but not in Scotland, suggesting that such people were most likely born in England and later moved on to Scotland. Whilst Table . reflects both historical and geographical factors, Table . focuses more specifically on the geographical dimension, revealing important intra- and internation contrasts at a sub-national level. Insofar as it exists, multicultural diversity in each nation is most evident in the larger urban areas, but differences between these urban areas are more marked than the overall national differences. Ten English cities³
³ Note that, with the exception of London, the data shown are for the corresponding local authority areas. In the case of Manchester, this means that the data do not include other local authority areas in Greater Manchester such as Salford and Trafford. For London, the data are regional, that is, including all London boroughs.
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Table 6.5 Ethnic Diversity in Selected UK Cities, 2011
Birmingham Bradford Bristol Cardiff Edinburgh Glasgow Leeds Leicester Liverpool London Manchester Newcastle Sheffield
% % % % % % % % % % % % %
White British etc.*
White Others
All other groups**
53.1 63.9 77.9 80.3 82.1 82.7 81.1 45.1 84.8 44.9 59.3 81.9 80.8
4.8 3.6 6.1 4.4 9.7 5.8 4.0 5.5 4.1 14.9 7.3 3.6 2.8
42.1 32.6 16.0 15.3 8.3 11.6 14.9 49.5 11.1 40.2 33.4 14.5 16.3
Notes: * White British, English, Northern Irish, Scottish, or Welsh; all non-White others.
** Mixed/multiple, Asian, Black and
Sources: For Scotland—http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk; for England and Wales—http://www. nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011.
are shown, together with the two largest Scottish cities (Edinburgh and Glasgow, in bold) and the largest Welsh city (Cardiff). If we assess multicultural diversity simply by the proportion who describe themselves as White British (or White Scottish, English), the two Scottish cities are very similar to each other, but also to Cardiff and several English cities. But they are markedly different from a number of other cities in England where the White ‘majority’ represent only quite a narrow majority or indeed a minority of the population.⁴ In differentiating between the White and non-White minority groups we can also see that the extent of diversity in Edinburgh is mostly attributable to White minorities. Focusing on non-White minorities, Glasgow is somewhat more diverse than Edinburgh but, with the exception of Liverpool, is again not particularly multicultural in a wider British context. Overall, the two Scottish cities are (as we would expect) more diverse than Scotland as a whole, but generally less so than other British cities. But this contrast is most strikingly evident in comparison to a smaller sub-group of English cities: Birmingham, Bradford, Leicester, London, and Manchester. What, then, is the wider social and political significance of all this evidence pertaining to the demographic perspective on multiculturalism in Scotland? A central point here is that although prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviour towards people in minority groups undoubtedly exist in Scotland (Cant and Kelly ; Emejulu ), social and political discourse and structures are not racialized to the same extent as in
⁴ Cities with this character have been referred to as ‘majority-minority cities’—see Crul ().
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other parts of the UK—most specifically England (McCrone : )—and to a considerable extent this may be related to the demographic evidence we have reviewed. This broad argument has been advanced at least since the s (see Miles and Dunlop ), and further layers must be added to it as the social and political context has changed in recent decades. It thus involves various dimensions which we will now unpack. The first dimension relates simply to the comparatively lower overall levels of immigration and ethnic diversity outlined above. As Emejulu (: ) puts it: ‘because Scotland has not experienced a large wave of migration and settlement of non-white groups, racist and xenophobic debates about identity and citizenship are not “politically active categories” for popular debate’ (Chapter in this Handbook). Second, not only did non-White migration to Scotland take place at a slower rate compared to England, it occurred within a wider historical context where net emigration was a predominant characteristic of Scotland’s demography (Miles and Dunlop ; Anderson ). Although in recent years this demographic trend has begun to reverse, it continues to colour contemporary political discourse concerning immigration and, by extension, the multicultural character of Scotland (McCollum et al. ). In contrast to Westminster debates about migration, which have been influenced by perceptions of overcrowding and strain on various services, most obviously in London and the south-east of England, in Scotland there ‘is party political consensus that there is a perceived demographic deficit north of the border, and that encouraging immigration is necessary for the future economic health of Scotland’ (McCrone and Bechhofer : ). The third key factor regarding the ostensibly less racialized nature of society and politics in Scotland concerns not just the size of minority populations within the UK, but also differences in their distribution, structure, and origins, which may in themselves be related to economic history. Specific weaknesses in Scotland’s economic and industrial development in the post-war period meant that it was less attractive to migrants from the New Commonwealth,⁵ who instead migrated disproportionately to more economically developed urban areas in England (Miles and Dunlop ; Anderson ). This may also have led to important differences in the structure of the minority ethnic populations in these nations. In the s, Miles and Dunlop (: ). observed that this economic backdrop was consistent with the apparent absence of a ‘large Asian wage-earning class’ and evidence of high levels of selfemployment and entrepreneurship amongst the (predominantly ‘Asian’) minority ethnic population in Scotland. This is also reflected in more contemporary claims that this population is relatively middle-class (Hopkins ; Bonino ). Differences in economic structure also resulted in some quite fundamental differences in the origins of migrants north and south of the border, most prominently the absence of any significant primary migration from the (Black) Caribbean to Scotland. Such ⁵ This term applies to former British colonies which gained independence in the decades following , mainly situated in South Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa.
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phenomena continue to have contemporary significance not only with regard to overall levels of ethnic diversity but also regarding the levels of concentration of minority groups in different parts of the UK, most notably its urban areas, as indicated in Table .. Both the differential distribution of people in minority groups and potential differences in the class structures of these groups also underlie a fourth dimension that may contribute to an explanation of the absence of racialized political discourse in Scotland. This concerns the coincidence of diversity and disadvantage in urban England. Many of the English cities where ethnic diversity is greatest have experienced substantial disturbances in recent decades which, to some degree at least, have had their origins in tensions and conflicts related to this diversity (Benyon and Solomos ; Phillips ). Phillips (: ), for example, has described them as ‘racialized disturbances’, although she also critically challenges any notion that the origins of these disturbances may be attributable largely to the agency of minority groups in leading so-called ‘parallel lives’. However, and with the caveat that we must be cautious in generalizing within and across what are different and highly diverse minority groups, it is also clear that these disturbances have at least some of their roots in the particular urban concentrations of (some) minority ethnic groups in England and relative disadvantage and social exclusion amongst these groups (Phillips ). The essential point is that the absence of such disturbances in Scotland once more does not necessarily reflect the absence of racism towards, and any socio-economic disadvantage amongst, minority ethnic groups (Williams and De Lima ), but rather is more likely to result, at least in part, from the much less obvious coincidence of diversity and disadvantage. Census data from show that generally speaking, people in minority ethnic groups in England are more likely to live in deprived areas than their counterparts in Scotland (Scottish Government ). Scotland’s largest non-white minority group, ethnic Pakistanis, provide an obvious illustration. In Scotland, slightly fewer than one in ten Pakistanis live in the most deprived areas—a virtually identical proportion to the White majority—whereas in England more than per cent of Pakistanis live in such areas, compared to only about per cent of the White majority (Scottish Government : ), and in some regions of England such as the North and Midlands this proportion rises to around per cent of Pakistanis (Jivraj and Khan ).⁶ Not only are people in (most) minority ethnic groups in Scotland no more likely to live in a very deprived area than are those in the majority, a further evident contrast with England is the preponderance of urban areas with high concentrations of
⁶ The geographical areas used in the Scottish Government’s analysis are Data Zones in Scotland and Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England. Data Zones aggregate the smallest census geographical areas—output areas—to give populations of between and , people. LSOAs provide a broadly equivalent geographical area in England. Deprivation is assessed on rank using the Index of Multiple Deprivation (England) and the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). The most deprived areas are defined as those in the most deprived decile ( per cent).
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Table 6.6 Selected Data for Pollokshields East, Glasgow City, and Scotland, 2011 Census Pollokshields East
Glasgow City
Scotland
Ethnicity % White British or Irish % Pakistani
43.3* 37.7
84.6 3.8
92.9 0.9
Health % health very good or good % long-term health condition
81.9 24.7
77.5 31.0
82.2 29.9
Economic (in)activity % unemployed % long-term sick or disabled % routine and semi-routine occupations
6.7 6.2 20.0
6.5 8.4 29.0
4.8 5.1 28.5
Education % no qualifications % degree or equivalent
25.9 35.4
32.0 25.9
26.8 26.1
Note: * The next lowest proportion of White British or Irish people amongst the Glasgow neighbourhoods in the data is 60.3 per cent in Pollokshields West. Source: For Pollokshields East and Glasgow—Glasgow City Council (n.d.) 2011 Census Profiles for Neighbourhoods in Glasgow; for Scotland—http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk.
minorities. As shown in Table . above, Glasgow is the most diverse Scottish city in this regard, but it is also much less so than many urban areas in England. In fact, analysis of the Census published by Glasgow City Council (n.d.) suggests that in only one neighbourhood in Glasgow do people in the White ‘majority’ actually account for a minority of the population (Pollokshields East).⁷ Not surprisingly, the largest minority group in this area is ethnic Pakistanis, who make up more than one-third of residents. Considering that Glasgow is also home to a number of areas of multiple deprivation, how does Pollokshields East rank in this regard? Might we identify at least one neighbourhood in Scotland where high levels of diversity coincide with disadvantage? Table . suggests this is not the case. Using the same data from Glasgow City Council, it compares Pollokshields East with the city as a whole and (using data from the Scotland’s Census website) with Scotland as a whole. Although the indicators shown are not the same as those used in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation—SIMD (a much more complex measure), they do provide data relating to some dimensions of disadvantage, as well as highlighting the relative ethnic diversity of the neighbourhood.⁸ ⁷ ‘Neighbourhoods’ in this analysis amalgamate Data Zones to give larger geographical areas with populations of several thousand (in the case of Pollokshields East, , people). ⁸ However, if the postcode for Pollokshields East railway station is entered in the SIMD postcode finder, its data zone is ranked , out of ,, where represents the most deprived: that is, broadly speaking, an average as opposed to a deprived neighbourhood, falling in the th decile.
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Although on some measures Pollokshields East compares somewhat unfavourably with Scotland (most notably with regard to unemployment) on most of the dimensions shown it appears no more disadvantaged than Glasgow as a whole, and on some measures it compares well with national data. Although this is just one example, focusing on this extreme case, most likely the most ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Scotland (Hopkins ), and also situated in the nation’s most deprived city, it highlights the non-coincidence of diversity and disadvantage that has been a contributory factor in social problems south of the border and, by extension, the racialization of politics and society in England that has been absent in Scotland. A further dimension that has been advanced to account for this absence relates, somewhat less obviously, to some of the White minority groups in Scotland that have been evident in our review of Scotland’s demographic structure. This in itself is a somewhat complex dimension that requires some unpacking. It centres around the essential idea that different (White) ‘significant others’ (Emejulu ) have been and are more central to society and politics in Scotland such that the multicultural diversity reflected by the presence of non-white minorities is less problematic. One aspect of this argument is that the potential for discrimination against nonwhite migrants was essentially limited by pre-existing anti-Catholic sentiments and ‘sectarian’ divisions, which themselves are largely related to nineteenth-century Irish migration to Scotland (Miles and Dunlop ). Miles and Dunlop also argued that sectarianism was a factor in the very limited development and success of political parties of the far right in Scotland. This is significant in that it is within parties of the far right that we most commonly find anti-immigrant and anti-minority sentiments, and even in the contemporary era such parties have enjoyed very little significant presence or electoral success in Scotland—certainly less so than in other parts of Britain. The ‘English’ are also held to be a significant other (perhaps the primary significant other—Emejulu ) against which Scottish identity and interests are defined, once more deflecting the potential for non-White minorities and multiculturalism more broadly to be interpreted as an essential threat to the social fabric in Scotland. This in itself is a complex argument in that it might concern discrimination towards, and/or a perceived threat from, the English in Scotland, as represented by the substantial numbers of intra-UK migrants outlined in Table ., or a more abstract notion of English ‘oppression’, which might itself be somewhat conflated with the dominance of ‘Westminster’ or ‘London’ in Scottish affairs. The notion that Scotland is, and/or has been, ‘oppressed’ by England within the political union has been presented both as a potential reason why Scots are more tolerant of similarly oppressed peoples (Penrose and Howard : ) and to explain the comparative affinity of non-White minority groups with the Scottish nation (Hopkins : ), an issue that will be discussed more fully in the following section. In both senses, this offers a potential explanation for ostensibly greater multicultural ‘conviviality’ (Gilroy ) in Scotland. However, the notion that multiculturalism in Scotland might be relatively successful because of the greater salience of different (alien or oppressive) ‘significant others’ is questionable. First, even from their temporal vantage point in the mid-s, Miles and
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Dunlop recognized that the high point (such that there was one) of explicit anti-Irish/ Catholic politics in Scotland was historically located more than half a century earlier, in the s and s. Further, in the decades since Miles and Dunlop wrote, much evidence points to the decline of anti-Irish/Catholic discrimination in Scotland such that, although the historical legacy of this disadvantage might not have disappeared entirely, it has at least been fundamentally eroded (Paterson ; Devine ). So, whether anti-Irish and/or Catholic sentiment in Scotland continues to provide a compelling reason (if it ever did) for the more harmonious incorporation of nonWhite minorities is doubtful. Similarly, whilst there is undoubtedly a degree of prejudice and discrimination directed towards the English living in Scotland, there is no evidence that this amounts to a serious and systematic problem of a scale that would explain the sublimation of racist attitudes and behaviour towards other groups.⁹ Finally, the notion of an ‘oppressed affinity’ between Scots and non-White minorities is fundamentally undermined by Scotland’s involvement in Britain’s imperial activities, and the wider social consequences this had for social attitudes towards (former) colonial peoples in Scotland (Cant and Kelly ). As Miles and Dunlop (: ) argued, ‘Scottish colonial experiences have had important consequences for the contemporary reproduction and expression of racism in Scotland’. Once more, this highlights that the puzzle is not to explain the absence of racism in Scotland, but rather the absence of racialization of Scottish politics and society. A final reason that has been advanced for this apparent absence relates to the nature of contemporary (political) nationalism in Scotland. It has become something of a truism to say that Scottish nationalism generally, and more specifically the nationalism espoused by the current governing party in Scotland (the SNP), is essentially civic rather than ethnic (Hopkins ; Emejulu ; Chapters and in this Handbook). Notwithstanding the problems in portraying the ethnic and civic ideal types of nationalism as mutually exclusive, it is certainly clear that, not only for the SNP but for other political elites in contemporary Scotland, there is no sense in which membership of the nation should be premised on ancestral descent or ‘race’; it is very much a matter of ‘belonging’ rather than ‘blood’. Also significant here is the dominance of a broadly social-democratic perspective in Scottish politics. In recent decades this has largely been reflected in competition between Labour and the SNP for the crucial centre-left vote, initially characterized by a long period of Labour hegemony but more recently by SNP dominance. Overall, an essentially left-liberal civic nationalism has also contributed to the political insignificance of parties of the far right in Scotland. The reasons behind the development of this political landscape are likely to be complex, but a key point is that the demographic history and structures we have reviewed and discussed will be significant in this regard, and the relative non-racialization of politics in Scotland is ⁹ See Hussain and Miller () for a more developed analysis of ‘Anglophobia’ within a multicultural context in Scotland.
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likely to have both shaped and been shaped by this political landscape. However, it is equally important to stress that the apparent normative multiculturalism espoused by party political elites need not be straightforwardly reflected in relative multicultural conviviality amongst the wider population of Scotland. This issue is addressed directly in the next section.
T S P
.................................................................................................................................. A fuller understanding of multicultural Scotland requires more than analysis of broad demographic structures and inferences as to the social and political implications of these structures. It is also necessary to examine evidence concerning attitudes, identities, and experiences amongst the wider population in Scotland (both amongst minority and ‘majority’ groups). We first address popular attitudes to (im)migration and minorities amongst the general population in Scotland. These have been examined by McCollum et al. () using data from British and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys. To some extent their analysis is framed within similar observations to those discussed above: that elite political discourse in Scotland broadly centres around a consensus that is positive towards immigration, in contrast to a more negative discourse at a UK/Westminster level; that nationalism in Scotland (both generally, and more specifically as represented by the SNP) is relatively inclusive; and that until quite recently Scotland’s demography was consistently characterized by net outmigration, which has been a matter of some political concern. A key question addressed by McCollum et al. () is the extent to which these broader discourses and factors are reflected in public opinion on matters related to immigration and minority groups. They conclude that to some extent this seems to be the case, in that public attitudes in Scotland are indeed more positive in this regard compared to (most) other parts of the UK, but there are also several significant caveats. First, they show that the one UK region where attitudes appear to be somewhat more positive than in Scotland is London. This undermines any notion that Scottish attitudes are invariably more welcoming towards migration and minorities compared to other parts of the UK, and also challenges the proposition that one reason behind more positive perspectives on multiculturalism in Scotland might be comparatively low levels of ethnic diversity (since London is clearly one of the most diverse cities in Britain). Second, their analysis suggests that a large and growing minority in Scotland do espouse more negative attitudes towards migration and minorities, so there is clearly far from a popular consensus on such matters. Finally, they speculate that the fact that attitudes appear to be more negative amongst those who feel most strongly Scottish and those who favour an independent Scotland calls into question the notion that nationalism in Scotland is fundamentally civic and inclusive in nature (McCollum et al. ). The specific survey questions utilized by McCollum et al. concern attitudes to immigration (should it be stopped? have its effects generally been negative?); attitudes
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towards ethnic minorities (do they negatively influence the labour market, and/or threaten national identity?); and more explicit racial prejudice. Whilst data based on such questions may convey a somewhat equivocal picture in Scotland, and none of these attitudes need necessarily be expressed in discriminatory behaviour, what appears to be less equivocal is evidence regarding the experience of racism and discrimination amongst people in minority ethnic groups in Scotland. That this is substantial is consistently evident across time (Miles and Dunlop ; Cant and Kelly ; Hopkins , ; Hussain and Miller ; Bonino ; Arshad ; Young ) with data on racist incidents reported to the police or the experience of racial discrimination, as recorded in response to surveys of people in minority groups in Scotland (Meer b, c). In a recent report by the Runnymede Trust (Meer a), a consistent thread running through a number of the contributions from both academics and practitioners was the need to address the disjoint between a more positive elite discourse and the national narrative regarding equality and tolerance in Scotland, and the more negative experiences and outcomes for many people in minority groups. Insofar as multiculturalism relates to equality between people of different ethnic and national backgrounds and the absence of prejudice and discrimination towards those in minority groups, then clearly in Scotland this is limited to some degree at least. However, as well as assessing multiculturalism from the perspective of social exclusion, we may also consider the more symbolic inclusion or exclusion reflected in subjective national identities. As Fenton (: ) has argued ‘ . . . the question of the political and cultural definition of “the nation” is seen to be central to the problem of incorporation and equal treatment of minoritized populations. If the national story is “exclusive” then it needs to be somehow rewritten.’ One means of assessing the degree of any such exclusivity is to assess the extent to which people in migrant and minority groups feel an affinity with their nation of residence, as opposed to their birthplace, or that of their ancestors. But equally this might be done through examining the manner in which people in the national majority conceptualize national identity such that those in minority groups can or should be able to belong to the nation. Such issues are further complicated in multi-nation states such as the UK, where there are multiple national ‘stories’ (Virdee et al. ) and people may thus identify as British and/or as Scottish, English, Welsh, or (Northern) Irish. A substantial body of research has established the significance of this distinction with regard to the subjective national identities of people in minority groups in Scotland and England. The key contrast which this suggests is that there are not necessarily marked differences in the degree to which minorities identify with their nation of residence, but which nation is most salient in this regard. Survey evidence focused mainly on England has consistently demonstrated high levels of British identification amongst minorities (Maxwell ; Platt ; Karlsen and Nazroo ; Nandi and Platt ), but research also suggests that identification as English amongst these same minorities is much more limited (Thomas and Sanderson ) and that this may be
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related to (more ‘ethnicized’) conceptions of Englishness amongst the majority group (Fenton and Mann ). In contrast, studies carried out in Scotland have consistently shown much higher levels of Scottish national identity, suggesting this is more inclusive of people in minority ethnic groups in Scotland than is an English identity for their counterparts in England. Many of these studies have been rather small-scale and/or focused on a specific minority group, most commonly Pakistani Muslims (Saeed et al. ; Hussain and Miller ; Hopkins ; Bonino ), and the scale of Scotland’s minority population has itself presented a limitation on research based on robust quantitative data encompassing various minority groups. In this regard the census (the first in the UK to include a question on national identity) provided a unique opportunity, and largely confirmed previous findings indicating much higher levels of Scottish compared to English identification amongst minorities (Bond b, c). To give one specific example from this analysis, amongst Scotland’s largest ethno-religious minority group (Pakistani Muslims), per cent of adults identify as Scottish, compared to only per cent who identify as English in the corresponding group in England (Bond b: ). Overall, such patterns have led some to identify a ‘multicultural nationalism’ in Scotland (Hussain and Miller ), in which multiculturalism and Scottish nationalism have a mutually accommodating relationship. However, it is also important not to exaggerate contrasts with minority groups in England or the degree to which ‘multicultural nationalism’ may prevail in Scotland. First, the contrast in levels of British identification amongst minority groups in Scotland and England is much less obvious than for Scottish and English identification. For example, per cent of adult Pakistani Muslims in Scotland identify as British. Whilst this is indeed substantially lower than the corresponding figure for this group in England ( per cent) it is in fact higher than the aforementioned per cent who identified as Scottish (Bond b: ): this is also true of most other non-white minority groups in Scotland. Second, levels of Scottish identification amongst such minority groups are much lower than they are amongst the white majority. Although to some extent this is attributable to birthplace (with those in the White majority much more likely to have been born in Scotland), even when this is taken into account people in minority groups are still considerably less likely to identify as Scottish (see Bond b, c for more detailed analyses). Whilst the above evidence concerns the national identities of those in minority groups, also pertinent to a discussion of multicultural Scotland are wider popular views concerning the importance of ethnicity for ‘belonging’ to the Scottish nation. Prominent here is the work of McCrone and Bechhofer, who developed survey questions which presented various ‘scenarios’ to respondents in Scotland across a number of studies (for a summary see McCrone and Bechhofer ). These scenarios sought to explore how various ‘markers’ of national identity (such as birthplace, parentage, ethnicity, accent) might influence the (hypothetical) success of ‘claims’ to be Scottish. For example, to what extent would people generally be likely to accept that someone born in England but living in Scotland should be able to identify as Scottish, and what difference (if any) might it make if this notional person were White or not? They find
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that although survey respondents would be typically more likely to reject a claim to be Scottish from a hypothetical non-White person (other ‘markers’ being equal), this is only marginally true, usually reflected in a response differential of a few percentage points. In Scotland, birthplace rather than ‘race’ is clearly the most important factor in evaluating such claims. Sociological evidence concerning people’s attitudes and subjective national identities, whilst valuable, represents a somewhat generalized picture given that multiculturalism is experienced within specific (often local) contexts. This dimension is encapsulated to some extent at least in the concept of ‘everyday’ or ‘mundane’ multiculturalism (Wise and Velayutham ; Watson and Saha ; Radford ), which often focuses on the more positive and convivial aspects of cultural interaction and exchange between those of different ethnic backgrounds, as opposed to everyday prejudice and discrimination. Unsurprisingly, everyday multiculturalism is more likely to be experienced in specific places that are multicultural in the more demographic sense explored earlier. Living in such places may also influence how national belonging is conceived, both amongst minority and majority groups. For example, Virdee et al.’s (: .) research in a multi-ethnic area of Glasgow shows that ‘the Scottish nation cannot easily be imagined as White in ethnically mixed neighbourhoods’. Particularly for those in the neighbourhood’s (and Scotland’s) largest non-White minority group—Pakistanis— markers of identity such as accent, dress, and demeanour may be deployed to locate themselves within the (Scottish) nation rather than beyond it. At the same time, for those in the (White) majority, living in an ethnically diverse area where skin colour is an unreliable indicator of birthplace and upbringing undermines any easy association between Scottishness and whiteness. Overall, untangling the degree to which sociological evidence concerning attitudes, identities and everyday lived experiences of multiculturalism may be related to the broader political context in Scotland is perhaps an even more complex endeavour than exploring how this political context is informed by the multicultural structure of Scotland understood in a more demographic sense. However, whilst elite perspectives and discourses are undoubtedly not simply reflected at a more popular, everyday level, it seems likely that there is a reciprocal influence between political and popular domains with regard to issues that are relevant to multiculturalism. This might be illustrated by re-stating and considering more fully some salient features of the contemporary political landscape already highlighted above. As already noted, populist parties of the far right have gained markedly less traction in Scotland than they have even in other parts of Britain, which does not suggest widespread and significant anti-immigrant sentiment. People of immigrant origins living in Scotland have also proved willing to vote for (and in some cases electorally represent) an avowedly ‘nationalist’ political party in Scotland—the SNP. Large-scale data on political behaviour amongst minority groups in Scotland are rare, principally due to familiar problems of the scale of minority populations and therefore their representation in sample surveys (Meer and Peace ). But Hussain and Miller’s
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unique survey of ethnic Pakistanis in Scotland indicated that nearly half of this group voted for the SNP at the Scottish Parliament elections—a much higher proportion than the electorate more generally. Whilst they recognize that this vote was undoubtedly influenced by geopolitical events (specifically the Iraq war), a key conclusion here is that ‘ . . . it is almost inconceivable that any English National Party, however moderate, could win twice as much support from Blacks and Asians as from the average voter in England’ (Hussain and Miller : ). Meer and Peace () have also suggested that in the independence referendum campaign in Scotland there was no evidence to suggest that minority ethnic voters were particularly averse to a Yes vote. Overall, this evidence suggests a widespread affiliation rather than alienation from the principal nationalist party in Scotland and its key political aim of independence, which is consistent with that party’s position as normatively multicultural.
C
.................................................................................................................................. As in other areas of social and political life, an examination of the multicultural dimension requires that proper consideration is given to the ways in which Scotland is different, whilst at the same time not exaggerating the degree of such distinctiveness. Scotland’s demographic structure and the particular migration histories which underpin it contrast in some important respects with other parts of the UK. This in turn shapes distinctive attitudes, experiences and identities which both inform, and are informed by, political structures and measures. The particular constellation of these three dimensions—demographic, sociological, and political—means that multiculturalism in Scotland cannot be adequately understood simply by adopting a similar perspective to that which obtains at a UK (or, more accurately, English) level. Whilst people in minority ethnic groups in Scotland are to some extent similar to their counterparts elsewhere in the UK with regard to their shared experience of racism and discrimination, a key difference is that social and political discourse and structures are not obviously racialized in Scotland. The extent to which this may be attributed to the somewhat limited degree of diversity in Scotland is debatable, but that diversity has undoubtedly increased substantially in recent decades. If this trend continues, then there will likely be associated challenges, but there is also sufficient reason to believe these should certainly not be insurmountable.
R Anderson, M. . ‘Migrants in Scotland’s Population Histories since ’. in Scotland’s Population—The Registrar General’s Annual Review of Demographic Trends . Available at: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/stats-at-a-glance/registrargenerals-annual-review/, accessed December .
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Arshad, R. . ‘Race Equality and Scotland – Forwards and Backwards?’, in Meer, N. (ed.), Scotland and Race Equality: Directions in Policy and Identity. London: Runnymede. Ballard, R. . ‘Introduction: The Emergence of Desh Pardesh’, in R. Ballard (ed.), Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain. London: Hurst. Benyon, J. and Solomos, J. (eds). . The Roots of Urban Unrest. Oxford: Pergamon. Bond, R. a. ‘Minorities and Diversity in Scotland: Evidence from the Census’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Bond, R. b. ‘Sub-state National Identities among Minority Groups in Britain: A Comparative Analysis of Census Data’, Nations and Nationalism, /: –. Bond, R. c. ‘Multicultural Nationalism? National Identities among Minority Groups in Scotland’s Census’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, /: –. Bond, R., Charsley, K., and Grundy, S. . ‘An Audible Minority: Migration, Settlement and Identity among English Graduates in Scotland’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, /: –. Bonino, S. . ‘Scottish Muslims through a Decade of Change: Wounded by the Stigma, Healed by Islam, Rescued by Scotland’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Bonino, S. . ‘The Migration and Settlement of Pakistanis and Indians’, in T.M. Devine and A. McCarthy (eds), New Scots: Scotland’s Immigrant Communities since . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Boyle, M. . ‘Edifying the Rebellious Gael: Uses of Memories of Ireland’s Troubled Past among the West of Scotland’s Irish Catholic Diaspora’, in D. Harvey et al. (eds), Celtic Geographies. London: Routledge, –. Cant, B. and Kelly, E. . ‘Why is there a Need for Racial Equality Activity in Scotland?’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Crul, M. . ‘Super-diversity vs. Assimilation: How Complex Diversity in Majority– Minority Cities Challenges the Assumptions of Assimilation’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, /: –. Day, G., Davis, H., and Drakakis-Smith, A. . ‘There’s One Shop You Don’t Go Into If You Are English’: The Social and Political Integration of English Migrants into Wales’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, /: –. Devine, T.M. . ‘The End of Disadvantage? The Descendants of Irish-Catholic Immigrants in Modern Scotland since ’, in M.J. Mitchell (ed.), New Perspectives on the Irish in Scotland. Edinburgh: John Donald, –. Devine, T.M. . ‘Invisible Migrants? English People in Modern Scotland’, in T.M. Devine and A. McCarthy (eds), New Scots: Scotland’s Immigrant Communities since . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Devine, T.M. and Hesse, D. . ‘Introduction’, in T.M. Devine and D. Hesse (eds), Scotland and Poland: Historical Encounters, –. Edinburgh: John Donald, –. Drakakis-Smith, A., Day, G., and Davis, H. . ‘Inside Out: An “English” Dispersal into North-West Wales’, Immigrants & Minorities, /: –. Emejulu, A. . ‘Being and Belonging in Scotland: Exploring the Intersection of Ethnicity, Gender and National Identity among Scottish Pakistani Groups’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Fenton, S. . ‘The Sociology of Ethnicity and National Identity’, Ethnicities, /: –. Fenton, S. and Mann, R. . ‘ “Our Own People”: Ethnic Majority Orientations to Nation and Country’, in T. Modood and J. Salt (eds), Global Migration, Ethnicity and Britishness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, –.
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Findlay, A.M., Hoy, C., and Stockdale, A. . ‘In What Sense English? An Exploration of English Migrant Identities and Identification’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, /: –. Gilroy, P. . After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? London: Routledge. Glasgow City Council. n.d. Census Profiles for Neighbourhoods in Glasgow. Available at: www.glasgow.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=&p=, accessed March . Hopkins, P. . ‘Everyday Racism in Scotland: A Case Study of East Pollokshields’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Hopkins, P. . ‘ “Blue Squares”, “Proper” Muslims and Transnational Networks: Narratives of National and Religious Identities among Young Muslim Men Living in Scotland’, Ethnicities, /: –. Hopkins, P. . ‘Politics, Race and Nation: The Difference that Scotland Makes’, in C. Dwyer and C. Bressey (eds), New Geographies of Race and Racism. Aldershot: Ashgate. Howard, K. . ‘Constructing the Irish of Britain: Ethnic Recognition and the UK Censuses’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –. Hussain, A. and Miller, W. . Multicultural Nationalism: Islamophobia, Anglophobia, and Devolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jivraj, S. and Khan, O. . Ethnicity and Deprivation in England: How Likely are Ethnic Minorities to Live in Deprived Neighbourhoods? Manchester: Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity. Karlsen, S. and Nazroo, J.Y. . ‘Ethnic and Religious Differences in the Attitudes of People towards Being “British” ’, Sociological Review, /: –. Maxwell, R. . ‘Muslims, South Asians and the British Mainstream: A National Identity Crisis?’, West European Politics, /: –. McCollum, D., Nowok, B., and Tindal, S. . ‘Public Attitudes Towards Migration in Scotland: Exceptionality and Possible Policy Implications’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. McCrone, D. . The New Sociology of Scotland. London: Sage. McCrone, D. and Bechhofer, F. . ‘National Identity and Social Inclusion’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –. McCrone, D. and Bechhofer, F. . Understanding National Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McIntosh, I., Robertson, D., and Sim, D. . English People in Scotland: An Invisible Minority. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press. McIntosh, I., Sim, D., and Robertson, D. a. ‘ “We Hate the English, Except for You, Cos You’re Our Pal”: Identification of the “English” in Scotland’, Sociology, /: –. McIntosh, I., Sim, D., and Robertson, D. b. ‘It’s as if you’re some alien . . . ’. Exploring Anti-English Attitudes in Scotland’, Sociological Research Online, /. Meer, N. (ed.). a. Scotland and Race Equality: Directions in Policy and Identity. London: Runnymede. Meer, N. b. ‘Introduction: A “Scottish Approach” to Race Equality?’, in N. Meer (ed.), Scotland and Race Equality: Directions in Policy and Identity. London: Runnymede. Meer, N. c. ‘Self-reported Discrimination in Scotland’, in N. Meer (ed.), Scotland and Race Equality: Directions in Policy and Identity. London: Runnymede. Meer, N. and Peace, T. . ‘The Election: BME Groups in Scotland’, in O. Khan and A. Sveinsson (eds), Race and Elections. London: Runnymede. Miles, R. and Dunlop, A. . ‘Racism in Britain: The Scottish Dimension’, in P. Jackson (ed.), Race and Racism: Essays in Social Geography. London: Allen & Unwin. Mitchell, M.J. . ‘Preface’, in M.J. Mitchell (ed.), New Perspectives on the Irish in Scotland. Edinburgh: John Donald.
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Nandi, A. and Platt, L. . ‘Patterns of Minority and Majority Identification in a Multicultural Society’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –. Paterson, L. . ‘The Social Class of Catholics in Scotland’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, /: –. Penrose, J. and Howard, D. . ‘One Scotland, Many Cultures: The Mutual Constitution of Anti-Racism and Place’, in C. Dwyer and C. Bressey (eds), New Geographies of Race and Racism. Aldershot: Ashgate. Phillips, D. . ‘Parallel Lives? Challenging Discourses of British Muslim Self-Segregation’, Environment and Planning D, : –. Pietka-Nykaza, E. . ‘Polish Diaspora or Polish Migrant Communities? Polish Migrants in Scotland, –’, in T.M. Devine and A. McCarthy (eds), New Scots: Scotland’s Immigrant Communities since . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Platt, L. . ‘Is there Assimilation in Minority Groups’ National, Ethnic and Religious Identity?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –. Radford, D. . ‘Everyday Otherness’ – Intercultural Refugee Encounters and Everyday Multiculturalism in a South Australian Rural Town’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, /: –. Saeed, A., Blain, N., and Forbes, D. . ‘New Ethnic and National Questions in Scotland: Post-British Identities among Glasgow Pakistani Teenagers’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –. Scottish Government. . Overview of Equality Results from the Census, Release . Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Characteristics of Recent and Established EEA and non-EEA Migrants in Scotland: Analysis of the Census. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Thomas, P. and Sanderson, P. . ‘Unwilling Citizens? Muslim Young People and National Identity’, Sociology, /: –. Virdee, S., Kyriakides, C., and Modood, T. . ‘Codes of Cultural Belonging: Racialised National Identities in a Multi-Ethnic Scottish Neighbourhood’, Sociological Research Online, /. Walls, P. and Williams, R. . ‘Sectarianism at Work: Accounts of Employment Discrimination against Irish Catholics in Scotland’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –. Watson, M. . Being English in Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Watson, S. and Saha, A. . ‘Suburban Drifts: Mundane Multiculturalism in Outer London’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –. Williams, C., and De Lima, P. . ‘Devolution, Multicultural Citizenship and Race Equality: From Laissez-faire to Nationally Responsible Policies’, Critical Social Policy, /: –. Wise, A. and Velayutham, S. (eds). . Everyday Multiculturalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Young, C. . ‘Race Equality in Scotland’s Public Sector: Five Missing Links?’, in N. Meer (ed.), Scotland and Race Equality: Directions in Policy and Identity. London: Runnymede.
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.................................................................................................................................. V of unionism in Scotland may all be found in the debates in the last Scottish Parliament in –. The Earl of Roxburghe, one of the Squadrone Volante who swung from opposing to supporting the Union, predicted that ‘The motives will be, Trade with most, Hanover with some, ease and security with others, together with a general aversion to civill discords, intolerable poverty and . . . constant oppression’. Opposing him, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun sought a federal union in which Scottish institutions would be preserved, but was not (contrary to the modern popular picture of him) in favour of an independent Scotland. These strands of unionism have persisted for three centuries. In modern politics, they may be roughly mapped to social unionism (relieving intolerable poverty and constant oppression); trade and security unionism (preserving the nation state under the Hanoverian Crown); and nationalist unionism (protecting separate Scottish institutions in a union state). The last of these is not a contradiction in terms. The three strands map poorly onto contemporary party labels but are conceptually coherent. A social union entails uniform welfare standards and a uniform safety net throughout the UK. The trade and security union is about the economies of scale generated by free trade within the UK. It used also to be about the military and the British Empire, to which Scots contributed massively, but has been reborn as a primordial concern for the Union in and of itself, but with added Faslane. Nationalist unionism, well represented by the MacCormicks father and son, insists on the integrity of Scots constitutional law and on the sovereignty of the Scottish people. Nationalist unionism’s intellectual high point came in the obiter dicta of the (Unionist) Lord President Cooper in MacCormick v. Lord Advocate (), recently echoed in some submissions to Miller (R (on the application of Miller and another) v. Secretary of State
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for Exiting the European Union). It remains a live strand of unionism, although the least-understood one.
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.................................................................................................................................. ‘The motives will be, Trade with most, Hanover with some, ease and security with others, together with a general aversion to civill discords, intolerable poverty and . . . constant oppression’ (Earl of Roxburghe, a swing voter in the last Scottish Parliament in , cited in McLean and McMillan : ) As discussed elsewhere in this Handbook, the motives of the Scottish Union negotiators, and of members of the last pre-union Parliament, varied. Fundamentally, was not an English takeover; but arguably was (McLean and McMillan ; Whatley ). Daniel Defoe, travel writer, agent in Scotland for the English minister Robert Harley, and softener-up of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, wrote in : [N]othing is more plain than that the articles of the treaty . . . cannot be touched by the Parliament of Britain; and that the moment they attempt it, they dissolve their own Constitution; so it is a Union upon no other terms, and is expressly stipulated what shall, and what shall not, be alterable by the subsequent Parliaments. And as the Parliaments of Great Britain are founded, not upon the original right of the people, as the separate Parliaments of England and Scotland were before, but upon the Treaty which is prior to the said Parliament, and consequently superior; so, for that reason, it cannot have power to alter its own foundation, or act against the power which formed it, since all constituted power is subordinate, and inferior to the power constituting. This is so clear, and has been so often inculcated in this very case, and is so unanswerably stated in the very acts of Parliament themselves, ratifying the treaty, that I need say no more to it here. (Defoe [] : . Spelling as in reprint)
It did not take long for the new Union parliament to betray Defoe’s promise, which had helped to swing the leaders of the Church of Scotland behind the union project (McLean and McMillan : ). One of the terms of the Treaty and subsequent Acts was to protect the establishment of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland. The Scottish Act, incorporated and endorsed in the final Act of Union, provides that: it being reasonable and necessary that the true Protestant Religion as presently professed within this Kingdom with the Worship Discipline and Government of this Church should be effectually and unalterably secured Therefore Her Majesty
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with Advice and Consent of the said Estates of Parliament doth hereby establish and confirm the said true Protestant Religion and the Worship Discipline and Government of this Church to continue without any Alteration to the People of this Land in all succeeding Generations. (Union with Scotland Act c. Article XXV)
The Tory-dominated House of Commons elected in enacted a statute that seemed, to Scots lawyers and church leaders (and seems to me), to be starkly inconsistent with this constitutional guarantee. The Patronage Act c., according to its long title, is ‘An Act to restore the Patrons to their ancient Rights of presenting Ministers to the Churches vacant in that Part of Great Britain called Scotland’. This was anathema to Presbyterians, as landowning patrons might not even be Presbyterians themselves; and the right of a congregation to call its own minister was a fundamental tenet of the Scottish version of Calvinism (Peterson and McLean : –). Presbyterianism had been incorporated in the Claim of Right Act (ASP c.), as one of the conditions to which William and Mary assented in exchange for the offer of the crown of Scotland. The Act (actually enacted in , by the modern way of counting) is the first known instance of what is now called the ‘West Lothian Question’ (McLean : ), in which an Act affecting only Scotland was opposed by the majority of Scottish MPs. It led to two centuries of discord, peaking in the Disruption of the Church of Scotland (Rodger ), and settling only when the Church of Scotland Act c., discussed below, restored the position that the Scottish Parliament thought it had secured in . In the next three sections, I discuss the competing visions of Union as Scottish politicians and commentators saw them in . The least-understood of them, nationalist unionism, regained its political prominence only in the s and it makes sense to take the initial narrative from to . The other two main strands—social unionism and trade and security—are each discussed in separate Then and Now sections of the chapter.
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.................................................................................................................................. Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (nd baronet, –; cf. Clerk ) was MP for Whithorn, a public finance expert, and one of the Scottish Union commissioners. John Clerk is to the union negotiations as James Madison is to the drafting of the US Constitution in (Madison /): a participant-observer without whose witness we would not know what happened. For several subsequent years Clerk helped oversee the ‘Equivalent’. This was formally compensation to Scotland for agreeing to take on a share of the national debt of the new kingdom. Actually, it was a combination of Marshall Plan and massive bribe. As the Marshall Plan enabled democracy to survive in Europe after , so the Union and subsequent Equivalent enabled Scotland to survive the Darien disaster of –.
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The Company of Scotland was chartered by the Scottish Parliament in , in the same year as the Bank of Scotland. Ministers aimed to make Scotland an independent trading nation, and to break the trading monopoly claimed by the English East India Company, by creating a trading post called ‘New Caledonia’ in Darien (modern Panama). The effort was an unmitigated disaster. Two expeditions were sent out, but more than half of the colonists died. It did not suit King William’s statecraft to offend either the East India Company or the Spanish Empire (Insh ; Devine ). Darien is estimated to have consumed a quarter of Scotland’s capital stock after the Company of Scotland had been barred from English capital markets (Riley ). The promise of an Equivalent also smoothed the way for some Scottish MPs to switch from opposing to supporting the Union, although we have shown (McLean and McMillan : table .) that this was not statistically associated with having held Darien stock. It is anachronistic to call Clerk ‘left-wing’, but he clearly cared about what his fellowparliamentarian Roxburghe called the ‘intolerable poverty and . . . constant oppression’ of Scotland between Darien and the Union. He understood, much faster than most of his contemporaries, that integrating Scotland into a much larger economy, whilst giving Scots access to the British Empire, could pull Scotland out of its intolerable poverty. The results were not immediate. Clerk thought, with good evidence, that the Union was unpopular in Scotland (Clerk : –). The Jacobite risings of , , and were a symptom. Only after did the Union settle down in Scotland. In , Adam Smith wrote to his publisher that The Union was a measure from which infinite Good has been derived to this country [i.e. Scotland]. The Prospect of such good, however, must then [in ] have appeared very remote and uncertain. The immediate effect of it was to hurt the interest of every single order of men in the country . . . The views of their Posterity are now very different. (Adam Smith to William Strahan, April , in Mossner and Ross , Letter )
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.................................................................................................................................. ‘Hanover with some, ease and security with others’, said Roxburghe in . The Scots had brought the English to the table by threatening not to copy the English choice of the Hanoverian dynasty in succession to the childless Queen Anne. But Clerk saw that [I]t wou’d be next to madness to imagine that the Scots cou’d set up a separat King, or force any King on England but the person chosen by that nation. (Clerk : )
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It was true that Scots had defeated their much larger neighbour at Bannockburn () and Newburn (). They had tried to force their Presbyterian settlement on England in the Solemn League and Covenant of , which for a whilst both Charles I and Charles II were willing to accept. But for every Bannockburn there was a Flodden (); for every Newburn a Dunbar (). Clerk and Roxburghe were right to predict that ease and security would require Hanover. The matter was finally settled in . The seminal accounts by Devine () and Colley () explore how quickly Britain became a nation. As soon as the Acts of Union named the newly created union Great Britain, there was a spurt in the use of the words Britain, British, and Briton. A book entitled The British Empire in America was published in (Devine : xxiii). Trade and security went together. More security fostered more trade and vice versa. Scots’ access to Empire trade gave them the security that Darien had cruelly shown to be lacking. Devine (: ) notes that Article IV of the Treaty of Union, the one which gives Scotland equal access to trade and navigation, had the highest vote in its favour in the Scottish Parliament, with only nineteen members voting against Union. James Thomson, a Scotsman, celebrated Britannia’s rule of the waves by writing Britons never, never, never shall be slaves in —a phrase that would not have been nearly as resonant had it not been set to music by Thomas Arne. Thomson may have had in mind the Cruisers and Convoys Act & Anne c., which suppressed the pirates of the Caribbean (some of them), reduced transaction costs, and made trade to the Caribbean colonies cheaper and therefore more profitable. Britons might never (never, never) be slaves, but they profited at least indirectly from the slaveowning sugar and tobacco colonies. In , Robert Burns was ready to embark at Greenock, about to go to Jamaica as the bookkeeper on a slave plantation, until the unexpected success of the Kilmarnock Edition of his poems made him change his mind (Crawford ). It was after British victories in India and Canada in the so-called Seven Years’ War (–) that the empire really opened up to both Scottish trade and Scottish emigration. Defoe, in his multiple capacities as journalist, lobbyist, and travel writer, had already noted that Glasgow was the best-placed port in Britain for the American trade. A (Port-) Glasgow-based ship could make two transatlantic voyages a year; a London-based ship only one. Even the leading English west-coast ports, which were Bristol, Liverpool, and Whitehaven, had less favourable geography than Glasgow (Defoe : vol. II, –; Price ). Shorter voyages meant higher productivity not only directly, but also because ‘commercial intelligence could pass more quickly’ (Price : ). The Glasgow tobacco trade had already begun before the Union, despite severe trading restrictions. It therefore blossomed after the Union, helping to foster (and be fostered by) Glasgow University in its golden age (–), when Adam Smith taught economics, sociology, and moral philosophy, and James Watt repaired scientific instruments next door. It peaked immediately before American independence, building a capital base which enabled Glasgow to become the Second City of the Empire until its collapse in the s.
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The British Empire meant jobs as well as trade. Numerous studies have drawn attention to the disproportionate number of Scottish settlers in the British Empire. These came in all shapes and conditions: factors in the Chesapeake; administrators and doctors in India; rail and marine engineers everywhere; Gaels to Nova Scotia and Orcadians to Hudson’s Bay (summarized by Devine : –, ). And, relatedly, the Empire was an opportunity for military service. British ministers realized remarkably quickly after how Highland rebels could be turned into soldiers of empire, thus killing two birds with one stone: I sought for merit wherever it was to be found; . . . I was the first minister who looked for it and found it in the mountains of the north. (William Pitt the elder, , quoted by Devine : )
The ideology of unionism grew alongside its material outputs. Much of this comprised an apparently odd nationalist version of unionism to be considered in the next section. Part, however, depended on assertions of a common Protestant heritage, on which Colley () lays great stress. Until , Roman Catholics were widely defined as the ‘other’, who threatened both parts of Great Britain (‘Frustrate their knavish tricks’, chants a seldom-sung verse of the UK National Anthem). Anti-Catholic prejudice did not die out with the end of the Napoleonic wars (being prominent in reactions to Irish Home Rule from the s until ), in corners of the west of Scotland until the present day, and in Northern Ireland. However, as we have seen, the radically different forms of Protestantism in Scotland and England meant that Protestantism could divide as well as unite. The Colley hypothesis should be stated in terms of ‘common antiCatholic’ rather than ‘shared Protestant’ heritage.
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.................................................................................................................................. The fourth Duke of Hamilton nominally led opposition to union in the last Scottish Parliament, but ineffectually: Clerk suggests that he was so ‘unlucky in his privat circumstances that he wou’d have complied with any thing on a suitable encouragement’ (Clerk : ). The most prominent opponent of the Treaty was rather Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, member for East Lothian. Fletcher was a cosmopolitan figure who had spent most of his life outside Scotland, much of it in the Netherlands (Robertson ). His model for Union was, accordingly, a federal one, somewhat like that of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, from which William III had come in . In his powerful speeches to Parliament, he proposed that if the union of crowns should continue (which he supported: he was no Jacobite, but nor was he a Presbyterian), there should be two equal parliaments under it, that of England and that of Scotland. The Scottish Parliament should be solely responsible for appointing the monarch’s Scottish ministers:
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[T]here is no way to free this country from a ruinous dependence on the English court, unless by placing the power of conferring offices and pensions in the parliament, so long as we shall have the same king with England. (speech on May in Robertson : )
Although Fletcher was willing to support Hamilton’s proposal that the Scottish Parliament should be free to nominate a successor other than the Elector of Hanover on Queen Anne’s death (Robertson : ), it seems that his, and probably Hamilton’s, motives were tactical. That was the threat that brought the English to the table. However, once brought to the table, Fletcher’s (con)federalist vision got short shrift. Clerk explains: The first grand point debated by the Commissioners for Scotland amongst themselves was whether they should propose to the English a Federal union between the two nations, or an Incorporating union. The first was most favoured by the people of Scotland, but all the Scots Commissioners, to a Man, considered it rediculous and impracticable . . . And in things of the greatest Consequence to the two nations, as in Councils relating to peace and war or subsidies, it was impossible that the Representatives or their suffrages in both nations cou’d be equal, but must be regulated in proportion to the power and richess of the several publick burdens or Taxations that cou’d affect them. (Clerk : )
Here it is necessary to distinguish between the Treaty of Union and the two (Scottish and English) Acts of Union. The Treaty itself may fairly be read as an incorporating union, just as Clerk says, but the Acts cannot. The Union proposal was unpopular not only in the streets of Edinburgh but also in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Defoe and William Carstares (Clarke ) were the key players in bringing the church round, without which the Scottish Parliament would not have voted for Union. With Defoe’s encouragement, Carstares helped draft the Act of Security APS xi , c., guaranteeing the establishment of the Church of Scotland. The Scottish Parliament incorporated this Act into their Act of Union, and said that they would not accept the Union unless the English Parliament accepted the Act of Security, whilst being at liberty to enact a similar provision to protect the establishment of the Church of England. This duly happened, so that the final Act of Union contains constitutional guarantees to two ‘true Protestant’ religions even though at most one religion can be true. Hence the final Act was not an incorporating union. But, as already discussed, the Patronage Act showed that the constitutional guarantee might be empty. Throughout the following three centuries the tussle between Diceyan and nationalist unionism has waxed and waned, and the issues are as live in as they were in . The current constitutional issues are discussed shortly, but it is appropriate to mention some intervening history first. There has been a long literary history of nationalist unionism. Some of the most-read Scottish writers since , including (certainly) Walter Scott and (arguably) Robert Burns, celebrated nationalist themes whilst benefiting from (Burns), or propagandist
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for (Scott), the Union. This has been extensively discussed in studies of Scottish literature (see, latest, Carruthers and Kidd ), but it is not the focus of this chapter, which is about nationalist unionism in politics and law. The patronage dispute at first seemed controllable. From about until the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was in the control of a faction who called themselves the Moderates. Although the Assembly passed an annual resolution protesting against the Patronage Act, the Moderates, who tended to be ministers around Edinburgh with prosperous congregations, were not inclined to do anything about it. This changed in when the ‘popular’ or ‘Evangelical’ party gained control, setting in train the events that led to the Disruption of . The law cases surrounding that, brilliantly analysed by the late Supreme Court judge Alan Rodger (Rodger ), represent a fight between incorporating and nationalist conceptions of union. But patronage was abolished in , and the Church of Scotland Act , with its privileging of rules made by the Church of Scotland over statutes made by Parliament, closed that issue. The Act provides that The Declaratory Articles are lawful articles, and the constitution of the Church of Scotland in matters spiritual is as therein set forth, and no limitation of the liberty, rights and powers in matters spiritual therein set forth shall be derived from any statute or law affecting the Church of Scotland in matters spiritual at present in force, it being hereby declared that in all questions of construction the Declaratory Articles shall prevail, and that all such statutes and laws shall be construed in conformity therewith and in subordination thereto, and all such statutes and laws in so far as they are inconsistent with the Declaratory Articles are hereby repealed and declared to be of no effect. (s., my emphasis)
Because the Declaratory Articles were drafted not by Parliament, but by the Church of Scotland itself, the Act is therefore on its face a challenge to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty as enunciated by A.V. Dicey, constitutional scholar and later unionist firebrand, in : Neither the Act of Union with Scotland nor the Dentists Act, , has more claim than the other to be considered a supreme law. Each embodies the will of the sovereign legislative power; each can be legally altered or repealed by Parliament; neither tests the validity of the other. Should the Dentists Act, , unfortunately contravene the terms of the Act of Union, the Act of Union would be pro tanto repealed . . . The one fundamental dogma of English [sic] constitutional law is the absolute legislative sovereignty or despotism of the King in Parliament. But this dogma is incompatible with the existence of a fundamental compact, the provisions of which control every authority existing under the constitution. (Dicey : )
One conception of Union is Diceyan. Was Dicey slapdash, or insulting, or neither, when he spoke of the English Constitution? Whether or not the historical Union of
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was one in which England simply incorporated Scotland and sailed on, Diceyan unionism behaves as if it was, by the by treating English Constitution as a synonym for British Constitution. Colin Kidd () has recently coined the phrase ‘banal unionism’. In England, its most banal form is simply not knowing, or not caring, that ‘England’ and ‘Britain’ mean different things. This annoys Scots, even expatriates. It also has repercussions in Scotland when it takes the legal or political form of treating the Act of Union on a par with the Dentists Act . This is fully discussed elsewhere in this Handbook (Chapter ), but I recur to it later in this chapter, as it is highly topical for issues surrounding both Scottish independence and Brexit as this chapter is drafted. An intellectually bright but politically (it seemed) irrelevant comet crossed the sky in . John MacCormick, a classical nationalist unionist, had asked the courts to intervene in the refusal of the UK government to style the new queen ‘Elizabeth II and I’. There had never been a Queen Elizabeth of Scotland; therefore, on the analogy of James VI and I, the monarch should have a different number in England and in Scotland. The courts dismissed MacCormick’s claim rather summarily, saying that royal titles were a matter of royal prerogative and not justiciable. Then came the kicker, in the following obiter dicta (remarks by the way) from Lord President Cooper. The Lord President is the senior judge in Scotland’s senior court, the Court of Session. The principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law. It derives its origin from Coke and Blackstone, and was widely popularized during the nineteenth century by Bagehot and Dicey, the latter having stated the doctrine in its classic form in his Law of the Constitution. Considering that the Union legislation extinguished the Parliaments of Scotland and England and replaced them by a new Parliament, I have difficulty in seeing why it should have been supposed that the new Parliament of Great Britain must inherit all the peculiar characteristics of the English Parliament but none of the Scottish Parliament, as if all that happened in was that Scottish representatives were admitted to the Parliament of England. That is not what was done. Further, the Treaty and the associated legislation, by which the Parliament of Great Britain was brought into being as the successor of the separate Parliaments of Scotland and England, contain some clauses which expressly reserve to the Parliament of Great Britain powers of subsequent modification, and other clauses which either contain no such power or emphatically exclude subsequent alteration by declarations that the provision shall be fundamental and unalterable in all time coming, or declarations of a like effect. I have never been able to understand how it is possible to reconcile with elementary canons of construction the adoption by the English constitutional theorists of the same attitude to these markedly different types of provisions. (MacCormick v Lord Advocate SC at p. )
Lord Cooper went on to point out that Dicey himself had been inconsistent, and that in a later work (Dicey and Rait ) the authors wished to contend that the Act of Union was indeed a fundamental constitutional statute. In , Dicey and his co-author made no mention of the Dentists Act .
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Thomas Cooper was a former Unionist MP. His obiter in MacCormick was the most intellectually cogent statement of nationalist unionism since Defoe. Legally, it seemed to have few consequences. Arguments similar to Cooper’s were not found persuasive in several cases (Chapter in this Handbook). However, beginning in the s, several judges in UK constitutional cases did accept a distinction between constitutional statutes and others. The former, unlike the latter, were immune to implied repeal if a later statute contradicted them.¹ The revival of nationalist unionism is due largely to John MacCormick’s son (Sir) Neil MacCormick (–; cf. Twining ; Walker ). In a British Academy lecture entitled ‘The English Constitution, the British State, and the Scottish anomaly’ (MacCormick ; cf. also MacCormick ), MacCormick drew renewed attention to Defoe’s promise and Dicey’s dentistry. He labels them the ‘Defoe view’ and the ‘Dicey view’, labels borrowed in this chapter. In his lecture, followed closely by his influential book Questioning Sovereignty, he admitted that whilst Defoe had the better arguments, Dicey had won most of the law suits.
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.................................................................................................................................. Since the Scottish and English economies have been integrated, to the great advantage of Scotland and the minor advantage of England. Smith’s Wealth of Nations (/) is full of examples, although he is much more cautious about politics in his publications than his surviving letters (McLean ). As regards government policy, the value of union as a pooling device did not become clear until governments started spending money on what is now statistically classed as the Social Protection function of government (of which public pensions, sickness, and unemployment insurance are the largest components). Traditionally, poor relief was a local concern, but various reformers from Edwin Chadwick onwards (Finer ) understood that that was unsustainable, because poor areas have the most demand for social protection and the weakest tax base to pay for it. Explicit redistribution through the UK tax system began in , with the ‘Goschen Formula’ (McLean ). As part of what was incautiously called ‘killing [Irish] Home Rule by kindness’, the Unionist Chancellor of the Exchequer George Goschen introduced an assignment of some tax receipts in the magic proportion :: to England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland respectively. This kindness did not kill Irish Home Rule, and after most of Ireland left the UK in the Goschen formula applied only to Scotland. There were other means, outside the scope of this chapter, to ensure that generous subsidy flowed to Northern Ireland. From until Goschen was succeeded by the current Barnett Formula, it became the principal means of redistribution to ¹ The most important are Thoburn v. Sunderland City Council [] EWHC (Admin) and R (Jackson) v. Attorney General [] UKHL .
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Scotland, whose population had fallen below /ths of that of England and Wales by and continued to fall further. For fifty years, the Goschen gambit was to accept : as a floor ratio for any public expenditure and argue for the ratio to be higher whenever the Scottish administration could make a special case (bad weather, bad housing, bad health, remoteness . . . ). The Goschen gambit appealed to Secretaries of State of both parties and to finance civil servants at the Scottish Office. The Labour Secretary of State in the World War II coalition, Tom Johnston, was perhaps the most fearsome player of it (Morrison : ). Goschen began life as a formula to apportion tax proceeds, but it became a formula to apportion expenditure shares, which was not at all what Chancellor Goschen had had in mind. Goschen, and now Barnett, apply to specific programmes that are in principle controllable by governments. But another class of public expenditure comprises benefits paid to individuals. Most of Social Protection comes under this heading, with the big-ticket items being state pensions, sickness benefit, unemployment benefit, and housing benefits. In the UK, non-contributory state pensions date back to , and contributory National Insurance to . The drivers of Lloyd George’s ambulance wagon (the team responsible for introducing National Insurance) had to concede a separate committee for Ireland, demanded by the Irish Party as its condition for supporting the minority Liberal Government. Me-too pressure then led to committees for Wales and Scotland as well, to the fury of Lloyd George’s right-hand man, W.J. Braithwaite (Braithwaite : –). Braithwaite fretted that separate national committees would undermine UK-wide uniform rates and benefits. As it turned out, his worry was ill-founded. Rates and conditions have always been uniform throughout the UK. Hence, pensions and National Insurance, both vastly expanded under the – Labour governments, function as ‘automatic stabilizers’ to shield part of the Union facing hard times by a transfer from more prosperous parts. If there is structural depression in Scotland, then additional unemployment (and probably sickness) benefit will automatically be payable to Scotland. An instance is the collapse of its heavy capital-goods industries such as ship- and locomotive-building from to the s. The automatic stabilizers create a geographical transfer that dampens the shock. Thus, in the early twentieth century, the left-wing parties in the UK shifted their priorities on devolution. The Scottish Home Rule Association was a Liberal project founded in support and imitation of the Irish Home Rule proposed by W.E. Gladstone in . It hired as its secretary a young man called Ramsay MacDonald. In March , he wrote to another youngish Scotsman, Keir Hardie, who was running as an ‘Independent Labour’ candidate in a by-election, urging Hardie to stand firm in the ‘cause of Labour and of Scottish Nationality’ (Stewart : ; Marquand : ). One cause, not two. Thus both of the Labour Party’s most important pioneers started their careers as devolutionists, in an era when Irish Home Rule was the great progressive cause. The pensions and National Insurance legislation of –, together with Labour pressure via the Royal Commission on the Poor Law (Harris : –), pushed the left-wing parties away from devolution towards uniformity. This is encapsulated in the career of the ‘Red Clydeside’ Labour, later ILP, MP George
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Buchanan. In , Buchanan proposed a Government of Scotland Bill, which failed to make progress, with a speech arguing that such matters as the Scottish church settlement of were no business of the English and should be settled by Scottish representatives alone (HC Deb May vol. c.. Available at: https://api. parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons//may//government-of-scotland-bill# SCVP__HOC_ (accessed May )). In he became the first chair of the National Assistance Board, one of the institutions set up by the – Labour Government to ensure uniform national rates and criteria for social protection (McLean : , ). All parties in Scotland—including the SNP—say that they support the ‘social union’ (McLean et al. , chapter ), although they mean very different things by that. Public services (health, education, transport) are the responsibility of the Scottish Government and are funded out of Scottish taxation and Barnett transfers. Social protection (pensions and benefits) remain the responsibility of the UK government, although the Scotland Act c. and the associated Fiscal Framework Agreement between the Scottish and UK governments (HM Government and Scottish Government ) devolve responsibility for some discretionary benefits, such as cold weather payments, to the Scottish Government. Commitment to a social union may be regarded as the left-wing version of contemporary unionism. After the ‘no’ vote in the Referendum, the SNP Government pinned its hopes on the Fiscal Framework just mentioned. It required a year’s hard bargaining between the two governments after the referendum, in which the Scottish Government held out for Barnett transfers to continue, and with it a formula that was highly favourable to Scotland for calculating the financial effects of transfers of powers. Details are given in David Heald’s chapter (Chapter in this Handbook); suffice it to say that until the SNP Government has secured an agreement that mitigates the decline of transfers to Scotland on account of Scotland’s declining relative population. This is Goschen all over again: a unionist triumph for a nationalist government.
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.................................................................................................................................. With the disappearance of the British Empire, one might think that trade and security unionism had become an empty husk. The chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise is Scotty, but the oceans are no longer full of McAndrews (cf. Rudyard Kipling, ‘McAndrew’s Hymn’ () in Eliot : –). Nor are there Scots doctors in Mysore or Scots writers in Bengal. The Scottish diaspora remains culturally important, but is that relevant to unionism? Probably not. Nevertheless, ‘trade and security’ remain features of contemporary unionism in Scotland. In the run-up to the independence referendum the UK Treasury led a
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series of studies under the title ‘Scotland Analysis’, designed to show that union was in the material interest of Scotland. Under headings such as ‘borderless trade’ and ‘the advantages of the pound’, the studies drew attention to disadvantages of independence. An independent Scotland, they contended, would be unable to use the pound sterling; would be unable to shelter its finance and oil industries from systemic risks; would suffer, as would the rest of the UK, from trade friction; and would have to raise taxes and/or cut expenditure because of a structural deficit in Scottish public finance. Together, these disadvantages of independence were calculated as offering a ‘UK Dividend’ of £ per person in Scotland (HM Government : vol. , ). The ‘Yes’ side in the referendum campaign, and the Scottish Government, denounced these conclusions, and in particular the £ per head ‘Union Dividend’, as part of ‘Project Fear’. However, the Scottish Government’s counterclaims, including that independence would lead to each Scottish citizen being £ better off by , were thinly evidenced. Its White Paper, Scotland’s Future (Scottish Government ) contains rather few numbers, but one of them is a table (Annex C) showing a projected fiscal balance for what it hoped would be year of independence, /. One line was ‘Offshore receipts’, which it projected to be between £. and £. billion. The bottom line—Scotland’s net fiscal balance—was to be a deficit of between £. and £ billion. The referendum result was ‘No’ to independence, and neither the UK government’s ‘Union dividend’ nor the Scottish Government’s ‘independence dividend’ can be verified. The former depends on an untestable counterfactual; the latter was due to have accumulated by . However, another Scottish Government publication, the annual Government and Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS: latest Scottish Government ) offers a reality check. In –, offshore receipts from the Scottish sector were £. billion, having been indistinguishable from zero in –. Scotland’s net fiscal balance was a deficit of £. billion (GERS , tables S. and .). Oil revenue bounced back a little the following year, but not to anywhere near the Scottish Government’s projection (Scottish Government , table .). Progress towards the Scottish Government’s projected dividend appears to be slow (Table .). The other current issue in the trade and security union is the UK’s defence, and in particular the future of HMNB (HM Naval Base) Clyde. This comprises the base for the UK’s nuclear-armed submarine fleet at Faslane on the Gare Loch, and the weapons store at Coulport, on the adjoining Loch Long. Both of these are fjords on the west Table 7.1 Offshore Revenue and Net Fiscal Balance 2016–2017: Scottish Government Projection and Outturn, £bn Projected 2013 (midpoint) Offshore revenue Net fiscal balance
Outturn 2016–2017
7.35 3.35
Sources: Column 1 Scottish Government (2013); Column 2 Scottish Government (2017).
0.2 13.3
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coast, about thirty miles from Glasgow, and the geography of the UK dictates that there are no potential deep-water ports outside Scotland with similar characteristics. For decades, SNP policy was to expel the UK’s submarines after independence and not to join NATO. It reversed itself on NATO in (McLean et al. : ). The SNP Manifesto states: SNP MPs will build a cross-party coalition to scrap Trident as quickly and safely as possible . . . At Westminster we will press the UK government to meet their international obligations with regard to multilateral nuclear disarmament. SNP MPs will support long-term investment in HMNB Faslane as a conventional military base. (SNP : )
In one aspect, the SNP’s ‘scrap Trident’ manifesto commitment is a rerun of the Duke of Hamilton’s Resolve, a resolution passed by the Scottish Parliament in ‘Not to name the Successor [to Queen Anne] till we have a Treaty with England for regulating our Commerce’ (cited in McLean and McMillan : ). In both cases, it shows the English that the Scots can bring a credible threat to bear. The latest Scottish Government-sponsored publication at the time of writing, (Sustainable Growth Commission ) is slightly more in the real world of public expenditure than was the White Paper, but it proposes to pay the fiscal gap between Scotland’s tax receipts and Scotland’s current expenditure by using savings from cancelling the Trident nuclear submarine replacement programme. Not only does this fail to close the fiscal gap, but it asks questions of the vulnerability of the British Isles to hostile powers. This raises issues that go beyond this chapter (e.g. whether Trident’s successor would actually be undetectable under water). But Clerk and Roxburghe would have recognized the dilemma this poses for both Scotland and the rest of the UK.
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.................................................................................................................................. Even before MacCormick the scholar (, ), Neil MacCormick the politician had started to revive the Defoe view in Scotland. A lifelong Scottish Nationalist who served a term as an SNP MEP from to , his ideas permeated the ‘Claim of Right’ (McLean : ) This document presented the case for a devolved Scottish Parliament, and the ensuing Scottish Constitutional Convention was backed by leading Labour and Liberal Democratic politicians, as well as figures from civil society; its chair was an Episcopal clergyman. To MacCormick’s annoyance, the SNP declined to take part. The title ‘Claim of Right’ deliberately echoes two earlier documents of the same title. The Claim of Right Act c., still in force, is by its extended title The Declaration of the Estates of the Kingdom of Scotland containing the Claim of Right and the offer of the
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Croune to the King and Queen of England. It sets out the terms of that offer, and, to followers of Defoe and the MacCormicks, it has the same standing as the English Bill of Rights Act. One of its terms is, [t]hat all Proclamationes asserting ane absolute power to Cass annull and Dissable lawes The Erecting Schools and Colledges for Jesuits The Inverting protestant Chappells and Churches to publick Mass houses and the allowing Mass to be said are Contrair to Law. ( c., preamble, from http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aosp// (accessed May ))
After a long recital of other rights that it alleges were abused by James VII, the Act then offers the crown of Scotland to William and Mary as a contractual deal: Haveing therfor ane entire confidence that his said Majesty the King of England will perfect the Delyverance so far advanced by him and will still preserve them from violation of their Rights which they have here asserted and from all other attempts upon their Religion lawes and liberties The said Estates of the Kingdome of Scotland Doe resolve that William and Mary King and Queen of England France and Ireland Be and be Declared King and Queen of Scotland To hold the Crowne and Royall Dignity of the said Kingdome of Scotland. (Ibid.)
In the sovereignty contest which led to the Disruption, when the Court of Session was appointing one set of parish ministers, the General Assembly another, and each purporting to unseat its opponents, the Assembly majority issued another Claim of Right (), making the same Defoeian claims that the Court of Session was rejecting (Rodger : –). So the conflict between Defoe and Dicey spans more than three centuries and three Claims of Right. The most important is the first, because it is a current UK statute. The first UK government document, as far as I am aware, to acknowledge the Claim of Right Act as having the same standing as the Bill of Rights is the White Paper on constitutional reform, issued under the (Scottish, son of the manse) Prime Minister Gordon Brown (HM Government : Cm , Box on p. ). But that White Paper led nowhere towards replacing Dicey by Defoe. The UK devolution statutes remained firmly Diceyan. The Scotland Act c., which creates the Scottish Parliament, states at s..
Acts of the Scottish Parliament () Subject to section , the Parliament may make laws, to be known as Acts of the Scottish Parliament. ... () This section does not affect the power of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to make laws for Scotland.
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This was modified by the Scotland Act c., enacted after the referendum and as a consequence of the ‘Vow’ signed by all the unionist parties immediately before that. The Act inserts the following subsection to s. of the Act: () But it is recognised that the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament. That word ‘normally’ carries enormous political weight. The Miller litigation R (on the application of Miller and another) v. Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union) [] UKSC was centrally about whether the Secretary of State—that is, the UK government—could issue an Article declaration to the European Union announcing its intention to withdraw without first seeking parliamentary approval. On that issue the Miller claimants won. It may seem to have been a hollow victory from the point of the Remainer Ms Miller, as Parliament promptly did pass the statute the court required, empowering the UK government to issue the Article notice. But the Miller litigation drew in litigants from all three devolved territories— Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This section considers the Scottish arguments only. Two of the parties supporting Ms Miller—the Scottish Government and the Independent Workers of Great Britain—both referred in their submissions to the Act’s prohibition on executive acts that would ‘Cass annull and Dissable lawes’ in support of Miller’s argument that the Government could not use prerogative to send an Article letter. It may be said that they won on that point, since the majority judgment cites the Scottish Act as one of the relevant statutes which led them to rule in Miller’s favour. Although an earlier Supreme Court decision had given some hope to anti-Diceyans (AXA . . . v. Lord Advocate . . . [] UKSC ; see the discussion of Lord Hope’s and Lord Reed’s speeches in Chapters and in this Handbook), the Miller court unanimously rejected another devolution argument: viz., that the Scotland Act , as amended in , required the UK government to seek the consent of the Scottish Parliament before enacting the bill to invoke Article . The court’s argument was legally orthodox. The subsection that the Act adds to the Act includes the word ‘normally’. It acknowledges that the Sewel Convention, which it puts into statute, is just a convention, and conventions are for politicians, not courts. But that merely defers the constitutional crisis that seems to be brewing as this chapter is drafted, eighteen months after Miller. The Scottish Parliament has refused legislative consent (that is, refused to issue a ‘Sewel motion’ or LCM) on the UK government’s main Brexit bill. What does that imply for s.() of the Scotland Act ? To a lawyer, nothing. The section says that the UK Parliament will not normally legislate for Scotland in a devolved matter. If the Brexit bill is enacted despite the Scottish Parliament’s refusal to pass an LCM, this implies that the Act is not ‘normal’. But the consequences are political, not legal. They reveal that s.(), which purported to be a constitutional guarantee to Scotland in light of the narrow ‘No’ to independence in , is legally empty. This problem would be familiar to the Scots who were scandalized by the Patronage Act .
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C
.................................................................................................................................. This chapter has shown that three concepts of union, all present in , are still present in . In one aspect, the Union is a social union, which guarantees equal treatment for equally situated citizens in every part of the UK. In a second, it is a trade and security union, whose parts benefit from free trade and a common security envelope. In the third, and currently most intriguing, it is a union in which two legal systems, and two concepts of sovereignty, coexist uneasily. Daniel Defoe argued that the Treaty of Union was fundamental law which extinguished the traditions and conventions of both predecessor parliaments. A.V. Dicey argued that the Acts of Union had no higher status than the Dentists Act (although his behaviour during the Irish Home Rule crisis proved that he did not hold that view consistently—McLean ). Until recently, this arcane dispute interested only a few lawyers. However, a UK constitutional crisis is looming as this chapter is being finalized. Some brute facts may bring it on. In the referendum, the unionist No side said that only by remaining in the UK could Scots continue to access the European Union. That argument looked sick in light of the Brexit referendum, and SNP figures used the opportunity to turn the tables immediately. Since the Brexit result, they said, the only way for Scots to remain in, or re-join, the EU was to hold a second independence referendum with an opposite outcome. This argument did not immediately move the needle—the proportion of Scots saying they would vote for independence did not rise. The monthly polling reported by the authoritative What Scotland Thinks shows ‘Yes’ vote intention for Scottish independence crossing above ‘No’ only twice since the Brexit referendum (Source: http://whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/howwould-you-vote-in-the-in-a-scottish-independence-referendum-if-held-now-ask#line, accessed December ). However, the constitutional dramas just discussed, plus the reality of Brexit, may move the needle. As noted in the previous section, neither the UK government nor the Supreme Court has been willing to give the Scottish Parliament a say in the terms of Brexit. This is one of the Brexit factors—not the only one—which may put a thumb in the scale in favour of Scottish independence in a second referendum. That will not be clear until after this chapter is published. But these events at least show that the context between Defoe and Dicey is not yet resolved.
R Braithwaite, W.J. . Lloyd George’s Ambulance Wagon: Being the Memoirs of William J. Braithwaite, –. London: Methuen. Carruthers, G. and Kidd, C. (ed.). . Literature and Union: Scottish Text, British Contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Clarke, T. . ‘Carstares [Carstairs], William (–)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online. Available at: https://doi.org/./ref:odnb/, accessed May . Clerk, Sir J. . Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik . . . Extracted by Himself from his own Journals, ed. by J. Gray. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society. Colley, L. . Britons. nd edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Crawford, R. . ‘Burns, Robert (–)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online. Available at: https://doi.org/./ref:odnb/, accessed June . Defoe, D. . The History of the Union between England and Scotland, ed. by G. Chalmers. London: John Stockdale. Originally published in . Defoe, D. . A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, ed. by G.D.H. Cole, vols. London: Dent (Everyman). Originally published in . Devine, T. . Scotland’s Empire. London: Allen Lane. Dicey, A.V. . Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. London: Macmillan. th edition with a new introduction . Dicey, A.V. and Rait, R.S. . Thoughts on the Union between England and Scotland. London: Macmillan. Eliot, T.S. (ed.) . A Choice of Kipling’s Verse. London: Faber & Faber. Finer, S.E. . The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick. London: Methuen. Harris, J. . William Beveridge: A Biography, nd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. HM Government. . The Governance of Britain, Cm . Available at: https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file// .pdf, accessed June . HM Government. . United Kingdom, United Future: Conclusions of the Scotland Analysis Programme. London: HMG. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ united-kingdom-united-future-conclusions-of-the-scotland-analysis-programme, accessed May . HM Government and Scottish Government. . The Agreement between the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom Government on the Scottish Government’s Fiscal Framework. London and Edinburgh: HMG and SG. Available at: https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file//fiscal_ framework_agreement__feb__.pdf, accessed May . Insh, G.P. . The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies. London: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Kidd, C. . Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacCormick, N. . ‘The English Constitution, the British State, and the Scottish anomaly’, Proceedings of the British Academy, : –. MacCormick, N. . Questioning Sovereignty: Law, State, and Nation in the European Commonwealth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Madison, J. /. Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of , ed. and intro by Adrienne Koch. New York: W.W. Norton. Marquand, D. . Ramsay MacDonald. London: Jonathan Cape. McLean, I. . The Legend of Red Clydeside, nd edition. Edinburgh: John Donald. McLean, I. . The Fiscal Crisis of the United Kingdom. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. McLean, I. . Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian: An Interpretation for the st Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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McLean, I. . What’s Wrong with the British Constitution? nd revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McLean, I. and McMillan, A. . State of the Union: Unionism and the Alternatives in the United Kingdom since . Oxford: Oxford University Press. McLean, I., Lodge, G., and Gallagher, J. . Scotland’s Choices: The Referendum and What Happens After It. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, nd revised edition. Morrison, H. . Herbert Morrison: An Autobiography. London: Odhams Press. Mossner, E.C. and Ross, I.S. (eds). . Correspondence of Adam Smith. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Peterson, S. and McLean, I. . Legally Married: Love and Law in the UK and the US. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Price, J.M. . ‘The Rise of Glasgow in the Chesapeake Tobacco Trade, –’, William and Mary Quarterly, /, Scotland and America (April): –. Riley, P.W.J. . The Union of England and Scotland. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Robertson, J. (ed.). . Andrew Fletcher: Political Works. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rodger of Earlsferry, A., Lord. . The Church, the Courts, and the Constitution: Aspects of the Disruption of . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Available at: http://www.gov.scot/resource// .pdf, accessed May . Scottish Government. . Government Expenditure & Revenue Scotland –. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Available at: http://www.gov.scot/Publications// /, accessed May . Scottish Government. . Government Expenditure & Revenue Scotland –. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/ Economy/GERS, accessed November . Scottish National Party (SNP). . Stronger for Scotland. Available at: https://dnaprovhmx. cloudfront.net/thesnp/pages//attachments/original//Manifesto___. pdf?,,,, accessed May . Smith, A. /. Wealth of Nations, vols. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Stewart, W. . J. Keir Hardie: A Biography. London: Keir Hardie Memorial Committee. Sustainable Growth Commission. . Scotland—The New Case for Optimism: A Strategy for Intergenerational Economic Renaissance. Edinburgh: The Commission. Available at: https:// static.squarespace.com/static/afcbbbfcedbdbf/t/bacfcaa/ /SGC+Full+Report.pdf, accessed May . Twining, W. . ‘Donald Neil MacCormick’, in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy XI. Available at: https://www.britac.ac.uk/sites/default/files/_-Neil_ MacCormick.pdf, accessed May . Walker, N. (ed.). . MacCormick’s Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Whatley, C.A. . The Scots and the Union. nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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I
.................................................................................................................................. T chapter is about the Scottish constitution following devolution to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland in . Like the constitutions of the other devolved nations, and the constituent polities of many federal and regional states, the Scottish constitution is what is commonly referred to as a ‘subnational constitution’, a description which should not be taken to imply that Scotland is anything less than a nation. It is also a constitution in the ‘unwritten’ or, more accurately, uncodified Westminster tradition—a small-c constitution rather than a capital-C Constitution (King ). Rather than being set out in ‘a comprehensive written statement called a constitution’ (Ontario (AG) v Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union : , Justice Beetz), it is to be found in a mixture of statutes—the most important of which is the Scotland Act , which established the legislative and executive institutions of devolved government—judicial decisions, constitutional conventions, that is, non-legal rules of political behaviour, and soft-law instruments. After examining the constitution’s main features, as derived from these sources, the chapter turns to the attempts that were made to entrench the devolution settlement on which the constitution is based following the No vote in the independence referendum, and the ‘interim constitution’ that would have replaced it had Scotland voted Yes. The chapter begins with Scotland’s constitutional arrangements as they stood before devolution.
S’ C A D
.................................................................................................................................. There was no Scottish constitution before devolution. Whatever was written on the constitution from a Scottish point of view, Andrew Dewar Gibb wrote, ‘would of
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necessity be pure history . . . To write at length on this subject in a book of Scots Law would be something of an absurdity’ (Gibb : ). That did not mean there was no recognition or element of Scottish distinctiveness in the UK’s unwritten constitution. For Dicey, the ‘essential point of likeness’ between the position of Scotland and that of Pennsylvania was that ‘the understandings of the unwritten British Constitution secure to Scotland, as the articles of the written United States Constitution secure to Pennsylvania, that the people of the country shall be governed under local law, and enjoy local institutions’ (Dicey : , quoted in Mitchell : ). With the growth in the functions of government from the mid-nineteenth century on, this principle formed the basis of a separate Scottish system of administration, in the form initially of ad hoc administrative boards, such as the Board of Supervision for the Relief of the Poor in Scotland (), and then later of a central government department, the Scottish Office (), whose functions steadily increased after the Second World War: Some of the alterations may have been made for political reasons, others out of a desire for administrative tidiness; the river may have flowed erratically, but its main course has been clear. There has been a definite and increasing tendency to assign to a Scottish minister matters in which there is a distinct Scottish tradition or body of law or where Scottish conditions are notably different from those in England and Wales. (Milne : –)
For the most part the understandings on which this system was based were conventional understandings not legal understandings—a continuing theme in relations between Scotland and the wider United Kingdom. Their weakness was summed up in A Claim of Right for Scotland, the report of the group invited by the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly to make recommendations on the governance of Scotland following the general election, which saw the Conservatives win an overall majority at Westminster but only ten seats in Scotland, down from twenty-two in . However relatively superior the English constitution may have been a hundred and fifty years ago, it is by modern standards fundamentally flawed. It is now acceptable only so far as Governments in general and Prime Ministers in particular exercise restraint, show sensitivity and do not drive the constitution to its limits. It is unrealistic to expect such qualities in every case and they have been markedly absent recently. (Dudley Edwards : para .)
The retention of a separate Scottish judicial system after the Union did raise the possibility that the courts might take a different view of constitutional questions from their English counterparts—in Neil MacCormick’s language, the possibility of a ‘Scots law’ interpretation of the UK constitution (MacCormick : ), but for the most part this did not happen. Where constitutional questions arose the Scottish courts took their lead from English law, principally because they were in little doubt that there should be no difference in the law of the two jurisdictions (Page : paras .–.). ‘We have had no argument as to what was the effect of the Union of the two Kingdoms in ’, Lord Justice Clerk Scott Dickinson said in Macgregor v Lord Advocate, in
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which the Inner House of the Court of Session held that the Crown’s immunity in tort extended to Scotland: but it seems to me that the legislation that then took place almost necessarily resulted in this, that the position of the Crown in such matters must be the same on both sides of the Border. Accordingly, although few questions have arisen, the English decisions have been accepted as correctly expressing the law of Scotland. (Macgregor v Lord Advocate : –)
The foremost exception was MacCormick v Lord Advocate in which Lord President Cooper famously dismissed the principle of parliamentary sovereignty as ‘a distinctively English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law’ (MacCormick v Lord Advocate : )—without, as was later observed, deigning to explain what the Scottish position was (Rodger : ). Seizing on Lord Cooper’s dismissal of the principle, ‘legal nationalists’ argued that the Acts of Union and associated legislation formed the ‘basic skeletal constitution’ of a new state, the parliament of which had no power to disregard the fundamental provisions of its constituent instrument. Were it to do so the courts would be bound to deny effect to the legislation in the name of a higher law. As T.B. Smith put it: If I am right that the terms of Union are constituent, then Parliament can only legislate lawfully within the powers conferred upon it; and the Judiciary would be bound by their oath to pay regard to the fundamental law in preference to a mere Act of Parliament. (Smith : )
This argument never made much progress in the Scottish courts, although in a spirt of ‘never say never’ (Rodger : ) they stopped short of dismissing it altogether. In MacCormick v Lord Advocate, Lord Cooper took the view that the courts could not entertain any challenge to the Westminster Parliament’s legislative competence with regard to matters of ‘public right’, but reserved his opinion with regard to provisions relating to the Court of Session, Scotland’s highest civil court, whose existence ‘in all time coming’ had been guaranteed by the Acts of Union (art XIX), or to the laws ‘which concern private right’, which the Acts of Union had provided, were not to be altered ‘except for the evident utility of the subjects within Scotland’ (art XVIII). Whilst the argument that the Westminster Parliament was bound by the Acts of Union could not be dismissed as ‘entirely fanciful’, Lord Hope explained in Lord Gray’s Motion, the courts had always been able to find another way of disposing of it, making it unnecessary to determine whether there had been a breach of the Acts of Union (Lord Gray’s Motion : ; in addition to MacCormick, the case law includes Gibson v Lord Advocate and Pringle, Petitioner ). ‘But if, which I doubt, there is an exception here to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty,’ Lord Bingham later wrote, ‘it is a very limited exception born of the peculiar circumstances pertaining to the union with Scotland and throws no doubt on the general applicability of the principle’ (Bingham : ).
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T S A C
.................................................................................................................................. ‘The Scotland Act is not a constitution, but an Act of Parliament’, Lord Reed said in Imperial Tobacco v Lord Advocate (, para ), dismissing the argument that as a constitutional instrument the Scotland Act fell to be interpreted more generously than other UK statutes. Whether we regard the Scotland Act as a constitution or not depends on our definition of a constitution. Cheryl Saunders provides a convenient summary of the commonly understood features of a constitution: In most places, a constitution is understood as a single, formal, written document that provides a framework for the institutional structure of government, delineates key aspects of relations between people and the state, and protects other matters deemed sufficiently important in the polity in question to warrant constitutional status. Typically, a constitution is accepted as a form of law that overrides other law and in that sense is supreme. Supremacy generally is secured both by a constitutional alteration procedure, which differs from alteration procedures in existence for ordinary law, and is further secured through provision for a form of judicial review, should conflicts with ordinary law rise. Almost invariably, a constitution is made by a distinctive process that assists to justify its superior status by reflecting, more or less overtly, the authority on which it is accepted to rest. In a democracy, the obviously constituent authority is the people. (: ; see also Raz : –)
As the ‘approximate equivalent of a written constitution’ (Elvidge : ), the Scotland Act displays many of these features. It provides the framework for the institutional structure of devolved government. It is supreme in the sense that it overrides Acts of the Scottish Parliament, with its supremacy being secured through a combination of hard entrenchment and an amendment procedure that differs from the amendment procedure for Acts of the Scottish Parliament, together with provision for judicial review should conflicts with Acts of the Scottish Parliament arise. Where it is most obviously lacking is in not having been made by a distinctive process that helps justify its superior status. It derives its authority from the UK Parliament rather than from the people of Scotland, although it was preceded by a referendum in which a substantial majority— . per cent of those voting—was secured for a Scottish Parliament.
T I S D G
.................................................................................................................................. In terms of the institutional structure of devolved government, the Act established the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government.
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As established by the Scotland Act, the Scottish Parliament is a single chamber legislature, made up of members, elected by a mixed member or additional member system, rather than the first-past-the-post system used for Westminster elections, which was meant to prevent a political party without a majority of the vote gaining a majority of seats (Chapter in this Handbook). After forming a minority government in , however, the SNP went on to win an outright majority at the Scottish parliamentary elections in , making inevitable a referendum on Scotland’s constitutional future. At the parliamentary elections the SNP lost its overall majority but remained the largest party, securing of the seats. In what was a significant departure from the position at the UK level at the time it was enacted, the Scotland Act fixes the timing of elections, preventing a government from manipulating the timing to their advantage (Scotland Act , s.). Elections take place every four years but since the Fixed-term Parliaments Act () governing the length of the UK Parliament’s term at Westminster, the Scottish Parliament’s term has twice been extended to five years in order to avoid clashes with UK general elections—in and again in . The Scottish Government is currently consulting on the length of the Scottish Parliament’s term (Scottish Government ). The Scottish Parliament is a parliament of extensive but not unlimited powers. Rather than granting the parliament the power to legislate on certain matters, with all other matters being reserved to Westminster, the Scotland Act reserves certain matters to Westminster, leaving the parliament free to legislate on any matter that is not reserved (Scotland Act , s ()(b) and sch ). The Act’s predecessor, the Scotland Act , by contrast, granted the Scottish Assembly the power to legislate only on certain matters, with all other matters being reserved to Westminster, leading to widespread criticism of the Act for its ‘complexity and difficulty of comprehension’ (MacCormick : ). In the interests of ‘maximum clarity and stability’, therefore, the Scotland Act lists the matters reserved rather than the matters devolved (Scottish Office : para .). As well a number of general reservations, which include (aspects of) the constitution, defence, and foreign affairs, the matters reserved to the Westminster Parliament include a long list of specific reservations, ranging from fiscal, economic, and monetary policy, with exceptions for devolved taxes and local taxes to fund local authority expenditure, to the regulation of activities in Antarctica. As well as ‘reserved matters’, the limits on the Parliament’s legislative competence include fundamental rights in the shape of the rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) that are given ‘further effect’ in the United Kingdom by the Human Rights Act . The Scotland Act provisions apply only to the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government. The rest of the governance of Scotland is subject to the Human Rights Act. The Scotland Act made no such provision. ‘If there were to be any infringement of or failure to protect essential human rights through actions of the assemblies’, the Kilbrandon Commission suggested, ‘[the UK] Parliament could use its paramount powers to provide the remedy’ (Royal Commission on the Constitution : para ), a mark of the extent to which attitudes towards
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how fundamental rights should be protected had changed in the intervening twenty years. The limits also include, for the time being, EU law, a restriction which may be replaced by a temporary ‘freeze’ on modifying retained EU law in areas that are to be subject to UK-wide common frameworks once the UK has left the EU (Scotland Act , s ()(d), European Union (Withdrawal) Act , s ). The Scottish Government is drawn from the Scottish Parliament on the Westminster model and accountable to it for the devolved government of Scotland. Originally called the Scottish Executive, in a vain attempt to distinguish it from the UK government, it was renamed by the SNP Government on its election in , and the change was given formal legal effect by the Scotland Act . The Act requires the parliament to nominate one of its members for appointment as First Minister within days of a general election, failing which an extraordinary general election must be held (Scotland Act , s ()(a), ()(b)). Once appointed the First Minister appoints the other members of the Government with the agreement of the Parliament (Scotland Act , ss (), ()). In the course of a general inflation of titles, Ministers have become Cabinet Secretaries and junior Ministers have become Ministers, having previously been deputy Ministers, without these changes having been given formal legal effect. As well as fixing the timing of elections, the Act put the convention of responsible government on a statutory basis, leaving no room for a government defeated on a motion of no-confidence to cling onto power. The First Minister and other members of the Scottish Government must therefore resign if the Scottish Parliament passes a motion of no-confidence in the Scottish Government (Scotland Act , ss (), ()(c), and ()), following which an extraordinary general election must be held, or an alternative government formed from within the existing Parliament. The Scottish Ministers, which is the statutory term used in conferring powers on the Scottish Government, exercise a mixture of statutory and prerogative powers, derived initially from the Scotland Act , to which have since been added powers conferred by the UK Parliament as well as by the Scottish Parliament. Most powers are exercisable by the Scottish Ministers rather than their UK counterparts, but in some cases powers may be exercised concurrently by UK as well as by Scottish Ministers, giving the Scottish Ministers the option of relying, for example, on GB or UK subordinate legislation where they judge it appropriate, including in ensuring that the statute book continues to function properly once the UK has left the EU. The Scottish Government is subject to essentially the same restrictions as the Scottish Parliament in the exercise of its powers, including those in respect of the ECHR and (for the time being) EU law, save that it may take executive action in relation to reserved matters where authorized to do so by or under a UK Act of Parliament. Devolution did not require the establishment of a third branch of government, the Scottish judicial system having ‘survived in unbroken continuity since the earliest days of the modern Scottish state’ (Styles : ). Devolution is subject, however, to the ‘continued existence’ as reserved matters of Scotland’s two highest courts, the High Court of Justiciary and the Court of Session, in both cases as courts of first instance and
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of appeal (Scotland Act , Pt , paras (d), (e)), maintaining in a new form the guarantee of their continued existence first provided by the Acts of Union (art XIX). With devolution, judicial appointments mainly became a matter for the Scottish Government rather than the UK government. With the exception of the two most senior judicial appointments, the Lord President and the Lord Justice Clerk, judicial appointments are made on the recommendation of the First Minister (Scotland Act , s ()). The two most senior appointments continue to be made on the recommendation of the UK Prime Minister, who cannot however recommend anyone who has not been nominated by the First Minister (Scotland Act , s (), ()). Following devolution, the judicial appointments system, which fell far short of the standards regarded as axiomatic elsewhere in the public service, was overhauled, as was the judicial system, with the judiciary being ‘unified’ and the court service placed under judicial control (Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act ; Page : chapter ). The Scotland Act created a new jurisdiction for dealing with ‘devolution issues’ arising out of the devolution settlement, with the aim of providing a relatively quick and authoritative means of deciding such issues. This jurisdiction quickly became a source of conflict between the High Court of Justiciary, which had been the final court of appeal in Scottish criminal cases since the House of Lords declined jurisdiction in (MacIntosh v Lord Advocate ; Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act , s ), and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the final court of appeal in the new jurisdiction, and then the UK Supreme Court, which assumed the Judicial Committee’s devolution issues jurisdiction when it replaced the House of Lords as the UK’s final court of appeal in . Following the furore which erupted over the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Cadder and Fraser cases (Cadder v HM Advocate ; Fraser v HM Advocate ), the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction in Scottish criminal cases was cut back by the Scotland Act , leaving it as a court of reference rather than a court of appeal, and restoring to the High Court of Justiciary the final say in the disposal of Scottish criminal cases raising devolution issues (Page : paras .–.; Macklin v HM Advocate ).
S
.................................................................................................................................. The Scotland Act’s ‘higher law’ status in relation to Acts of the Scottish Parliament is secured, first, by a combination of hard entrenchment and an amendment procedure which differs from that for Scottish statutes. As originally enacted, the Scotland Act was entrenched almost in its entirety against the Scottish Parliament (Scotland Act , sch , para ). If it was to be amended it could only be amended by the UK Parliament—hence the complaint soon after devolution that the Parliament could not appoint a temporary additional deputy presiding officer without asking Westminster to amend the Act, an omission that was repaired by the Scotland Act .
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Following the independence referendum, the restrictions on the Act’s amendment by the Scottish Parliament were relaxed as part of an attempt to secure ‘a durable but responsive constitutional settlement for the governance of Scotland’, with the Scottish Parliament gaining control over its size and composition, electoral system and franchise (Smith Commission ; Scotland Act , s ). In recognition of its constitutional importance, however, legislation amending the franchise, the electoral system, or the number of constituency and regional members for the Scottish Parliament requires the approval of a two-thirds majority of the Scottish Parliament. It cannot be enacted by ordinary process of legislation, which would leave key elements of Scotland’s constitutional arrangements open to amendment by a simple majority. The Scotland Act’s higher law status is also secured through judicial review. Should the Scottish Parliament exceed the limits on its powers, the courts have the power to set aside its legislation as unlawful. They are not confined to making a declaration of incompatibility as they would be in the case of an Act of the UK Parliament which is contrary to the ECHR (Human Rights Act , s ). Such a declaration puts the executive on notice that the legislation, in the court’s opinion, does not reflect the UK’s obligations under the Convention, but otherwise leaves it in full force and effect until such time as it is amended. The decision taken at the outset, however, was that the Scottish Parliament should have no power to legislate incompatibly with the ECHR (Home Office , para .). It has no choice, therefore, but to amend or repeal the offending legislation to bring it into line with the Convention. The limits on the Scottish Government’s powers are likewise judicially enforceable. In one of the first decided cases, the Inner House of the Court of Session rejected the suggestion that as a democratically elected body the Parliament enjoyed any immunity from judicial review. Like any other body set up by law, the Lord President, Lord Rodger said, the Scottish Parliament was in principle ‘subject to the law and to the courts which exist to uphold that law.’ It was the Westminster Parliament which, in the Lord President’s view, was ‘unusual in being respected as sovereign by the courts’ (although certain inroads had been made into that sovereignty by the European Communities Act ). The Scottish Parliament, by contrast, had simply joined that ‘wider family of parliaments’, which ‘owe their existence and powers to statute and are in various ways subject to the law and to the courts which act to uphold the law’ (Whaley v Watson , –). As to how far judicial review might extend, in the most important judicial decision so far on the Scottish Parliament’s powers, the UK Supreme Court subsequently held that the grounds of review of Acts of the Scottish Parliament were not confined to those set out in the Scotland Act. For Lord Hope, the Scottish Parliament’s ‘dominant characteristic’ was: its firm rooting in the traditions of a democracy. It draws its strength from the electorate. While the judges, who are not elected, are best placed to protect the rights of the individual, including those who are ignored or despised by the majority, the elected members of a legislature of this kind are best placed to judge
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what is in the country’s best interests as a whole . . . This suggests that the judges should intervene, if at all, only in the most exceptional circumstances. (Axa General Insurance Ltd v Lord Advocate , para )
At the same time, however, he was not prepared to accept that the former Conservative Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham’s warning of elective dictatorship () had no application to the Scottish Parliament: We now have in Scotland a government which enjoys a large majority in the Scottish Parliament. Its party dominates the only chamber in the Parliament and the committees by which bills that are in progress are scrutinised. It is not entirely unthinkable that a government which has that power may seek to use it to abolish judicial review or to diminish the role of the courts in protecting the interests of the individual. Whether this is likely to happen is not the point. It is enough that it might conceivably do so. The rule of law requires that the judges must retain the power to insist that legislation of that extreme kind is not law which the courts will recognise. (Axa General Insurance Ltd v Lord Advocate , para )
In enacting the Scotland Act, Lord Reed said, the UK Parliament ‘did not legislate in a vacuum: it legislated for a liberal democracy founded on particular constitutional principles and traditions. That being so, Parliament cannot be taken to have intended to establish a body which was free to abrogate fundamental rights or to violate the rule of law’ (Axa General Insurance Ltd v Lord Advocate , para ). Despite its novelty in UK constitutional terms, judicial review of legislation under the Scotland Act has not proved as controversial as some anticipated at the time of devolution (O’Neill ). In the almost twenty years since the Scottish Parliament was established there have been only five cases in which the courts have struck down a provision of an Act of the Parliament as outwith its competence, in four of the five cases on Convention rights rather than reserved matters grounds (Cameron v Cottam ; Salvesen v Riddell ; Christian Institute v The Lord Advocate ; AB v HMA ; In Re UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill ). With the exception of the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill, all bar one provision of which the UK Supreme Court held would have been within the Scottish Parliament’s legislative competence had it not been effectively trumped by the UK European Union Withdrawal Act , none of these provoked an outcry. More controversial, as has been mentioned, has been the implications of the ECHR for the Scottish criminal justice system—implications which would have arisen as a result of the Human Rights Act regardless of devolution. The difference devolution made was to enable Scottish criminal cases raising human rights issues to be pursued in a court outside Scotland; previously such cases would have gone no further than the High Court of Justiciary as Scotland’s final court of criminal appeals. Although the Supreme Court’s devolution issues jurisdiction was cut back by the Scotland Act
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, the Scottish criminal justice system has not fully recovered the autonomy it enjoyed before devolution.
A S- C
.................................................................................................................................. As well as the Scotland Act, the Scottish constitution is to be found in statutes, of both the Scottish and UK Parliaments, judicial decisions, constitutional conventions, and soft-law instruments. UK statutory sources include the Human Rights Act , which reaches the parts of the governance of Scotland the Scotland Act does not reach; the European Communities Act , which for the time being gives effect to EU law in Scotland as in the rest of the UK; and the Constitutional Reform Act , which includes a guarantee of the separate identity of Scots law. Scottish statutory sources include the Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act , which provides a statutory guarantee of the ‘continued independence’ of the judiciary, modelled on that contained in the Constitutional Reform Act , and the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act , which governs the control and audit of public expenditure. Also deserving of inclusion in this list are the statutes establishing the various ‘constitutional watchdogs’ or ‘integrity agencies’, such as the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland and the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, which are responsible for ensuring the proper conduct of devolved government. Whilst ‘quasi constitutional’ status might be claimed for some of these statutes in judicial proceedings, with the consequence that their amendment would require express words rather than being achievable by implication, a striking feature of all the Scottish statutory sources is that no attempt was made to entrench any of them against a future Scottish Parliament. They could, in theory, therefore be amended by a simple majority of the Scottish Parliament, as have the statutes establishing the various integrity agencies. Amongst constitutional conventions, particular importance attaches to the ‘Sewel convention’, after the Scottish Office minister who first announced it, which governs legislative relations between the UK Parliament and the devolved legislatures. As a sovereign parliament the UK Parliament retains the power to legislate in the devolved areas. When the Scotland Act was being enacted, however, the Government announced that it expected ‘a convention to be established that Westminster would not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament’ ( HL Debs., col , Lord Sewel, July ). The convention was subsequently incorporated in the Memorandum of Understanding which governs relations between the UK government and the devolved administrations, in the form in which it had been originally announced (Cabinet Office : para ). The rules governing relations between national and subnational governments are usually defined in the national rather than the subnational constitution (Watts : ). In the absence of a codified UK constitution, they are set out principally in the Memorandum of Understanding between the UK government and the devolved
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administrations (Cabinet Office ; see also Chapter in this Handbook), which is ‘a statement of political intent, and should not be interpreted as a binding agreement. It does not create legal obligations between the parties’ (Cabinet Office : para ). Other important soft-law instruments, which likewise are not intended to be legally binding, include the fiscal framework agreement (HM Government, Scottish Government ), and the Treasury’s statement of funding policy (HM Treasury ), which has been rightly described as ‘one of the most important constitutional documents in the reinvention of the union state’ (Rawlings ; see Chapter in this Handbook). The UK government also retains ‘override powers’ whereby it may prevent legislation from being enacted (Scotland Act , s ; bills may also be referred to the UK Supreme Court, as in the case of the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill: ss A and ), or require the Scottish Government to take, or to refrain from taking, executive action (Scotland Act , s ). For the Kilbrandon Commission, which was appointed in to investigate the case for devolution, the retention of such powers, together with the continuing sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament, was an important safeguard against the risk of the adoption of ‘extreme or incompatible policies’ by a devolved legislature, and an essential feature of a non-federal constitution (Royal Commission on the Constitution : paras and ).
E D S
.................................................................................................................................. The Scotland Act is entrenched against the Scottish Parliament but not against the UK Parliament, which retains the power, in theory at least, to amend or repeal the Act without restriction. Such was the burden of the advice given to the Scottish Constitutional Convention, which was informed that ‘in theory under Britain’s unwritten constitution’ an Act of the Westminster Parliament establishing a Scottish Parliament ‘can be repealed or amended without restriction’ (Scottish Constitutional Convention : ). A number of ways were canvassed in which entrenchment of the Act might be attempted, or its repeal or amendment made more difficult (Boyd ), but the UK government chose not to pursue these in the legislation. There is no requirement, for example, of a special majority or some form of Scottish consent for the Act’s amendment or repeal. Instead, the Act included an unequivocal declaration that the conferral of law-making powers on the Scottish Parliament ‘does not affect the power of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to make laws for Scotland’ (Scotland Act , s ()), a declaration Lord Sewel for the UK government defended as ‘an essential constitutional statement of the nature of the devolved settlement’: To sum up, we are setting about a devolved settlement—nothing more, nothing less. It is not the first step on the road to some other settlement, whether that be
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independence or federalism. It is a self-contained settlement, based on the principles of devolution. Essential to that is the recognition that sovereignty remains with the UK Parliament. The UK Parliament retains the ability to legislate on all matters, but it devolves the power to legislate, other than on reserved matters, to the Scottish parliament. ( HL Debs., col , Lord Sewel, July )
Devolution has vindicated those who saw the essential guarantee of the Scottish Parliament as lying in the support of the Scottish people, rather than in any attempt to limit the sovereignty of the UK Parliament, which as well making the passage of the legislation more difficult would have been of questionable legal effect. Even before the independence referendum, the Scottish Parliament’s abolition without Scottish consent was inconceivable—the constitutional debate was about Scotland’s future as part of the UK, not about the Scottish Parliament as part of that future. As a matter of strict law, the UK Parliament may retain the power to abolish the Scottish Parliament, but as was said in another context, ‘that is theory and has no relation to realities’ (British Coal Corporation v The King , , Viscount Sankey). The possibility that the Scottish Parliament might be abolished, no matter how unlikely, or that its powers might be unilaterally altered, has nevertheless proved a persistent source of criticism. ‘Although by convention the Westminster Parliament does not legislate for matters that are the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament’, Scotland’s Future, the independence White Paper, said, ‘it retains the ultimate power to do so and could unilaterally change the powers of the Scottish Parliament, or indeed abolish the Parliament entirely’ (Scottish Government : ). Following the independence referendum, the Smith Commission, a cross-party commission, overseen by Lord Smith of Kelvin, which was charged with reaching agreement on the devolution of further powers to the Scottish Parliament, agreed that ‘the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government should be made permanent’ (Smith Commission : para ). The Commission’s recommendation was implemented by an amendment to the Scotland Act, which now provides that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government ‘are a permanent part of the United Kingdom’s constitutional arrangements’, and that ‘they are not to be abolished except on the basis of a decision of the people of Scotland voting in a referendum’ (Scotland Act , s A, inserted by Scotland Act , s ). Those who regard parliamentary sovereignty as ‘continuing’ rather than ‘selfembracing’ or self-limiting (Hart ) will no doubt continue to argue that, the declaration of permanence notwithstanding, the UK Parliament retains the power to abolish Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government without a referendum. Support for their position may be derived from the UK government’s insistence that the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty was not affected by the declaration of permanence. For the Advocate General (the UK government’s law officer for Scotland), ‘It appears to us that, in light of the Smith commission agreement, the Government should be prepared to make that political declaration of permanence. It does not take
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away from the supremacy or sovereignty of this United Kingdom Parliament. That remains’ ( HL Debs., col , December , Lord Keen). The political reality, which the Scotland Act as amended reflects, however, is that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are a permanent part of the United Kingdom’s constitutional arrangements, and will continue to be so for so long as Scotland remains part of the United Kingdom—or the people of Scotland voting in a referendum decide that they should be abolished. Subject to that latter possibility, the Scotland Act as amended confers on the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government the same ‘in all time coming’ status as was conferred on the Court of Session by the Acts of Union three centuries ago (art XIX, ‘That the Court of Session or Colledge of Justice do after the Union and notwithstanding thereof remain in all time coming within Scotland as it is now constituted by the Laws of that Kingdom and with the same Authority and Priviledges as before the Union’). More problematic, as the controversy over the European Union (Withdrawal) Act demonstrates, is the question of alterations to the Scottish Parliament’s powers without its consent. The Smith Commission also agreed, as part of the same attempt to secure ‘a durable but responsive constitutional settlement for the governance of Scotland’, that the Sewel convention should be ‘put on a statutory footing’ (Smith Commission : para ). As initially announced by Lord Sewel, no attempt had been made to define what was understood by legislation ‘with regard to devolved matters in Scotland’ to which the requirement of Scottish parliamentary consent under the convention was to apply. In a devolution guidance note to departments on handling legislation affecting Scotland, issued in December , however, the convention was defined as extending to Westminster legislation varying the Scottish Parliament’s powers or those of the Scottish Ministers as well as Westminster legislation for devolved purposes. Where the Scottish Parliament’s powers are varied in the exercise of the powers conferred by the Scotland Act, the Scottish Parliament’s consent is required (Scotland Act , ss .). What the guidance note did was to extend the consent requirement to changes made by Act of Parliament as well as in the exercise of the powers conferred by the Scotland Act. When, however, the convention was put on a statutory footing, in implementation of the Smith Commission agreement, it was in the terms in which it had been originally announced and not as it had been set out in the devolution guidance note. After declaring that the conferral of law-making powers on the Scottish Parliament ‘does not affect the power of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to make laws for Scotland’, section of the Scotland Act now provides: ‘But it is recognised that the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament’ (Scotland Act , s (), inserted by Scotland Act , s ). Attempts were made to amend the Scotland Bill to reflect the terms of the devolution guidance note but these were resisted by the UK government on the grounds that these were ‘working arrangements which may alter from time to time and should not be enshrined in statute’ ( HL Debs., col , December , Lord Keen).
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Of more immediate consequence than the question of the Sewel convention’s scope, in the context of the UK’s proposed withdrawal from the European Union, was the question of whether its status had changed as a result of statutory recognition. In the Miller case, in which the UK government’s claim that notification of the UK’s intention to withdraw from the European Union under Article of the Treaty on European Union did not require parliamentary authorization in the form of legislation was successfully challenged, the Supreme Court dismissed suggestions that statutory recognition meant that the status of the convention had been altered. In writing the convention into the Scotland Act, the Supreme Court said, the UK Parliament was not seeking to convert it into a rule ‘which can be interpreted, let alone enforced, by the courts; rather, it is recognising the convention for what it is, namely a political convention, and is effectively declaring that it is a permanent feature of the relevant devolution settlement’ (R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union , para ). Although there is nothing in law, therefore, to prevent the UK Parliament from unilaterally altering the Scottish Parliament’s powers, the expectation from the outset was that any changes to the Scottish Parliament’s powers would normally be made by agreement, an expectation reinforced by statutory recognition of the Sewel convention in implementation of the Smith Commission agreement. Such was the case with the changes to the Scottish Parliament’s powers made before the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, including those made by the Scotland Act and the Scotland Act . What was most striking about the enactment of both Acts, and the adoption of the fiscal framework agreement, was the UK government’s unwillingness to proceed other than on the basis of agreement. That same unwillingness was evident in the protracted negotiations over what is now section of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, but agreement having not been reached, and the Scottish Parliament having withheld its consent from the Bill, the UK parliament enacted the Bill with the provisions to which the Scottish Parliament was opposed intact. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act having been enacted without the Scottish Parliament’s consent, the Scottish Government adopted a policy of ‘no consent’ to other Brexit-related primary legislation—but not to all Brexit-related secondary legislation. How this will be resolved remains to be seen. The episode is a reminder, however, that devolution is not federalism, and that Scotland and the other devolved nations do not enjoy the same constitutional guarantees of their autonomy as do, for example, the Australian states or the Canadian provinces under a federal constitution. Short of a UK constitution that limited the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament it is difficult to see how that could be achieved. In the meantime, a power that, like the power to abolish the Scottish Parliament, might have been thought to be more theoretical than real has been shown to be not just a power in name only.
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.................................................................................................................................. Had Scotland voted for independence in September , the SNP Government’s intention was that the Scottish Parliament elected in May should be required to establish a constitutional convention to prepare a permanent written constitution for Scotland (Scottish Government , ). A written constitution would distinguish an independent Scotland from the United Kingdom. In the meantime, the Scottish Independence Act , an Act of the Scottish Parliament, would have put in place an ‘interim constitution’ which, together with a ‘refreshed’ Scotland Act, would provide the basis for the governance of Scotland until such time as a permanent written constitution was agreed ‘by or on behalf of the people of Scotland’ (Scottish Government : s ()). The Scottish Independence Bill, published in June , was framed in terms of ‘higher level principles and values’ with the ‘technical detail’ being relegated to the refreshed Scotland Act, a summary of which was provided in the consultation document on the draft Scottish Independence Bill. The Bill had been drafted to be ‘accessible, straightforward and concise’, in the hope that this would enable the people of Scotland to see clearly the ‘most important principles, rights, and structures of government’ on which the SNP Government believed an independent democratic Scotland should be founded (Scottish Government ). Foremost amongst those principles was ‘the sovereignty of the people of Scotland’—‘In Scotland, the people are sovereign’ (Scottish Government : s )— which would replace the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament as ‘the predominant constitutional principle in an independent Scotland’ (Scottish Government : ). Under the draft ‘interim constitution’ set out in Part of the Bill, the institutional arrangements of the new state would have remained essentially unaltered: Scotland already has many of the institutions that a modern state requires: a parliament elected by the people, a government accountable to that parliament, an impartial civil service, an independent judiciary and an autonomous legal system. These institutions will continue on independence, underpinned by new constitutional arrangements reflecting Scotland’s new constitutional status. (Scottish Government : )
The Scottish Parliament would thus have had full competence to make and modify the law of Scotland, and the Scottish Government full responsibility for the government of Scotland, whilst the High Court and the Court of Session in their appellate capacities would together have become Scotland’s Supreme Court (Scottish Government : ss. , , ). The decision to postpone preparation of a permanent constitution until after independence has been criticized, as has the interim constitution that would have served as the constitution of Scotland until it was replaced (Bulmer , ). One
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criticism that has been made of the draft interim constitution is that it was lacking in essential detail. Bulmer comments: For example, it included a commitment to the removal of nuclear weapons and tackling climate change—two principles dear to the SNP—but said nothing about such mundane but vital measures as how Parliament was to be elected, how the First Minister was to be chosen, or how judicial independence and civil service neutrality were to be protected. (Bulmer : )
Not too much should be made of this criticism. Much of that detail is to be found in the Scotland Act, which in its refreshed form would have formed part of the interim constitution, and the other instruments that currently make up Scotland’s uncodified constitution. Included in the Scottish Independence Bill was a continuity of laws provision which would have ensured that those other instruments remained in force after independence (Scottish Government : s ). The interim constitution would therefore not necessarily have been lacking in essential detail. The more fundamental criticism is that the interim constitution would have been no more difficult to amend than any other law after independence. The SNP Government rejected the ‘rigidity’ of hard entrenchment or a special amending formula as not appropriate for what were intended to be temporary arrangements (Scottish Government : , ). Nor would it have been judicially enforceable. It was only where future legislation was incompatible with the ECHR or EU law that the courts would have had the power to declare it invalid: they would not have had the power to do so where it was contrary to the interim constitution (Scottish Government : ). The result would have been a flexible constitution which ‘would not have been protected against majoritarian amendment. As such, it would have been little more than a politician’s promise, unable to restrain the potential abuse of power by the government . . . ’ (Bulmer : ). It would also, no less importantly, have been a constitution under which a now sovereign Scottish Parliament would have been able to set aside any judicial decision that was not to its liking. In short, it would have been a constitution which lacked the higher law status of Scotland’s current constitution and with it two of the most important safeguards against the abuse of state power—entrenchment and judicial enforceability. Scotland’s current constitution may lack the seal of Scottish popular approval—it may for the most part not have been ‘made in Scotland’—but in terms of safeguards against the abuse of power it has important strengths, which ought not to be lightly dismissed in consideration of what might replace it, even if only on a temporary basis.
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.................................................................................................................................. A second independence referendum, to which the SNP Government remains committed, would reopen the question of the Scottish constitution. Short of a second
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referendum, the likelihood in the short term is of only marginal adjustments to those still relatively few elements of the Scottish constitution within the Scottish Parliament’s legislative competence, with a second chamber for the Parliament and an increase in its size, the latter in the light of the increase in its powers and responsibilities since devolution, both having been rejected during the current session. The McCormick Commission, which was appointed to consider ways in which the Parliament could, amongst other things, ‘be assured it had the right checks and balances in place for the effective conduct of parliamentary business’, believed that it would need to be demonstrated that the Parliament was currently working at ‘peak efficiency’ before recommending a second chamber or an increase in its size (Commission on Parliamentary Reform : foreword). Looking further ahead, the Scottish Parliament’s next session may see the introduction of a statutory human rights framework encompassing economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, as well as the civil and political rights currently secured by the Scotland Act and the Human Rights Act (First Minister’s Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership ). Reform along those lines would have potentially farreaching implications for the relationship between the courts and government in Scotland. In what form, if any, it might be taken forward however remains to be seen.
R Bingham, T. . The Rule of Law. London: Penguin Books. Boyd, C. . ‘Parliament and Courts: Powers and Dispute Resolution’, in T. St. N. Bates (ed.), Devolution to Scotland: The Legal Aspects. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Bulmer, W.E. . Constituting Scotland: The Scottish National Movement and the Westminster Model. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bulmer, W.E. . Foundations for Freedom—A Discussion Paper on the Process for Establishing an Independent Scotland’s Constitution. Glasgow: Common Weal Policy. Cabinet Office. . Memorandum of Understanding and Supplementary Agreements between the United Kingdom Government, the Scottish Ministers, the Welsh Ministers and the Northern Ireland Executive Committee. Available at: https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file//MoU_ between_the_UK_and_the_Devolved_Administrations.pdf. Commission on Parliamentary Reform. . Report on the Scottish Parliament. Available at: https://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/CurrentCommittees/.aspx. Dicey, A.V. . ‘The American Commonwealth’, Edinburgh Review, : –. Dudley Edwards, O. . A Claim of Right for Scotland. Edinburgh: Polygon. Elvidge, J. . ‘Governance and the Institutional Framework’, in A. Goudie (ed.), Scotland’s Future: The Economics of Constitutional Change. Dundee: Dundee University Press, –. First Minister’s Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership. . Recommendations for a New Human Rights Framework to Improve People’s Lives: Report to the First Minister. Available at: https://humanrightsleadership.scot/wp-content/uploads///First-MinistersAdvisory-Group-on-Human-Rights-Leadership-Final-report-for-publication.pdf, accessed December . Gibb, A.D. . A Preface to Scots Law. Edinburgh: W. Green & Son.
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Hart, H.L.A. . The Concept of Law, nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. HM Government, Scottish Government. . The Agreement between the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom Government on the Scottish Government’s Fiscal Framework. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-agreement-between-thescottish-government-and-the-united-kingdom-government-on-the-scottish-governmentsfiscal-framework. HM Treasury. . Statement of Funding Policy: Funding the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and Northern Ireland Assembly. Available at: https://www. whatdotheyknow.com/request/hm_treasury_the_statement_of_fun. Home Office. . Rights Brought Home: The Human Rights Bill. Cm . London: UK Government. King, A. . The British Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MacCormick, N. . ‘Constitutional Points’, in D. Mackay (ed.), Scotland: The Framework for Change. Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing. MacCormick, N. . ‘Is There a Constitutional Path to Scottish Independence?’, Parliamentary Affairs, : –. Milne, Sir D. . The Scottish Office and Other Scottish Government Departments. London: George Allen & Unwin. Mitchell, J. . ‘The United Kingdom as a State of Unions: Unity of Government, Equality of Political Rights and Diversity of Institutions’, in A. Trench (ed.), Devolution and Power in the United Kingdom. Manchester: Manchester University Press. O’Neill, A. . ‘The Scotland Act and the Government of Judges’, Scots Law Times. Page, A. . Constitutional Law of Scotland. Edinburgh: W. Green. Rawlings, R. . Delineating Wales: Constitutional, Legal and Administrative Aspects of National Devolution. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Raz, J. . Between Authority and Interpretation. On the Theory of Law and Practical Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rodger, Lord of Earlsferry. . The Courts, The Church and the Constitution: Aspects of the Disruption of . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Royal Commission on The Constitution. . Volume Report, Cmnd . Saunders, C. . ‘The Constitutional Credentials of State Constitutions’, Rutgers Law Journal, : –. Scottish Constitutional Convention. . Scotland’s Parliament, Scotland’s Right. Edinburgh: Scottish Constitutional Convention. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . The Scottish Independence Bill: A Consultation on an Interim Constitution for Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Consultation Paper on Electoral Reform. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Office. . Scotland’s Parliament, Cm . London: UK Government. Smith Commission. . Report of the Smith Commission for further devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament. Available at: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ /http://www.smith-commission.scot/wp-content/uploads///The_ Smith_Commission_Report-.pdf. Smith, T.B. . ‘The Union of as Fundamental Law’, Public Law, –.
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Styles, S.C. . ‘The Scottish Judiciary’, in A. McHarg and T. Mullen (eds), Public Law in Scotland. Edinburgh: Avizandum. Watts, R.L. . ‘Foreword: States, Provinces, Lander, and Cantons: International Variety among Subnational Constitutions’, Rutgers Law Journal, : –.
C AB v HMA [] UKSC . Axa General Insurance Ltd v Lord Advocate [] UKSC . British Coal Corporation v The King AC . Cadder v HM Advocate [] UKSC . Cameron v Cottam [] HCJAC . Christian Institute v The Lord Advocate [] UKSC . Fraser v HM Advocate [] UKSC . Gibson v Lord Advocate SC . Imperial Tobacco v Lord Advocate [] CSIH . In Re UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill [] UKSC . Lord Gray’s Motion SC (HL) . MacCormick v Lord Advocate SC . Macgregor v Lord Advocate SC . MacIntosh v Lord Advocate () R (HL) . Macklin v HM Advocate [] UKSC . Ontario (AG) v Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union [] SCR . Pringle, Petitioner SLT . R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Existing the European Union [] UKSC . Salvesen v Riddell [UKSC] . Whaley v Watson SC .
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.................................................................................................................................. L other nations in multinational states, Scotland has a dual public sphere—that is, there are two distinct but interconnected communicative spaces in which the citizenry acts politically. There is a Scottish public sphere with its own national political institutions north of the border. This is deeply and simultaneously connected to the wider public sphere of the British state. Although the Scottish and UK public spheres often overlap, key differences in political institutions, voting patterns, and agendas mean that there is built-in scope for dispute about media content, legal and regulatory competencies related to the media, and the distribution of publicly funded resources to support the ‘creative economy’ to which media are central. The present constitutional and political framework, therefore, tends to generate continuous demands for change and, from time to time, drives related policy shifts. Communication and culture are of key importance for the analysis of nations and nationalism (Schlesinger ). According to Deutsch (), nations are significantly defined by their internal ‘communicative complementarity’ and this singularity makes each distinct from any other. National boundaries, accordingly, may be seen as containers that both reflect and express the internal cultural development of a given polity. Mediated communication is what facilitates comprehensive territorial reach within such spaces. Deutsch rightly observed that statehood and nationhood do not necessarily coincide. Given Scotland’s historical distinctiveness and status as a devolved nation within the larger UK, it is worth restating this point—a commonplace north of the border. It is not necessary to possess the political shell of statehood for a nation to have a collective identity or distinctive media.
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Developing this Deutschian line of thought, Gellner () argued that under conditions of industrial modernity, territorially based systems of communication tended to produce tightly bounded cultural communities marked as distinct by their common high culture, lingua franca, and media system. Anderson (/), similarly concerned with nation-formation, also reframed Deutsch’s central idea, in the process coining a celebrated trope. He described the ‘deep, horizontal comradeship’ of the nation as constituting an ‘imagined community’, typically supported by a range of cultural institutions such as the newspaper, the book, the census, the map, and the museum. Billig () subsequently shifted the focus from nation-building to national cultural reproduction. What he influentially called ‘banal nationalism’ concerned the routine, often unremarked, naturalized features of everyday life. The omnipresence of the national flag, the symbolic uses of the national anthem, the chronic categorizations of insiders and outsiders supplied by major media—all of these making a national identity part of what is taken for granted. The Deutschian ‘social communications’ approach has been concerned preeminently with how nations speak to themselves. This perspective has much in common with Habermas’s () theory of the growth of a public sphere, where the national collective may act as a public engaged in reasoned deliberation about matters of general interest—with affairs of state central to that conversation. This view, first formulated to deal with the emergent public of a ‘nation state’ on route to modernity, may be adapted to analyse other political formations. Habermas () subsequently sought to apply his theory to the supranational communicative space of the European Union, at a historical moment when the boundary-transcending cosmopolitan potential of a European identity and public sphere still seemed to be realizable. If supra-state scaling-up is one analytical option, intra-state scaling-down is another. Within the UK, since Scotland’s stateless national political distinctiveness has been institutionally buttressed by devolution. The creation of the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament, the reorientation of civil service activity, the evolution of Holyrood-focused electoral politics, and the refocusing of political communications became central to the operation of a Scottish polity within the British state. In this connection, then, what we know about ‘the ties between representations, institutions and power’ are crucially important for understanding how such a ‘media nation’ operates (Mihelj : ). Debate on the public sphere has engendered discussion of the role of media and public opinion-formation in democracies, most commonly where political public space is coextensive with the boundaries of a state, although it has been extended to nations that do not have sovereign statehood. Discussion of how media operate in the public sphere has been particularly important in shaping discussion of PSB—public service broadcasting (Garnham ). Both social communication and public sphere theories have tended to be inwardlooking: first and foremost, they concern national publics that speak to themselves. However, states and nations do not exist in isolation. Both public deliberation and national identity need to be understood in the wider contexts that give them shape.
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For example, the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU) in December did not cancel the British state’s need to devise a new set of relations with that formation’s Member States. A changed relationship to the EU did not mean that splendid isolation and autarchy had become feasible future options. Moreover, the reshaping of international relations between the UK and the EU had, and will continue to have, consequences for interrelations between the component nations of the British state. The outcome of the referendum on leaving the EU was a case in point. Only per cent of England’s electorate voted to remain in the European Union whereas in Scotland per cent opted to do so. This divergence fed into the continuing debate over Scotland’s place both in the UK and the EU. Social communication theory describes relatively stable political formations with largely predictable patterns of cultural reproduction. Aside from the political and constitutional question marks hanging over the UK’s future, like the media industries elsewhere in the UK as well as in other small countries, Scotland’s media face a period of major instability due to the digital revolution (Schlesinger and Benchimol ). This has profoundly disrupted the business models of media enterprises—how they deliver content, how this is consumed, and relationships to competitors and audiences. The present digital revolution is transforming media and communications globally. Scotland’s media, therefore, are faced by wider changes in technologies, consumption, and markets and related questions of policy and regulation. This chapter will discuss the contemporary lineaments of a Scottish media space that is also, in David McCrone’s (: ) term, a ‘geopolitical’ one. The Scotland Act established the present devolved order and the principal focus of our analysis will be the two decades since the Scottish polity assumed its present status, although, where relevant, earlier developments and events will be discussed. In what follows, we will consider the decline of the post-devolution Scottish ‘indigenous’ press—that is, titles established and published in Scotland—in the wider context of the digitization of journalism; the gradual reshaping of broadcasting and its uncertain future; established and emerging media during the independence referendum campaign; and the consumption of media. Some relevant policy developments throughout the period will also be addressed.
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.................................................................................................................................. The press has figured large in sociological conceptions of how national cultures and public spheres are constituted (Anderson /; Billig ). Whilst this approach has predominantly concerned the formation and functioning of states, it has also addressed the sub-state level of political life (Schlesinger and Benchimol ). Scotland, as both a distinct polity and society, has long had an indigenous press whose history and development is distinct from that south of the border, although deeply connected to wider political and economic developments in the UK and
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internationally, not least those affecting the ownership and control of the newspaper industry and the technologically driven shift from print to digital. The Scottish press has been a key part of a Scottish public sphere although it is regulated at a UK level, presently under the Independent Press Standards Organisation. Early examples of Scottish newspapers were produced in the seventeenth century (Hutchison ) and the public prints were an important form of political expression in debate about the Union of between Scotland and England (Bowie ). Since the late eighteenth century, the press has been significant in articulating and interacting with national and regional identities in Scotland, as well as in contributing to the making of a distinct public sphere within that of the United Kingdom. Kellas () has described how Scotland’s post-war media connected with the ‘Scottish political system’, then centred on the Scottish Office. Several years before devolution returned to the constitutional agenda MacInnes (: ) noted that compared to other parts of the UK, ‘[g]iven the existence of a distinct civil society and various institutional remnants of political autonomy in Scotland the news media have something to report!’ Prior to the passage of the Scotland Act , newspapers such as Edinburgh-based The Scotsman and The Herald in Glasgow—both influential in shaping elite opinion— were cheerleaders for new political arrangements north of the border. In Scotland, coverage of the campaign for devolution and a Scottish parliament differed from that of the UK’s London-based press. Not surprisingly, the first post-devolution parliamentary election in May —which occurred during what was still the heyday of the printed press—was reported and analysed in much greater depth in Scotland than south of the border, thereby addressing the needs of the new Scottish electorate (Higgins ). The creation of the Scottish Government (initially called the Scottish Executive) and the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament after almost three centuries, underpinned a Scotland-focused system of political communications. Post-devolution arrangements made for the new Scottish political media corps and government media management evolved from models supplied by Westminster, Whitehall, and London’s parliamentary Lobby, rather than constituting a radical break (Schlesinger et al. ). But it was a rough beginning as Macwhirter (: –) has noted, with a ‘hyperbolically critical’ press that offered ‘generalised hostility’ to the new political institutions. The precipitous decline of the Scottish press since devolution, whether in sales or democratic influence, has been much discussed. Often presented as a paradox, this is best considered as a continuing loss to the country of newspapers’ collective capacity to hold those in power to account by offering in-depth content for Scotland’s citizens. The communications deficit arrived just as Scotland became ‘more detached from the British state’ (McCrone : ). With the shrinking press in mind Macwhirter (: ) commented: ‘Scotland has a national political system, but is in danger of losing a national media’. Focusing on the indigenous press, McCrone (: ) showed how between and , sales of the Scotland-wide Daily Record (founded: ) plummeted from some , by per cent; sales of nearly , of Dundee’s The Courier (founded: ) fell by per cent; those of Aberdeen’s The Press and Journal (founded: )
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dropped from close to , by per cent; Glasgow’s The Herald (founded: ) slumped from over , by per cent, whilst those of Edinburgh’s The Scotsman (founded: ) collapsed from over , by per cent. The Scotsman and The Herald, and to some extent their Sunday stable-mates, had long vied to be ‘national’ voices for Scotland but in their attenuated state this ambition became less credible. Following devolution, London-based newspapers increased their competitive edge in producing editions for the Scottish market—‘putting a kilt’ on the news and features, in a well-worn phrase that combines wryness, cynicism, and disparagement. Often offering a ‘wider range of news and features than their Scottish competitors’ they are ‘now read in substantial quantities in Scotland as well resourced alternatives to “indigenous” newspapers suffering from under-investment’ (Blain and Hutchison : , ). Despite losing readers in the general downward trend of print sales, the Scottish Sun (owned by News UK, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp) presently sells more than any other title north of the border, its over , copies besting the indigenous former leader, the Daily Record, now the second most widelyread daily paper. The Scottish Daily Mail—the Scottish edition of the London title owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust—currently occupies third place in the market (McCrone : ). Relatively little of the indigenous Scottish press is still Scottish-owned. Until recently, the Scotsman Group was part of the Johnston Press, Edinburgh-based but principally a major UK proprietor of local newspapers. This company went into administration in November and was bought by JPIMedia, led by a US hedge fund, raising questions about the long-term future of its titles and staff, the emblematic Scotsman included. The Press and Journal, The Courier and the Sunday Post are all owned by Dundee-based D.C. Thomson & Co. The Daily Record and Sunday Mail are owned by Reach plc (the rebranded Trinity Mirror), one of the UK’s biggest newspaper groups and publisher of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror. The Herald & Times Group is owned by Newsquest, a subsidiary of the Gannett Company, the largest US media holding company. The fall in Scottish newspapers’ print sales is part of a broader trend in the UK as a whole, as well as comparable countries internationally. Dekavalla (: ) has suggested that the decline in Scotland’s indigenous press has ‘arguably been more dramatic than that experienced in other markets’ because of competition for readers with titles based south of the border. It is a crowded marketplace and there has been long-term underinvestment in Scottish titles. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has reported that ‘UK newspaper print circulations have halved since , with average revenue from digital users less than per cent of a print reader’ (Newman et al. : ). The post-devolution decline in the indigenous press has coincided with a widespread shift from a purely print publication to a combination of print and digital, one in which publishers have devised different business models to try to compensate for the loss of physical sales and the migration of advertising revenues from print to online. At the ‘quality’ end of the UK market, there are signs that newspapers such as The Telegraph,
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The Guardian, The Financial Times, and The Times have made some headway in strategies to generate new revenues that range across imposing a paywall, metering content, and soliciting donations (Newman et al. : ). Mobile devices (notably, widespread use of easy-to-use smartphones and tablets) have increased digital reach across all demographics. Access to content via digital devices does not equate to providing a reliable income stream for producers. The UK is near the bottom of the international rankings in paying for online news, with only per cent of those surveyed willing to do so, which puts recent claims to advances in digital revenue-generation by newspaper publishers into context. Moreover, only per cent of UK news consumers are willing to donate to access news digitally, with most of that funding going to The Guardian (Newman et al. : –). The Published Audience Measurement Company (PAMCo) has developed a new ‘currency’ to assess the reach of ‘news brands’. The results for Scottish titles reveal that shrinkage of print sales has been accompanied by a substantial shift to digital consumption, where the use of smartphones generally has far exceeded that of desktops and tablets. Between April and March , The Scotsman’s daily ‘total brand reach’ (TBR) was , readers, of which , read print but , accessed content digitally. The Herald’s TBR was , of which , read the print version but , used a device. The Press and Journal’s TBR was ,, with , using print and , digital means. The Courier had a TBR of ,, dominated by , print readers to , digital. The Daily Record’s , TBR was digitally dominated with , accessing content through mobiles or desktops to , via print (PAMCo ). These figures do give pause to catastrophist predictions of inevitable decline, although they offer no insights into how reach may be converted into revenue streams, an issue that precipitated the Scotsman Group’s change of ownership. That said, Scottish newspaper publishers seeking to recoup lost advertising revenues due to falling print sales and circulation do now have a better case to argue.
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.................................................................................................................................. Like the press, PSB has been a linchpin of the UK’s public sphere and often theorized as of key importance to the functioning of democratic polities, whilst at the same time being seen by critics as reproducing the status quo (Higgins ). Its operations and regulation have always been in the public eye. Whether PSB at a national level can long survive in this crucial (if contested) role is increasingly in question (Tunstall ). The streaming of audiovisual content by unregulated global players with deep pockets that outmatch the broadcast finance available to UK broadcasters, the rapidity of technological change in a platform economy, and the digital device-driven transformation of
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consumption, most notably in younger demographics, are all displacing PSB from its former centrality (Ofcom c). The Scotland Act established cultural policy as a devolved power under the aegis of the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament. Despite devolution, broadcasting policy—which deals with radio and television—remains a reserved power, held in London rather than Edinburgh. This policy field has always been marked by highly political considerations, as is evident from the near century-long history of the BBC, which has been an ‘organization within the constitution’ ever since the general strike of (Briggs : ). The broadcasting marketplace and its regulation have always involved the political management of economic interests and the creation of regulatory bodies deeply inscribed with Britishness, even if they offered various forms of territorial representation to the ‘nations’, namely, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The latest step in this process came after the referendum on Scottish independence, when the Scotland Act provided Scottish ministers with the power to appoint members for Scotland to the Boards both of the BBC and the UK communications regulator, Ofcom. That power, however, was ultimately subject to the approval of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in London. London, however, has largely relinquished control over the Gaelic Media Service, MG Alba, for which substantial financial support comes from the Scottish Government; it falls under the strategic oversight of the Scottish ministers (MoU ). Scotland is part of the UK television network and receives all the five public service channels: BBC, BBC, ITV, Channel , and Channel . It is therefore integrated through network provision into the UK’s audiovisual space. Viewers in Scotland may also access the gamut of non-public service channels and platforms through satellite, cable, and the internet. There have been recurrent pressures in Scotland to treat broadcasting policy as part of cultural policy. In , the first tentative rethinking of the policy map came with the report of the Cultural Commission chaired by a former BBC senior executive, James Boyle. Jack McConnell, First Minister of the last of the Labour–Liberal Democrat coalitions that ruled between and , initiated a rethinking of cultural policy. The Cultural Commission (, annex G: ) asked Scottish ministers to introduce ‘an element of devolution in broadcasting’, stating that there was ‘a strong case for the establishment of at least one [television] channel based in Scotland’. Rapidly dismissed by the then Scottish Executive, the idea was picked up shortly thereafter by the incoming SNP minority government. In the background lay a failed attempt in to seek the devolution of more decisionmaking powers to BBC Scotland. In particular, there was a proposal to launch a new Scottish, UK and international hour-long news programme replacing the BBC’s networked Six O’Clock News whilst integrating Reporting Scotland, the BBC Scotland news programme that followed. The refusal to countenance such purported broadcasting nationalism by the BBC’s Director-General, John Birt, together with machinations in Westminster by leading Scottish Labour cabinet ministers, ensured that the downfall of
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aspirations for a ‘Scottish Six’ would in future become an instantly recognizable, regularly invoked, and enduring symbolic cause (Schlesinger et al. : chapter ). In line with the UK as a whole, Scotland’s present broadcasting landscape has evolved by stages. The BBC has addressed Scottish audiences in what used to be called its ‘national region’ through radio broadcasts ever since the s (McDowell ; MacInnes ). BBC Radio Scotland was established as a stand-alone service in and BBC Nan Gàidheal, the Scottish-Gaelic radio service, was set up in . BBC Radio Scotland covers the whole national territory, addressing listeners in ways comparable to its national counterparts in Wales and Northern Ireland. It is a generalist broadcaster that covers news and current affairs, talk, music, sport, and comedy. The BBC’s UK radio networks are also available to Scottish listeners in the shape of thirteen digital audio broadcasting (DAB) and seven analogue stations. As distinct from England, there is no BBC local radio in Scotland. However, in March there were sixty-nine DAB and thirty-five analogue commercial local stations; thirty-four DAB and four analogue UK commercial stations could also be received (Ofcom a: ). The commercial sector has seen considerable consolidation and the majority of stations (notably those in major urban areas) are owned by companies located outwith Scotland. The German-headquartered company, Bauer, owns Forth , Clyde and Northsound and has per cent of the market, followed by Global, London-based owner of Capital and Heart, which has almost per cent (Ofcom a: ). Over time, due to commercial contractors’ pressure, the regulated scope of ‘locality’ has shrunk and has become largely focused on short news bulletins and music. In , twenty-five Scottish community stations were also licensed to broadcast. The BBC’s Scottish HQ is at Pacific Quay in Glasgow, housed in a major production centre established in . It has become a relatively significant contributor to network production, although the extent and nature of BBC Scotland’s contribution is a matter of perpetual dispute. In television, programming specific to Scotland was long provided by BBC Scotland ‘opt-outs’ from the BBC and BBC networks. Programming included news and current affairs, drama, sport, music, and comedy. This was meant to change in when, marking a break with decades of opt-outs, the BBC launched a BBC Scotland channel, broadcasting daily from pm, with a pm integrated news programme intended to dispel the resilient spectre of the Scottish Six. In addition, new investments were made in drama, factual, and journalism. Whether this would transform critical perceptions of the corporation’s role in Scotland remained an open question. STV Group plc, also located at Pacific Quay, is the last outpost of the original ITV federal system. STV operates the Central Scotland and the North East commercial licences under one brand. It took over the Grampian TV licence in . Aside from broadcasting ITV network programmes, STV produces its own opt-outs, notably news and current affairs; it is also a production house, supplying programmes to other companies, with a focus on factual entertainment. In the south of Scotland, the ITV Border region provides sub-regional Scottish news and current affairs programming. In , legislation enabled the launch of local television throughout the UK, although detractors immediately raised questions about the financial viability of
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such ventures. In Scotland, STV successfully bid for local licences in Glasgow and Edinburgh, successively launching those stations in and . Subsequently, STV won its bids for stations in Aberdeen, Ayr, and Dundee, which were launched in . The broadcaster consolidated the five local stations under a secondary brand, STV. However, even as a quasi-channel they rapidly proved to be loss-making and in the licences were sold to That’s Media, which controls local stations in England and Wales. Comparable to the BBC Gaelic radio service is the Gaelic TV channel BBC Alba. Set up in , this channel is broadcast by the BBC but supplied with content by its partner, MG Alba. The remit is to serve the Gaelic-language community, . per cent of Scotland’s population, in line with Scotland’s language policy. Despite the use of Gaelic along with English sub-titles, Alba has achieved a reach amongst the wider Scottish public, notably through its sport coverage. How BBC Alba will be affected by the launch of BBC Scotland is presently unclear. The London-centrism of the UK’s broadcasting has been regularly attacked in Scotland, as in other ‘nations and regions’. Debate north of the border has typically concerned two matters: the volume and range of Scottish-produced content aired in Scotland for Scottish audiences; and the extent to which the share of production of radio and television programmes for the UK’s networks is proportionate to Scotland’s population and contributes to the country’s creative weight in the British system. Complaints from executives and producers about the small share of Scotland’s contribution to the networks have been long-standing and became more vociferous from the early s (McInnes : ). The quotas under Ofcom’s rules applied by the PSBs to ‘out of London’ production are therefore a matter of considerable interest to politicians and producers. In this regard, a potentially significant development came in October when Channel () announced that Glasgow would become one of its ‘creative hubs’, in line with its intention to spend per cent of its commissioning budget in the ‘nations and regions’ of the UK. Glasgow had long had a minor Channel presence, on which this new initiative built, following a fierce UK-wide competition. However, back in dissatisfaction with the prevailing state of play crystallized tellingly when the SNP First Minister, Alex Salmond, influenced by an Ofcom report detailing a fall in the percentage of Scottish production for the UK network, as well as by a Work Foundation report on the importance of the creative economy, set up the Scottish Broadcasting Commission (SBC). In this, he followed his Labour predecessor Jack McConnell, and also asked a former BBC executive, Blair Jenkins (later to head the pro-independence Yes Scotland campaign), to chair the inquiry. This was charged with investigating the economic, cultural, and democratic aspects of broadcast provision in Scotland. Salmond’s move implied that broadcasting policy was rightly part of cultural policy—that it should be a devolved rather than a reserved power (Schlesinger ). The Commission’s establishment was a response to TV producers’ demands— they wanted more programme production commissioned in Scotland because the
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country’s overall reported share in value and volume had fallen. The creation of the SBC also reflected the SNP’s long-term dissatisfaction with the service provided by the BBC as well as wider concern about the relative decline of Scotland’s audiovisual creative economy. The SBC’s (: ) key recommendation was the creation of a Scottish digital network within the devolution settlement, funded by the TV Licence Fee, which won no favour in London, although it did gain crossparty support in the Scottish Parliament. The Commission’s evidence-taking produced an assurance in September that BBC Scotland would increase its network production figures substantially, although how this was done rapidly became contentious because programmes could be misleadingly described as ‘Scottish’ when made elsewhere. In , a follow-up report came from a working party set up by the Minister for Culture and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop. The remit set the stage for later ideas on broadcasting independence: ‘to provide a secure and sustainable source of competition to the BBC for public service broadcasting within Scotland’ (Scottish Digital Network Panel : ). Along with such inquiries, successive committee hearings in the Scottish Parliament have ensured that broadcasting has remained on the political agenda. During the independence campaign, the Scottish Government issued a White Paper, Scotland’s Future, whose key proposal for broadcasting in an independent state was to set up a Scottish Broadcasting Service (SBS). This would be a public service broadcaster ‘founded on the staff and assets of BBC Scotland’ to broadcast on TV, radio, and online (Scottish Government : ). A licence fee equivalent to that raised for the BBC would be levied and a ‘proportionate share’ of the BBC’s commercial ventures claimed. It was assumed—questionably—that the new SBS would produce programmes for the UK network and have unimpeded access to the BBC’s output. In short, there would be a very close relationship to the BBC but with control exercised in Edinburgh. More than a decade on from the SBC’s report, the new BBC Scotland TV channel launched in was plainly a response to the Commission’s recommendation to increase the scale and range of broadcasting north of the border. The SNP did not envisage the new digital network as a mere add-on to the BBC but rather as an alternative. The particular form this expansion of service has taken bespeaks the continuing politics of caution in the broadcasting field. The new BBC Scotland was set up not only to respond to the pressures outlined above but also to retain control in London, in line with the reserved powers model. Its role and functioning will undoubtedly be heavily scrutinized.
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.................................................................................................................................. The UK’s constitutional framework, coupled with Scotland’s history of shifting degrees of autonomy within the British state, has shaped the political contours of the evolving media
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environment. The established media, along with newer entrants, were a crucial theatre for representing (and misrepresenting) the long campaign for Scottish independence. On September , the Scottish electorate voted on whether Scotland should stay in the United Kingdom or become an independent country. On a turnout of over per cent, per cent voted against leaving to per cent voting for independence. Coverage of the campaign centred on the struggle between Better Together, which represented the pro-union parties, whereas Yes Scotland was the umbrella organization for those advocating independence. Coverage of the ‘indyref ’ campaign in – entrenched a negative view of ‘mainstream’ media performance in pro-independence circles. Whilst the press had its detractors, the BBC’s coverage engendered a particularly deep hostility that has persisted. Research into referendum media coverage has raised pertinent questions about how news and commentary were presented during the campaign. Dekavalla (: ) has noted that: During the referendum, the press—Scottish and UK-wide—was either outright opposed or ambivalent towards independence. Only the Sunday Herald eventually came out in favour of a ‘Yes’ vote [ . . . ] and after the referendum Newsquest launched a new pro-independence title, The National.
We can only conjecture about the impact of pro-union press coverage on voting intentions. But it is reasonable to conclude that it favoured the status quo. Hutchison (: ) concluded that during the campaign ‘the lack of press support was a serious problem for the Yes side’, also noting that whilst no paper supported the independence movement editorially, ‘individual columnists certainly did so in The Herald and The Scotsman [and] space was offered to Salmond and [Deputy First Minister Nicola] Sturgeon’ (Hutchison : ). Clearly, such concessions did not significantly shift the overall balance of coverage. The launch of The National in November , and support for independence by the Sunday Herald, combined both editorial and commercial judgements on the part of the publisher. Richard Walker, long-standing editor of the Sunday Herald, and also launch-editor of The National, had to convince Newsquest that this shift of allegiance would work in business terms. In August , Newsquest announced that the Sunday Herald and Herald would merge operations, with the new Herald on Sunday abandoning its pro-independence line. The National acquired a Sunday stablemate and these became the sole bearers of pro-independence journalism in the group, and more exposed as a result of this reorganization. Walker (: ) has argued that disaffected independence supporters think that most media reporting in Scotland has aimed ‘to discredit the SNP government, failing to explain properly the respective powers of Holyrood and Westminster and, in general, obscuring the true picture to undermine confidence in independence’. Hassan (: ) concurring, cited a Panelbase survey indicating that per cent of Scots ‘thought the BBC was biased against independence’, and contended that the referendum and its aftermath revealed the Britishness of the BBC and the lack of autonomy of BBC Scotland.
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According to his analysis of the main Scottish news and current affairs programmes, both the BBC and STV had failed to adapt their now-outmoded models of coverage and did not grasp the grassroots nature of the pro-independence movement. Moreover, postreferendum, the broadcasters were unable to offer a common way of addressing ‘a more fragmented and divided society’ (Hassan : ). Dekavalla (: ) has suggested that despite its broadly oppositional stance to independence, the Scottish press took a ‘more nuanced’ approach than London-based papers. During the campaign, she found, editorial positions across Scottish titles shifted increasingly towards recognizing the need for enhanced devolved powers across a range of policy areas. The Scotsman, The Herald, and the Daily Record largely converged on the position known as ‘The Vow’—the last-minute plea to Scots to stay in the Union, burnished with a commitment to give ‘extensive new powers’ to the Scottish Parliament. This was published in the Daily Record on September , two days before the vote itself. ‘The Vow’ displayed on the paper’s front page was signed by the UK party leaders of the Conservatives, Liberal-Democrats, and Labour—David Cameron, Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, and Ed Miliband, Leader of the Opposition. The Daily Record—its senior editors dismayed by the lacklustre Better Together campaign and alarmed by the likelihood of a ‘yes’ vote for independence—linked up with former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown to engineer promotion of a promise of more devolved powers for Scotland—precisely what had been excluded as an option on the ballot paper (Foote ). It was hoped that this appeal would rally wavering voters to the unionist cause, just as independence had gained significant support in the polls. It was a dramatic intervention by a media platform. The impact of The Vow on the electorate is not clear, as intentions to vote may well have been largely settled by that point. Buchanan’s analysis of social media activity records scepticism about the delivery of Better Together’s last-minute promises, both in the pro-independence and pro-union camps. Of the latter, she observed: ‘The number of bitter and critical posts indicated that whilst pro-union supporters opposed independence, they did not believe that the promises made were likely to be fulfilled’ (Buchanan : ). There was an exceptional level of public engagement during the campaign in an electorate well capable of deliberating and thinking for itself. We should not think of Scottish voters as passive, or of the media as simply a transmission belt for successfully imposing unionist ideas. Mitchell (: ) has suggested that ‘the most significant impact of the campaign was the revival of Scottish democracy. The per cent turnout in the referendum broke records.’ Furthermore, given the widespread rise of the ‘town hall’ meeting and a wide array of gatherings and activities, the BBC covered the referendum ‘beyond the Westminster and Holyrood bubbles’ although its approach ‘was dominated by high profile people and events’ (Mitchell : ). Robertson’s () research into referendum coverage on BBC TV and radio, as well as on ITV/STV questioned whether public service broadcasters properly adhered to expected standards of fairness and impartiality. His quantitative analysis of TV coverage from September to September noted that the first year of the campaign
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was intensively covered by Scottish broadcasters but rarely on UK-wide channels. Focusing on the key early evening Scottish news programmes, the BBC’s Reporting Scotland and STV News, he found that these contained a ‘numerical preponderance of anti-independence statements by a ratio of :’ (Robertson : ). Economic arguments dominated coverage and there was negative personalization of Alex Salmond, it was argued (Robertson : ). A qualitative one-month study of BBC Radio Scotland’s flagship, Good Morning Scotland, conducted in April , found that the Yes Scotland campaign was favoured by a ratio of :. Such unexpectedly favourable statements, he suggested, had emerged in response to negative ones (Robertson : ). On their publication in February , the BBC disputed Robertson’s findings. However, his research was taken up by pro-independence commentators and social media and enlisted in support by the BBC’s detractors. In a smaller-scale study, Hutchison focused on coverage of the Scottish Government’s White Paper, Scotland’s Future, in November , as well as the two set-piece TV leadership debates prior to the vote in August . White Paper coverage was broadcast on news and current affairs programmes on three UK networks—the BBC, ITV, and Channel —as well as on BBC Scotland and STV. In , there was a common reporting formula, with interviews involving leading figures: Alistair Darling, ex-Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer and main spokesman for Better Together; Alistair Carmichael, the LibDem Secretary of State for Scotland in the UK Coalition Government; and Alex Salmond, SNP First Minister. The interviews focused on Scotland’s access to the pound sterling, entry to the EU, and NATO membership coupled with the removal of nuclear weapons. Hutchison (: ) concluded that excepting one fractious interview on the BBC’s Newsnight Scotland, the First Minister did not face especially hostile questioning and that broadcast coverage was far more measured than that of the press. In the final stages of the campaign, two set-piece debates took place between Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond, who had wanted instead to debate independence with Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, a request that was refused. The first debate, on August , was broadcast to a Scottish audience by STV, although viewable online. Hutchison (: –) noted the widespread view that Salmond’s performance was relatively poor, with the SNP exposed on the currency to be used by an independent Scotland. The second broadcast was on the BBC network on August , when Salmond was widely judged to have bested Darling. A measure of the temper of the closing days of the campaign came on September , when independence supporters demonstrated outside BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay HQ in protest against its alleged anti-independence bias. Reflecting on the overall impact of the independence campaign on the public sphere, Hassan (, : ) pointed to the enlargement, if not displacement, of an established anti-Tory, centre-left Scottish commentariat by ‘new voices, agencies and self-organising groups’. Social media and pro-independence websites offered new spaces for political discussion in ways that have become widely familiar: alongside reasoned discourse there was also personal vilification and trolling. Social media engagement gave rise to two new contending identities: ‘cybernats’ and ‘unitrolls’,
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with the former receiving most attention (Macwhirter ). Much critical social media discourse and its agenda and frames of reference were unavoidably dependent on reports and comments appearing in ‘mainstream’ outlets. Buchanan (: ) commented that ‘Public participation in the independence debate on Facebook and Twitter was so extensive that on December , it was announced that the Scottish referendum was the UK’s most discussed subject on Facebook, and one of the most featured topics on Twitter’. During the independence campaign, it is clear, a new stage in the development of Scotland’s ‘alternative media’ (Atton ) occurred, changing the scope of the Scottish public sphere. The hostility of established media to the independence cause was a generally accepted starting point. The need to counter this led to the expansion of the mediated public sphere by the launch of political websites, political uses of social media and a fresh focus on some existing websites. Much of this shift was underpinned by the widespread political engagement already noted, which for younger generations was a first entry into a politics of commitment. However, social media involvement also cut across age groups. The expanded Scottish public sphere consisted of a mixed bag of generally very smallscale, sometimes individually run ventures, which at times have been capable of achieving significant audience reach. Wings Over Scotland, launched in , a well-established pro-independence site successful at crowdfunding, gained a substantial following during the campaign. So did Bella Caledonia, set up in , which attained considerable prominence in –, although since the referendum, its longer-term viability has sometimes been in doubt. Newsnet Scotland was established in to counter mainstream media reporting, with a particular focus on the BBC; in December , it restructured, continuing operations as newsnet.scot. National Collective gathered mainly younger support from various cultural sectors, ran some political-cultural events, and was active from to . Scottish Review, a current affairs magazine established in , went online in to become a source of commentary before, during, and following the independence campaign. The Ferret, a subscription- and crowdfundingbased digital investigative journalism start-up, although conceived before the referendum, was launched in and has been run by a co-operative of journalists with a public interest mission (Price ). Hassan (: ) has suggested that emergent and mainstream media are engaged in a struggle over legitimacy in ‘a political culture in significant transition’. In that undoubted jockeying for position, however, the resources available play a key role. At this time of writing, more striking than the displacement of established media is their continued centrality.
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.................................................................................................................................. When investigating how a collective identity is formed we should ask ‘what importance communicative practices might play in its constitution’ (Schlesinger : ). We cannot assume, for instance, that there is a simple correspondence between the
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circulation of media content, its reception and interpretation, and the formation and development of a national identity. Scotland has been an illuminating laboratory for addressing this complex issue, although it has not provided a definitive answer. When the devolutionary media–political nexus was established in Edinburgh, the focus of political communications north of the border rapidly shifted from London—from the UK state to the Scottish nation (Schlesinger et al. : –). Rosie and Petersoo’s (: ) interviews with press and radio journalists and editors a few years after devolution underlined just how much the new system ‘had brought a specifically Scottish news agenda into focus’, a major consequence being ‘less rather than more obligation on media to relay news from Scotland to audiences in England’. Preston () similarly noted: ‘Scotland has ceased to exist south of the border. [ . . . ] And in just the same way, from Berwick on, England has faded into the mists of public consciousness. What you see and read is what you get.’ ‘Ghettoization’ of this kind was further remarked on by King (: ) in a review of BBC news and current affairs coverage commissioned by the BBC Trust. The post-devolution regionalization of media content and the overwhelming metro-centrism of the London press made it easy for citizens of the UK to be ignorant of Scottish affairs. But equally Scots may be uninformed about Wales, Northern Ireland, and most of England. In March , in the wake of the Scottish Six row, the BBC produced a staff guide titled The Changing UK to raise awareness of the implications of devolution (Schlesinger et al. : –). Little changed, and criticism did not fade away. The BBC Trust’s report was commissioned in due to continuous complaints from the UK’s nations and because the BBC had ‘a particular responsibility to serve the whole UK, not least because it draws the same licence fee from citizens wherever they live’ (BBC Trust : ). Its report concluded: there is seen to be a general bias in favour of stories about England or telling stories from an England perspective; and there is evidence that several stories in the nations which may have been significant to the UK were not taken up by the network. (BBC Trust : )
In response, the BBC Executive suggested a range of remedies. Unconvinced, the BBC Trust, however, soon felt the need to follow up, publishing a further report in . It considered that, despite improvements, there was still a lack of clarity in the labels used in coverage, leaving audiences unsure of ‘which devolved issues affect which parts of the UK’, as well as a ‘continuing preponderance of stories about England’ (BBC Trust : ). More training was recommended and the Trust’s devolution guidelines were incorporated into the BBC Academy’s () journalism courses. No further evaluation was published by the Trust, which was wound up in and replaced by Ofcom. Whatever the shortcomings of news coverage, and despite the continuing row about bias, television viewing in general is still very important for Scottish audiences. In , Scots had ‘the highest level of TV consumption of the four UK nations’, spending ‘an average of hours minutes per day’ (Ofcom a: ). However, reflecting Scots’
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continuing ambivalence about the BBC, Ofcom (c: ) also reported that so far as portraying the UK and its component nations was concerned: Audiences in Scotland rate the BBC lower for its performance [ . . . ] than do those in other nations. The BBC needs to continue to develop its ways of serving and reflecting Scotland and consider how it can do so through its new BBC Scotland television channel, which will launch in .
However, present-day consumption has occurred against a noteworthy decline of TV viewing in Scotland (in line with that of the UK as a whole) from minutes daily in to minutes in . Of especial note has been the increasing shift away from watching PSB channels amongst younger age groups—the – years old and those even younger, the – years old. Netflix, the commercial content streaming platform, was as likely to be viewed in Scotland as the BBC iPlayer. Growing up with PSB has ceased to be the norm. This shift is highly relevant to the future of PSB channels as a whole, which in , attracted just over per cent of the total Scottish broadcast TV audience (Ofcom a: –). Live viewing of broadcast TV has continued to decline gradually and is now roughly two-thirds of all viewing (Ofcom a: ). Consequently, Sharon White, Chief Executive of Ofcom, urged the PSBs to coalesce and compete with online streaming services such as those of Netflix, Amazon Prime and Sky’s Now TV, noting the ‘decline in revenues for pay TV, a fall in spending on new programmes by our public service broadcasters, and the growth of global video streaming giants’ (Ofcom b). Dissatisfaction with news coverage continues to be marked amongst supporters of independence, whose criticism has focused especially on the BBC. According to Ofcom (a: ), however, per cent of regular viewers in Scotland considered PSB news programmes to be ‘trustworthy’. Although its figures do not disaggregate Scotland, The Reuters Institute also identified the BBC as the ‘most trusted news brand’ in the UK, closely followed by ITV News (Newman et al. : ). Early evening Scottish news programmes have attracted relatively high audiences—with, in , BBC Scotland’s Reporting Scotland pulling in close to per cent and STV’s News at Six over per cent of viewers. Expenditure on news and current affairs absorbed almost half of the total spent on programming produced specifically for Scottish viewers (Ofcom a: ). Criticism of the BBC in Scotland, therefore, coexists—in some quarters, at least— with considerable trust in, and extensive use of, its news services. In March , radio listening in Scotland was divided between services provided by the BBC and commercial companies. Over per cent of the population accessed radio via digital platforms and devices and live radio was the most popular listening activity. After listening to music, local news coverage was the most valued activity— underlining, once again, the taste for Scottish content (Ofcom a: ). In line with a long-standing preference, more Scots listened to commercial radio ( per cent) than the BBC ( per cent), with listeners spending an average of just over twenty-one hours per week. Counting in Radio ’s substantial following, however, the
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BBC stations’ overall share of the radio market in Q was more than per cent, followed by Bauer Radio’s per cent and Global Radio’s almost per cent. Despite declining slightly year on year, BBC Radio Scotland’s weekly reach was still per cent in Q (Ofcom a: ). Looking ahead, there are parallels in the growing bypassing of scheduled radio consumption to the digitally driven shift to streaming amongst television audiences. The Reuters Institute reported that ‘Crucially, the demographics of podcasting are explosive. The younger generation is embracing content at a time and in a format that works for them’ (Newman et al. : ). The UK’s multinationality has become ever more salient since the devolution of powers not only to Scotland but also to Wales and Northern Ireland. Figures of the kind just cited do not reveal the meaning of the content consumed nor do they illuminate the identities of those consuming it. Whilst most of the press read in Scotland is not Scottish-owned, it must still produce enough Scottish content to sell newspapers. Law () has underlined the importance of the ‘deixis’ used in Scottish newspapers—that is, the minute contextualization embedded in press content that provides a connection with the readership. This includes emphasizing the ‘we-ness’ of the audience, its identification with place, common experiences, and a recognized manner of telling what is being told. Law noted that Billig’s approach to ‘banal nationalism’ took the overarching ‘Britishness’ of the English press for granted. This meant overlooking those parts of the UK state that rightly consider themselves to be distinct and where, as in Scotland’s case, the press still daily signals its readership’s national identity to itself. Relatedly, Rosie and Petersoo (: ) have analysed how ‘the patterns of national nouns and adjectives explicitly mentioned in articles, and the locations mentioned in them’ differed systematically between Scottish and London-based, overwhelmingly metro-centric newspapers, arguing that the UK’s diverse cultural geography means that there has never been a ‘single news agenda within the UK’s press [or] in more modern forms of media’ (Rosie and Petersoo : ). Within Scotland, how media are consumed, at least in part, depends on how audience members conceive of themselves. As Kiely et al. (: ) note, the country therefore ‘provides an interesting case for assumptions about the relationships between identity and media consumption’, precisely because of its dual public sphere. Drawing on research in the early years of devolution, when widespread and regular newspaper reading was still common, Kiely et al. () analysed the different relationships to media of Scottish nationals by birth compared with English migrants to Scotland. Their study showed that ‘most Scottish nationals read the Scottish press’, preferring local news and sports coverage. By contrast, English migrants might diversely use their media consumption to negotiate their identities in Scottish society. Media consumption could at times lead some incomers to invoke Britishness as their preferred identity, whereas others, in effect, decided to ‘become Scottish’, underlining the point that national identity is not automatically reproduced (Kiely et al. : –). As yet, no equivalent research into the meanings of media consumption has been undertaken on the independence campaign or its aftermath. Nevertheless, we may
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conjecture that the electorate’s diverse assumptions about the nature of Scottish identity and its relationship to Britishness, along with a range of views as to what independence might mean for Scottish society, were—and continue to be—systematically related to the choices of media consumed, and to the interpretation of content.
W N?
.................................................................................................................................. As this chapter has made clear, Scotland’s mediated dual public sphere is comprised of what are now often termed ‘legacy’ media—the press, radio, and television—as well as a range of internet-based voices, whose overall weight, influence, and durability is far from clear. An analysis such as this is bound to be overtaken by the continuing digital revolution and the resulting transition to new media business models that technological disruption has provoked. At present, it is noteworthy that in terms of reach the fall in indigenous newspaper print sales has begun to be counterbalanced by their extended digital reach. Scotland is not out of kilter with the rest of the UK in this regard. How such a shift might translate into long-term viability for the press as a sector, and particularly which indigenous titles will survive in the face of London-based competition remains an open question. As for radio, Scotland’s long-standing preference for local commercial services over the BBC remains evident. The generic range of Scottish commercial services has increasingly narrowed and, whilst their localism is now lightly worn, as throughout the UK, news is still an important signifier of place and identity. BBC Radio Scotland’s model has not been fundamentally rethought for several decades and will need to be. Meanwhile, at a UK level, the BBC has taken increasing cognizance of changed consumption by younger demographics. With the creation of its audio platform BBC Sounds in October , the corporation began to address how to change to meet the accelerating shift from broadcast to podcast, as well as how a new balance may be effected between the two. In a renewed policy focus on the creative economy, in the Scottish Government increased its financial support for the audiovisual sector. In response to TV and film producers’ pressure, as well as a reappraisal by the Scottish Parliament’s culture committee, it began to rethink how best to intervene. The ineffectiveness in the fields of film and television of Creative Scotland, the lead quango for the arts and the creative industries established in , had become increasingly evident (Schlesinger ). In , a new semi-autonomous body, Screen Scotland, was created in response to Creative Scotland’s shortcomings (CTEER ). This occurred just as the long-standing profile of television north of the border had undergone significant change. STV’s local TV experiment proved to be short-lived amidst continuing speculation about whether the company would in future be taken over by ITV (itself not immune to speculation about a takeover by a global player). The decision to establish a Channel creative hub in Glasgow in October offered the
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prospect of enhancing Scotland’s position within the UK’s audiovisual economy. Moreover, the BBC’s launch of a new channel in January was a consequential throw of the dice, given forecasts of a very small audience share in an audiovisual market in which the PSBs have lost ground overall, and where channels per se have been profoundly challenged by video on-demand. Aside from these considerations, the BBC’s expansionary move might contribute positively to the Scottish creative economy by commissioning new work north of the border (along with Channel ), and thereby add to Scotland’s competitiveness with other nations and regions outwith London. However, BBC Scotland’s operations will be minutely scrutinized, and for those favouring independence its very existence is a direct blockage to setting up an autonomous new broadcaster in Scotland. As we have seen, social communication theory may provide a useful starting point for conceptualizing the boundaries of Scotland’s mediated space, whereas public sphere theory is apt for considering how that space is populated. However, Scotland is not an enclosure. Its present Britishness means that the country’s mediated public sphere is necessarily dualistic. The future course of Scotland’s media and its public spheres will be shaped by how the constitutional question plays out, by the UK’s relationship to the European Union, by the competitive impact on the UK media sectors of global internet-based players, by how market-driven media economics addresses continuing digital transformation, and not least by how government policy and regulation allocate powers and resources in light of their sensitivity to the UK’s complex multinational polity.
R Anderson, B. /. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, st edition and nd edition. London: Verso Editions. Atton, C. . ‘Alternative Media in Scotland: Problems, Positions and “Product” ’, The Critical Quarterly, /: –. BBC Academy. . Coverage of the UK Nations: BBC Trust’s King Report. Available at: http:// www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/article/art, accessed August . BBC Trust. . The BBC Trust Impartiality Report: BBC Network News and Current Affairs Coverage of the Four UK Nations. Including an Independent Assessment by Professor Anthony King and Research from Cardiff University and BMRB. June . Available at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/ impartiality/uk_nations_impartiality.pdf, accessed August . BBC Trust. . BBC Network News Coverage of the Four UK Nations: Follow-up. July. pp. Available at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_ research/impartiality//nations_impartiality.pdf, accessed August . Billig, M. . Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publications. Blain, N. and Hutchison, D. . ‘The Media Landscape in Scotland’, in N. Blain and D. Hutchison, with G. Hassan (eds), Scotland’s Referendum and the Media: National and International Perspectives. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –.
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Bowie, K. . ‘National Opinion and the Press in Scotland before the Union of ’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Briggs, A. . The Birth of Broadcasting: The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume . London: Oxford University Press. Buchanan, M. . ‘“Liked”, “Shared”, “Re-tweeted”: The Referendum Campaign on Social Media’, in N. Blain and D. Hutchison, with G. Hassan (eds), Scotland’s Referendum and the Media: National and International Perspectives. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –. Channel . . ‘All the UK’. Available at: https://www.channel.com/corporate/about-/ -all-uk, accessed November . CTEER. . Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Relations Committee, ‘Making Scotland a Screen Leader’, SP Paper . th Report, (Session ). Available at: http://www. parliament.scot/S_European/Reports/CTEER_Report_.._Making_Scotland_a_ Screen_Leader.pdf, accessed June . Cultural Commission. . Final Report of the Cultural Commission, June . Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Dekavalla, M. . ‘The Scottish Newspaper Industry in the Digital Era’, Media, Culture & Society, /: –. Dekavalla, M. . ‘The Referendum in the Scottish Press’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Deutsch, K.W. . Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationalism. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press. Foote, M. . ‘Inside THE VOW: How historic Daily Record front page which changed the course of Britain’s constitutional settlement was born’. Available at: https://www.dailyrecord. co.uk/news/politics/inside-vow-how-historic-daily-, accessed July . Garnham, N. . ‘The Media and the Public Sphere’, in C. Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, –. Gellner, E. . Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Habermas, J. . The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, J. . ‘Citizenship and National Identity’, in B. van Steenbergen (ed.), The Condition of Citizenship. London: Sage Publications, –. Hassan, G. . Independence of the Scottish Mind: Elite Narratives, Public Spaces and the Making of a Modern Nation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hassan, G. . ‘Scotland’s Changing “Community of the Communicators”: The Political Commentariat and the Independence Referendum’, in N. Blain and D. Hutchison, with G. Hassan (eds), Scotland’s Referendum and the Media: National and International Perspectives. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –. Hassan, G. . ‘Minority Interest Nation: The Changing Contours of Reporting Scotland on BBC and STV’, The Political Quarterly, /: –. Higgins, C. . This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC. London: Guardian Books. Higgins, M. . ‘Substantiating a Political Public Sphere in the Scottish Press’, Journalism, /: –. Hutchison, D. . ‘The History of the Press’, in N. Blain and D. Hutchison (eds), The Media in Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –. Hutchison, D. . ‘Broadcasting and the Press’, in N. Blain and D. Hutchison, with G. Hassan (eds), Scotland’s Referendum and the Media: National and International Perspectives. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –.
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Kellas, J.G. . The Scottish Political System, th edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kiely, R., McCrone, D., and Bechhofer, F. . ‘Reading between the Lines: National Identity and Attitudes to the Media in Scotland’, Nations and Nationalism, /: –. King, A. . ‘Network News and Current-affairs Coverage of the Four UK Nations. An Independent Assessment for the BBC Trust’, University of Essex, May, pp. Available at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/impartiality/ uk_nations_impartiality.pdf, accessed August . Law, A. . ‘Near and Far: Banal National Identity and the Press in Scotland’, Media, Culture & Society, /: –. Macinnes, J. . ‘The Broadcast Media in Scotland’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Macwhirter, I. . Democracy in the Dark: The Decline of the Scottish Press and How to Keep the Lights On. Saltire Series No. . Edinburgh: The Saltire Society. Macwhirter, I. . ‘Their Own Worst Enemy: The Scottish Press since Devolution’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. McCrone, D. . The New Sociology of Scotland. London: Sage Publications Ltd. McDowell, W.H. . The History of BBC Broadcasting in Scotland, –. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). . Memorandum of Understanding between the UK Government, Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament and the Office of Communications [unpublished document]. Mihelj, S. . Media Nations. Communicating Belonging and Exclusion in the Modern World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mitchell, J. . ‘The Unexpected Campaign’, in N. Blain and D. Hutchison, with G. Hassan (eds), Scotland’s Referendum and the Media: National and International Perspectives. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –. Newman, N., with Fletcher, R., Kalogeropoulos, A., Levy, D.A.L., and Neilsen, R.K. . Reuters Institute Digital News Report . Available at: http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/ survey//united-kingdom-/, accessed August . OFCOM. a. Media Nations: Scotland . Available at: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/ __data/assets/pdf_file///media-nations--scotland.pdf, accessed July . OFCOM. b. ‘TV streaming services overtake pay TV for first time’. Available at: https:// www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/features-and-news/streaming-overtakes-pay-tv, accessed July . OFCOM. c. Ofcom’s Annual Report on the BBC. Available at: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/ tv-radio-and-on-demand/information-for-industry/bbc-operating-framework/performance/ bbc-annual-report, accessed October . PAMCo. . Latest Results. Available at: https://pamco.co.uk/pamco-data/latest-results, accessed August . Preston, P. . ‘The break-up of Britain’, The Guardian, April. Available at: https://www. theguardian.com/politics//apr//election.devolution, accessed July . Price, J. . ‘How to Feed The Ferret: Understanding Subscribers in the Search for a Sustainable Model of Investigative Journalism’, Journalism. Online First: October. DOI: ./. Robertson, J. . ‘Fairness in the First Year?’. Available at: http://issuu.co/creative_futur/ dosc/robertsonfairnessinthefirstyear, accessed July .
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Robertson, J. . ‘Scottish TV coverage of the referendum campaign from September to September ’, in N. Blain and D. Hutchison, with G. Hassan (eds), Scotland’s Referendum and the Media: National and International Perspectives. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –. Rosie, M. and Petersoo, P. . ‘Drifting Apart? Media in Scotland and England after Devolution’, in F. Bechhofer and D. McCrone (eds), National Identity, Nationalism and Constitutional Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, –. Schlesinger, P. . Media, State and Nation: Political Violence and Collective Identities. London: Sage Publications. Schlesinger, P. . ‘The Nation and Communicative Space’, in H. Tumber (ed.), Media Power, Professionals and Policies. London: Routledge, –. Schlesinger, P. . ‘The SNP, Cultural Policy and the Idea of the “Creative Economy”, in Hassan, G. (ed.), The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –. Schlesinger, P. . ‘Cultural Policy and the Constitutional Question’, in G. Hassan and J. Mitchell (eds), After Independence. Edinburgh: Luath Press Ltd, –. Schlesinger, P. and Benchimol, A. (eds.) . ‘Crosscurrents Special Section: Small Nations, the Press and the Digital Challenge’, Media, Culture & Society, /: –. Schlesinger, P., Miller, D., and Dinan, W. . Open Scotland? Journalists, Spin Doctors and Lobbyists. Edinburgh: Polygon. Scottish Broadcasting Commission. . Platform for Success. Final Report of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk//shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/_ __broacasting.pdf, accessed August . Scottish Digital Network Panel. . Final Report. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/ Resource/Doc//.pdf (accessed August ). Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/Publications///, accessed August . Tunstall, J. . BBC and Television Genres in Jeopardy. Bern: Peter Lang. Walker, R. . ‘Whatever Happened to the Independence Press?’, Scottish Affairs, /: –.
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Cultural and Political Nationalism after ......................................................................................................................
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.................................................................................................................................. T cultural and political nationalism of modern Scotland are not the same.¹ Though easily conflated, they are like twin locomotives working on parallel tracks, usually (but not always) chugging in the same direction. They can be coupled together on the same track when required, to move a heavy cargo uphill (notably during the referendum on independence). But in general, Scotland’s cultural and political nationalism have spoken in distinct voices about distinct priorities, and given each other plenty of elbow-room in post-war civic life. Prior to devolution, it was uncommon for leading lights of Scottish theatre, literature, music, or cinema to express public enthusiasm for the SNP, and that party has consciously eschewed the image of a national awakening led by kilted folk-singers and truculent poets. Patriotic actors and painters feel no compunction to defend the economic policies of the leading pro-independence party, and with few exceptions SNP politicians are only too happy to refrain from literary controversy. So whilst we cannot really understand Scotland’s cultural or political nationalism in isolation—they are twinned to the bone—we should beware of simply incorporating one into the story of the other. But this is a considerable challenge: a key framing assumption of modern nationalism is the underlying unity of Scotland’s claims to cultural difference and political autonomy (Gellner ). The deep logic of that paradigm tends to erase the disparities of greatest interest in the Scottish case, insisting the twin tracks are really one and the same.
¹ This chapter draws extensively on research presented at full length in Hames ().
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We begin with narratives running in parallel. The political story moves along the familiar electoral timeline: the rise of the professionalized SNP, the Hamilton shock, Labour’s slow and painful embrace of a Scottish Assembly, the debacle of , followed by the tartanization of Scottish Labour in the s (Geekie and Levy ), cries of ‘no mandate’ and the ‘civic’ cementing of national politics leading to Holyrood (Mitchell ; Hearn ). After devolution, the Jack McConnell administration aimed (in ) to ‘place culture at the heart of government’, fully incorporating cultural ‘rights’ and industries into social and economic strategy, ‘on a par with health, housing and education’ (Scottish Executive ). The more telling moment, for our purposes, was Alex Salmond’s canny rebrand of the Scottish Executive as the ‘Scottish Government’ after the SNP took office in , a piece of wordplay which bolstered the national ego more effectively than anything penned by the National Makar (poet). The SNP landslide led to the independence referendum of , in which many prominent cultural figures were vocal supporters of the Yes campaign (Hames ). In the wake of the No result, tens of thousands of Yes supporters flooded into the massified SNP (whose membership has increased fivefold since the vote (Audickas et al. )), and brought with them a more populist and flag-waving orientation to national feeling. This style of patriotic display is relatively alien to many of the vigilantly ‘civic’ and technocratic SNP MSPs working under Nicola Sturgeon (the most culturally literate First Minister to date), but Saltires and related iconography are key to the ‘continuity’ Yes movement which now forms the SNP’s political base. Scotland’s cultural nationalism is much more difficult to narrativize in this manner. Dealing mainly in highly mediated precedents rather than direct causation, cultural history lacks the centrally organizing matrix of the electoral system, which offers the (sometimes helpful) illusion of politics as a linear release of events and consequences. For this reason it is much easier to draw a coherent, if jagged, line from the Hamilton by-election to indyref than it is to link (say) the neo-folk anthems of The Corries to the ‘tartan noir’ crime fiction of Val McDermid, still less to the surreal internet comedy of Brian Limond (‘Limmy’). If pressed, we could certainly formulate a weak solvent of ‘Scottish culture’ in which Muriel Spark, Billy Connolly, and the TV personality Lorraine Kelly could be made to dissolve—or, for that matter, another batch blending Ivor Cutler, Jackie Kay, and Still Game—but the resulting brew would be an artful confection of our own, tasting nothing like its key ingredients. What we usually mean by culture is simply so various, discontinuous, and borderless, it makes little sense to project tidy trajectories or commonalities from this to that; and yet linking ‘culture’ to ‘politics’ within the national frame always requires some dot-joining of this seductive though spurious kind (Thomson ). We should be mindful of this difficulty even as we listen for echoes between (say) the : theatre company’s sensational ceilidh-play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil () and the decision of the young Scottish Executive to establish a National Theatre for Scotland (in ). These two moments are not unrelated, but precisely how they are connected is difficult to say without begging the very questions I mean to explore here: functionally and ideologically speaking, what is the cultural component of modern Scottish
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nationalism? Specifically, what role has it played in affirming, mobilizing and institutionalizing the national-political frame? And finally, should political scholars take it more seriously?
S O N
.................................................................................................................................. Peter Lynch (: ) observes that ‘Scottish nationalism is not primarily concerned with language or cultural issues but with political and economic self-government.’ Yet there is more to say, and Scottish political science has sometimes over-estimated the unimportance of ‘culture’, or conceived it in terms which obscure rather than clarify its role. James Kellas (: ) found colour but little substance to cultural nationalism in his seminal study The Scottish Political System: Cultural nationalists make a small but vociferous contribution to Scottish nationalism. They encourage the use of a Scottish means of expression in literature, and cultivate Scottishness in the other arts. A few support the SNP, or political devolution, but most are uninterested in politics, preferring to change Scottish society through education and cultural activities. The SNP, for its part, takes little interest in cultural matters.
If this were broadly true at the time of the book’s publication in , it seems an eccentric reading of developments between the first and fourth edition (published in ). Though many of the cultural changes briefly surveyed in this chapter occurred just adjacent to Scotland’s formal political system, they were key to authenticating and broadening support for that system, and played a significant role in the articulation of Scottish difference. Indeed, it has often been argued that ‘Scotland’s artists did more than its politicians to dream up a new Scotland’, and were the true driving force of devolution (O’Rourke : ). ‘If politics and votes were the means of bringing the parliament into existence, they were not its direct cause’, according to Cairns Craig (: ). In this reading, the parliament ‘has been built on the foundations of a revolution in the nation’s culture’ (Craig : ). Kellas’s model is of limited help in tracing (let alone scrutinizing) this story of cultural devolution, because it cannot grasp developments at the ragged edge of the organized party and electoral system, where ‘politics’ meets broader civic life. In framing his general (and today virtually uncontested) argument against a homogeneously British vision of the UK state, Kellas (: ) noted that the ‘criteria for nationhood’ ought to satisfy two broad requirements: that the members of the nation think of themselves primarily as such, and not primarily as members of another nation; and that the nation should have some objective characteristics of its own, such as
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language, ‘complementary habits and facilities of communication’, religion, territory, previous statehood, a history of common action, and so on. The first requirement is well fulfilled in the case of Scotland.
Scotland’s ‘subjective’ qualities of nationhood were all present and correct, but their ‘objective’ correlates were more doubtful (and seem especially so in retrospect). Kellas (: ) emphasized Presbyterianism and the well-attended national Kirk (‘its communicants amount to around one quarter of the adult population’), and also highlighted the dominance of the indigenous press, observing that no London newspaper ‘is read by more than per cent of Scottish adults on weekdays and per cent on Sundays’. These planks of nationality are severely weakened today—Iain Macwhirter (: ) warns that ‘Scotland has a national political system, but is in danger of losing a national media’—despite the growing strength and appeal of Scottishness over the intervening period (Park et al. ; McCrone ; Chapter in this Handbook). Are feeling and reality connected at all? For a political scientist, the proof of the pudding will lie in the voting: the fact that people who identify as Scots do not automatically vote Scottish nationalist (nor ‘disdain cooperation with the “English” political parties’) led Kellas (: ) to conclude that ‘most of the time [ . . . ] the political nationalism lies dormant, and the “British” pattern of political behaviour prevails’. This approach conflates in advance ‘identity’ and ‘political behaviour’: you are what you vote, and only wholesale electoral rejection of the British order would manifest sub-British national identity ‘activated’ from its usual dormancy. In this perspective cultural identity can affirm established political structures, but cannot really figure in their gradual transformation, and thus cannot achieve what actually happened in Scotland over the span roughly between Lulu and Trainspotting. It cannot help to crystallize ‘objective’ qualities of cultural nationhood (institutions, curricula, platforms for collective memory and ‘common action’) out of mobilized national consciousness. Other-than-British national feeling, Kellas (: ) writes, ‘came to the surface during the late s with the rise of political nationalism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (the last a quite separate variety). But in reality it was always there.’ It is the anterior and ‘banal’ quality of this national consciousness (Billig )—‘always there’, gathering dust—which seems to consign the permanently open question of cultural identity to the background, in just the period it was moving swiftly to the political foreground. Kellas’s classic study was untimely because it rendered illegible the dynamic role of cultural identity in challenging—and eventually expanding—the ambit and popular grounding of the existing (Scottish) political system. This is a signature development of the s and s: increasingly, national-cultural attachment operates not merely as an anchoring residue— or, viewed from Whitehall, as a source of potential disruption to political Britishness—but as a structuring principle for the re-constitution of Scottish national-political space.
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T N ‘G S D’
.................................................................................................................................. Tom Nairn’s analysis of Scottish cultural identity from the later s is of crucial importance in tracing these changes and avoiding superficial readings of national awakening. Though the remaking of Scottish political identity is often linked to rising ‘cultural confidence’, it is the staleness and sterility of Scottish culture which animate the crucial advance which Nairn began. Reporting on the Edinburgh Festival for the New Statesman in , he blasted the tiresome fantasy-life the Scots have been doping themselves with for the past three centuries to avoid their real problem. Festival time in Edinburgh seems to have joined tartanry, militarism, Burns and Scott—those ‘mummified housegods in their musty niches’, as Edwin Muir put it—as a constituent of the Great Scottish Dream. (Nairn : )
The ‘most important trait’ of this dream, Nairn continued (: –) in New Left Review, ‘is a vast, impossible dissociation from the realities of history’, a vision-quest driven by ‘the hope for an identity’ where none is possible, or not possible as the true identity of a living political nationhood (the ‘real problem’): Scotland’s wilful dreaming is of a romantic ‘substitute consciousness’ which, at the level of camp culture-nostalgia, both admits and compensates for the ‘unreality’ of lived national experience. Marked by a yearning for ‘identity’ rather than political power, modern Scottish nationalism is a ‘dream of redemption’ that will make good the loss of living collectivity: ‘for the Scots, national existence must represent that magic, whole reality of which they have been cheated by history—in it, their maimed past will be redeemed, in more vivid colours than a history can ever provide’ (Nairn : ). We are closer here to imaginative compensation than historical recovery, and it is notable that Nairn—who first trained as an aesthetician and art-teacher—draws largely on novelists, poets, and literary scholars in developing this analysis. Indeed, the ‘Scotland’ which has assimilated the Edinburgh Festival into its own ‘tiresome fantasy-life’ stands revealed as a fundamentally fictive enterprise, expressing latent cultural needs in ‘crooked’ and neurotic form. ‘In Scotland the real must become unreal, and the unreal be seen at all costs as real’ (Nairn : ). ‘Despite the fairly critical stances taken against political Nationalism by Scottish intellectuals’, observes David McCrone (: ), the inescapable premise of their quest for identity is the ‘assumption that Scotland has (or had) a “national” culture waiting to be discovered’, awakened and revitalized. Thus the cultural unit and identity ‘Scotland’ generates a steady flow of signs, narratives, and images to sustain its formal ‘identity’, all the while knowing—and bracketing—the placeholder function of this mask, a necessary stand-in for the real, redeemed nationhood yet to come. In this perspective, the tracks are not parallel so much as operating on different planes of
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reality, culture compensating for the emptiness of politics. On the level of cultural dreaming, even going round in the same chimerical circles keeps the national wheels and pistons from grinding to a halt, sustaining the possibility of someday escaping this drowsy half-life. Tartanry and Burns-worship are only the most familiar (and usually despised) faces of Nairn’s ‘Great Scottish Dream’. At another level, the zombie permanence of these phenomena serves as endless fodder for strenuous debunking by the national intelligentsia, whose role is to castigate the symptoms whilst affirming the reality of the underlying pathology, so validating the quest to supply ‘Scotland’ with a viable political referent (or Kellas’s ‘objective characteristics’). The trouble, Nairn argues, is that the vigorous myth-busting of the cognoscenti coincides with their own intense romanticism, one which exceeds the sceptical impulse and figures the actuality of modern Scotland as a craven disgrace to the ideal nation. Thus, in the course of venerating Hugh MacDiarmid as a ‘true bard’ who unflinchingly ‘presents the Scottish people with their own image’, his raging protégé Tom Scott inveighs against ‘Scotshire, a county in the north of England, an ex-country, an Esau land that has sold its birthright for a mess of English pottage’ (quoted by Nairn, : ). A common misreading of this tendency overlooks how bitterly and sweepingly it scorns what really-existing Scotland has allowed itself to become. In this bleak but proudly undeceived vision, the actual Scotland visible through the kitchen window is a scar, an embodiment of cultural damage which cannot be repaired at the level of image and ‘identity’. Faced with these twin falsities—the infantile tartan fantasy, the living lie of Scotshire—Scotland as subject, Nairn (: ) writes, ‘is rejected as travesty, and can only be rejected totally’. The revolutionary neo-Celtic Scotland intended to take its place, in MacDiarmid’s Renaissance project, is conceived as a blitzkrieg negation of this sham, but finds little purchase outside the clammy, circular debates of a vanguardist coterie. Thus the insularity and ‘complacent narcissism’ of an Elect literary-nationalist milieu, Nairn (: –) argues, in which the ‘trash-image’ of tartanry is forever being violently rejected by patriot-redeemers who find, like MacDiarmid, ‘that the “real” Scotland which is worthwhile and has survived it all is—oneself.’ This strain of national revivalism has cold contempt for Scottish culture in the sense of the ‘way of life’ actually experienced by ordinary Scots you might see on the bus or at the bingo. Nairn would later warm to the national cause (and to the SNP), but his crucial writing of this late s period claims two profound ruptures worthy of further contemplation today: one between substantive political nationhood and degraded cultural ‘identity’— the loss of the former compelling the neurotic fantasies of the latter—and a second between the sleepy self-regard of an introverted nationalist intelligentsia and the dismal reality of the heedless Scottish public. Only a few months later, the landscape would look rather different; even Nairn (: ) would cease to dismiss ‘the utter feebleness of Scottish political Nationalism’ after the Hamilton by-election of November . But the developments which followed Hamilton largely confirmed Nairn’s sense of the profound rift between cultural dreaming and electoral nationalism.
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‘A ’
.................................................................................................................................. Hamilton marks a complex intersection between distinct currents of cultural and political nationalism; a watershed from which new streams would flow and eventually combine, but also the final ebbing of a certain purist spring of ethno-cultural revival. Perhaps surprisingly, the durable camp-followers of the Scottish Renaissance spearheaded by MacDiarmid in the s and s—still a sizable contingent of militantly ‘Scottish’ cultural life in the s, especially in poetry—deeply distrusted the surge of electoral success. John Herdman (: ) spoke for many in declaring ‘that the SNP is for the most part a crassly philistine body whose obsessive worship of economics is only a little less nauseating than that of the unionist parties’. According to Herdman (: ), the apparent ‘revival of nationalist consciousness’ manifested in the rising nationalist vote might ‘through the SNP express itself sufficiently in political action to effect a change in the constitutional position of Scotland, which in its turn would stimulate a genuine spiritual development in the Scottish people’. That higher plane of spiritual development and redemption remained paramount to literary nationalists such as Herdman, Tom Scott, and Alan Bold. The reformist SNP and its vulgar propaganda comparing food prices in Scotland and England—its tendency, in Herdman’s (: ) words, ‘to appeal to everything that is basest and most inert and complacent in the public mind’—could only grudgingly be accepted as a means to those loftier ends. In the immediate aftermath of Hamilton, different political orientations within the Scottish literati expressed real ambivalence about the rise of the SNP, each seeing in Ewing’s triumph different portents of national degradation. For the Renaissance stalwarts, the growing strength of the SNP threatened to reduce the sacred cause of freedom to ‘an attractive proposition for self-satisfied and stupid materialists’ (Herdman, : ). For younger writers who despaired of the musty Renaissance, the pipes-and-whisky fanfare that followed Hamilton threatened a regression to uncritical tartanry. Whilst taking heart (and vindication) from the mood of national self-assertion, the MacDiarmidites kept their distance from its modernized electoral vehicle. Christopher Harvie (: ) recalled the ‘a-cultural quality’ of Scottish nationalism in the s: Meetings of the SNP lacked both kilts and literary figures, in contrast to the apparent situation before World War II. Writers and artists, however nationalist in sympathy, shied from a party so explicitly ‘modernising’ in its ethos and, despite the literary enthusiasm of the chairman, William Wolfe, this distrust was reciprocated by many leading figures in the party.
Writing in the late s, Jack Brand (: ). argued that ‘despite the obvious quality of the modern writers, they seem to have ignored the questions of national identity which have come to be an interest of the Scottish people’. This was an overstatement, but it has political and historiographic importance: the surging SNP
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of the s did not perceive itself to have a significant literary wing, and was certainly not relying on the afflatus of poets, thinkers, and Lallans activists to chart the course. The impetus for ‘cultural devolution’ came not from national-traditional revivalists but an emergent cadre of the proto-national establishment. ‘The critical change’ in this period, wrote Harvie, ‘is one of consciousness’: the growing interest in Scotland—both scholarly and moral-political—by its native intelligentsia. The s brought swift and bewildering social change, enabling a fresh look at Scottishness prompted less by stirring patriotic dreams than the pregnant disarray of inherited templates. ‘The complacent conservatism which characterised middle-class Scottish culture seems almost completely to have disappeared’, Harvie observed in : The old Scottish institutions are admitted to be in dissolution; the hold of the churches has been broken; law is seen more as a restrictive practice than a national ornament; education is badly in need of reform. Political nationalism is no more prepossessing as an ideology than it was, but there is no longer a British or imperial alternative. The intelligentsia can only now create a tolerable, convivial community in its own country. (Harvie : )
Thus it the perceived cultural breakdown and crisis which precipitated the reformation of a national politics, and the rhetorical ‘hardening’ of national politics in the s into an arena of representative power, that the writers and intelligentsia could claim as their own. This pattern of intellectuals re-instituting national consciousness is first visible in the small Scottish periodicals of the post-Hamilton period, inaugurated by Scottish International (Review) in . This was ‘a golden age of small magazine publication in Scotland’, Herdman (: ) observes, and it was ‘in the pages of the few long-standing journals and of those new ones which sprang up in the late sixties and early seventies the ideological wars of that era were fought out.’ Loosely centred on the University of Edinburgh, overlapping literary and activist circles produced a rich ecology of left-nationalist debate across the s and s, in cheaply printed periodicals that turned ‘the Scottish dimension’—cultural and political—into a living discursive formation visible in bookshops and newsagents. Though never reaching a mass audience, the wider political importance of these magazines stems from their role as a crucial testing-ground in which the Scottish intelligentsia established a new habitus and role for itself. Cultural and political reviews such as New Edinburgh Review (from ), Chapman (), Calgacus () and Crann-Tàra () took up elements of leftist strategy, folk revivalism and the ‘Celtic idea’, and developed a neo-Gramscian reading of Scottish cultural history. These titles laid the groundwork for the leftnationalist consensus which intersected directly with electoral politics (and postreferendum malaise) in later magazines such as Cencrastus () and Radical Scotland (). The latter title functioned as a laboratory and clearing-house for prodevolution strategy such as the ‘Foulkes Memorandum’, in which the Labour MP George Foulkes proposed an escalating campaign of parliamentary disruption ‘to provoke the constitutional crisis necessary to get change’ (Hepburn : ), and
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carried original poetry and fiction (funded by the Scottish Arts Council, so badged from ). It also published an exciting new wave of Scottish cultural and intellectual history in essays by Neal Ascherson, Cairns Craig, Isobel Lindsay, and Stephen Maxwell. Much of this activity took place in a brainy debatable land between socialist and nationalist politics—memorably captured in James Robertson’s epic novel of devolution, And the Land Lay Still—but dauntless cultural heroes seeking a higher, spiritual Scottish awakening were neither conspicuous nor required.
’ A
.................................................................................................................................. The magazine debates moved closer to the political mainstream after the miscarried referendum on a Scottish Assembly, effectively filling the vacuum where an official Scottish political system had failed to find sufficient democratic purchase. Writing in New Edinburgh Review, Tom Nairn (: ) was both mordant and chipper in his response to the disaster, noting that ‘the simple polarisation of the referendum dissipated a good deal of Scotch middle-class mist’. During the referendum campaign, he observed, ‘people were made to line up in some sort of vague battle-order, and Scotland was made to see more clearly that the growth of real national consciousness is a difficult conflict, a civil war within the nation as much as a struggle between it and the metropolis.’ But this bare-knuckle conflict would never arrive. On the contrary, the s see the cultural politics of Scottishness elided with a constitutional project proud of its own urbane consensualism, keen to parade its suspension of intra-nation hostilities as a model for political renewal. In place of a ‘civil war within the nation’, pro-devolution politics skipped straight to the ceasefire and declared victory all round for ‘representation’: of a ‘new’ Scottish political order increasingly identified with crossparty committees, and characterized by a mood of sober ‘civic’ unity. One pugnacious exception was the ‘Scotch Myths’ exhibition of Barbara and Murray Grigor, mounted in . In Neal Ascherson’s () summary, this ‘charged straight at the grisly tangle of sentimental kitsch which passed for the national self-image, the complex which the political thinker Tom Nairn called “the Tartan Monster”. It was followed by a heretical “Scotch Myths” Hogmanay show on television, and the Monster has been weakened and derided ever since.’ The Grigors’ exhibition, and the spinoff study Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television (McArthur, ), briefly instigated a truly critical orientation to the ‘content’—not just the frame—of national culture, without pulling punches for fear of weakening Scottish ‘confidence’ or the cause of Home Rule. It is a rare but valuable moment on the path to devolution which figures the recognized signifiers of Scottish culture as an obstacle and problem, and not only a solution and resource. The early s was a period of intense and sharpening exchange between the cultural and political spheres. Writing in Radical Scotland in , academic and activist George Kerevan (a: ) observed that ‘politics is no longer confined to the Establishment and Labourist agenda of economic tinkering.
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Cultural values represent a new Second Front.’ But the role of a Scottish cultural public in that movement—whether simply as receptive audiences or co-creators of a revived, neo-popular national art—remained unclear. Commenting in Chapman the same year, theatre critic and journalist Joyce McMillan (: ) pointed out that ‘working people in Glasgow are much more concerned about the next episode of Dallas than about the survival of Scottish culture in any form’, whilst being ‘fully as sophisticated, as up-to-date, as well-travelled and as internationally-connected as any modern Western proletariat’. Here, the ‘maturity’ and non-parochialism of the Scottish mass audience is proven by its interest in the latest transatlantic TV sensation; it is the self-conscious literati who are fixated by their nationality (most notably via the revived ‘language question’ of the s–s, concerning whether and how to write in Scots). However, McMillan (: ) writes (echoing Nairn), the cure to this neurosis lies outside the domain of culture as such: ‘the destructive obsession with the need to emphasise and preserve the “Scottishness” of our writing far beyond what comes naturally and truthfully to writers will persist for as long as Scotland remains in political limbo; in other words, it will last until Scotland either becomes a full nation state, or loses its sense of nationhood altogether.’ It follows that the success of a new Scottish cultural renaissance will be measured not by ticket-sales or penetration of the mass, TV-watching audience, but in jumping the track from Scottish cultural consciousness to mobilized political agency: a leap achieved via institutionalization of Scottish identity (by its elite guardians) rather than direct appeals to popular taste.² Alan Bold (: ) concluded his study of Modern Scottish Literature on a note of ‘uncertainty’ about the Scottish cultural public in whose name ‘cultural devolution’ was beginning to claim institutional clout. Scottish dramatists, he said, were ‘waiting, not for something to turn up but someone to turn to’: an engaged national audience hungry for its own artistic representation. To a significant extent—and in common with many other nationalist movements—‘cultural devolution’ was powered by the intelligentsia’s formidable energies of cultural production and commentary, rather than the appetites of Scottish consumers— the majority of whom would likely recall Dallas and the Pet Shop Boys ahead of Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (), the seminal Scottish literary achievement of the decade.
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.................................................................................................................................. Though marginal to the programme of the SNP, the re-framing of Scottish politics in this period was ultimately premised on the ‘given’ and established character of national-cultural difference. In the second issue of Radical Scotland, Cairns Craig (: ) argued that ‘it is precisely on the basis of the value of a culture, the culture of a people, that nationalist politics makes its claims. What distinguishes nationalisms ² A decade later, McMillan later served as Chair of the Scottish Constitutional Commission, designing a Scottish parliamentary system on the lines indicated by the Claim of Right.
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from other ideologies is that the defence of cultural difference and cultural integrity is the basis of its claim to control over the economic and social powers within the society of that culture.’ Responding to socialist critics, Craig (: –) insists on the primacy of cultural difference not only within nationalism, but its imbrication with any leftist politics aiming to justify control over economic and government power in the interests of a defined ‘people’. In this sense, ‘to treat the problems of Scotland as a purely political problem [ . . . ] is to ignore entirely the ways in which culture operates as a powerful force for the existing state within the fabric of our total social experience. [ . . . ] It is on the cultural question that Scottish nationalism has failed.’ How, and to what extent, was this problem solved? In the s and s notions of ‘Scottish voice’ increasingly bridged the gap between liberal discourse of democratic representation and the fabric of urban social life, in the emergence of a ‘vernacular’ mode of nationalism which married claims of class dispossession, cultural erasure, and national disenfranchisement (Hames ). In , Michael Keating (: ) noted that ‘Scottish nationalist discourse has traditionally had a rather weak cultural dimension’ and that ‘little attention is paid to language or to ritual’. But in a zone of cultural debate consciously external to SNP policy—and energized by writers overtly hostile to the SNP’s nationalism, including James Kelman and Tom Leonard— employing working-class language became a powerful and valorized way of mapping precisely Keating’s (: ) sense ‘that national conflict in Scotland is closely tied to perceptions of class struggle and opposition to the Conservative government with its English base’. Just as Thatcherism ‘helped identify neo-liberalism with English values and restore the old association of nationalism with dissent’ (Keating : ), the traditional demotic language held to embody Scotland’s communitarian values was charged with new kinds of political representivity. Keith Dixon (: ) writes of a ‘radical cultural neo-populism’ in the Scottish s, motivated by ‘the need to provide authentic new representations of the people’ in conditions of democratic deficit. Whilst Dixon regards the key literary figures of this movement (Kelman, Leonard, Gray) as ‘underground’ and dissident voices, the ‘neo-populist’ turn he traces clearly occurred within, and was shaped around, a statist constitutional paradigm derived from the Westminster system. The Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution— intended mainly as a talking-shop when established by Wilson’s Labour government shortly after the Hamilton thunderbolt—had cautiously recommended devolution on the following terms: ‘we all see the establishment of an assembly [ . . . ] as being an appropriate means of recognising Scotland’s national identity and of giving expression to its national consciousness’ (Royal Commission on the Constitution : I, ). Whatever it would later become in the hands of Scottish cultural vanguardists and elected politicians, for its s Whitehall architects devolution was a tool for the management of national feeling: offering ‘recognition’ of identitarian claims to national difference and autonomy by directly incorporating these claims into the structures of the ‘modernizing’ union-state, strengthening its own claims to representative pluralism. By , ‘national voice’ was a key trope in (anti-Thatcher) political conditions which made the assertion of cultural difference, class resistance, and constitutional
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disquiet one and the same. In Craig’s (: –) commentary in Radical Scotland, we see this political context directly informing the critical rubric in which Scottish cultural production is interpreted: Whatever the specific quality of the works of art of the ’s and ’s, they have all been explorations of and assertions of the vitality and validity of the Scottish voice. And that vitality has taken the Scottish voice through the gradations from identification with the core experience of the working class—let’s say Billy Connolly— into a flexible instrument which can range across many different kinds of Scottish experience, each of which is voiced differently but still voiced as Scottish—‘Naked Radio’ and Robbie Coltrane. The voicing of Scotland is what the ’s have been about in cultural terms, from Liz Lochhead’s poetry to the Proclaimers’ songs, from Gregory’s Girl to The Steamie.
The aesthetic qualities and political ‘content’ of artworks read within this frame are almost irrelevant; the nationality of the expressive channel is all. ‘Scottish voice’ now became a key metaphor for unifying constituent elements of the national community, and the direct index of social textures and values which distinguish Scotland from England. The pivotal shift over the preceding decade is not so much the retrieval of popular imagery of communal values and experience (often, as Craig argued, nostalgic and performative), but the reconstitution of national structures: of expression, of organization, of cultural and political reproduction. From the anti-Thatcher ‘no-mandate’ argument highlighted the hollowness of Scottish democracy within the UK, and representative legitimacy was assertively claimed and contested in the field of ‘culture’, in both new and reactive ways. By the turn of the s, organized popular defiance (of unrepresentative Tory government, of industrial policy, of the poll tax) was incorporated into an elite consensus in favour of devolution, most importantly via the Scottish Constitutional Convention (a body with deep roots in Radical Scotland, via its own considerable overlap with the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly founded in (McLean )). The SNP controversially withdrew from the all-party Convention, hardliners fearing a Labour stitch-up (Mitchell : –; Lynch : –), though the body’s inaugurating statement, the Claim of Right, included audacious claims to cultural and popular sovereignty, closer to the traditions of SNP fundamentalists than the comfort-zone of Labour devolutionists (Edwards ).
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.................................................................................................................................. ‘Culture’ in the sense of poetry and painting played almost no role in the machine politics by which devolution was slowly and painfully squared with the electoral interests of the s Labour Party and eventually ‘delivered’ by New Labour in
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(Hames ), but of course these developments and strategic responses were ultimately actuated by electoral behaviour which cannot be severed from cultural affiliation and mobilization. Explaining The Growth of Nationalism in Scotland in the midst of this shift, Keith Webb (: ) noted ‘that national feeling is a permanent feature of Scottish culture’: It is not possible, therefore, to explain the rise of a nationalist movement by referring to a sudden spread of nationalist sentiment. What is needed is an explanation of why the nationalist feelings already held by many Scots became politicized when they did. [ . . . ] What seems to have happened is that the Scottish identity has become relevant to politics, whereas previously politics was only seen in British terms.
One possibility here is suggested by Stephen Kendrick (), who highlights changing broadcast media and their role in socially embedding the national-political frame. Noting the relative uniformity of post-war social and economic change across the UK, Kendrick is sceptical of economic or cultural explanations for the emergence of Scottish political ‘difference’ in the s. He instead directs our attention to shifting ‘experience of the state’, and specifically the impact of state broadcasting on that ‘set of taken-for-granted assumptions which underlay the rhetoric of the national political game’ (Kendrick : ). The arrival of Scottish Television in prompted the BBC to broadcast its first specifically Scottish news bulletin the same year, and coverage of Scottish current-affairs quickly established a ‘frame of reference which accepts Scotland as the national unit which national economic management and national politics are about’ (Kendrick : –). The impact of this media frame, which ‘assumes a national identity on the part of the viewer and invites the viewer to share a national perspective’ (: –), was heightened by the erosion of earlier customs and alignments across the same restive period. Treating communications media as the crucial link between state intervention and the domain of everyday life, Kendrick posits ‘that the electoral divergence between Scotland and England is in part a consequence of the forefronting of the national frame of reference on the part of new national media with a particular impact on those for whom older forms of identity are weakening’ (: ). Crucially, those fading patterns of settled social identity—including the dealignment of working-class Labour support, in a s Scottish trend where ‘class has a diminishing role in relation to voting behaviour’ (Brand : )—could be recreated in the neo-national consciousness associated with rising SNP support in the New Towns. Writing in , George Kerevan (b: –) argues that changes in class composition—above all, the expansion of university education—were a key factor in artistic dynamism, attributing ‘the explosion of cultural activity in Scotland in the Seventies and Eighties’ to collective release of ‘the psychic frustrations of this new and enlarged intelligentsia’, an army of disenchanted schoolteachers and middle-class professionals with limited allegiance to the ‘service ethos’ of their predecessors. The
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changing mediascape has significant power to re-fashion this group’s orientation to wider political horizons: ‘those who have become most detached from older forms of social embeddedness will be those most open to having their relevance-structures and even identities’ shaped by the ‘national framing assumptions’ of Scotlandcentred media (Kendrick : –) Thus, fraying traditional loyalties and kinship bonds, and the rise of expressive freedoms echoing the ‘world youth revolt’ of the s, induce a new thirst for roots and ‘identity’ which can be readily satisfied within the strengthening national frame. (Needless to say, the salience of the Scottish media frame rests upon a prior foundation of cultural identity—had there been no audience ready to see and understand itself as ‘Scottish’, the national perspective could not have been affirmed and politicized.) In this reading, Scotland’s cultural rebirth since the s is premised not on the recovery or intensification of distinctive patterns of national community, tradition and cultural self-knowledge, but something closer to the opposite. The fading and dislocation of those bonds and attachments, on a pattern which is general to the globalizing, de-industrializing West, created the conditions in which the national frame could re-surface and fill Kendrick’s (: ) ‘identity vacuum among the privatized, post-solidaristic citizenry’. However bleak, this pattern better accords with the themes and profoundly individual, alienated lives represented in the key Scottish novels of the post-s period (Hames ). Arguably, the most important frame here was not the Scottish national media, but the UK electoral system. Throughout the s, anti-Thatcherism turbo-charged electoral divergence and generated an image—perhaps a mirage—of a sturdy and indeed strengthening welfarist and communitarian consensus, at just the moment the economic structures and ingrained cultural patterns of post-war Scotland were falling away. It has often been observed—notably by the novelist Allan Massie—that it has been in the period of Scotland’s loss of distinctive cultural traditions and practices (above all, in religion) that the signs and claims of separate identity have become stronger and more politically insistent. In this pattern, the wounds and scars of de-nationalization—so keenly felt by radical literary nationalists of the s such as Tom Scott—have been repurposed as the signs of a new and assertive heritage of dispossession: a creed focused less on the promised land of self-government or national (spiritual) reconstruction, and more on the expression and affirmation of Kerevan’s ‘psychic frustrations’. Arguably, the inheritors of MacDiarmid’s project today are not the neo-makars of crowd-funded poetry pamphlets, but the nihilist internet comedy of figures such as Limmy (), swathing signs and narratives of Scottishness—notably the anti-Thatcherism of his parents’ generation—in a blank irony which mixes scorn for ‘confident’ cosmopolitan Scotland, the self-contempt of gamer culture, and a Twitter troll’s refusal of ‘debate’ as a meaningful political activity. This is almost the antithesis of the ‘civic Scotland’ ideal, in which a restored deliberative democracy would enable the recovery of national selfhood and agency, but closer to prevailing popular taste in Scotland today.
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I P S
.................................................................................................................................. Despite the pitfalls we noted at the start of this chapter, we should attempt to draw these threads into some kind of cohesive picture. That integrated story begins with electoral divergence from England during a nebulous period sometime between Beatlemania and the discovery of North Sea oil, held by nationalists to manifest ingrained Scottish differences—whether civic-institutional or moral-political—somewhat mysteriously activated from their prior dormancy. The democratic signal represented by (sporadically) rising votes for the SNP in the s expressed more than shifting party preferences, but a politicization of Scottish identity linked both to UK electoral conditions and rising national-cultural consciousness. This optimism was badly bruised by the failed referendum on devolution, but was spurred by this very trauma to take a leading role in piloting forms of ‘cultural devolution’ which left the politicians behind. Fostered and partly institutionalized by Scottish writers and intellectuals, this newly assertive sense of national-cultural distinction was a key component of the pro-devolution political consensus which emerged in the later s. The protoparliamentary campaign bodies were strongly mediated by party politics (including complex internal wrangling within the Labour party) but articulated their cause as a broad national dissent against a malfunctioning—and increasingly illegitimate— British democratic order, in which Scottish rights to distinctive government, selfdetermination and cultural dignity were being systematically infringed. After and a decade of ‘democratic deficit’, in which the preferences of Scottish voters were increasingly misaligned with UK electoral outcomes, the nation’s political elite (and legislators in waiting) began to catch up with the cultural vanguard, voicing passionate and increasingly emotive ‘national’ demands for Scotland’s own machinery of representation and legislative authority. Devolution was nobody’s utopian dream, but could be welcomed both as a pragmatic upgrade to the UK constitutional order, a recognition of Scotland’s ‘voice’, and a strong affirmation of the neo-national identity constituted within the campaign for devolution: marginalized and disrespected, but inventive, egalitarian and increasingly self-reliant. On these terms the establishment of Holyrood in might seem to ‘resolve’ a problem of Scottishness which lay outside and prior to the arena of political deliberation, but it also instituted this very problem as the motor and warrant of devolution, conceived as a mechanism for supporting, recognizing, and strengthening Scottish national—which is to say, cultural—identity. In his account of these developments, David McCrone (: –) argues that the point is not that suddenly Scots changed their values and attitudes, but that the political prism through which they expressed these altered. [ . . . ] This is perhaps how one should understand Scottish-English differences, not as the result of some deep differences in social and economic structures (because there are no significant structural ones), nor because there are separate ‘Scottish’ and ‘English’ values (again, because there are few), but because the cultural prism for translating social
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change into political meaning and action is different, always has been, and if anything, has become more so.
The creeping differentiation of the Scottish ‘cultural prism’ since the s cannot simply be attributed to developments within ‘culture’ of the kind we might corroborate with references to literary texts or popular songs; but neither can they be separated or disentangled from the growing sense of national-cultural difference and alienation. After , Scottish cultural otherness (within the UK) is overtly mobilized at the electoral level, and becomes a functional basis on which to solidify and democratize the Scottish political system, whilst installing notions of national difference and representation at the heart of an increasingly separate political culture. In truth, the political culture was becoming more distinct even as national life (viewed in sociological terms) was becoming less so, with ingrained patterns of Scottish custom and tradition fading significantly, above all in the decline of the Kirk. This allowed (and perhaps required) the confidence and separateness accrued in the cultural sphere (in the sense of literature, music, entertainment) to accrue a heightened, structural importance, increasingly a scaffold and platform for national life rather than its ornamentation. Cairns Craig (: ) argued that ‘culture’ led a recovery of Scottish ‘voice’, stimulating further development of national forms of social organization: Essentially what happened after ’ was the declaration of autonomy by groups which gave up on the political scene as a whole and concentrated on creating a devolved, autonomous power base for their own activities within their own sphere of control. The creation of new institutions—in the arts new magazines, new publishing houses and imprints, new archives for the past achievements of Scottish culture, new facilities for creation and promotion—took the business of independence into the very texture of creative life.
‘Self-determination’ emerges as a key but ambivalent principle in this milieu, operating on multiple scales (personal, class, national). This flexibility has been crucial: one reason post-devolutionary Scotland has been open to strategically reimagining national identity and its symbols is the historic marginality of ‘the cultural argument’ within organized political nationalism. This weak cultural basis—that is, the minimal extent to which the rationale for political independence is safeguarding and developing distinctively Scottish culture—has allowed devolved Scotland to bypass the ‘traditionalist’ quandary by which a narrative of cultural preservation inevitably imposes pastoriented restrictions on the nationalist imagination. Arthur Aughey (: ) observes that: nationalist politics in Scotland, perhaps because it did not have any heavy culturist baggage, has become reasonably nimble in adapting to [post-devolutionary] selfconfidence. The embrace by nationalism of an attractive popular culture rather than a single-minded attempt to make traditional culture popular may now be its strength and its appeal to youth in Scotland.
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C P T
.................................................................................................................................. I will conclude by briefly scanning the present political horizon. In many respects, the Scottish cultural-political field has, since , been frozen in postures of ‘resistance’: of unpopular Westminster ventures such as the Iraq War, austerity, and Brexit, but also the bureaucratic frustrations of Creative Scotland, the successor to the Scottish Arts Council through which cultural strategy is linked to democratic governance. Though bullish in social and political debate, the dissenting energies of Scotland’s ‘cultural sector’ have been considerably de-fanged by devolution itself. Fully incorporated into the business and ethos of Scottish Government, there is little political leverage in promoting an egalitarian Scottish cultural identity when the governing order successfully articulates itself as the steward and expression of that identity. By , Scotland’s cultural intelligentsia had lost effective leadership of the left-nationalist project incubated in the earlier magazines, and was largely incorporated into Salmond’s one-nation social democracy. In the aftermath of the No result, it became clear that the energies of pro-independence politics had shifted in a populist direction: the very success of the Yes campaign in catalysing a national movement made august cultural leaders of the s–s somewhat redundant, and we can safely assume that the (pro-Yes) indyref activism of figures such as Alasdair Gray, Liz Lochhead and Irvine Welsh was dwarfed by the impact of the Wee Blue Book distributed in pubs by supporters of the controversial nationalist blog Wings Over Scotland. Even to ponder the continuities of the Scottish political blogosphere with the magazine culture of the s–s (most closely in a website such as Bella Caledonia) is to recognize the revolutionary impact of the internet on forms of political culture and behaviour; perhaps too revolutionary to permit serious comparison. The online subcultures of Scottish politics would require a whole other chapter, but suffice to say that galloping ‘privatism’ in the neoliberal era has been yoked to ‘filter-bubble’ tribalism on terms that make a distinct and coherent Scottish cultural public more elusive than ever. The post- establishment of the pro-independence tabloid The National whilst the quality Scottish press suffers slow but severe collapse, and the eventual, somewhat grudging establishment of a ‘BBC Scotland’ (digital only) television service, only mask an underlying hyperfragmentation. For younger Scots, the national media frame of television is no longer a central social rubric and ‘relevance-structure’, but one, on-demand consumer choice amongst others. In today’s mediascape, a specialist TV platform for fans of Scotland is rather akin to a sports channel or cooking podcast; just another stream to choose from, without the power to integrate a cohesive picture of social reality and political purpose. I have hardly touched on cultural Britishness, but the Anglo–Scottish union as a cultural tradition and ideological project seems much weaker than political support for the constitutional status quo. In , Scottish voters gave the Union its strongest-ever democratic endorsement, with over two million votes against independence. But there are few signs of renewal for Unionism (as opposed to what we might call ‘No-ism’ on the question of independence). It may be that the Union was preserved by (economic,
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transactional, rhetorically post-British) campaigning arguments that actually weaken its prospects of long-term renewal (Hames ). In a memoir, John Herdman (: ) recalled his boyhood reading of H.E. Marshall’s Scotland’s Story (), with its confident recuperation of William Wallace into a British national imaginary: ‘if Scotland had been joined to England in the days of Edward, it would have been as a conquered country, and the union could never have been true and friendly’. Though already a curio in the s—the narrative ends abruptly in , breezily concluding that ‘you must read the rest of the story of Scotland in the story of the Empire’ (Marshall : )—Herdman (: ) finds Marshall’s ‘tortuous doublethink’ highly expressive of ‘the central ambivalence toward Scottish nationality and Scottish experience’ of his privileged upbringing in Edinburgh during the s–s. One way of charting the Scoto-centric shift in McCrone’s ‘cultural prism for translating social change into political meaning and action’ is to note the baffled mirth these passages elicit from university students today. Boilerplate sentiments of traditional Scoto-British patriotism are virtually incomprehensible to most Scots under , who struggle to parse (let alone embrace) the rudiments of ‘unionist nationalism’ (Morton ). By , social attitude data ‘seem to show that saying you are British is much more of a “political” statement than saying you are Scottish’ (McCrone : ). What Colin Kidd () calls ‘banal unionism’, the taken-for-granted arguments for Scottish Britishness which were effectively ‘background noise’ in Scotland until the s are, today, hoarse whispers from another age, though still sedimented in key elements of the devolved political infrastructure (including, notably, broadcasting). Nationalist hostility to the BBC stems not only from (real or imagined) ‘unionist bias’ in its output, but the anomalous holdout represented by the BBC’s durable structural frame for integrating Scottish and UK-wide perspectives.
C: F C N T S
.................................................................................................................................. This brings us full circle to the case of The Cheviot, a famous but complex moment in which the twin tracks appear to converge. Written by John McGrath (: ), in his own words ‘a Liverpool-Irish person of Welsh upbringing, Oxford and London training and Scottish only by marriage, domicile and commitment’, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil is a barnstorming historical polemic with music, linking the Highland Clearances to the exploitation of North Sea oil. The play was devised as the maiden production of : (Scotland), the company’s first foray outside of England, and made its debut at the ‘What Kind of Scotland?’ conference in April , organized in Edinburgh by Scottish International. This event was, in McGrath’s (: xi) description, a crowd of ‘politicians, union men, writers, social and community workers, academics, and ordinary people who cared about the future of Scotland’, gathered together to ponder radical visions of a changing nation at a moment when not only
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devolution but Scottish independence seemed a tantalizing possibility. Seven weeks later, the play was also performed at the SNP’s annual conference in Oban, on the invitation of party leader William Wolfe. As McGrath (: xxviii) recalls: we wrote pointing out that we were not nationalists, and would attack bourgeois nationalism, but he repeated the invitation, hoping our politics would stimulate discussion within his party. We discussed it, and decided to go. [ . . . ] it would do no harm for the chauvinists and tartan Tories to get a dose of what we were saying.
What they were saying was, in brief, ‘“Nationalism is not enough. The enemy of the Scottish people is Scottish capital as much as the foreign exploiter” [ . . . ] some cheered, some booed, the rest were thinking about it’ (McGrath : xxix). But it was not the provocative content of this single, iconic play that might explain its formative role in the later establishment of a National Theatre. Rather, it is the developing context in which the play was received (cheers, boos, and otherwise) as a ‘national’ moral and historical statement, giving ‘voice’ to urgent sentiments that ‘masses of people in Scotland wanted said’ (McGrath : xi). The key change between the heady days of pondering ‘What Kind of Scotland?’ and the official solidity of The Scottish Government is not just about shifting ideological and electoral loyalties, of the kind we can measure with political-scientific precision, but the effective merger of those two Cheviot audiences in early April and late May . Two groups gathered to debate the national future, one in a free-wheeling, vituperative, and ‘radical’ intellectual milieu (in Edinburgh, with Scottish International) and the other in the more sedate and tweedy atmosphere of an organized party conference (in Oban, with the SNP). With devolution, and above all in the self-image of ‘cultural devolution’, these two groups are invited to recognize and embrace each other as pulling in the same direction, both on the winning side of a civil struggle not within but ‘for’ Scotland, conceived as a ‘trans-class peoplenation’ (Law and Mooney : ): a culturally distinctive society crying out for ‘representation’ rather than revolution. It was not :’s agit-prop historical drama that changed Scottish politics, or any other tally of landmark cultural achievements over the past five decades. It was the national public that these plays, magazines, novels, and media formats helped to ‘constitute’ and solidify, one gathered into a civic-democratic unity under the national—which is to say, cultural—frame of Scottish identity.
R Ascherson, N. . ‘Obituary: Barbara Grigor’, The Independent [online], October. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-barbara-grigor-.html, accessed July . Audickas, L., Dempsey, N., and Keen, R. . Membership of UK Political Parties: Briefing Paper SN. London: House of Commons Research Library. Available at: https:// researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN, accessed July .
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Aughey, A. . Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State. London: Pluto Press. Billig, M. . Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Bold, A. . Modern Scottish Literature. London: Longman. Brand, J. . The National Movement in Scotland. London: Routledge. Craig, C. . ‘Across the Divide’, Radical Scotland, : –. Craig, C. . ‘Scotland Years On (The Changes That Took Place While Rip Mac Winkle Slept)’, Radical Scotland, : –. Craig, C. . Intending Scotland: Explorations in Scottish Culture Since the Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Craig, C. . ‘Unsettled Will: Cultural Engagement and Scottish Independence’, Observatoire de la société britannique, : –. Dixon, K. . ‘Notes from the Underground: A Discussion of Cultural Politics in Contemporary Scotland’, Etudes écossaises, : –. Edwards, O.D. (ed.) . A Claim of Right for Scotland. Edinburgh: Polygon. Geekie, J. and Levy, R. . ‘Devolution and the Tartanisation of the Labour Party’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Gellner, E. . Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hames, S. (ed.) . Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independence. Edinburgh: Word Power. Hames, S. . ‘On Vernacular Scottishness and its Limits: Devolution and the Spectacle of “Voice” ’, Studies in Scottish Literature, : –. Available at: https://scholarcommons. sc.edu/ssl/vol/iss//, accessed July . Hames, S. . ‘Saving the Union to Death? Gordon Brown and the Evacuation of Britishness’, The Drouth, : –. Available at: https://issuu.com/drouth/docs/scott_hames_ saving_the_union_to_dea, accessed July . Hames, . ‘The New Scottish Renaissance?’, in P. Boxall and B. Cheyette (eds), The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume Seven: British and Irish Fiction Since . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hames, S. . The Literary Politics of Scottish Devolution: Voice, Class Nation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Harvie, C. . ‘Nationalism, Journalism and Cultural Politics’, in T. Gallagher (ed.), Nationalism in the Nineties. Edinburgh: Polygon, –. Harvie, C. . ‘The Devolution of the Intellectuals’, in L. Paterson (ed.), A Diverse Assembly: The Debate on a Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [reprinting Harvie in the New Statesman, November ]. Hearn, J. . Claiming Scotland: National Identity and Liberal Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hepburn, I. . ‘The Foulkes Memorandum’, Radical Scotland, : . Herdman, J. . ‘Politics III’, in D. Glen (ed.), Whither Scotland? London: Gollancz, –. Herdman, J. . ‘Scots to the Backbone’, in T. Royle (ed.), Jock Tamson’s Bairns: Essays on a Scots Childhood. London: Hamish Hamilton, –. Herdman, J. . Another Country: An Era in Scottish Politics and Letters. Edinburgh: Thirsty Books. Keating, M. . Nations Against the State: The New Politics of Nationalism in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland. London: Macmillan. Kellas, J.G. . The Scottish Political System, th edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Kendrick, S. . ‘Scotland, Social Change and Politics’, in D. McCrone, S. Kendrick, and P. Straw (eds), The Making of Scotland: Nation, Culture and Social Change. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –. Kerevan, G. a. ‘The Cultural Consequences of Mr Keynes’, Radical Scotland, : –. Kerevan, G. b. ‘Labourism Revisited’, Chapman, /: –. Kidd, C. . Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Law, A. and Mooney, G. . ‘Devolution in a “Stateless Nation”: Nation-Building and Social Policy in Scotland’, Social Policy & Administration, /: –. Limmy. . YouTube channel. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/ LimmyDotComBlog, accessed July . Lynch, P. . SNP: The History of the Scottish National Party, nd edition. Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press. Macwhirter, I. . Democracy in the Dark: The Decline of the Scottish Press and How to Keep the Lights On. Edinburgh: The Saltire Society. Marshall, H.E. . Scotland’s Story: A History of Scotland for Boys and Girls. Tenterden, Kent: Galore Park. [First published ]. McArthur, C. (ed.) . Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television. London: BFI Publishing. McCrone, D. . Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation. London: Routledge. McCrone, D. . ‘Cultural Capital in an Understated Nation: The Case of Scotland’, British Journal of Sociology, /: –. McCrone, D. . The New Sociology of Scotland. London: Sage. McGrath, J. . The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black, Black Oil, edited by Graeme Macdonald. London: Bloomsbury. McLean, B. . Getting it Together: The History of the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly/ Parliament –. Edinburgh: Luath. McMillan, J. . ‘The Predicament of the Scottish Writer’, Chapman, –: –. Mitchell, J. . Strategies for Self-Government: The Campaigns for a Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: Polygon. Morton, G. . Unionist Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, –. East Linton: Tuckwell Press. Nairn, T. . ‘Festival of the Dead’, New Statesman, September, –. Nairn, T. . ‘The Three Dreams of Scottish Nationalism’, New Left Review, I/: –. Nairn, T. . ‘After the Referendum’, New Edinburgh Review, : –. O’Rourke, D. (ed.) . Dream State: The New Scottish Poets, nd edition. Edinburgh: Polygon. Park, A., Bryson, C., Clery, E., Curtice, J., and Phillips, M. (eds.). . ‘Devolution’, in British Social Attitudes: The th Report. London: NatCen Social Research, –. Available at: http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media//bsa_devolution_final.pdf, accessed July . Robertson, J. . And the Land Lay Still. London: Hamish Hamilton. Royal Commission on the Constitution – [Kilbrandon]. . Report. London: HM Stationery Office.
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Scottish Executive. . Cultural Commission Final Report. Available at: https://www. webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive//http://www.gov.scot/Publications/ ///, accessed July . Thomson, A. . ‘Thomson, Alex, “You can’t get there from here”: Devolution and Scottish Literary History’, International Journal of Scottish Literature, . Available at: http://www. ijsl.stir.ac.uk/issue/thomson.htm, accessed July . Webb, K. . The Growth of Nationalism in Scotland. London: Pelican.
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PARTIES AND ELECTIONS .............................................................................................................
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A M- E L
.................................................................................................................................. O can imagine a polity in which elections to multiple levels take place on the same day, using the same electoral system and the same electoral boundaries, regulated by the same legislation, with the same spending limits, the same campaign activities, and the same body keeping a watchful eye over things. Scotland is not one of those polities. Elections take part on different days, using different electoral boundaries, campaign rules, electoral systems, and different franchises, which in turn can create different incentive structures when individuals decide whether to engage with politics. Elections are held across Scotland to local authorities, the Scottish Parliament, the House of Commons and the European Parliament; there are also community councils (see Table .). Scotland’s thirty-two local authorities vary considerably in geographic size, population, and socio-demographic constitution (Chapter in this Handbook). The councils range in size from eighteen members (Clackmannanshire) to eighty-five members (Glasgow) with ratios of electors to councillors that also range from fewer than electors to one councillor in the island councils (Orkney, Shetland, and Western Isles) to over electors per councillor in Glasgow. Local elections in Scotland use the Single Transferable Vote (STV), in which voters rank their preferred candidates to elect multiple members per electoral ward. In addition, Scots vote for representatives in three Parliaments: the -member Scottish Parliament, which uses the Additional Member (AMS) electoral system, the (for now) fifty-nine Scottish seats in the (for now) -seat House of Commons elected by First-Past-The-Post in the UK Parliament and (until its departure from the European Union) the six Scottish MEPs which formed part of the seventy-three MEPs that the UK sends to the -member European Parliament. The Scottish MEPs are selected by national-list Proportional Representation (PR), in which voters cast a ballot for a party, and successful candidates are drawn from a list ordered by those parties.
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Table 11.1 Electoral Systems in Scotland Legislature
Number elected
32 Local authorities
1227
Scottish Parliament
129
House of Commons
59
European Parliament
6
Electoral system
Electoral unit
Single Transferable Vote
Multi-member wards (3–4 members each)
Additional Member System
Constituencies (73) and regions (8)
First-Past-The-Post
Constituencies
Closed list Proportional representation
Scotland
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
Just as the electoral system varies across elections so, too, do the rules about who may cast a ballot. The chief differences are age, eligibility of members of the House of Lords, and citizenship. Until recently, individuals needed to be eighteen to vote in local, devolved, state, and European elections. In , those aged and were given the vote in local and Scottish elections for the first time; this has previously applied only for community councils.¹ Electors to the Scottish Parliament include members of the House of Lords who are resident in Scotland. Indeed, it is possible to be elected to the Scottish Parliament as a member of the House of Lords. However, members of the House of Lords can neither be members of, nor vote in elections to, the House of Commons. The electorate for the Commons includes Commonwealth citizens but excludes EU citizens, other than UK and, Irish citizens, and by virtue of their Commonwealth membership, citizens of Cyprus and Malta. The electorates for the Scottish independence and Brexit referendums also differed, with the same restrictions applying in the Brexit referendum that apply in elections to the Commons. This meant that some residents in Scotland who were able to vote in the independence referendum in were unable to vote in the UK General Election or the Brexit referendum.
E A
.................................................................................................................................. Elections are governed by a range of legislation dictating rules for election timing, franchise, campaign spending as well as a range of bodies, most of them independent or
¹ Members of Community Councils must be on the electoral register in the area served and over sixteen years of age though additional members, including citizens under age sixteen, can become Associate members. The electorate includes UK, Irish, Commonwealth, and EU citizens apart from those excluded from voting (those in prison).
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arms-length from government. Campaign spending in UK elections (and non-local referendums), for example, is governed by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (PPERA). Initially, the UK Parliament had exclusive authority to pass legislation, or approve secondary instruments, for UK and devolved elections. The Scotland Act transfers much of this competence in relation to devolved elections to the Scottish Parliament. Under the Scotland Act , the Scottish Parliament already has these powers in relation to local elections. In , the Scottish government began consulting on legislative proposals related to electoral reform. Electoral wards are the building blocks for constituencies in Scottish and UK elections. The size of electoral wards is determined by the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland (LGBCS), which also determines the number of councillors per local authority. Since electoral wards are determined in a process for local government elections, and in Scotland the electoral system for local government is the Single Transferable Vote, which elects either three or four members per ward, these units can be quite large and therefore when forming Scottish or UK constituencies wards can be split. The LGBCS also sets both constituency and regional boundaries for the Scottish Parliament. Reviews are typically held every ten to twelve years. Reviews of Holyrood and local boundaries were completed in and respectively.² The Boundary Commission for Scotland, by contrast, sets the boundaries for the Scottish constituencies for Westminster elections. In the Boundary Commissions in Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland submitted proposals complying with the Parliamentary Constituencies Act (as amended), which calls for a reduction in the House of Commons to seats and a more equal electoral quota around constituency size. In Scotland, this would have resulted in a reduction from fifty-nine seats to fifty-three, two of which—Orkney and Shetland, and the Western Isles—are protected in the legislation. This was the second time that the boundary commissions have been tasked with reviewing boundaries in a few years, the first time having been halted when the UK government amended legislation so that the commissions were no longer required to report. Whilst the two boundary commissions establish the geographic units in which voters cast ballots, the Electoral Management Board (EMB) manages the running of elections. This includes the training of returning officers, the staffing of polling stations and counting of ballots, but not the creation of voter registration lists. These are maintained by electoral registration officers housed within local authorities. The convenor of the EMB is the chief counting officer for Scotland.
² The most recent local government boundary review created wards in total, one more than previously, and the number of councillors increased by four to ,. Some authorities were more affected than others with Glasgow and North Ayrshire getting two more wards and six and three more councillors respectively. North Lanarkshire gained one additional ward and seven more councillors overall (Bochel and Denver : ).
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The Electoral Commission, by contrast, issues guidance on rules and regulations relating to campaigning, including spending. The Commission deals with the conduct of local, devolved, UK, and European elections and there are offices in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, and London. Different pieces of legislation deal with different elections but there are general similarities when it comes to both spending rules and the franchise. There are typically three sources of spending in elections: spending by individual candidates; by the political parties that they represent; and by third-party campaigners. There are two clear rules. Actors (candidates, parties, campaigners) must not spend more than their limit and they (electoral agents in the case of candidates, party treasurers in the case of political parties) must file returns outlining spending (for UK elections within three months for those spending £k or less, or within six months for those spending more than £k). For Westminster, the regulated period during which spending rules apply is typically days before the election whilst for European elections it is four months. For devolved elections, there are two regulated spending periods, a long period from January until election day; and a short period, from when one officially becomes a candidate, which can be no earlier than when Parliament is dissolved until election day. In Scottish Parliament elections, there are different spending rules for those who are standing for constituency seats, regional seats (where campaigning expenses are counted by party, not by candidate) or who stand as dual candidates. Spending limits vary even for constituency candidates, with a base amount and a variable top-up to account for the number of electors in the constituency, with slightly higher rates for county constituencies. For the elections this was a £, base amount plus .p per elector in burgh (urban) constituencies and .p in county (rural) constituencies. In addition, candidates must make choices about spending decisions. Whether campaign leaflets promote a particular candidate or a political party as a whole determines whether it counts against candidate spending limits or party limits. As well as regulated periods for campaign spending, each election has a purdah period—the period between when an election is called and when it is held—during which there are rules governing behaviour of civil servants and journalists who work for public broadcasters. One way to tell whether elections are well regulated and whether they are free and fair is by looking at the incidence of electoral fraud, data for which are collected by the Electoral Commission. Police Scotland dealt with nine cases of alleged fraud in , of which two related to the devolved elections held that year. There was one conviction for electoral fraud in Scotland—an incidence of personation in East Ayrshire during the Brexit referendum (Electoral Commission ). In , when the previous devolved elections were held, there were six cases of suspected electoral malpractice in Scotland, one of which involved suspected personation when a care worker completed postal ballots for eleven residents in a care home on Skye. The votes were rejected and no charges brought (Electoral Commission ). For the Westminster elections, Police Scotland dealt with seven allegations of electoral fraud in but there were no convictions (Electoral Commission ).
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Obviously the efforts of parties to reach voters matter but the structural features of elections can influence engagement. This includes the length of campaigns as well as electoral timing. The timing of Westminster elections has typically been unpredictable. The Scottish Parliament elections were initially set on a four-year electoral cycle. For the first three elections of the Scottish Parliament the local and devolved elections were held on the same day. In , the Arbuthnot Commission recommended that this simultaneity should be stopped, as it meant that concurrent local and devolved campaigns inhibited a campaign focus on different political arenas. They were likely right about this. At the same time, however, they warned that referring to first and second votes in devolved elections suggested a priority of constituency MSPs over regional list MSPs in the minds of voters. In , the local elections were held for the first time under the Single Transferable Vote. On the same day the devolved elections employed a different ballot design, with YOU HAVE TWO VOTES printed across the ballot. This led to thousands of spoiled ballots, the confusion over whether to cast two constituency votes or two regional votes compounded by the ability to rank order preferences on the local ballot (Carman et al. ). Thus ended the vertical simultaneity of local and Holyrood elections. With respect to UK elections, the Fixed Term Parliaments Act was designed to introduce predictable election cycles, removing from government the ability to call a snap election, and moving to a five-year fixed term. Since this would introduce vertical simultaneity between Holyrood and Westminster elections the Scottish Parliament adjusted its election schedules so that the two would not coincide. With the early UK General Election in , however, much of this was put up in the air, partly in that it set up a future clash with devolved elections and partly because it suggested there is rather less political will for predictable electoral cycles in Westminster. This has various knockon effects. The transfer of competence to the Scottish Parliament has prompted plans for electoral reform. This and the adjusted Holyrood election timetable means that the boundary reviews—if they remain on their – year cycle—could be occurring in the middle of an election campaign. As a result candidates could be campaigning for seats that might not exist at subsequent elections. Given the resources required to engage in local campaigning, this could present a source of some concern for candidates. Two other structural features are worth noting. First, the method of electoral registration has changed recently, with a move from household registration to individual electoral registration (IER). Research from other jurisdictions suggests that IER can depress the proportion of potential voters on registration lists as it increases the costs of registration. In Scotland this potential drop was offset slightly by the swelling of the electoral registration lists before the referendum. Perhaps the most important structural feature influencing engagement is the ease with which individuals can cast a ballot. In all four electoral levels voters must vote in person on election day or, if they know in advance that they are going to be unable to cast a ballot on that day, may send in an advance ballot or use a proxy. Postal and proxy voting have been permitted for certain categories of the electorate since the end of the First World War—initially for those serving in the armed forces but extended to others
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who would be away from home at the time of an election—and the proportion of votes cast in this way has increased since rules were relaxed. Since , anyone in Scotland may request to vote by post and measures were introduced in to verify the identity of postal voters to counter electoral fraud. Scotland recorded the largest increase in the use of postal voting of all parts of the UK to . This was likely due to the levels of public engagement and political activity in the wake of the independence referendum. The trend of voting by post has continued to increase. People who request a postal vote are more likely to vote. In , . per cent of the electorate requested a postal vote in local elections (up . per cent from ). The proportion varies across Scotland from under per cent in West Dunbartonshire to over per cent in Aberdeen (Bochel and Denver : ) Ballots are paper ballots. There is therefore no technology related to the voting process. Voters cannot cast ballots online, for example, nor at computer stations so that votes can be counted electronically. One exception to this is the scanning of local election paper ballots so that STV preferences can be counted electronically. Voting takes place on one day—typically a Thursday, typically in early May. There is therefore no weekend voting, as in other jurisdictions, nor extended voting periods, each of which we know serve to increase turnout in elections.
C A
.................................................................................................................................. Literature on campaigning distinguishes between the national and local campaign, each of which requires different levels of resources. National campaigns—which focus on media appearances, rolling leader visits, and targeted messages informed by market research—are expensive. Local campaigns are run largely by volunteers, so even for a well-funded party able to pay for multiple types of campaign leaflets, an absence of volunteers makes things difficult. Parties now canvass by telephone, which allows older members, who constitute a growing part of every party’s membership, and who might otherwise be unable to participate in door-to-door campaigning, to contribute to campaigns. This applies also to activists in safe or unwinnable constituencies who can contribute to campaigns in marginal constituencies that may be some distance from home. Scottish campaigns, like UK-wide election campaigns, tend to prioritize national campaign messages over local campaigns, with targeted activity in closer contests but this logic makes less sense for elections run using STV or the Additional Member System, both of which reward more diffuse campaigning. In single member wards one can predict with greater accuracy the likely vote intention of residents. In STV multi-member wards, however, successful candidates rely not just on first preferences but second preferences of voters. Abandoning some wards in favour of others can damage the chances of picking up second preference votes and thus can damage electoral changes. Likewise, the mixed nature of AMS means parties must balance their campaign attentions between anticipated seats won in constituencies, which might well
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require more focused campaigning in winnable seats, and on seats won from regional lists, which would require less targeted campaigning. The balance of constituency and list seats won by parties, and thus their campaigning needs, has changed since the first devolved elections. In the early years of devolution, Labour’s focus was on constituencies whilst the SNP’s was on lists where the two parties respectively gained most seats. Over time that situation has been reversed. Media attention to campaigns can focus on activities that are driven by parties, for example leader visits and the speeches delivered at campaign events, or media-driven events, including leader debates. Whilst these tend to be one off, a more consistent way to cover the campaigns is by media-commissioned election polls. The frequency of polls commissioned by media outlets and therefore in the public domain varies considerably across electoral levels. Within the context of UK campaigns, polls tend to focus on the GB electorate, with Scottish respondents typically composing a few hundred of the + sample. This makes it very difficult to gauge Scottish preferences, as the Scottish-specific sample is too small to make reliable predictions. There are, on occasion, Scotland-specific polls within UK General Election campaigns. In general, though, in the last four elections to domestic parliaments held in Scotland, polling of the Scottish electorate was fairly limited, with ten polls in most cases. This is dwarfed by the more than fifty polls in the most recent UK election and the almost polls in the previous UK General Election (Table .). The polls themselves became the story in (and again in after the Brexit referendum), when the reliability of poll results and media reporting of them came under scrutiny. In , polls systematically underestimated Conservative support whilst in , polls appeared to systematically underestimate Leave support. What was not immediately clear was whether the polls were wrong or whether voters had changed their minds as voting day approached. After the election an investigation by the British Polling Council attributed errors to a combination of panel conditioning, an over-representation of politically engaged poll respondents (influenced in part by the need for many polls with quick response times), and non-random sample selection. In other words, those who respond to polls, and in particular respond to polls quickly, are unlike the electorate as a whole. In the subsequent Westminster election, pollsters sought to address these inaccuracies, experimenting with how to ensure that samples reflected a population that is less interested and engaged. Many reweighted their results according to likely intention to vote, with some relying on self-reported anticipated likelihood of voting, some on a combination of past practices and intention to vote and a third group using external data to identify, from modelling, those individuals most likely to cast ballots. These efforts represent a spectrum from those who took voters at their word when they said they were likely to vote to those who used more interventionist methods to predict who was likely to vote. In general, those who deviated most from self-reported intention to vote tended to have a bigger gap between their final polls and the eventual results. This suggests that in elections where turnout varies significantly from previous contests, modelling on past behaviour offers a less helpful guide. Or, in other words, if turnout in the next election is high, then focusing more on
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Table 11.2 Election Polls between Dissolution and Election Day, 2011–2017 Period between dissolution and election
Number of polls commissioned
2017 UKGE
3 May 2017–8 June 2017
61 GB polls 10 Scotland-specific polls
2016 Scottish Parliament
23 March–5 May 2016
10 polls
2015 UKGE
30 March–7 May 2015
94 GB polls 13 Scotland-specific polls
2011 Scottish Parliament
22 March–5 May 2011
10 polls
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
those who voted last time at the expense of those who did not will lead to inaccurate results. In response to these errors, some have suggested that political polls should be regulated. Lord Foulkes’ private members bill attempting to regulate opinion polling died on the order paper but since then there has been a House of Lords report into the political reporting of polls which suggests the issue is not entirely dormant. The general message from all of this, though, is that polls are a more frequent feature of UK electoral contests than of Scottish ones. We turn now to our case study of elections to explore the different systems in place, how they came to be and what impact they appear to have on electoral outcomes in Scotland.
F O E S M: A C S
.................................................................................................................................. Electoral systems ‘determine the means by which votes are translated into seats in the process of electing politicians into office’ (Farrell : ). They involve ‘one set of rules which deals with the process of election itself: how citizens vote, the style of the ballot paper, the method of counting, the final determination of who is elected . . . This is the electoral system, the mechanism of determining victors and losers, which clicks into action once the campaign has ended’ (Farrell : ). The reasons why the different systems and electorates have been adopted and their implications for the outcome of elections are explored in the rest of this chapter. As outlined above, four different electoral systems operate in Scotland. There was considerable discussion of the electoral system to be used in elections to the Scottish Parliament in debates in the Scottish Constitutional Convention. Prior to , FPTP (First-Past-ThePost) was the only system used but then there were only elections to community councils, local government, and the House of Commons. The first direct elections to the European Parliament were held in , using FPTP in eight Scottish regions. In , this was
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changed to proportional representation by closed lists, except in Northern Ireland, where the Single Transferable Vote was used. Scotland was treated as a single region initially returning eight Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).This was later reduced to six as part of a reduction of the UK quota. The FPTP electoral system was replaced with STV for local elections for the first time in . Whilst these electoral systems are different there were links between the systems at different stages in the process of their creation. The Scottish Parliament’s constituencies were based on the House of Commons constituencies with the exception of Orkney and Shetland, which had one MSP each rather than a single member as in the Commons. The regions used to elect the regional list members were the then eight European Parliament constituencies.
FPTP W
.................................................................................................................................. Under the old two-party system (before the s), the First-Past-The-Post or simple plurality system that operated in elections to the Commons tended to translate votes into seats to the advantage of both Labour and Unionist (Conservative) parties. The two main parties usually gained a higher proportion of seats than a strict proportional vote share would have rewarded but the degree of disproportionality was small relative to what happened when the two-party system started to break down. Between and , the combined Labour and Unionist votes was never less than per cent. The decline of the Conservatives and rise of other parties after was more evident in vote share than seats. The electoral system continued to be kind to Labour in Scotland. When the SNP won . per cent of the vote and eleven (. per cent) of Scotland’s seventy-one seats in October , Labour’s share of the vote was . per cent and it won forty-one seats (. per cent). But Labour well understood that it could change positions with the SNP if the latter increased its share of the vote. This haunted Labour, especially when evidence suggested that many Labour voters saw the SNP as their second preference (Brand et al. ). Ensuring an ‘efficient’ vote under FPTP requires parties to target and concentrate resources in marginal seats rather than spread resources thinly across seats that are held by the party itself or opponents with large majorities. Piling up ever-larger majorities in safe seats does not help gain more seats and increasing the share of the vote in seats with little hope of winning makes little sense under FPTP. Parties with relatively evenly spread support are likely to suffer until they reach a threshold when they can expect major gains. Labour had crossed that threshold, aided by a fragmented opposition. This culminated in Labour winning just under per cent of Scottish seats in and with . per cent and . per cent of votes. The Conservatives had broadly won the same percentage of votes and seats from until . Thereafter, the system worked to their disadvantage with the brief exceptions of and elections when the Conservative share of seats was broadly proportional to the party’s
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Deviation from Proportionality
50 45 40 Percentage
35 30 25 20 15 10
2017
2015
2010
2005
2001
1997
1992
1987
1983
1979
1974O
1974F
1970
1966
1964
1959
1955
1951
1950
0
1945
5
Deviation from proportionality
. Deviation from Proportionality under FPTP, Scottish Voting in UK Elections –
share of the vote. But from onwards, the Conservatives became significant losers under FPTP in Scotland. The Liberals and successor parties had suffered under FPTP although part of the problem was that for most of the post- period, resources prevented it from contesting many seats, thus deflating its potential vote share but likely having no effect on its share of seats. In time, however, by focusing their effort in Scotland, the Liberal Democrats made the system work to their advantage and by the s were gaining a higher percentage of seats than votes. The main losers under FPTP until very recently was the SNP. The SNP’s share of the vote tended to be relatively even across Scotland compared with other parties. There was little evidence of it targeting marginal seats with the same focus as the Liberal Democrats with the consequence that it would often gain more votes than the Liberal Democrats but fewer seats. This situation was spectacularly reversed in when the SNP won per cent of the vote, giving it fifty-six ( per cent) of Scotland’s fifty-nine seats. This was the largest disparity between any party’s share of seats and votes in post Scottish electoral history. The SNP lost ground in winning thirty-five seats (. per cent) with . per cent of the vote. The difference between its share of seats and share of votes was less than Labour had achieved in each of six elections from to . Figure . shows the deviation from proportionality in successive elections.
AMS S P
.................................................................................................................................. The Labour Government during the – Parliament proposed legislation to establish a Scottish Assembly which would be elected by FPTP though unsuccessful
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amendments were moved in the Commons and Lords to change the system. Opponents of devolution during the referendum argued that the electoral system would allow for Labour dominance, and especially the dominance of Labour in west-central Scotland. The extent to which this argument resonated with voters is unclear, although it had an impact on subsequent debates on devolution. The electoral system adopted for use in the Scottish Parliament had been the subject of intense debate in the Constitutional Convention meeting from (Convery and Lundberg ). Labour and Liberal Democrats were the two main participants in the Convention, each with historically different views on electoral systems. Labour had long supported FPTP and the Liberal Democrats were supporters of STV. A number of factors led to the adoption of AMS. As noted above, the FPTP electoral system for the proposed Scottish Assembly was believed to have undermined devolution in the referendum. Labour was less committed to FPTP after another defeat in the general election. The Labour Party conference agreed to the establishment of a working party on electoral systems given that the party was committed to creating a Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, and Regional Assemblies in England as well as an elected second chamber. The Working Group, under Raymond Plant, produced a report before the election which recommended keeping FPTP to ensure constituency accountability but with additional seats to ensure a greater degree of proportionality. Three reasons were presented: the legitimacy of the Parliament required a degree of pluralism that would not be created by what might be seen as a ‘one-party state’; even Working Group members who were otherwise unsympathetic to proportional representation accepted that the Constitutional Convention had coalesced around the need for an alternative system; and it was accepted that the Scottish Parliament was sui generis, quite different from Westminster (Plant : –). Self-interest might have inclined Labour to support FPTP but there was sufficient concern inside the Labour Party that the system which had worked for it for over a generation could work against it in the future. Short-term gain came up against potential long-term loss and as Michael Forsyth, the Conservative Scottish Secretary, frequently pointed out ‘devolution was not just for Christmas’. The prospect of an SNP overall majority won with a minority of Scottish votes demanding independence could not have been far from Labour minds. Other considerations would have been the desire to ensure that the Liberal Democrats would become involved in the Constitutional Convention and that the leadership in London, under Neil Kinnock, was open to the idea of electoral reform with Scotland potentially leading the way. The Constitutional Convention’s route to adopting AMS involved intense deliberation around the theme of inclusion and ‘new politics’ (Chapters and in this Handbook). An early report identified key principles: (a) that it produces results in which the number of seats for various parties is broadly related to the number of votes cast for them; (b) that it ensures, or at least takes effective positive action to bring about, equal representation of men and women, and encourages fair representation of ethnic and other minority groups;
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(c) (d) (e) (f)
that it preserves a real link between the member and his/her constituency; that it is as simple as possible to understand; that it ensures adequate representation of less populous areas; and that the system be designed to place the greatest possible power in the hands of the electorate. (Constitutional Convention : )
These were mutually incompatible principles and compromises had to be made. Agreement was reached on the Additional Member System. This provides that some MPs are elected in constituencies under First-Past-The-Post, with additional members elected on party lists on a regional basis. Regional seats are allocated to the parties so that, in each region, the total number of seats for each party is proportional to the votes obtained by the regional lists. Parties gaining a lot of constituency seats might expect to gain fewer regional seats. The constituency–list MSPs ratio was important as this would determine the extent of proportionality. This was settled in a private meeting between the leaders of the Scottish Liberal Democrats and Scottish Labour with agreement on seventy-three constituency and fifty-six (seven in each of Scotland’s eight regions) list MSPs for a total of . The challenge for the parties was to create strategies taking account of the regional list element that had never been present in previous elections. This was less of an issue for Labour in the first elections held in when, based on the experience of previous elections to the Commons and polling data, it expected to gain most FPTP seats and few regional list seats. The Liberal Democrats, ironically as the party most closely associated with electoral reform, were likely to perform well in constituencies and thereby not do so well on the lists whilst both the SNP and especially the Conservatives would expect most of their seats to be won on the regional lists. Focus on constituencies still made sense in the early years for Labour as it was unlikely to be rewarded with list seats in most regions. By contrast, the SNP needed to build up support in constituencies to challenge Labour at some future election whilst also ensuring that its list vote held up well to ensure it won seats. This did not mean that a party which won all constituencies in a region could not also win a list seat in the same region but this would be challenging. This is illustrated when comparing the and elections. In , Labour won fifty-three constituencies with . per cent of the constituency vote. Labour prohibited members standing for both constituency and list though this rule was relaxed subsequently. In , the SNP won the same number of constituencies but with . per cent of the constituency vote. Labour’s highly efficient constituency vote in made it difficult for the party to win list seats. Labour’s three list seats in that election were all in the Highlands and Islands region. But the SNP’s high list vote in meant that it won sixteen additional list seats, including a seat in North East Scotland where it had taken all constituencies with . per cent of the list vote. What had been thought highly unlikely had happened. A party had won an overall majority in Holyrood. That highpoint for the SNP meant it had a majority to implement its manifesto including the commitment to an independence referendum which it had been unable
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to deliver on in when it first took office but as a minority government. The Holyrood election was held in the shadow of the Brexit referendum. The Conservatives presented themselves as offering strong opposition to the SNP and independence, appealing across Scotland, picking up four constituencies, and doubling its number of list seats to become the second party in Holyrood. The SNP managed to increase its number of constituencies by six but lost twelve of its sixteen list seats resulting in it having to form a minority government. A key difference that damaged the SNP was that whilst its constituency vote increased slightly, its list vote fell, making it difficult under the system’s rules to hold onto list seats won five years before.
STV L G
.................................................................................................................................. A Commission under former local government chief executive, Sir Neil McIntosh, to explore the working relationship between local government, the Scottish Parliament, and Scottish Executive was set up after the devolution referendum which reported just after the first elections to the new Parliament (McIntosh ). Amongst its recommendations, it suggested an immediate review of the electoral system and that the existing FPTP system be replaced with a more proportional system. McIntosh suggested that the criteria used to determine the electoral system should be proportionality; councillor–ward link; fair provision for independents; allowances for geographical diversity; and a close fit between council wards and natural communities. It suggested consideration should be given to the Additional Member System, the Single Transferable Vote, and the Alternative Vote system. The Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition assisted the case for local government electoral reform as the Liberal Democrats had been long-term advocates of reform. A working group, under Richard Kerley, on ‘renewing local democracy’ was set up shortly after the formation of the coalition and published its report in June . The group concluded that ‘STV best meets the requirements of our remit’ on the two key criteria of proportionality and councillor–ward link (Kerley : ). AMS was thought less attractive for local elections and would require larger wards. Kerley suggested that wards should generally have three to five members though in sparsely populated areas a minimum of two councillors might be appropriate. The Scottish Executive issued a white paper in March , Renewing Local Democracy—The Next Steps. A draft Local Governance (Scotland) Bill was presented in February . Progress on reform had been slow until after the Scottish Parliament elections when the Liberal Democrats gained ground and Labour support declined. Part of the negotiations involved debate on electoral reform for local government. The Scottish Lib Dem conference in demanded legislation to reform the local electoral system and suggested that the party should refuse to be part of a coalition with Labour without this. A working group reported in late on the implementation of STV for local elections (STV Working Group ). Legislation was passed and the first STV
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elections were held in . At the time, concern was expressed that the new STV system would operate on the same day as the next Holyrood elections. The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) () produced a guide for candidates, agents, and parties which explained the operation of STV and how to campaign under the new system. Whereas it made most sense to concentrate campaign efforts in marginal seats under FPTP, there was logic in campaigning vigorously across a broader range of seats under STV. A key question for parties was the number of candidates standing in each ward. Whilst the main parties tended to contest all constituencies under FPTP, it did not make sense to contest all available elected positions in each ward under STV. The ERS advice was to consider a range of factors: how many people are strong supporters of the party; how many people might vote for one of the party’s candidates because of personal or other factors; how is support for the party and for individual candidates is distributed throughout the area; whether supporters of other candidates and parties are prepared to give candidates transfers and if so which candidate is most attractive to transfers (Electoral Reform Society ). It would be highly unusual for any party to win all three seats in a ward. In the first elections under STV, according to a report from the Electoral Reform Society, the SNP could have done even better had they put up more candidates’ (Electoral Reform Society ). Over time, parties have become more adept at devising strategies and determining the number of candidates to be put forward. Fears had been expressed that the electorate would find STV confusing when it was introduced in but research suggests that the electorate has had little difficulty understanding how to vote (Bennie and Clark ; Clark and Bennie ; Denver et al. ; Clark ), even if the process of counting votes may be largely unknown to voters. The count can take a long time if conducted by hand in the traditional manner of election counts using FPTP and so ballot papers are scanned and counted electronically to speed up the process. In , under . per cent of ballot papers were rejected, mainly because voters expressed more than one first preference. Rejected ballots are a crude measure of voter comprehensional though it is worth noting there were variations including . per cent in Glasgow (Bochel and Denver ). This is higher than the . per cent rejected ballots in Scotland at the UK General Election, the lowest recorded of any component of the UK, in under FPTP (Electoral Commission ). There was confusion in but this was not due to the introduction of STV so much as holding the local elections on the same day as the elections to the Scottish Parliament with different electoral systems operating. The main cause of confusion was the design of the ballot paper for the Scottish Parliament elections (Carman et al. ). An issue that has emerged with STV is the extent to which voters are influenced by the candidates’ place on the ballot paper (Curtice ; Curtice and Marsh ). Candidates with surnames near the start of the alphabet from the same party are at an advantage over candidates of the same party with surnames at the end of the alphabet. At the most recent local elections in , the pattern of ‘alphabet’ voting evident five years before was again evident (Bochel and Denver : ).
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Table 11.3 Use of STV Preferences, 2017 Local Elections, % Preferences available % who used them
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
100 85.4 60.6 28.6 18.1 14.5 12.7 11.2 10.1 9.5 7.7 7.4
Note: The figures are the percentage of voters who had the option of expressing this number of preferences and actually did so. Source: Bochel and Denver (2017: 10).
Another feature of STV is the opportunity not only to express preferences between candidates of the same party but to opt for candidates of different parties. In some places such as Malta where STV has been used, the ‘leakage’ of party support as expressed in preferences is minimal, allowing parties to put up the same number of candidates as seats available, or in some cases more to give the electorate maximum choice. In the Scottish local elections, almost per cent of voters only used their first preference. The number of candidates in each ward varied across Scotland with per cent of wards having at least three candidates (see Table .). The significance of the system was also evident in the proportion of first preferences won by each party with the Conservatives outpolling Labour in this respect but ending up with fewer council seats. The main consequence of STV in local elections has been the increased likelihood of councils having no single party with overall control. Following the first elections under STV in , Labour retained overall control of two councils—Glasgow and North Lanarkshire—whereas it had had overall control of thirteen of Scotland’s thirty-two councils before the election. In part this reflected the swing away from Labour to the SNP but there was also an electoral system effect which reduced the likelihood of parties gaining a significantly higher proportion of seats compared with first preference votes than would have occurred if these first preferences had been expressed in a simple plurality system. It also meant that smaller parties were more likely to gain seats on councils where previously they would have struggled to have gained representation.
C
.................................................................................................................................. What then, are the main lessons of elections in Scotland? First, a multilevel polity has resulted in multiple electoral worlds that voters must navigate, with variations across all features of electoral life. Second, change has been something of a constant, with alterations to the timing, franchise, and electoral system, often in reaction to changes made at other electoral levels. Nor does this chapter capture the full extent of change. The Scottish Parliament Islands Act allows for one- and two-member wards for local elections in island (Orkney, Shetland, and Western Isles) councils as well as
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hybrid island–mainland councils (Highland, Argyll and Bute, North Ayrshire), which means more boundary reviews for the LGBCS. The legislative proposals for electoral reform on which the government has consulted have not included a change to the size of the Scottish Parliament nor to its electoral system but it has raised the possibility of extending the franchise for Scottish Parliament elections as well as the possibility of creating two- and five-member electoral wards across all thirty-two local authorities. More change, clearly, is coming. Third, there is a likelihood that the electorate will change. All parties at Westminster, apart from the Conservatives, are committed to votes for - and -year-olds and there are likely to be implications of citizenship, including voting rights, for people from the European Union after Brexit. Fourth, the long experiment with different electoral systems especially since devolution is likely to continue. This relates closely to the learning process that has been occurring as experience of the different systems develops. This learning may, of course, act as an impediment as parties are unable to agree on reforms, given that the key to any party’s support for electoral reform relates to its prospects under a reformed system. Finally one key lesson learned by all parties (and to a certain extent, pollsters) is that the dynamic effects of electoral systems means that tactics and strategies adopted in one election may be redundant or at least less useful in the next.
R Bennie, L. and Clark, A. . ‘The Transformation of Local Politics? STV and the Scottish Local Government Elections’, Representation, : –. Bochel, H. and Denver, D. . Report on Scottish Council Elections . London: Electoral Commission. Available at: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/ //-Scottish-Council-elections-Report.pdf. Brand, J., Mitchell, J., and Surridge, P. . ‘Will Scotland Come to the Aid of the Party?’, in A. Heath, R. Jowell, and J. Curtice (eds), Labour’s Last Chance? The Election and Beyond, Aldershot: Dartmouth. Carman, C., Mitchell, J., and Johns, R. . ‘The Unfortunate Natural Experiment in Ballot Design: The Scottish Parliamentary Elections of ’, Electoral Studies, : –. Clark, A. . ‘Second Time Lucky? The Continuing Adaptation of Voters and Parties to the Single Transferable Vote in Scotland’, Representation, : –. Clark, A. and Bennie, L. . ‘Electoral Reform and Party Adaptation: The Introduction of the Single Transferable Vote in Scotland’, Political Quarterly, : –. Constitutional Convention. . Towards Scotland’s Parliament: A Report To The Scottish People By The Scottish Constitutional Convention. Edinburgh: Scottish Constitutional Convention. Convery, A. and Lundberg, T.C. . ‘Rational Choice Meets the New Politics: Choosing the Scottish Parliament’s Electoral System’, Government and Opposition: An International Journal of Comparative Politics***. Curtice, J. . Scottish Local Government Elections: Report and Analysis. London: Electoral Reform Society. Available at: https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/sites/default/files/ -Scottish-Local-Government-Elections.pdf.
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Curtice, J. and Marsh, M. . ‘Confused or Competent? How Voters use the STV Ballot Paper’, Electoral Studies, : –. Denver, D., Clark, A., and Bennie, L. . ‘Voter Reactions to a Preferential Ballot: The Scottish Local Elections’, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, : –. Electoral Commission. . Analysis of Cases of Alleged Electoral Malpractice in the UK in . London: Electoral Commission. Available at: http://www.electoralcommission.org. uk/__data/assets/pdf_file///Analysis-of-alleged-cases-of-electoral-malpracticein-.pdf. Electoral Commission. . Analysis of Cases of Alleged Electoral Fraud in the UK in . London: Electoral Commission. Available at: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__ data/assets/pdf_file///Fraud-allegations-data-report-.pdf. Electoral Commission. a. Analysis of Cases of Alleged Electoral Fraud in the UK in . London: Electoral Commission. Available at: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__ data/assets/pdf_file///Fraud-allegations-data-report-.pdf. Electoral Commission. b. UK Parliamentary General Election, June . London: Electoral Commission. Available at: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/ pdf_file///UKPGE--electoral-data-report.pdf. Electoral Reform Society. . Campaigning Under the Single Transferable Vote Revised Edition, nd edition. Edinburgh: Electoral Reform Society. Electoral Reform Society. . Local Authority Elections in Scotland. Edinburgh: Electoral Reform Society. Available at: https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ //-Scottish-local-elections.pdf. Farrell, D. . Electoral Systems, nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kerley, R. . The Report of the Renewing Local Democracy Working Group. Edinburgh: The Stationery Office. McIntosh, Sir N. (chair). . Moving Forward: Local Government and the Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: The Stationery Office. Plant, R. . ‘The Plant Report: A Retrospective’, Representation, : –. STV Working Group. . Single Transferable Working Group Final Report. Available at: http://www.gov.scot/resource/doc//.pdf.
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......................................................................................................................
......................................................................................................................
, , ,
I
.................................................................................................................................. S live, simultaneously, in four polities. They are resident in communities nested within one of Scotland’s thirty-two local authorities, as well as Scottish, British, and European polities. They are multilevel citizens who can cast ballots in different electoral contests but can also seek to engage with politics and policy at different levels. Some of these arenas have interested researchers more than others, and so we know a lot more about how and why Scots engage with politics at the devolved and UK level than at the local or European level, and we also know a lot more about engagement with formal politics—and particularly voting—than with informal politics. This is reflected in the theories that we typically use to understand political behaviour in a multilevel context, four of which are particularly useful in helping us to understand how Scottish voting behaviour fits within a wider comparative framework. These include the notion of firstand second-order elections, balance theory, split-level citizenship and the importance of electoral cycles. The basic premise of first- and second-order election theory is that voters view certain contests as more important than others, because those elections have more at stake, both on account of their ability to deliver a decisive winner and because the eventual winner will control significant policy areas that are perceived to influence people’s lives (Reif and Schmitt ). In these important, first-order, elections, voters will be more likely to vote, will pay more attention to election issues and party policy, and will tend to cast a ballot for true rivals for government. In second-order elections, by contrast, voters will pay less attention, in part because the media and the parties
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will pay less attention and the costs of being informed are higher. The distinction between first and second-order elections is embedded within Downs’ () rational perspective, that individuals will pay attention when there is more at stake and the costs of doing so are low. European elections are perceived to be second-order elections because they do not elect ‘national’ (by which the authors mean ‘state-wide’) governments but this would also apply to elections to sub-state legislatures, local elections, by-elections or elections to upper chambers. For individuals there are several consequences to this. They will be less likely to vote in second-order elections and, if they do go to the polls, their decisions are driven more by state-wide politics than by the issues, policies, or performance of the second-order government actually being elected. In this respect, second-order elections serve as referendums on state government performance and the extent to which those (firstorder) governments are punished or rewarded depends in part on the timing of the second-order election relative to the first-order contest. In the honeymoon period after a new government is elected, it is hypothesized, state governing parties will do well in second-order contests. Midway through the electoral cycle this is less likely to be the case. The other assumption is that, in second-order elections, because there is perceived to be less at stake, voters will more likely to experiment with supporting smaller parties who stand no chance of government formation. We would expect parties competing in second-order elections to play to cleavages present in first-order contests and would also expect it to be harder for them to attract attention to their campaigns. With respect to system effects we would expect lower levels of turnout than in typical first-order elections. Two other efforts to explain voting behaviour in multilevel electoral contests suggest that voters consciously provide balance to the political system as a whole. This can work across the houses of a parliament, for example, the US House of Representatives and the Senate. In a multilevel context this can, in theory, lead voters to provide partisan balance across the whole political system. The classic example of such behaviour would include Quebec voters backing the separatist Parti Québécois (PQ) in the provincial election, supporting the Liberal party in the (minority Conservative) and (majority Liberal) elections, voting No in the referendum on sovereignty-association, then re-electing the PQ in . Whilst these patterns are easier to track in the aggregate it is less clear whether voters are, at an individual level, consciously attempting to balance the system or whether other motivations result in different electoral preferences in different electoral arenas. One possibility, is that voters have a sense of split-level citizenship, with an ability to evaluate policy responsibility and attribute reward and blame in different electoral areas. In such an arrangement, sub-state elections need not be second-order contests and could instead serve as first-order contests alongside (or indeed instead of) state elections. Researchers of Scottish elections have long argued that with respect to vote choice as well as turnout, sub-state elections need not be second-order contests (Jeffery and Hough ; Henderson and McEwen ; Carman et al. ). We will return to the evidence for such claims later in the chapter.
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, .
W I P B?
.................................................................................................................................. In , the Scottish Election Study (SES) team asked about levels of political interest in recent elections as well as various other high profile events. The results show that selfreported levels of political interest were high, and highest for devolved elections. Eighty per cent of respondents said they were very or fairly interested in the Scottish Parliament election later that month, compared with per cent who reported being interested in the UK general election the previous year and per cent for the referendum on the Alternative Vote. Interest in the Scottish Premier League title race, the X Factor and the recent royal wedding were all considerably lower at per cent, per cent and per cent respectively. It is one thing to be interested in politics, and another to participate. If we want to know who is more likely to engage in politics or who is more likely to vote for particular political parties we have a wealth of academic literature to drawn on. With respect to turnout we can distinguish between predictors of participation that relate to individuals, such as age, gender, income, education, and interest; those that relate to the political or electoral structures in which elections take place such as the electoral system, the various means by which one can cast a ballot, the number of days for campaigns (Chapter in this Handbook); and factors that relate to particular elections including whether it is a close contest, whether there are obvious policy differences between the contenders, whether the leaders or party policies are popular. We know a fair bit about what makes people turn out to cast their ballots and here Scotland is quite typical. If we are looking for evidence that devolved elections are second-order contests then levels of turnout would tend to support this. Since average turnout in the devolved Scottish parliamentary (Holyrood) elections has been per cent, compared to per cent for the equivalent period (in this case since ) for Scottish participation in Westminster elections. Levels of engagement in local and European elections were markedly lower, averaging per cent and per cent respectively. There are important caveats when comparing turnout across types of elections and across time. First, all four types of election here employ different electoral systems: Westminster uses single-member simple plurality (also known as First-Past-The-Post); Holyrood elections are based on a mixed-member proportional system; local council elections use the single transferable vote (or STV); and EU elections have been based on a party list proportional system. Since these systems vary in terms of how intuitive they are for voters in how votes are translated into seats (Chapter in this Handbook) and whether voters fear that their ballots may be wasted, there are implications for turnout. Second, different elections may be held simultaneously—as with local and devolved elections from to . This likely served to increase levels of participation in local elections (judging by the drop below per cent in ) rather than to depress turnout in Holyrood elections, although this also dropped slightly in . Third, we know from research on turnout that as opportunities to vote increase—in other words as the number of democratic events increases—participation levels can drop.
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84.6
90 80
Electoral Turnout
70
67.2 60.4
60 50 40 30 20
Local
Holyrood
UK
Referendums
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
0
1997
10
EU
. Turnout in Elections and Referendums in Scotland, –
This perhaps explains the chronically low levels of engagement in Swiss elections. Scots have been to the polls six times in four years, whereas for the equivalent period one decade earlier (–) they went twice (albeit for three elections). If anything, however, participation levels have increased since , a point to which we will return below. Nonetheless, there are two clear patterns driving variations in turnout across elections in Scotland. One is the point highlighted by the first- and second-order thesis, about the powers available to the body being elected. The second is less to do with what is formally at stake and more about what is emotionally at stake in an election. Research on individuallevel predictors of participation show that, as attachment to, or identity with, the polity increases, so too does participation. Furthermore, in a comparative context, sub-state regions with higher levels of jurisdictional autonomy, and greater regional or national distinctiveness both in demographic or cultural distinctiveness and the presence of nationally specific parties leads to greater turnout increases (Henderson and McEwen ). Understanding the motivation of non-voters, in Scotland as elsewhere, is not easy. With the switch to online surveys and the use of volunteer panels of possible survey respondents, many of whom tend to be more engaged politically, finding a sufficient sample of non-voters is difficult. This in turn complicates efforts to identify the characteristics that distinguish those who participate from those who do not. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that voting is the kind of socially valued behaviour that survey respondents are sometimes prone to say that they have done even if they have not (Sciarini and Goldberg ). We do, however, have evidence about a number of, what have been established in previous research as, key drivers of turnout. The most powerful of these is a sense that voting is a civic duty. The SES routinely asks whether respondents agree that citizens have a duty to vote. Predictably, we have always found clear majorities in Scotland saying yes ( per cent in , per cent in
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, .
), with an eight-point jump in the proportion saying they agree strongly over that nine-year period ( per cent in , per cent in ). The earlier survey also included questions about a sense of satisfaction with voting ( per cent), as well as whether those in a respondent’s network feel that voting is a waste of time ( per cent). Another important prompt to turnout is a sense that the election result will make a difference, and this depends partly on the ideological or policy gap between the parties. At the time of the Scottish Parliament election, only per cent of respondents reported seeing ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of difference between the SNP and Labour contenders for office in Holyrood—which was actually down from per cent in . This helps to explain why, despite the heightened participatory mood in Scotland following the referendum, the turnout in was unspectacular.
S V B
.................................................................................................................................. There are two axes to party space in Scotland, one left–right, the other constitutional. Before and after devolution this constitutional spectrum has run from the status quo to independence but the level of congestion—or the extent to which parties are clustered tightly together in one part of the spectrum—has changed. Before devolution, the majority of Scottish parties supported change whilst the Conservatives alone were opposed. Now the SNP stands alone amongst the larger parties as the sole proponent of independence.¹ Second, Scots have typically expressed divergent partisan preferences across electoral levels, tending to back the Labour party in Westminster elections but more likely to back the SNP in Holyrood (see Carman et al. ). This is not to say that a majority of Scots have voted for the SNP in Holyrood elections since but merely that the electoral performance of the SNP was stronger in Holyrood elections—typically greater than per cent—and lower in Westminster elections— typically lower than per cent. Figure . shows trends in support for the main parties in Scotland in UK elections since . The results show the extent to which voters in Scotland have tended to back the Labour party until the election, which marked a departure from ‘politics as usual’ given the remarkable surge for the SNP. Notwithstanding the drop in SNP support from per cent of the vote in to per cent in this figure is still higher than the previous high watermark of October . When we compare these results to the voting patterns in Holyrood we can see parallel trends. The most obvious is that from to SNP support has risen sharply (in both Holyrood and Westminster elections), whilst Labour support has fallen, and the rate at which it has done so has accelerated since . The independence referendum cemented—and introduced to Westminster elections—a realignment whereby the SNP became the ¹ The Scottish Greens, who have held seats in Holyrood since the first session in , also support independence.
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60 50
Percentage
40 30 20 10 0
1974
1979
1983
1987 Labour
1992
1997 Con
2001
2005
SNP
2010
2015
2017
Lib Dem
. Scottish Voting in UK Elections 50 45 40
Percentage
35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0
1974
1979
1983
1987 Labour
1992 Con
1999 SNP
2003
2007
2011
2016
Lib Dem
. Voting in Scottish Parliament Elections (Constituency Vote) –
dominant party in the erstwhile Labour heartlands of the urban west of Scotland and the central belt. It also triggered a recovery of Conservative support to levels not seen since the late s. Between and , Labour’s plunge in fortunes occurred as the SNP vote share increased (Figure .). Between and , however, the SNP’s drop in fortunes occurred as Conservative support increased. But these are aggregate trends and may mislead about the patterns of vote-switching that occur at the individual level. More detailed analysis of the General Election indicates that most of the switching was from the SNP to Labour and from Labour to the Conservatives.
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, .
W I S V C? ..................................................................................................................................
Research on voting began by pitting three explanations for vote choice against each other. By one explanation votes were swayed by the demographic or socio-economic groups to which they belonged with political parties seeking to gain advantage amongst certain ‘types’ of voters. Parties could align along religious, linguistic, or class lines. By another explanation, voters are driven by a rational assessment of the party that best protects their interests. In one variant of this, we would see voters evaluate the policy positions of different parties, identify their own preferences, and cast a ballot for the party closest in ‘issue space’ to their own view. The first, sociological, explanation is very useful for explaining stability from one election to the next whilst the second, rational, or economic, approach can explain the different choices that individuals (and electorates) make from one election to the next. An alternative view suggests that there are layers of influences on vote choice, some more proximate to the election, such as attitudes to election issues or assessments of leaders, their competence, their performance in debates, the results of recent opinion polls, and more stable features including identities, such as partisan identification, but also national identity, as well as demographic or socio-economic characteristics such as age, gender, and education. Such a ‘funnel of causality’ suggests that these different blocks of predictors on vote choice can each exert independent impacts, with some more important in certain elections than others. Three other, related, explanations are worth noting. The rational measurement of preferences referred to above can be disaggregated into positional and directional forms. In positional (or spatial) voting, individuals will measure their own preferences and vote for the closest party. A typical example might be on tax. Imagine three parties: one offering to cut income tax by p in the pound, one by p, and another offering to increase tax by p in the pound. If your preferred policy is to cut taxes a little but not a lot—by p, for example—then you would vote for the second party listed above. In directional spatial voting, issues can be broken down into binary choices, with voters casting ballots for the clearest statement on an issue that fits their preference (within an accepted region). For tax policy this could mean raising or lowering taxes, but a more relevant example might be constitutional preferences. Someone opposed to independence would, according to this approach, cast a ballot for the party with the clearest statement on this issue. When surveys ask voters for the most important issue, it is often because researchers are trying to determine if they are casting ballots for the party closest to their own position on the issue that matters most to them. Different voters have different issue priorities as well as different policy preferences and, critically, might come to different evaluations of parties as a result. Valence voting, by comparison, is tied to notions of competence. Here, voters typically agree on the main issue facing the country and judge parties and their leaders based on their ability to deliver effective policy on that issue. Typically these include large issues such as managing the economy but could also include crime or education.
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The electoral choice then, is not between a party that wants to improve the economy versus one that wishes to prioritize education, but amongst parties all of whom profess to best manage the economy. If voters all agree that managing the economy is the most important goal, then the party most likely to win will be the one most able to convince voters of their competence on managing the economy. In multilevel states such as the UK, ‘standing up for’ one’s particular region or sub-state nation can be a consensus issue on which competence is judged. These theories are useful not merely because they have helped to structure academic debates about vote choice for the past fifty years and therefore are relevant to anyone interested in voting whether within or outwith Scotland, but because the behaviour of Scottish voters has tended to follow certain theories more than others at different times and, arguably, at different electoral levels. One might expect that identity politics would play a role in Scottish voting and that, prior to , spatial voting, and in particular, positional voting would be less prevalent. This stems, first, from the limited fiscal autonomy of the Scottish Parliament. Positional voting lends itself to economic issues and in particular to policies on tax. With some policies it is very hard to evaluate whether a party is closer or farther away because the important issue is not degrees of support but whether they support a policy at all (such as the ‘named person’ legislation, or testing for P children) or they do not. With policies on taxing and spending, however, it is possible to identify a range of positions. It is therefore a classic positional issue. Whilst the Scottish Parliament always had the power to vary tax by three pence in the pound, parties avoided using this in a sort of self-denying ordinance, and so election campaigns were typically spending campaigns, rather than focused on a balance of wealth creation and spending. This dampened the likelihood of positional voting. Second, due in part to limited control over economic levers, the valence issues have tended to dominate and the key valence criterion, rather than management of the economy, has been a general impression of governing competence and a reputation for ‘standing up for Scotland’. Parties doubted on the latter count have tended to struggle badly in Scottish elections (Carman et al. ). In contrast with Holyrood elections, we would expect Westminster elections to lend themselves more to positional voting, given the range of tax and spend powers at the disposal of the UK government. Neither of the two main rivals for government at the UK level advocated independence and therefore supporters of independence in Scotland would be faced, in Westminster elections, with the choice of backing a party that supports their constitutional preferences, or backing one of two possible rivals for government. One possible explanation for the lower rate of success for SNP candidates in Westminster elections is therefore that voters prioritized picking amongst rivals of government rather than supporting a ‘regional’ and ‘regionalist’ (Brancati ) party. This is compatible with the view that Westminster elections have tended to be firstorder contests for voters, where government formation has been perceived to be (a) salient and (b) prioritized over other issues. In , the SNP formed the largest party in a devolved election. This did not herald a sea change in support for independence. The improved performance for the SNP
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, .
from the third devolved elections was attributed at the time to valence considerations. The Scottish election study team, for example, argued that the SNP won the election that year by persuading enough voters that it was a credible party of government and that it offered a more positive and Scottish-oriented agenda than Labour (Johns et al. , ). The SNP was perceived to be best able to stand up for Scotland’s interests, which meant not only most willing to stand up for Scotland’s interests but also most able to defend them. Curtice et al. () note that the election was not just one of SNP gaining votes but Labour losing them, in part due to policies (notably the war in Iraq) pursued by the Westminster Labour Government rather than any particular failings of Scottish Labour as such. By , this general explanation of valence voting in devolved elections was perceived to account for Scottish vote choice, with the SNP winning support not just from those who wanted independence, but (a) as the most competent pro-independence party and (b) the most competent party of government. Again, a vote for the SNP was not necessarily a vote for independence, but a vote reflecting identity preferences, on Scottish issues for a Scottish government, with the SNP best perceived to govern for Scotland (Carman et al. ). There are two possible routes by which the Scottish independence referendum could have influenced voting habits. First, it could have reinforced the importance of valence. In the absence of full powers to manage the economy, valence issues have focused predominantly on the ability of parties to stand up for Scotland. Given the dominance of the constitutional issue in the preceding three years, this particular valence issue could have retained its importance. Second, the expanded powers of the Scottish Parliament, negotiated as part of the Scotland Act but not fully in force until , coupled with additional powers highlighted by the Smith commission, could have brought heightened attention to both taxing and spending and thus greater emphasis on positional voting. Such a change would have signalled a reorientation of Scottish devolved elections, decreasing competition on the constitutional axis and shifting attention to the left–right axis. The evidence suggests, however, that the anticipated shift to positional voting did not occur. In part this is because voters largely misunderstood the tax policies of the different parties, with voters thinking that all parties were to the left of their proposals, and voters perceiving themselves to be to the left of the parties they supported. On competence, the SNP was perceived to be better able to stand up for Scotland, and these figures, replicated in other surveys, received considerable attention at the time. It is worth noting, however, that the SNP was not only perceived to best stand up for Scotland but perceived by voters to be more competent to manage every policy area mentioned (health, justice, even education). The election in had the potential to tip the balance between the importance of the constitutional axis and the left–right axis, but this appears not to have happened. These explanations of voting in Scottish elections do not transfer, wholesale, to the study of Scottish voting in UK elections. Since devolution there has been more limited focus on Scottish voting in UK elections. In part this is a structural issue about data access and attention and, related to this, the fact that the distribution of Scottish seats
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has often provided little by way of excitement. In not a single seat changed hands from the result (despite movement in by-elections). This prompted Mitchell and van der Zwet () to suggest that it was, even in Scotland, a very British election in part because of the issues debated and the emphasis on British leaders’ debates. Viewing figures confirm this with per cent of the Scottish population tuning in to watch the British ITV debate between Nick Clegg, David Cameron, and Gordon Brown and less than half that ( per cent) tuning in to watch the equivalent Scottish debate (Mitchell and van der Zwet ). By the General Election, however, the results suggested that Scottish voting behaviour could be explained by some of the very factors influencing vote choice in devolved elections: identity, valence considerations about standing up for Scotland, as well as typically first-order calculations such as opposition to the politics of austerity (Mitchell ). The General Election had a similarly mixed character. On the UK side, Brexit loomed large, and Labour’s late gains were owed largely to voters focusing on the battle between Corbyn’s Labour and May’s Conservatives. On the other hand, Holyrood personalities—notably Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson—were both prominent and seem to have influenced voting decisions, giving a devolved flavour to this non-devolved election.
A S E S O?
.................................................................................................................................. When Reif and Schmitt () suggested that certain elections could be first or second order the assumption was that sub-state elections were, by their very nature, secondorder elections. Since then researchers have sought to evaluate whether Scottish elections are, in fact, second order and the evidence is mixed. On the one hand, levels of participation are lower than in other elections, but there are other signs we might examine. First, we can explore whether voters are casting ballots on the basis of UK policy issues or Scottish issues.² Here we see that a majority of Scots have, from the outset, based their devolved vote on devolved issues, and that that figure has risen from just over six in ten in the first devolved election to around seven in ten voters in the most recent devolved election (Table .). When they explored this issue in the context of the election Carman et al. () argued that with each successive devolved election more was perceived to be at stake, and therefore the first- and second-order distinction should be less obvious. ² Of course, the distinction between purely Scottish and UK issues is not necessarily clear cut. Whilst the structure of the UK’s devolution settlement does create clearer areas of responsibility between the tiers of government than might be found in more complicated federal systems that have evolved over time (e.g. the US), the distinction in the UK system can become muddied. For example, in terms of the size of the Scottish budget, changes to the UK budget (even in areas of reserved power) have distinct implications for the overall size (if not the distribution) of Scotland’s budget.
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, . Table 12.1 Voting on Scottish Issues Per cent claiming Scottish Parliament vote is based on Scottish issues 1999 2003 2007 2011 2016
62 67 71 70 69
Source: SES 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2016.
The corollary of this research question is, of course, whether Westminster elections are truly first-order elections. Whilst turnout is higher, one might make a plausible case that, in their focus on constitutional issues (and specifically on Scotland’s constitutional future) the election had some of the hallmarks of a second-order election. We are, of course, primarily interested in the perceptions and behaviour of voters and whether from their behaviour we can detect whether certain elections are perceived to be first or second order. It is worth noting, however, that political party behaviour can indicate whether they perceived certain electoral arenas to be first or second order. In their analysis of the election, Carman et al. () claimed Labour were deliberately courting a second-order vote (by contrasting Labour and Conservative policy records at Westminster) whilst the SNP were campaigning on valence issues. By and , Scottish parties were citing devolved policy achievements, or alleged failings, in an effort to sway voters in Westminster elections. Journalists grilled Alex Salmond in particular on the alleged failings of SNP government policy in Edinburgh, notably its record on education and poverty. Of course, all elections since have been overshadowed by the constitutional question and, since this concerns relations between Westminster and Holyrood, it is hard to designate this as first or second order. In strict constitutional terms, it is reserved to Westminster. On the other hand, the Scottish Parliament clearly plays a mandating role; moreover, both sides clearly see the ongoing independence debate as the central political issue in Edinburgh. What is not in dispute is the electoral importance of the issue regardless of the body Scots are electing at the time. First, we know that just under one in five voters said they voted tactically in the election, and of these two-thirds said they did so to stop the SNP winning. Furthermore, we know that constitutional preferences structured voting preferences. Notwithstanding long-held deviation between Holyrood and Westminster voting preferences, since we have seen greater alignment between the two electoral levels. We also know that we are seeing Westminster voting preferences change to become more similar to Holyrood preferences and that constitutional preferences play an important part in that shift. Figure . distinguishes between No voters and Yes voters in and compares how they voted in with how they voted in . The results show that for the
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No voters
100%
Yes voters
100% 50%
50% 0%
Con in 2010
Lab in 2010
LD in 2010 Con in 2015
SNP in 2010 Lab in 2015
0%
Con in 2010
LD in 2015
Lab in 2010
LD in 2010
SNP in 2010
SNP in 2015
. Vote Switching from to by Independence Vote
group that voted No in and had previously backed the SNP then a majority defected for other parties by the time of the election. In the case of the SNP, per cent of its No voters switched to unionist parties. Of course, other political currents may carry voters to another party even when constitutional preferences and party policy align. Amongst No voters who backed the Liberal Democrats in , a majority switched by as that party’s vote collapsed. Crucially, though, this is movement within the blocs on either side of the independence issue—very few ‘No’-voting Liberal Democrats switched to the SNP. By contrast, if we look at the distribution of preferences amongst Yes voters, those who backed unionist parties in voted in huge proportions for the SNP in .
D I R L G L E?
.................................................................................................................................. Another contemporary debate explores the impact of the referendum on political engagement. Looking only at engagement in formal politics we can see that an increased number of individuals joined the electoral register during the referendum campaign and this extension was not limited to - and -year-olds included in the franchise for the referendum. By international standards the referendum campaign was a long one, and researchers have found evidence of increased engagement and policy learning over the course of that campaign. It is worth determining whether there has been a lasting effect. To explore this we turn to four possible forms of engagement: levels of political interest, anticipated engagement, rates of turnout, and informal participation. Since the SES team has asked individuals to evaluate their own level of interest in politics or in particular democratic events. The questions are typically asked before and after the devolved election, and so we might expect that the survey would elevate support for a current event compared to one more distant in memory. In addition, the successive surveys have focused on different levels of elections at different times so trends across the entire period are not always available. The results suggest that interest
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, .
Table 12.2 Political Interest Across Elections 2007–2017 Politics in general 2007 2011 2016 2017
Current Scottish Parliament election
n/a n/a 74 75
81 80 82 n/a
Most recent UK election
Most recent local elections
n/a 77 80 n/a
76 n/a n/a 80
Source: SES 2007, SES 2011, SES 2016 waves 1 and 3 (2017).
Table 12.3 Political Interest Before and After the 2014 Referendum UK politics in general 2014 wave 1 2014 wave 2 2015 wave 3
6.5 6.8 6.9
Scottish politics in general 7.1 7.4 7.1
Scottish referendum 8.4 8.6 n/a
International politics 5.6 6.1 n/a
Source: SRS waves 1 (pre-2014), 2 (post-2014), and 3 (2015).
in politics—as measured by the proportion of respondents reporting ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of interest—is fairly steady, and we see no evidence of the referendum leading to a substantial jump in self-reported interest from to (Table .). Given the high proportion reporting at least ‘quite a lot’ of interest in the earlier years, it is worth examining interest in greater detail. For the referendum, the Scottish Referendum Study used a to scale to assess possible movements in interest. Table . presents averages of the to interest measure across the Scottish electorate. If we compare results before (wave ) and after (wave ) the referendum, we can see increases in interest across all the different domains. When we polled again one year later we found that interest had returned to pre-referendum levels with respect to Scottish politics and remained about the same for UK politics, though Scottish interest marginally trumped interest in UK politics across all three survey waves. Immediately after the referendum we also asked people whether they felt that the referendum had made a difference to their levels of engagement. We first asked individuals to evaluate whether they felt that the referendum had made them more active and then asked whether they felt that they, or Scotland as a whole, would stay more engaged in politics. The results in Table . show an initial increase in anticipated engagement, but indicated that this was overwhelmingly amongst Yes voters rather than No voters. In enduring effects we see that there are still meaningful distinctions between Yes and No
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Table 12.4 Post-referendum Engagement in Politics Referendum has made me more involved3
In the future, Self more involved4
In the future, Scotland more involved
2014 Total Yes voters No voters
37 50 25
54 66 32
41 54 17
2015 Total Yes voters No voters
35 62 21
695 80 49
64 76 41
2017 Total Yes voters No voters
30 41 22
79 81 75
61 66 52
Sources: SRS wages 2 (post-2014), and 3 (2015).
voters after the referendum. We did not ask these questions before and so cannot know for sure whether there were pre-existing differences between Yes and No voters. However, a quick check on levels of formal participation suggests that Yes-leaning and No-leaning voters in were not markedly different in their levels of political interest.⁶ We can also look at differing levels of engagement with formal politics, which can include voter turnout, voter registration, belonging to political parties or a sense of partisan identification. To control for the effects of participation in different electoral arenas we can focus purely on turnout in devolved elections. Here we see an increase in turnout between and . The overall trend is for an increase over the period for which we have data. ³ Full text for the question reads as follows: ‘This question is about the effect of the referendum campaign on the Scottish public’s involvement and interest in politics. Which of these statements best describes your own situation?: I didn’t notice it making any difference to anyone; I noticed others getting more involved but it didn’t make any difference to me; It got me a bit more involved; It got me a lot more involved.’ The figures in this column include a bit more and a lot more involved. ⁴ Full text for the question reads as follows: : ‘And what do you think will happen to levels of political involvement—both your own and in the Scottish public as a whole? Will stay more involved; Will go back to normal’ : ‘And, in the year since the referendum, what do you think happened to levels of political involvement—both your own and in the Scottish public as a whole? Stayed more involved; Went back to normal’. : And what do you think will continue to happen to levels of political involvement in Scotland—both your own and in the Scottish public as a whole—in the future? Question asked of ‘Yourself’ and ‘The Scottish public’. The data in these columns include ‘more involved’. ⁵ In we asked individuals to reflect on whether, since the referendum, they had become more involved. The figures are, per cent for self staying more involved, per cent perceiving Scotland stayed more involved. For self staying more involved it was Yes voters , No voters . For Scottish public per cent of Yes voters think Scotland stayed more involved and per cent of No voters think Scotland stayed more involved. ⁶ In , amongst the respondents who wanted to keep the Scottish Parliament with its existing powers, per cent were interested in the Scottish Parliament election, per cent were interested in the UK election and per cent reported voting in the devolved elections. Of the equivalent figures for the respondents who wanted Scotland to become independent per cent were interested in the devolved election, per cent interested in the UK elections, and per cent reported voting.
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, .
All of this suggests that, by measures of interest and engagement we see little meaningful difference before and after the referendum for the electorate as a whole. Where we do see a difference is in the levels of engagement of Yes voters and No voters. If the referendum had an impact on political engagement it is largely in the minds of, and through the actions of, Yes-supporting Scots.
C
.................................................................................................................................. Scotland offers an interesting case in which to assess the development of a national polity. The founding of the Scottish Parliament in marked a relatively rare event—the establishment, almost out of thin air, of a parliamentary institution within a stable, industrial Western democracy. And whilst twenty years might seem a rather long time, in terms of the development of a major political institution, it might be considered just to be a flash. Instead of settling the constitutional (and independence) question, devolution might be seen to have fanned the flames. Scots have witnessed their parliament grow in size, scope, remit, authority, and controversy. The powers devolved to the parliament have also substantially developed since its inception. Scots, then, have faced quite a substantial learning curve in understanding how, and where, they are governed, the powers held by differing institutions across multiple levels, and how devolution has shaped and moulded those governing arrangements. In that sense, despite the initial rush of academic enthusiasm to understand the Scottish voter, it may be that we are only just beginning to understand fully the extent to which Scots weigh decisions in the polling place based on their (developing) understanding of the political systems. Indeed, studying political behaviour in Scotland today is a little like studying zoology in the aftermath of an asteroidal impact. The sudden impact of the referendum is clear enough; more difficult is to pick out the evolutionary processes that were in operation before that impact and are slowly resuming as the dust settles. In this case, for ‘evolution’ read ‘devolution’. The institution of a parliament and executive in Edinburgh had created a multilevel polity but, in line with the well-known characterization of devolution as ‘a process, not an event’, it took time for Holyrood elections to move slowly along the continuum from second towards first order. The more that the devolved administration did, and the more it was reported in the media, the more it mattered to voters who won Scottish Parliament elections and the more likely they were to vote on ‘Scottish issues’. Holyrood elections were, for want of a better description, increasingly resembling ‘normal’ elections. It would be premature to suggest that Scottish Parliament elections are on course to become Scotland’s first-order elections, however. For one thing, the turnout record remains unimpressive. It is hard to say how much of the upturn between and was fuelled by the referendum, whose boost to Westminster election turnout was very
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clear in but much less so in . What is clear, however, is that the per cent turnout in was unimpressive in absolute terms and relative to those UK general elections. That leads to the second point, which is the continuing importance of Westminster elections. Whether it was voting in record numbers for the SNP in with a view to maximizing Scotland’s influence in the coalition negotiations (that were supposed to follow that election!) or switching to the Conservatives or Labour in in order to support Theresa May’s Brexit or to oppose her austerity, most Scottish voters continue to regard Westminster elections as being about electing Westminster MPs and governments. There is no reason why Scottish voters cannot enjoy two first-order elections provided, at least, that they are held at different times. However, this points away from the hierarchy implicit in the concept of election ‘order’. It is perhaps more sensible to talk about the two major arenas of politics in Scotland, each with its own institutions, events, and personalities. They overlap, of course. Nicola Sturgeon sits at Holyrood but would be a key figure in any coalition negotiations with Labour in London; and we have already discussed the impossibility of cleanly assigning the independence question (even constitutionally, let alone politically) to either the Westminster or Holyrood arenas. So elections in a given arena are not insulated from the other. Moreover, there will be a few ‘arena specialists’: that is, those so much more interested in one arena than the other that it dominates their decision-making at any election. Nonetheless, both the Holyrood and Westminster arenas matter enough to most Scottish voters for their elections to take on a largely first-order character. Moreover, the election showed signs that voters were willing to vote for parties on the other side of the constitutional issue. Brexit took some ‘Yes’ voters into the Conservatives’ hands; the Corbyn surge took some into Labour’s. Yet the electoral imprint of the referendum is still deep. If the picture was a little less clear-cut than in Figure ., it was so only marginally. For every independence supporter that switched to a unionist party, many more stayed with the SNP. And there could hardly be more vivid proof of post-referendum politics than the unprecedented shift of votes from Labour to the Conservatives, as many former Labour supporters found their auld enemy to be the most effective opposition to their new enemy. Crucially, then, those who switched were changing party but not constitutional preference. The stubbornly flat-lining independence polls only confirm what voters will recognize from everyday political life: an entrenched and polarized public. Whilst the rest of the UK learns via Brexit how a keenly fought referendum can polarize opinion, Scots knew already. The two sides of the independence divide are also polarized in terms of political participation. This was already shown by the huge surges in membership of the two main ‘Yes’-supporting parties in the days and weeks after the referendum. Yet party membership is still the province of a small minority. When we look at the wider electorate, there is evidence of increased interest and engagement immediately after the referendum and it is disproportionately amongst supporters of independence. However, the change seems to be in attitudes to, and expectations of, participation rather than activity itself and, as noted, the spike in turnout has already largely
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, .
subsided. This is natural enough: there are good reasons why more intense forms of political participation are minority pursuits, and these quickly reassert themselves. The big question is whether the seeming appetite for activity amongst ‘Yes’ grass roots would translate into mobilization in the event of ‘indyref’. If so, it would again prove a campaigning advantage for that side.
R Brancati, D. . ‘The Origins and Strengths of Regional Parties’, British Journal of Political Science, /: –. Carman, C., Johns, R., and Mitchell, J. . More Scottish than British. The Scottish Parliament Election. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Downs, A. . An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper. Henderson, A. and McEwen, N. . ‘A Comparative Analysis of Voter Turnout in Regional Elections’. Electoral Studies, : –. Jeffery, C. and Hough, D. . ‘Regional Elections in Multi-Level Systems’, European Urban and Regional Studies, /: –. Johns, R., Denver, D., Mitchell, J., and Pattie, C. . ‘Valence Politics in Scotland: Towards an Explanation of the Election’, Political Studies, /: –. Johns, R., Denver, D., Mitchell, J., and Pattie, C. . Voting for a Scottish Government: The Scottish Parliament Election of . Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mitchell, J. . ‘Sea Change in Scotland’, in A. Geddes and J. Tonge (eds), Britain Votes . Oxford: Oxford University Press, –. Mitchell, J. and van der Zwet, A. . ‘A Catenaccio Game: The Election in Scotland’, in A. Geddes and J. Tonge (eds), Britain Votes . Oxford: Oxford University Press, –. Reif, K. and Schmitt, H. . ‘Nine Second-order National Elections: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results’, European Journal of Political Research, : –. Sciarini, P. and Goldberg, A.C. . ‘Turnout Bias in Postelection Surveys: Political Involvement, Survey Participation, and Vote Overreporting’, Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, /: –.
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I
.................................................................................................................................. A Margaret Thatcher () once observed, ‘the Scottish Conservatives are the oldest political party in Scotland, but not a lot of people know this’. It is curious that more than any other party in Scotland, the Scottish Conservatives’ Scottishness has been repeatedly called into question. This questioning reflects a fundamental tension at the heart of the party’s ideology: how far (and how) Scottish distinctiveness can be accommodated whilst still retaining a commitment to the Union. The party’s answers to this question have varied from the invention of administrative devolution (), support for a Scottish Assembly (–), strident opposition to any form of political devolution (–), grudging acceptance of the Scottish Parliament () and, finally, strong proposals for greater fiscal autonomy in Scotland (). The challenge of how to handle the UK’s exit from the EU is the latest manifestation of the enduring autonomy/unity question. There was as much of a ‘Conservative Century’ (Seldon and Ball ) in Scotland as there was in the rest of the UK. However, the s represented a fundamental breach for the party from which it has struggled to recover. Answering the autonomy/unity question has become much more difficult in the context of devolution and an increasingly fragmented UK party system. Nevertheless, the Scottish Conservatives survived the nadir of and were able to wait for something to turn up. This chapter begins by examining the origins and development of the Scottish Conservative Party. Its relative autonomy within the British Conservative Party can be traced to its beginnings as a separate entity that only full merged with the UK party in the s. The decline of the Scottish Conservatives since the high point of has been striking and was at its most marked during the Conservative Governments (–) when Margaret Thatcher became a potent symbol of a foreign
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Englishness. We then look at ideology. Scottish conservatism and, especially, Unionism is ideologically flexible, but it took its cue from the economically liberal direction of the British Conservative Party at the end of the twentieth century. The party’s attitudes towards devolution have in general caused much more discord than its approach to economic policy. These debates pose fundamental questions about the Union and became intertwined in the s with issues of Scottish distinctiveness and identity in a manner that was deeply damaging for the Conservatives. Finally, we examine the Scottish Conservatives’ revival under Ruth Davidson’s leadership and ask how far the party has changed its policies and approach since . The attempt to forge a distinctive Scottish conservatism was abandoned by the party in the s and has only been partially resurrected by the shock of the independence referendum in . Having pulled itself back from the brink in the elections of and , the party now faces the ultimate test of its rehabilitation: can it ever be in government in Scotland?
O D
.................................................................................................................................. The Scottish Conservatives’ origins can be traced to the eighteenth century. As Gerald Warner () explains, the word ‘Tory’ ‘is a corruption of the Irish Gaelic tóiridhe, meaning ‘pursuer’ or ‘brigand’; when applied by the Exclusionists to the supporters of the Catholic prince, James, it had the derogatory implication of ‘Irish papist bandits’ or ‘rebels’. The present day Scottish Conservative Party is in fact an amalgamation of different parties. The split in the Liberal Party in created the Liberal Unionists. In , they merged their organization with the Conservatives to create the Scottish Unionist Party. The ‘Unionist’ name at this point referred to the Union with Ireland and opposition to Irish Home Rule. The party in Scotland was always a separate organization. Indeed, John Maclay served as Secretary of State for Scotland (–) in the UK Conservative Government whilst still officially a ‘National Liberal and Conservative’. In political science terms, therefore, they were formed not from territorial penetration, but by territorial amalgamation (Eliassen and Svaasand ): the separate Scottish party worked together with and then joined what became the larger UK organization. The patchwork of Unionist and Conservative identities persisted until a reorganization in . The party in Scotland was officially renamed the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party and was linked much more closely to the British Conservative Party. Most observers of the party consider this merger and change of name to have been a fundamental strategic error (Seawright ; Dyer ; Kidd ). According to Seawright (: ): ‘A crucial aspect of Unionism was an ability to appeal to powerful symbols in Scottish culture which gave the party a Scottish identity irrespective of its stance on devolution. This the Conservative boo-word could not do.’ For Richard Finlay, the Scottish Conservatives were ‘the most successful organisation in Scottish politics in the period from after the Great War to the mid-s’
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(Finlay : ). The Conservatives benefited from their commitment to having a distinctive voice on economic and social matters that went with the grain of wider Scottish opinion on the need for strong state intervention (Hutchison : ). This stance manifested itself most markedly in the Scottish Conservatives’ attitudes to house-building. From the inter-war period, the party was an enthusiastic backer of the need for social housing. Indeed, as Hutchison (: ) points out, ‘Walter Elliott . . . became so irritated as Scottish Secretary with what he believed to be footdragging by Labour-run municipalities that he set up the Scottish Special Housing Association in , designed to build even more state-subsidised housing stock’. Such policies went hand in hand with a rejection of laissez-faire economics and an embrace of corporatist strategies for improving economic growth. In the post-war period, the Scottish Conservatives thus embraced the prevailing consensus about state intervention. They trumpeted not only their commitment to house-building in contrast to Labour, but also their approach to infrastructure and increased spending in local authorities (Hutchison ). The party pointed to these policies as evidence of ‘standing up for Scotland’. The post-war period was the heyday of the sort of One Nation Conservatism that the Scottish Conservatives could call their own. In addition, the Scottish Conservatives benefited from the multiple identities that could be used to attract support in different areas and elections. They existed mainly by proxy in local government. For instance, the Conservatives on Glasgow City Council in the s identified as ‘Progressives’ (Taylor ), giving a strong local flavour to Conservative themes about lower taxation. The high point of support for the party was the UK general election when it gained . per cent of the vote in Scotland. However, the decline of the party from this point was striking (Seawright ). The nadir was the general election when the Scottish Conservative Party lost all of its MPs. There is no single explanation for Scottish Conservative decline in the latter half of the twentieth century, but we may point to several factors, not all of which were entirely under their control. First, the change of name in deprived the Scottish Conservatives of a potent symbol of their Scottish distinctiveness at just the moment when Scottish nationalism was becoming more important. This change contributed to the conditions under which the idea of Conservatives privileging Britishness over Scottishness could take root. Second, the disparate electoral groups that could unite under the idea of ‘Unionism’ were gradually attracted to other options. Dyer (: ) argues that the Conservatives’ decline in Scotland is explained in part by ‘a waning of the cultural conditions which produced the centre-right coalition which dominated Scottish politics, –, and its fragmentation into Conservatism, Liberalism and Scottish Nationalism’. Relatedly, there is some debate about the precise role of religion in explaining Scottish Conservative decline. The loss of the protestant working-class vote is cited by some scholars as a key explanation for the party’s declining support from the s onwards. As Kendrick and McCrone (: ) argue, ‘Even as late as the s part of the Conservatives’ strength lay in their appeal to sections of the Protestant working class’.
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However, according to David Seawright, ‘the decline in Conservative support has occurred in those of all religions and of none’ (Seawright ). He found that support for the Conservatives amongst protestants remained strong and therefore concluded that ‘the Conservatives are still a protestant party, simply not a very successful one’ (Seawright : ). Finally, and most controversially, there is the ‘Thatcher factor’ and the wider impact of the policies and approach of the Conservative Governments of –. We may split this explanation into three components: the economic impact; the person of Margaret Thatcher; and the idea of the threat to Scottish distinctiveness of ‘alien’ policies imposed by a distant government. On the economic side, the wrenching effects of the Thatcher Governments’ policies on Scotland’s traditional industries would have created political difficulties for any political party. There is a legitimate debate about the economic impact of Thatcherism in Scotland (for revisionist accounts, see Stewart or Torrance ). However, regardless of the economics, the problem for the Conservatives was that the impact of their policies gradually became fused with ideas about Scottish difference and national identity. The notion that Scotland had different economic needs from the rest of the UK that required different policies jarred with Thatcher’s insistence on a ‘Britishness’ in which the state was largely meant to withdraw from industrial policy. Thus: ‘The Scottish economic dimension had made Scotland an ideological category largely incompatible with Conservative English/British national rhetoric as employed by Mrs Thatcher’ (Kendrick and McCrone : ). Relatedly, therefore, in the person of the Prime Minister herself, these policies became associated with a figure who seemed (however inadvertently) not to understand Scotland. In her memoirs, she laments in her chapter on Scotland that it represented ‘Thatcherism Rebuffed’ and that there had been ‘no tartan Thatcherite revolution’ (Thatcher : ). However, despite her frequent insistence on the Scottish roots of her economic philosophy via Adam Smith and other figures (Kidd ), she failed to grasp the Scottish dimension to spreading the benefits of Thatcherism across the UK. In general, the impression began to take hold in parts of the electorate and amongst Scottish cultural, academic and political elites that the ideologically driven Conservative Governments were imposing a series of alien policies inimical to the traditional communitarian values of Scottish life. Again, such an idea must be treated with caution for, as Kidd (: ) points out, ‘several of [Thatcherism’s] central policy prescriptions—from the poll tax to the privatization of public services—were first devised in Scotland’. However, regardless of the provenance of these ideas, the combination of painful economic change championed by a forceful English leader caused great difficulties for the Scottish Conservatives. This combination provided a powerful and enduring myth about Scottishness and its ‘others’ that endures to this day. For the Conservative cabinet minister Michael Gove, ‘you could be Scottish or you could be Tory, but you couldn’t be both’. In short, for the first time, it seemed that Scottish distinctiveness might be under threat from a UK government. The politicization of Scottish identity in the s and
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s and the idea that the Conservatives were ‘anti-Scottish’ had a corrosive effect on the party’s support. Something has clearly gone badly wrong when parts of the nation you want to represent define their national identity in part on the basis of not being a Tory. Through the s, the party lost ground. Its vote share dropped from . per cent in to . per cent in , with the loss of one MP. In , however, the party dropped from to seats in Scotland, compounding the idea that the Conservative Governments’ policies lacked legitimacy in Scotland and fuelling the campaign for devolution. Table . charts the decline. The decline is not exactly linear during this period and it must be remembered that the Conservative vote share went up slightly at the general election and they gained one MP. Nevertheless, this is the period when the perfect storm of troubles hit the Scottish Conservatives, from the lack of freshness that inevitably comes with having been in government for eighteen years to a rejuvenated Labour opposition under Tony Blair. The combination of difficult economic medicine (however beneficial it might have been in the long term), and controversial public policies administered by a government whose Scottish distinctiveness was in doubt, became electorally lethal. The Conservatives’ fortunes languished for several elections after losing all their Scottish MPs in . David Torrance () refers to this period as the ‘wilderness
Table 13.1 Conservative Party Performance at UK General Elections in Scotland, 1950–2017 Year 1950* 1951* 1955* 1959* 1964* 1966 1970 1974 (February) 1974 (October) 1979 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005 2010 2015 2017
Votes
Percentage share
Number of MPs
1,222,010 1,349,298 1,273,942 1,260,287 1,069,695 960,675 1,020,674 950,668 681,327 916,155 801,487 713,081 751,950 493,059 360,658 369,400 412,855 434,097 757,949
44.8 48.6 50.1 47.2 40.6 37.6 38 32.9 24.7 31.4 28.4 24 25.6 17.5 15.6 15.8 16.7 14.9 28.6
31 35 36 31 24 20 23 21 16 22 21 10 11 0 1 1 1 1 13
* includes National Liberals Source: Author’s own compilation.
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years’. The Conservatives held only one seat in the House of Commons between and (Peter Duncan in Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, –, and David Mundell in Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, –). Thanks to the Scottish Parliament’s mixed member proportional electoral system, the Conservatives gained eighteen MSPs at the first elections in . They maintained this number in , but dropped to seventeen in and fifteen in . The post-devolution electoral breakthrough for the Scottish Conservatives did not occur until the Scottish Parliament elections when the party returned thirty-one MSPs. The UK electoral breakthrough occurred in when the Scottish Conservatives had their best result since , returning thirteen MPs. The Scottish Conservatives arrested their s and s decline in general elections only in .
I
.................................................................................................................................. For Robin Harris, the ‘Conservative Party exists, has always existed and can only exist to gain and exercise power’ (Harris : ). The history of the Conservative Party for most of the twentieth century is therefore one of ideological flexibility. John Ramsden (: ) notes ‘the party’s quite remarkable facility for adaptation and, closely allied to this, its appetite for power, often indeed its readiness to subordinate all other considerations to that one objective’. The Scottish Conservatives have for the most part shared both this desire and the flexibility required to achieve it. However, they are also pulled in different directions by the sometimes competing demands of party loyalty, commitment to the Union and support for Scottish distinctiveness. At the heart of Scottish conservatism is a commitment to ‘unionism’. Although this referred initially to the Union with Ireland, gradually over the twentieth century the Conservatives have come to understand it also as a desire to protect the Union of . Unionism is a thin ideology and can be shared by parties on the left or the right. On this point, the party has not wavered. It is the issue around which the party can most easily unite, regardless of the policy or political context. However, its unwillingness to embrace a more flexible interpretation of Unionism has stored up problems. In the s and s, it refused to consider how devolution might strengthen, rather than weaken, the Union. This intransigence was not only ‘politically irrational’ (Kellas : ), it also failed to recognize how Unionism might be refashioned to suit new circumstances. a trick the party had successfully pulled off in the past (see, for instance, Torrance on ‘Nationalist Unionism’). A similar lack of imagination led three out of the four candidates in the leadership election to oppose the further transfer of powers to the Scottish Parliament. Instead of arguing, for instance, for a more fiscally responsible Parliament along Conservative lines, senior Conservatives seemed to view every new power for the Scottish Parliament as a concession to the SNP and a danger to the Union. Such an inflexible ideological outlook made it difficult for the Conservatives to articulate a positive vision
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for the future of devolution and left them defending a status quo they did not really believe in and which was shortly to be replaced (Mitchell and Convery ). Like other parties of the centre-right, the Scottish Conservatives found themselves torn between economic liberalism and a conservative attachment to tradition and the nation. Should Conservatives support fiscal devolution because they believe in responsibility and decentralization? Or should they prioritize traditional understandings of the nation and sovereignty that oppose further change? This tension led to a kind of ideological stasis after , in which the party avoided difficult debates about its future and instead concentrated on being an effective opposition in the Scottish Parliament (Smith ; Convery ). The party brought its unionism and conservatism into line only in when it wholeheartedly backed more powers for the Scottish Parliament in the independence referendum campaign. Referring to the s, Finlay (: ) concludes that ‘one of the features of the Scottish Conservative Party was that it had missed out on the Thatcher ideological revolution that had swept through its southern counterpart’. The Scottish Conservative response to Thatcherism was dutiful accommodation rather than passionate embrace. None of the Secretaries of State for Scotland during this period were true-believing Thatcherites, with the exception of Michael Forsyth. In fairness to Mrs Thatcher, she was not overwhelmed by original ideas from the Scottish Conservative Party that she uncaringly chose to veto. Instead, the party concentrated on softening the edges of Thatcherism and the time-honoured tradition of ensuring as generous a funding settlement for the Scottish Office as possible (Mitchell ). Thus, there were reprieves from closure for various Scottish industries and the Barnett Formula ensured that public spending in Scotland remained higher than in England and Wales. The Conservative Secretaries of State for Scotland (–) could point to notable successes in both of these areas. However, such activity did not amount to a distinctively Scottish Conservative response to the policy problems of the late twentieth century. For David Melding (: ), therefore, the Scottish Conservative Party’s ‘culture has remained unitary, even ultra-unionist’. One of the most remarkable features of the post-devolution Scottish Conservative Party has been the lack of ideological debates and factions. It is difficult to point to any disputes over economic policy or opposition to Ruth Davidson’s more liberal approach to immigration policy. The main fault line in the party has instead been over the issue of devolution itself.
T D Q P C
.................................................................................................................................. The debates about devolution in the Scottish Conservative Party were only decisively put to rest during the independence campaign. The devolution question is so
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thorny for the party because it cuts to the heart of difficult ideological questions. Should Conservatives seek to preserve the organic nature of the UK’s parliamentary state by opposing radical change? Should they instead prioritize devolving responsibility away from central government? Might devolution preserve the Union or endanger it? More practically, could devolved government help insulate the party from electoral threats from the Scottish National Party and Labour? The answers to these questions have pulled the party in different directions at different times. Perhaps more than any other party, the Scottish Conservatives played a key role in the creation and maintenance of distinct Scottish institutions that made devolution possible at the end of the twentieth century. The Conservatives created the post of Scottish Secretary in , beginning a process of administrative devolution that continued until . As the role of the state expanded, the Scottish Office gradually gained more responsibilities. It was a characteristically British and piecemeal approach to territorial management. A department based on territory rather than function became part of the machinery of British Government and ensured the acceptance in Whitehall of a distinctly Scottish dimension to important public policies (Mitchell ). Even so, the question of whether there should be some sort of separate Scottish assembly or parliament did not go away. The Conservatives engaged seriously with it in , culminating in what became known as Edward Heath’s ‘Declaration of Perth’. This commitment to the creation of a Scottish Assembly emerged partly out of electoral considerations. The political context suggested to the Conservative Party that nationalism in Scotland and Wales was becoming an increasing threat. In particular, the SNP’s victory at the Hamilton by-election in concentrated minds in the party on the other seats in Scotland that might be lost. However, as Gordon Pentland () has argued, the announcement also emerged from a much more thoughtful debate about the development of the British Constitution. It can be placed in the context of the evolving Conservative approach towards Scotland’s place in the Union. Amongst the groups contributing to debates at this time was the Thistle Group, a collection of Conservatives (including Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Ancram) who proposed a federal solution to the UK’s constitution, involving parliaments in all four nations. Nevertheless, this policy both divided opinion within the party and seemed not to be particularly electorally helpful in . This experience explains some of the reluctance to return to it when the Conservatives were forced to look again at constitutional issues in the s (Pentland ). The Declaration of Perth therefore represented ‘a missed opportunity to take a long-held commitment to administrative devolution all the way to a legislative end’ (Mitchell : ). Margaret Thatcher was not sympathetic to Edward Heath’s approach to Scotland when she became leader of the Conservative Party in . In particular, on the devolution question, she concluded that: ‘Ted had impaled the party on an extremely painful hook, from which it would be my unenviable task to set it free’ (Thatcher : ). For Thatcher, devolution was an unnecessary distraction from the most pressing problems facing the UK and was potentially a threat to its future. In the end,
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she was able to dispense with Heath’s policy without too much fuss. Despite having failed to deliver on ‘Perth’ during the – Conservative Government, the party opposed the Labour Government’s first devolution bill not on principle, but on the basis that the Conservatives would come up with a better version when they returned to government. This position prompted the resignation of Alick Buchanan-Smith and Malcolm Rifkind from the front bench. However, the dissent was in the main muted. The failure of the devolution referendum in cemented this position. As Teddy Taylor recalled, ‘No decision was ever made in the Shadow Cabinet to reject devolution. It just quietly slipped away’ (quoted in Moore : ). Instead, the Conservative Party manifesto promised ‘discussions about the future government of Scotland’ (Conservative Party ). The idea of a Conservative case for some sort of Scottish Assembly had been undermined both by the acrimony it had caused within the party for seemingly little electoral payoff, and by the increasingly powerful idea that such a policy would be a concession to nationalism that might put the Union in danger. Thus the stage was set for the party’s official stance towards devolution for the next eighteen years. The Conservatives gained six seats in Scotland at the general election. However, whilst they could never again cross the intellectual line towards a Scottish Parliament or Assembly, the Conservative Governments (–) did try to resolve the tensions within the Union by reaching for the old strategy of extending administrative devolution. When Ian Lang was Secretary of State for Scotland, the Government strengthened the Scottish Grand Committee, giving it more time to consider Scottish legislation. By this point, however, the Conservative Party was buffeting against the limits of this strategy. One of the problems with the deepening of administrative devolution was that it involved giving more powers to a Scottish Office that was run by a party with dwindling Scottish popularity. Even when powers were devolved to Scotland, they were still in the control of a Conservative Secretary of State. The party failed to recognize that a question of Scottish control over Scottish affairs had also become a democratic question about who should hold those powers. However, it would be wrong to conclude that this reading of the territorial constitution had its roots in leading figures being captured by English conservatism and thus complicit in their own oppression. The party’s opposition to devolution may have been ‘politically irrational’ (Kellas : ), but it was sincerely felt. For Ian Lang, for instance: . . . it became an issue of irreducible principle. I knew that lots of people wanted it. I knew opposing it had cost us support in elections. I knew it was one of the reasons why the media hated us. I could see the arguments, of heart and head, in favour of it. I sensed that sooner or later it would happen in some form, probably under a Labour government. But after I had thought about it long and hard, I could not bring myself to do anything other than stand firm over an issue that I could not believe to be in the best interests either of Scotland or of the United Kingdom. (Lang : –)
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If Heath’s policy shift on devolution could be portrayed as a U-turn, then any shift on the devolution issue in the s would have seemed like a stark admission that the party had got it wrong. The Conservative instinct to close ranks on this issue is also understandable when we consider that the main supporters of devolution (and the make-up of the Scottish Constitutional Convention) appeared to be united in part by their opposition to the Conservative Party. Whilst in the s and s, the Conservative Party could own the idea of devolution as a continuation of their longstanding approach to the Union, by the s they viewed it as a plot by their opponents. The issue of devolution was therefore a ‘toxified’ one for the Conservatives and this attitude prevented any serious intellectual engagement with it until . This view within the party had generally not changed, even after the disastrous general election result in which the party lost all of its seats in Scotland and Wales. As one party official recalled, when the election was over ‘we went to a conference immediately afterwards, , people at the conference, very well-attended conference, absolutely determined to oppose devolution’ (quoted in Convery : ). The party campaigned against devolution in the devolution referendum. However, with consummate conservative pragmatism, the party quickly accepted the referendum result and campaigned in the first elections for the Scottish Parliament. It elected David McLetchie as leader and commissioned an organizational review led by Lord Strathclyde () and a policy review led by Malcolm Rifkind (). The organizational review recommended a continuation of the separate Scottish party structure but with strong links to the UK party. However, the organization adopted reflected in part the party’s ambivalent views about devolution itself. The Party Leader was never quite fully in charge and shared power with the Party Chairman and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland. This situation caused tensions during the early years of devolution that were only resolved by the implementation of the Sanderson Commission’s reforms in . These changes streamlined the leadership structure so that the Party Leader was more explicitly in charge (Convery ). Ironically, given the party’s opposition to proportional representation, it was rewarded with the relatively healthy total of eighteen MSPs elected on the regional list vote. This group provided a platform on which the party could start to rebuild itself for a new era. However, there still existed what Kellas referred to in the s as ‘strong residual non-devolutionary Unionism amongst the activists’ (Kellas : ). The party as a whole had not fully come to terms with devolution. Convery’s () interviews with Conservative MSPs in – reveal that the party’s elites struggled to reconcile the importance they attached to the Scottish Parliament with their perception of their supporters’ and members’ views of devolution. Some MSPs worried that enthusiasm for the Scottish Parliament might put off core supporters from turning out. Concentrating in on issues like the cost of the Parliament building may have provided a focus in the short term, but it did not deal with the more difficult questions about what the Scottish Conservative Party was now for. This attitude was neatly captured in the manifesto’s picture of a mock ‘Hollywood’ sign that instead displayed the word ‘Follyrood’ (Scottish Conservative Party ). It also proposed
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cutting the number of MSPs to (Scottish Conservative Party ). This was not a party at ease with devolution. During this period, the party’s policy positions did not move on much from the ideas it had become attached to in the s and s. For instance, in , the party advocated a return to GP fundholding in the NHS (Scottish Conservative Party ). Even in , the Scottish Conservatives were still proposing school vouchers as a means to improve the education system (Scottish Conservative Party ). The party did not take the time to renew its policy platform and instead concentrated on day-today opposition. It had two popular and capable leaders in David McLetchie and Annabel Goldie, but neither of them moved the party on decisively to embrace the Scottish Parliament. The party took a step closer after the election of the SNP minority government in . It participated in the Calman Commission that proposed further powers for the Scottish Parliament, including control of p in the pound of income tax. At this point, however, there was still disquiet within the party about how far devolution should go. Margaret Mitchell campaigned in the leadership election for a referendum on whether the powers proposed by the Calman Commission should be devolved. The former Secretary of State for Scotland Lord Forsyth also intervened to express his opposition to the Calman proposals. It took the independence referendum campaign to fully resolve almost a century of debates about devolution for the Scottish Conservatives. For the first time, the party was forced to confront the question: what does Scottish devolution look like when it is designed by a Conservative? The party’s answer to this question was radical and finally married its centre-right ideology with its Unionism. Once again, the party commissioned Lord Strathclyde to carry out a review. If the Scots voted against independence, what new powers for the Scottish Parliament would the Scottish Conservatives propose instead? Lord Strathclyde proposed that the Scottish Parliament be given control over all income tax in Scotland. Crucially, it went beyond tactics to try to provide, for the first time since the s, a Conservative philosophy of devolution: When these actions are taken within the context of Conservative policies on empowering individuals and decentralising power throughout the rest of the UK, it is clear that empowering the Scottish people to shape their own nation within the security of a United Kingdom is not just something we are willing only to grudgingly accept, it is something that sits at the very heart of what it means to be a modern Scottish Conservative. (Scottish Conservative Party : –)
Unlike the reaction to the Calman Commission, there was hardly any dissent in the party from Strathclyde’s recommendations, although predictably Lord Forsyth was not pleased. Ruth Davidson endorsed them enthusiastically and finally the Scottish Conservatives had a coherent message on Scotland’s place in the Union that did not perceive every new power for the Scottish Parliament as a concession to the SNP.
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The idea that the Union might be under threat and that the Conservatives had to make a convincing offer in order to protect it helped to face reality in this regard. In so doing, they also outflanked the Scottish Labour Party in the radicalism of their offer. At the UK level, the Conservative Party’s attitude to devolution has been characteristically pragmatic. Unlike in the UK Labour Party, for instance, there have been no examples of the UK party attempting to impose policies or candidates on the Scottish Conservatives. Convery () found that the Conservative Party in Scotland and Wales generally enjoyed a high degree of autonomy after and that the UK party never interfered with Scottish decision-making. Although this is likely to be in part the result of benign neglect (UK party leaders had bigger fish to fry and did not expect much from Scotland), it displays a pragmatic adaptation that compares favourably with devolution attitudes in other European parties.
D, D, S C R?
.................................................................................................................................. The Scottish Conservative Party faced a number of dilemmas about how to respond to post-devolution life. In addition to the thorny issue of how far the party should embrace devolution, there was also the question of what Scottish conservatism should look like in a post-Thatcher era. Should the party continue along the lines of the market-based public service reforms of the s and s or should it embrace the Labour, Liberal Democrat, and SNP consensus about trusting professional elites to work together to bring about improvements? During the Thatcher and Major years, many of the same reforms were implemented in Scotland and England, but they were less enthusiastically embraced in Scotland. For instance, although Scottish schools were given the power to opt out of local authority control, only one chose to do so. Is the lesson for the Scottish Conservatives, therefore, that the agenda of choice and diversity in public services is one to which they should not return? Ruth Davidson had decisively answered the devolution question, but the Scottish Conservative approach to public services remained ambiguous. Whilst they remained economically on the right, it was not at all clear how they would deal differently with health, education, or the other main policy areas under the Scottish Parliament’s control. If the answer is that they would tinker around the edges of the professional elite consensus, then the Scottish Conservatives have not provided much of an alternative for Scottish voters. Ruth Davidson was elected leader of the Scottish Conservative Party in . She is the post-devolution leader who has had the most impact on the party in Scotland and the UK. However, her initial pitch for the leadership of the party did not suggest that she would take the party in a radically different direction. Instead, during the leadership election, she defined her candidacy in part against the more radical proposals of Murdo Fraser to create an entirely new party of the centre-right in Scotland.
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In particular, Davidson campaigned on the idea that the recommendations of the Calman Commission for new powers for the Scottish Parliament represented a ‘line in the sand’ for further devolution. In that sense, she was much more of a continuity candidate than Fraser and she seemed to suggest that the Scottish Conservatives needed to change their presentation, rather than their fundamental message. What was clearly distinctive about Ruth Davidson, therefore, was her image. She was famously described as a ‘kick-boxing lesbian’ (Holyrood Magazine ) and clearly represented a departure from previous Scottish Conservative leaders and her opponents. Having an out LGBT leader was especially striking for a party that had traditionally been associated with social conservatism. In particular, ‘Section ’ of the Local Government Act (banning the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools) was still a potent symbol of Conservative intolerance, even after its repeal in Scotland in . Although Davidson became associated with David Cameron’s ideas about modernizing the Conservative Party, she did not explicitly draw on that work when campaigning for the leadership (Vaizey et al. ; Boles ). She did not think the Conservative brand in Scotland was so damaged that it had to be abandoned altogether. Indeed, many of the changes we now associate with Davidson’s leadership were not obviously planned from the outset. Instead, Davidson (who was elected in and has never been a backbench MSP) had to feel her way through the difficulties of leadership and take advantage of circumstances as they arose. First, on the devolution question, it seemed like Davidson was once again about to place her party on the losing side of the Scottish Question. In drawing a ‘line in the sand’, she may have appealed to many party members, but she was also boxing her party in and precluding any attempt to reclaim devolution for the Conservatives. Happily for the party, the independence referendum prompted a change of heart or the sense that she was now strong enough to take on the residual elements in the party that had not come to terms with devolution. The Strathclyde Commission report (), which she endorsed in full, put the Scottish Conservatives for the first time since the s in a position where they were proposing a more radical devolution offer than the Labour Party. Though it was impossible to predict from her initial pitch, detoxifying devolution in the Conservative Party is Davidson’s most significant achievement as Party Leader. Neither McLetchie nor Goldie managed to put the issue to rest as decisively. Second, having cleaved to traditional s Tory fare in the leadership campaign, Davidson started to carve out some distinctive Scottish Conservative positions. For instance, in an article on the UnHerd website, Davidson stated that capitalism needed to be radically reformed in favour of workers. She argued that: ‘It is not enough simply for an Amazon to bring down the cost for consumers, the public expect it to pay a fair share of taxation and grant workers a decent wage as well.’ Furthermore: ‘It is not inequality that bites deepest, but injustice. People expect that the CEO of a corporation will be the highest paid person on the payroll. What they don’t accept is that FTSE bosses are paid times the average worker’s wage in this decade—compared to to times in ’ (Davidson ). She also stated her opposition to the UK Conservative Government’s , per year immigration target (Davidson ). This type
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of thinking marks a departure from the liberal orthodoxy about economic policy that has informed the Conservative Party’s thinking at the UK level. Such interventions therefore indicate the beginnings of a post-Thatcher agenda in economic thinking. Overall, the vague Scottish Parliament manifesto (designed not to scare the horses but to be maximally appealing) did not provide a coherent programme for what the Conservatives might actually do in government in Scotland. Nevertheless, it did represent a step forward from the Conservative public policy inheritance of the s and s. Controversial policies were dropped (like school vouchers) in favour of promises to spend more money on key services. On health, the Scottish Conservatives de-emphasized a commitment to market-based reforms and instead concentrated on mental health and on a commitment to raise the NHS budget in Scotland by Barnett consequentials, inflation or per cent, whichever is higher (Scottish Conservative Party ). In , the Conservatives finally had their breakthrough moment. Both the context and the strategy worked in their favour. First, they faced an SNP Government that had been in power for nine years and was beginning to show signs of wear. The Labour opposition under Kezia Dugdale had also experienced a difficult few years. Johann Lamont resigned the leadership in and said she felt the UK party leadership treated her like the manager of a ‘branch office’. In general, Labour had not renewed itself on opposition since and struggled when many of its supporters switched to the SNP after the independence referendum campaign (Chapter in this Handbook). Moreover, the SNP’s refusal to rule out completely a second referendum on independence provided the Scottish Conservatives with an opening to appeal to Unionist voters across all parties. In a series of interviews, Kezia Dugdale, Leader of Scottish Labour (–), suggested that there might be circumstances under which the Labour Party would allow its MSPs to campaign for independence. The Scottish Conservatives seized the chance to portray themselves as the only reliably Unionist option in the election. They were also able to capitalize on Ruth Davidson’s growing public profile, honed through the independence referendum and the general election. Not only was she a different type of Conservative, she was a capable politician. For her campaign team, Davidson was ‘a gateway drug to voting Tory’ (quoted in Shipman ). The party thus alighted upon a threefold message that they stuck to with iron discipline throughout the campaign: first, vote for the popular figure of Ruth Davidson; second, we know the SNP will win this election, so vote for a strong opposition party to replace the beleaguered Labour Party; and, finally, if you care about the Union, vote for the only party that is unequivocally against having a second independence referendum. The Scottish Conservatives exploited their strengths and the political context and were rewarded with thirty-one seats in the Scottish Parliament, an increase of sixteen on . The party relied on the same strategy in the UK general election, increasing their number of MPs from one to thirteen, their best result in Scotland since . Overall, Henderson and Mitchell (: ) conclude that in , ‘the improved fortunes of the Conservative party appear to stem from a combination of
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tepid support in the electorate for a second referendum and the personal popularity of their Scottish leader’. The most obvious changes in the Scottish Conservatives between and are in the areas of leadership and attitudes to devolution. Ruth Davidson helped the party to move on from the UK Conservative Governments (–) and slayed the dragon of devolution. She has been the party’s most popular post-devolution leader. However, it should be remembered that change was a slow-burning process under Davidson. She presided over both the general election (no gain in seats and loss of votes and vote share) and the general election success. Therefore, the political context has also been important in providing the Scottish Conservatives with space to grow. In addition to a good strategy, the party could hardly believe its luck that the issue that it indisputably owned and was most comfortable talking about (protecting the Union) became highly salient in and . The issue of Europe has not been as divisive in the Scottish Conservative Party as it has been in the UK party. The Scottish party has generally taken its cue from the Eurosceptic tone of the wider party, but (in contrast to devolution) the issue never threatened to cause major splits. The Scottish Conservatives dutifully supported David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum, but the issue was never as salient in Scotland as in England. In particular, the Scottish Conservatives have faced no challenge on the right in the form of a strong electoral showing from UKIP north of the border. When campaigning in the independence referendum in , David Mundell argued that the best way to ensure Scotland’s continued EU membership was for voters to opt to remain part of the UK. The UK’s decision to leave the EU has exposed wider constitutional tensions. The Scottish Conservatives faced awkward questions about Brexit and the UK government’s attitude towards Scotland. Ruth Davidson not only campaigned in Scotland for the UK to remain in the EU, but also played a prominent role in the official UK-wide Stronger In campaign, being one of its spokespeople in the final BBC debate before the referendum. The Scottish Conservatives were also mostly on the Remain side (with the exception of seven MSPs), having adopted the broadly pro-EU consensus of Scottish political elites. Davidson had to therefore very quickly change her position after the result in order not to open up a wide division between the UK and Scottish Conservative parties. This awkwardness was most keenly felt over the UK government’s failure to reach an agreement with the Scottish Government in about the way in which to devolve powers returning from the EU to the UK. Instead of sticking to the Sewel Convention on this matter (that the UK Parliament should not normally proceed without the Scottish Parliament’s consent), the UK government opted to overrule the Scottish Parliament for the first time since . The Conservatives were once again isolated as the only party to vote in favour of giving legislative consent. Whilst the impact at the time was muted, the longer-term implications for the territorial constitution are potentially more serious. Although the Scottish Conservatives have faced up to devolution, in a potential future independence referendum, they may find it more difficult
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to defend their philosophy of the Union as an evolving partnership involving respect from the UK government. Unlike most of their English counterparts, the Scottish Conservatives are acutely aware of the long-term territorial and constitutional impacts of leaving the EU.
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.................................................................................................................................. The Scottish Conservatives’ ‘wilderness years’ may be over, but it has been a long journey from their meltdown. The discussion here points towards three conclusions about the party on devolution, ideology, and the pursuit of power. First, having done more than any other party to preserve and enhance the distinctive Scottish institutions that made devolution possible, the Conservatives dug themselves into a hole on the issue that was both politically damaging and intellectually incoherent. Instead of drawing on the rich seam of middle ground opinion on options for the future of the UK (Kidd ), the Conservatives found themselves stranded on the losing side of the Scottish Question. Had Lang’s and Forsyth’s ideas about extending administrative devolution been proposed earlier, they might have had more impact. However, the party would still have had to face up to the changing electoral demography of the UK and the increasingly territorial character of the party system. Administrative devolution could only really work in the long term so long as Scotland and England voted along broadly similar lines. Ironically, therefore, the deepening of administrative devolution under the Conservatives only served to strengthen the case for a Scottish Parliament. Why should increasing swathes of Scottish domestic policy be decided in Edinburgh by a party with declining support in Scotland? The logic of the Conservatives’ development of Scotland’s place within the Union could lead quite naturally towards a Scottish Parliament. Their ideological blockage on this issue was only fully removed in . The party’s attitude to the territorial constitution was therefore unsatisfactory between and . Ruth Davidson removed the party from this hook in but had also to deal with the consequences of the UK’s decision to leave the EU. The UK government’s decision to unilaterally overrule the Scottish Parliament on this point is at best awkward for the Scottish Conservatives. Public opinion may be unaffected by such a decision, but it poses difficult questions for the Conservatives about the future of the territorial constitution. Second, having slain the devolution question, the party could now think about what might constitute a distinctive Scottish conservatism. Ruth Davidson won the leadership without staking out a clear ideological position on matters beyond the constitution. She outlined some distinctive ideas on immigration and on aspects of reforming capitalism. However, it remained unclear what the Scottish Conservatives might do differently if they were in government in Scotland. Would they reach for similar public policy
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solutions that they pursued in the s (and have been extended in some areas by the Coalition, Cameron, and May) or would they take a different approach? Finally, therefore, there is the question of the Scottish Conservatives’ ultimate rehabilitation: can they ever form a minority or coalition government in the Scottish Parliament? That would rely on the support or abstention of other parties in the Scottish Parliament. For as long as such a scenario remains unimaginable, then the modernization of the Scottish Conservatives may not yet have gone far enough. The Scottish Conservatives may have closed the chapter on their long decline and subsequent stagnation, but if a party that exists to be in power cannot ever achieve it, then some Conservatives may question if it was worth the effort.
R Boles, N. . Which Way’s Up? The Future for Coalition Britain and How to Get There. London: Biteback. Convery, A. . The Territorial Conservative Party: Devolution and Party Change in Scotland and Wales. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Davidson, R. . ‘Ctrl + Alt + Del. Conservatives must reboot capitalism’, UnHerd, July. Available at: https://unherd.com///ctrl-alt-del-conservatives-must-reboot-capitalism/. Davidson, R. . ‘Speech at Glasgow University’. Available at: http://www. scottishconservatives.com///speech-from-ruth-davidson-building-a-stronger-britain/. Dyer, M. . ‘The Evolution of the Centre-Right and the State of Scottish Conservatism’, Political Studies, /: –. Eliassen, K.A., and Svaasand, L. . ‘The Formation of Mass Political Organizations: An Analytical Framework’, Scandinavian Political Studies, /: –. Finlay, R. . Modern Scotland, –. London: Profile. Finlay, R. . ‘Patriotism, Paternalism and Pragmatism: Scottish Toryism, Union and Empire, –’, in D. Torrance (ed.), Whatever Happened To Tory Scotland? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Harris, R. . The Conservatives: A History. London: Bantam. Henderson, A. and Mitchell, J. . ‘Referendums as Critical Junctures? Scottish Voting in British Elections’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Holyrood Magazine. . ‘Tartan Tory: The Ruth Davidson Interview’. Available at: www. holyrood.com/articles////tartan-tory-the-ruth-davidson-interview/. Kellas, J. . ‘The Party in Scotland’, in A. Seldon and S. Ball (eds), Conservative Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kendrick, S. and McCrone, D. . ‘Politics in a Cold Climate: The Conservative Decline in Scotland’, Political Studies, /: –. Kidd, C. . Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kidd, C. . ‘Chapter’, in D. Torrance (ed.), Whatever Happened to Tory Scotland? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lang, I. . Blue Remembered Years. London: Politico’s. Melding, D. . The Reformed Union: The UK as a Federation. Cardiff: Institute of Welsh Affairs.
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Mitchell, J. . Conservatives and the Union. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mitchell, J. . The Scottish Question. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, J. and Convery, A. . ‘Conservative Unionism: Prisoned in Marble’, in D. Torrance (ed.), Whatever Happened to Tory Scotland? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Moore, C. . Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume I. London: Penguin. Pentland, G. . ‘Edward Heath, the Declaration of Perth and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, –’, Twentieth Century British History, /: –. Ramsden, J. . An Appetite for Power. London: HarperCollins. Scottish Conservative Party. . Time To Do Something About It. Edinburgh: Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. Scottish Conservative Party. . Common Sense for Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. Scottish Conservative Party. . Commission on the Future Governance of Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. Scottish Conservative Party. . Manifesto. Edinburgh: Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. Seawright, D. . An Important Matter of Principle: The Decline of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. Aldershot: Ashgate. Seldon, A. and Ball, S. (eds). . Conservative Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shipman, T. . Fall Out. London: William Collins. Smith, A. . Devolution and the Scottish Conservatives: Banal Activism, Electioneering and the Politics of Irrelevance. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Stewart, D. . The Path to Devolution and Change: A Political History of Scotland under Margaret Thatcher. London: Tauris Academic Studies. Taylor, E.M. . Teddy Boy Blue. Glasgow: Kennedy and Boyd. Thatcher, M. . ‘Foreword’, in G. Warner (ed.), The Scottish Tory Party: A History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Thatcher, M. . The Downing Street Years. London: HarperCollins. Torrance, D. . ‘We in Scotland’: Thatcherism in a Cold Climate. Edinburgh: Birlinn. Torrance, D. . ‘The Wilderness Years’, in D. Torrance (ed.) Whatever Happened to Tory Scotland? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Torrance, D. . ‘Standing Up for Scotland: The Scottish Unionist Party and “Nationalist Unionism, –” ’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Vaizey, E., Boles, N., and Gove, M. (eds) . A Blue Tomorrow: New Visions for Modern Conservatives. London: Politico’s. Warner, G. . The Scottish Tory Party: A History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
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.................................................................................................................................. O upon a time the literature on political parties was straightforward—mirroring the two-party politics of a seemingly homogenized, unitary Britain. This is the political environment offered by R.T. McKenzie in his classic ‘British Political Parties’ published in , at the height of the post-war two-party system (McKenzie ). Class and social solidarity were seen as synonymous with the politics of integration and the central state, which in turn underpinned the politics of the centre-left. Such an account overstated the degree of uniformity in the UK, even in the s, but it still has an influence on how political parties are understood in the UK, despite two decades of devolution, and distinctive Scottish and Welsh political cultures. Accounts of the British Labour Party have largely focused on Westminster and ignored the territorial and regional make-up of the party (Miliband ; Howell ; Kogan and Kogan ; Kogan ). Scotland and Wales are subsumed into a British ‘abstract’ which does not do justice to the increasingly fragmented four-nation multiparty politics, or at best it relegates it to ‘sub-national’ studies of the party (Hassan and Shaw ; Hassan and Shaw ). Scottish Labour provides both a challenge to the conventional way of addressing British politics and to social democratic parties, but it is not unique. The Spanish Socialists, French Socialists, and Canadian New Democrats, have all faced the challenge of accommodating centre-left politics and social democracy to the rise of territorial politics and the electoral success of regional and self-government movements (Béland and Lecours ; Vampa ). Labour started in the dominant position politically in Scotland in votes, parliamentary seats, ideology, and values. Yet over the course of two decades, from the New Labour triumph in and establishment of the Scottish Parliament in , the
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party has managed to whittle away its impressive inheritance, first losing to the SNP in , and subsequently relegated to third party status. Scottish Labour traditionally stood for a politics of class and social solidarity, but has increasingly had to adapt to the politics of self-government and to the SNP claiming the same centre-left terrain. Restrictions on the party’s autonomy for most of the devolution era, drawbacks in leadership and personnel, and the cumulative cost of being the dominant party and political establishment for so long have exacerbated its problems. Not only has it suffered from periods of declining popularity for British Labour, but has been unable to benefit when British Labour stood high in the polls, as under the early Blair period and under Corbyn in , partly because of London’s lack of comprehension of Scotland and of Scottish Labour. This chapter addresses the evolution of Scottish Labour in recent decades and in particular over the devolution period. It looks at its organizational development, electoral performance, leadership, and political direction since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, concluding with looking at the current state of the party. The thread of how the party has fallen from being the leading party of the country to third place, runs through the chapter, which ends with a brief assessment of its future prospects and choices.
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.................................................................................................................................. There has always been a Scottish form of the Labour Party with its own history, identity, and brand. Its organizational origins lie in the Scottish Labour Party, founded by Keir Hardie in , which survived a mere five years before being merged with the UK-wide Independent Labour Party (ILP) set up by Hardie and others in . The ILP, in turn, along with the Fabian Society, the (Marxist) Social Democratic Federation, and a number of trade unions, set up the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in , renamed the Labour Party in . In , Labour established a Scottish Advisory Council to represent the party in Scotland. At Labour’s Conference the foundations were laid for a centralized, Britishwide party. Each region (including Scotland) was equipped with its own council but these lacked resources, powers, and autonomy. Labour, however, was by no means as rigorously centralized as it might seem, since the ILP continued to retain its own separate organization, membership, and leadership, and in Scotland, one of its strongholds, it operated as a major centre of political life. After , the ILP swung sharply to the left with left-wing ‘Red Clydeside’ MPs, such as Jimmy Maxton, displacing an earlier generation of more moderate leaders. The relationship between Labour and the ILP deteriorated sharply during the – minority Labour Government and despite its collapse and the party’s subsequent shift to the left the ILP decided to
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disaffiliate in . The once-thriving ILP was the major casualty of this decision as many of its members deserted, but its departure also drained Labour in Scotland of much of its energy and vitality. It slowly reconstructed itself but the party that emerged was a more pragmatic, cautious, and unimaginative one than the one that had existed prior to the ILP’s exit, and smaller in membership and activism. The ILP’s disaffiliation removed a major restraint to the emergence of a more centrally regulated and administered party. In the period that followed and for two generations, the key institutions of Scottish Labour, its Scottish Executive Committee (SEC) and Scottish Conference, enjoyed little discretion in either policy or organizational affairs, and exhibited little disposition to challenge their subordinate status. The SEC’s role was primarily consultative, to proffer advice on Scottish matters. Annual Conference was, especially in the s and s, often a dull, uninspiring and parochial affair, without proper debates and avoiding contentious issues (Knox : –). This is not to say that Scottish Labour, from the s onwards, was little more than a subordinate of the British party, entirely lacking the constitutional authority, resources, or even desire to assert itself. The party ran municipal authorities, particularly Glasgow, which shaped policy on key issues (notably housing) commanded significant resources and could dispense patronage (Keating ). Scottish trade union leaders played a major role in an array of political activities including influencing policy development, particularly through the powerful Scottish Trade Union Congress (which was wholly independent of the British TUC), providing organizational assistance and supplying funds. Affiliated unions countervailed the power of the party centre most sharply in the crucial area of parliamentary sections where the choice of candidates was heavily influenced by arrangements between the Scottish party and trade union organizers. Scottish Labour began to change in the s and early s as a result primarily of the emergence of the SNP as a powerful competitor, but also because of an upsurge in support for the left. These two trends combined to foster demands for more autonomy for the Scottish party, spearheaded by the Labour Co-ordinating Committee (known as LCC Scotland), the Scottish affiliate of a left-wing ginger group set up in . Having secured, with the aid of left-inclined trade union officials, a majority on the SEC, the LCC pressed London for more powers over policy and organization. After long and sometimes acrimonious discussions a compromise was reached which provided for a larger Scottish input into the party programme and improved consultation between the NEC and SEC, but Labour still remained in its essentials a centralized party. Shifting to the party on the ground, Scottish Labour was dogged by long-standing weaknesses. It had always presented itself as the party of the Scottish working class, but has never succeeded in building a mass party on the classic social democratic model. Membership levels were consistently low, activism weak and organization often ramshackle. The state of the party in Glasgow, Labour’s main Scottish stronghold, dramatically illustrates this. Time and again party organizers complained about abysmal membership, poor organization and desultory campaigning. In , it was estimated that total city party membership only stood at , (Hutchison : ). Despite
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persistent reprimands from London over the next two decades, little changed. A enquiry found that total individual membership in the fifteen Glasgow constituencies was ,, and that meetings were convened irregularly and that only small numbers were engaged in campaigning work. In some areas ‘only the devoted work of two or three people had prevented a complete collapse of organisation’ (Labour Party ). Leaping on another twenty years and Keating’s account showed that again little had improved (Keating : ). The pattern was broadly the same in other areas of strength outside Glasgow. Writing in , Marwick found that local Labour Parties sprang to life only at election time and were otherwise characterized by apathy or inertia (Marwick : ). Aberdeen in the early s had the lowest ratio of party members to voters in Scotland (Knox : ). In Labour’s Scottish Organizer, Jimmy Allison (, ), described membership throughout Scotland as ‘a disgrace’ and despite Labour’s remarkable electoral triumphs under Tony Blair these did not feed into any regeneration on the ground in Scotland (Lynch and Birrell ). As Seyd and Whiteley (: ) have observed, a flourishing membership acts as testimony ‘to the fact that a party has support in the community and is rooted in the concerns and values of real people. In this sense, members are “ambassadors in the community”’. Why, then, was Labour able to consolidate its control in Scotland in the absence of a substantial membership? One reason was that the generation after witnessed the highpoint of class identity, social solidarity, and tenacious party allegiances which reduced the need for active campaigning and mobilization. Another is that there were ambassadors in the community, albeit in a somewhat different form from that normally envisaged. The party, throughout much of the postwar pre-devolution era possessed a cadre of councillors, local notables, members of tenant associations, and trade union officials who were well-connected, muchrespected and had deep roots in their communities. These were often treated as opinion-leaders and ‘significant others’ whose influence thereby diffused outwards and helped lend Labour a visibility and, indeed, solidity in the social fabric it might otherwise have lacked (Hassan and Shaw ). The effectiveness of such informal linkages depended upon two conditions. The first was that these opinion-leaders did not gradually succumb to inertia in the belief that ‘the Labour vote’ could always be relied upon to turn out. There is evidence that this is precisely what happened, that repeated electoral success generated complacency and lethargy, reinforced by the much-exaggerated picture of Labour’s underlying strength in Scotland which the First-Past-The-Post system fostered. Second, these linkages presupposed a society defined by community cohesion, class solidarity, and powerful party allegiances. But all these waned, displaced by a relentless process of party dealignment, weakening class identities and much greater voter volatility as a result of which the conditions facilitating informal linkages decayed. When the SNP tide surged, and electoral competition became much more intense, a party with low membership and enfeebled activism along with few direct resources was left highly vulnerable.
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T E D S L
.................................................................................................................................. Scottish Labour’s electoral performance post- can be divided into three periods: the immediate post-war period of two-party dominance in the UK and Scotland; more volatile and unpredictable multi-party politics seen in the first rise of the SNP, and the emergence of the Liberal–SDP Alliance; and finally, post-devolution politics. If we look at Scottish Labour’s electoral performance at different levels and assess Westminster first, we are able to gauge the Scottish party’s support in comparison to English Labour—as well as Welsh Labour for a further comparator. In the period – Scottish Labour won . per cent of the vote on average and had a relatively stable vote—with a high of . per cent () and a low of . per cent ()—a difference of . per cent. The Scottish party finished in first place in votes ahead of the Conservatives on five occasions and in second place behind them on three; across the UK Labour also finished ahead on five occasions and second on three. Across – Scottish Labour won an average . per cent of the vote— ranging from a high of . per cent () to a low of . per cent ()—a difference of . per cent, nearly twice what it was in the previous period. The Scottish party finished in first place in votes in every one of the seven UK elections, with the Conservatives in second in five and the SNP second in two; across the UK Labour won the popular vote on two occasions. The first period is dominated by Labour and Conservatives with the SNP and Liberals struggling to make an impact beyond the occasional by-election, such as Hamilton in . Over – Labour averaged . per cent to the Conservatives . per cent, Liberals . per cent and SNP’s . per cent: a Labour lead of . per cent. Whereas the – era saw increased fragmentation and volatility which did affect Labour support, it disproportionately hit the Conservatives. Average support for Labour was . per cent, for the Conservatives . per cent, for the SNP . per cent, and for Liberals (including the Liberal–SDP Alliance and Lib Dems) . per cent—a Labour lead of . per cent. Across the five post-devolution Westminster elections Labour support averaged . per cent—with that figure disguising a huge variety from a high of . per cent () and a low of . per cent (): a difference of . per cent. Talk, as there was in the post-war period of ‘Labour Scotland’ or ‘a socialist country’, was thus overstated and misread the scale and nature of the party’s support (Hassan and Shaw ). For example, apart from the obvious point that Scottish Labour never won a majority of the popular vote, coming closest with . per cent in , the party’s vote was not always higher than that of English Labour (and mostly below Welsh Labour). Between and , the Labour vote was higher in England on three occasions (, , ) and equal in one (); between and , it was higher twice out of seven times (February and October ); and between and ,
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twice out of five. In comparison, in every single post-war UK election bar one () Welsh Labour polled higher than the Scottish party and in nine elections (–, ) the Welsh party won a majority of the popular vote. From to in nine consecutive elections the Scottish party outpolled its English comrades, only to see its support dramatically collapse in the and elections. A major factor in Scottish Labour’s dominance of politics north of the border for so long has been the effects of the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral system and the fact that the party’s vote was unevenly spread across the country and in particular clustered in safe West of Scotland seats (Chapter in this Handbook). In the party won . per cent of the vote and . per cent of seats, and in , . per cent of the vote and . per cent of seats. The Scottish Parliament is elected by a hybrid system of FPTP and a regional list within a broadly proportional system. In the election, Labour’s . per cent of the constituency vote and . per cent of the regional vote gave the party fifty-three out of seventy-three constituency seats (. per cent) and three out of fifty-six regional seats (. per cent)—giving an overall fifty-six out of seats (. per cent). Hence, Labour’s predominance in FPTP limited the degree to which the regional seats could produce an overall proportional result with Labour still receiving a winner’s bonus, albeit one significantly reduced compared to a pure FPTP system. This facilitated a major change for Labour in how it saw itself and did politics. The party had grown comfortable talking about being, and seeing itself as, a majority party and articulated the same politics of mandate as the UK Thatcher Government did at its peak in the s, when neither had a majority of the popular vote. Labour ‘mandaters’ north of the border tried to emphasize that the party’s per cent in was part of a pan-home rule consensus. Suddenly, in , in the context of the Scottish Parliament, Labour was confronted with the reality of its popular support: that it was a minority like all parties. This was a cathartic moment for the party and wider politics, and one some in the party relished, seeing it as a potential liberation from traditional Labour politics. Others, including several Westminster Labour MPs, were resentful that the party had voluntarily given away its majority of seats by abandoning FPTP. Labour was faced with a choice of attempting to govern as a minority administration, which would mean the other parties would be regularly able to defeat it, or enter coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which is what the party did, with Donald Dewar becoming First Minister and Jim Wallace, Deputy First Minister. The party continued in government for eight years under two subsequent First Ministers, Henry McLeish and then Jack McConnell. An electoral shock occurred in , when Labour lost narrowly to the SNP. The Nationalists won . per cent of the constituency vote to . per cent for Labour, and . per cent of the regional vote to Labour’s . per cent, resulting in the SNP winning forty-seven seats to Labour’s forty-six and forming a minority administration under Alex Salmond. The SNP won an overall majority of seats in on . per cent of the constituency and . per cent of the regional vote with Labour winning . per cent and . per cent respectively, which gave the SNP a mandate to hold the Scottish independence referendum. The consequences of this made the main dividing
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point of politics independence and anti-independence and, after the referendum, worked to the benefit of the SNP and Tories, two parties with unambiguous positions on the issue. And hence it worked to further undermine an already weakened Labour. Labour’s Scottish election was a one-off in the scale of change. The party’s vote fell from . per cent to . per cent whilst the SNP’s rose from . per cent to . per cent, but even more emphatically it went from forty-one seats in to one (Edinburgh South). Nothing had ever been seen like it and earned such descriptions as a ‘tartan tsunami’ (Macwhirter ). The following year’s Scottish Parliament elections saw Labour fall further, winning . per cent of the constituency and . per cent of the regional vote. There was only a small recovery when Theresa May called the election: . per cent of the vote and seven seats. Often overlooked in an analysis of these events is the psychological element and human factor. Scottish Labour has lost a host of experienced politicians from Westminster and Holyrood in recent years. A generation such as Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, John Reid, and Helen Liddell retired from elected Labour politics. Similarly at Holyrood, various former Labour ministers such as Wendy Alexander and Susan Deacon, decided that the party political arena was not for them. And then on top of this, the party experienced significant losses at Holyrood and a near wipeout at Westminster. Scottish Labour’s dominance under the First-Past-The-Post system reinforced the convictions of many Scottish Labour politicians that they spoke for Scotland and could do so as a majoritarian party when they were popular. This, in turn, made some Labour figures suspicious of political pluralism, disdainful of opponents (aided by their often negligible parliamentary representation), and influenced more by internal dynamics within the party than the external environment. Scottish Labour’s precipitous decline post- cannot be reduced to one factor or cause. But what undoubtedly played a part over the past four decades was the party’s attempts to, first, control, then come to terms with, a Scotland which was shifting into a different type of politics from the one which had aided Labour’s rise and dominance. Eleven key events can be identified from : –: Scottish Labour General Secretary Helen Liddell declares that in the first devolution referendum the party will not support any cross-party campaign for a Scottish Assembly. : The Thatcher Government introduces the right to buy council houses for sitting tenants. After initial Scottish Labour opposition this is legally forced through by the Scottish Office. : Labour agrees to enter a cross-party Scottish Constitutional Convention, which the SNP decide not to join. : Scottish Labour Conference agrees that a future Scottish Parliament should be elected by proportional representation. : Labour and Lib Dems agree a Scottish Parliament elected by a system of proportional representation.
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: Tony Blair announces a referendum on a Scottish Parliament without consulting the Scottish party. : First Scottish Parliament elections see Labour returned as the largest party and begin eight years of Labour–Lib Dem coalition government. : Labour agree to proportional representation for local government elections. : SNP narrowly win the Scottish Parliament elections and form a minority government; first local government elections held under PR. –: After the SNP form a majority government Scotland faces a three-year independence referendum campaign. –: In the aftermath of the independence referendum, Labour lose forty of their forty-one Scottish seats at Westminster seats and in the following year’s Scottish Parliament elections fall to third place in seats and votes behind the Tories. The above key events can be summarized as falling into three types. First, how the party responded to the emergence and challenge of the SNP as a serious electoral threat which culminated in the Nationalists’ victory over Labour in . Second, the party’s limited control over political matters directly relevant to it, seen at its most acute in the period of – leading up to the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, but also a factor before and after. Third, the contradiction between the party’s espousal of decentralization and devolution and its practice of centralization, both within the British and Scottish parties, and between the former and latter. All of these have undercut Scottish Labour’s ability to both develop a politics which was shaped towards the changing and more multi-party politics of the Parliament, and articulate a convincing Labour narrative.
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.................................................................................................................................. Devolution exposed Labour more fully than before to the competitive dynamics of territorial, multilevel politics. Some have argued that the party was organizationally slow in adapting. Simpkins contends that Labour ‘has maintained its top-down approach to internal party politics and continued to exert a centripetal influence in Scotland, thereby contributing to the lack of legitimacy’ (Simpkins : ). In effect, Scottish Labour remains little more than a ‘branch office’ of a hierarchically ordered, centralized party. The first major test of Labour’s new internal arrangements, the process for recruiting candidates for the Scottish Parliament, seemed to substantiate this view. The selection process is a major site for struggles over party leadership and policy direction (Ranney ). Under Labour’s post-devolution rules, responsibility for establishing the procedures governing candidate selection for the Scottish Parliament was delegated to the
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Scottish Executive Committee, which had recently fallen under the control of the party right-wing. The most controversial rule change introduced by the SEC was to establish a parliamentary panel, membership of which was a prerequisite for selection as a Labour candidate. This, in effect, gave the SEC a degree of control over the flow of candidates. The object, the SEC claimed, was to raise the calibre of candidates through more demanding criteria. However, it soon became evident that a number of prominent left-wingers were excluded, including Denis Canavan MP, who resigned from the party and subsequently won as an independent, and Susan Deacon, who appealed, won, was elected, and served as Donald Dewar’s first Health Minister. As a result, there was much internal party controversy over the new procedure widely denounced as an ideological vetting device (Laffin and Shaw ). This episode was portrayed as part of New Labour’s ‘control freakery’. The party leadership blocked Ken Livingstone’s candidature for the new post of London mayor and Rhodri Morgan’s efforts to become leader of the Welsh Labour party and Welsh First Minister—in both cases ultimately unsuccessfully. There is little doubt that the centralistic traditions of the party had been given added impetus by New Labour’s belief that the party could only succeed if it asserted tight discipline and marginalized all dissent (as chronicled in compelling detail in Minkin ). Added to this was anxiety that ‘Old Labour’ elements might be able to embed themselves in the new devolved institutions. However, it does not follow from this that Labour remained ‘strictly top-down, centralist and unitary’ (Simpkins : ). This claim overstates the leadership’s control capacity and overlooks countervailing forces. Closer inspection suggests rather that it would be more accurate to depict Labour’s power structure as conforming to what Eldersveld () called the ‘stratarchical’ model. A ‘stratarchical’ pattern of power has been defined as one where a party exhibits a ‘proliferation of ruling groups and a diffusion of power prerogatives and power exercise’ (Eldersveld : ). Eldersveld’s argument is that stratarchy better equips a party to reconcile conflicts over policy, strategy, and territorially grounded interests with the maintenance of party unity than more centralized patterns of control. By establishing a layered system of ‘power prerogatives and power exercise’ a party prevents overload on central party authorities and ensures that decisions are taken at the most appropriate level. Our argument here is that the pressure of circumstance pushed a traditionally centralized Labour Party into a more stratarchical direction, though this was a process which was not completed until , in the wake of the catastrophic loss of Scottish Westminster seats in the election of that year. The move towards stratarchy was a learning experience, and the first real lesson was Labour’s first and very heated Holyrood selections. Rather than illustrating Labour’s commitment to a system of rigorous central control, it demonstrated that such a system was counterproductive: the costs of interference had not been matched by the benefits and did not justify the ill-will incurred. In line with the logic of stratarchy, the party centre recognized that it was
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politically wiser to defuse tensions by signalling a willingness to delegate and accord Scottish Labour more local autonomy. Thus, in the years and , agreement was reached to devolve the right to determine procedures for both selecting candidates and electing the leader and for some other organizational issues to the Scottish party. But the process was slow and halting, leaving the impression that the party’s national leadership was reluctant to relinquish all power and, as a result, some of the benefits that might have accrued from more decisive action—notably a public image of the Scottish party as wholly free of London control—did not materialize.
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.................................................................................................................................. The creation of a Scottish Parliament with control over major legislative areas meant that new arrangements had to be established about the policy jurisdictions of the Scottish and British parties. Following the logic of devolution, the Scottish party was entrusted with control over matters devolved to Holyrood, and the British party with those reserved to Westminster. In practice, some measure of policy overlap was inevitable, as jurisdictions were not always clear-cut. Hence a mechanism to regulate relationships and manage intra-party differences was essential, what Carty calls a ‘political accord’. This he defines as ‘the fundamental organisational bargain that underpins and regulates the relationships among the various units of working parties’ within multilevel governance systems, spelling out their rights and responsibilities (Carty : ). The ‘political accord’ between British and Scottish Labour consisted of norms and conventions informally arrived at but never codified. It comprised three elements, which we call the principle of subsidiary, the ‘no surprises’ convention and the obligations of party solidarity. To illustrate how the accord worked in practice we focus on what was by far the most acrimonious dispute between the Labour–Lib Dem Scottish administration and New Labour in Westminster—policy over personal (or social) care for the elderly. In , the recently formed McLeish administration decided to implement the recommendation of the Sutherland Royal Commission. The Commission, set up by the UK government, had recommended universal free personal care (that is care that is not provided by trained medical personnel) for elderly sufferers from dementia and similar diseases (Hassan and Shaw ). This decision—which deeply split the Scottish party—became pivotal to McLeish’s period as First Minister. From the outset of his period in office, he believed ‘there now had to be a wider vision and a view of Scotland that was beyond managing and delivering services’ and that free personal care would provide ‘a statement of a country that was compassionate’ (McLeish : –). This stance ignited a furious response
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from London which claimed that by failing to fully consult London, the First Minister had breached the ‘no surprises’ convention. UK Labour ministers denounced McLeish for undermining the credibility of their argument for rejecting Sutherland: that universal care for the elderly was unaffordable, and by providing ammunition for voluntary organizations (such as Age Concern) which were clamouring for Labour to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission in England. McLeish’s initiative, it was charged, had caused dissension and showed cavalier disregard for the obligations of party solidarity. McLeish, in turn, riposted that devolution was pointless if a Labour-led Scottish administration was to be denied the right to pursue its own distinctive course of action, irrespective of the views and preferences of the party’s central leadership—and to do so would be a propaganda gift to the SNP. The bitterness of the dispute affected the future relationship between the two parties. Never again did the Westminster government seek to intervene in matters of devolved policy in such a clumsy way. Conversely, the experience reinforced both Scottish Labour’s instinct for caution and the pull of party loyalty, as well as its disinclination to take any stances that could cause difficulties for the British party and its leadership. After , relations between the two parties and administrations bedded down and for the most part disputes were resolved through largely informal channels without being publicized. This was particularly the case under Jack McConnell who succeeded McLeish as First Minister in . As one Scottish minister explained, ‘We were so loyal to Labour and did not want to see splits because splits bring down governments and that’s what the media would have loved, north and south of the border’ (interview, Peter Peacock). As noted, reserved policy matters remained a prerogative of the British party. By definition, the Scottish party could not implement policies on issues within Westminster’s remit. But could it express its own views, voice its criticisms and develop its own policies on such matters? The Scottish party was given some say in the British party’s deliberations, including twelve members out of in the National Policy Forum and a representative, normally the party leader on the NEC. But, at the time, these bodies had minimal influence and Scottish representatives did not necessarily articulate the view of the Scottish party. The question unexpectedly leapt to the forefront of political debate because the Scottish Party Conference coincided with the run-up to the Iraq war. A stream of resolutions had been submitted, largely critical of anticipated British intervention, and many delegates were eager to debate the issue. However, under prompting from London, local party managers sought to block any discussion by removing the whole issue from the conference agenda. Under pressure from the unions a compromise was reached. The Conference, chaired by Richard Leonard, was given the right to discuss Iraq but, since the UK government was determined to avoid the embarrassment of a critical resolution, not vote upon it. According to one minister ‘McConnell was virtually told to back Blair over Iraq’ (interview). As the full scale of the Iraq disaster became clearer, the failure of Scottish Labour to give expression to widespread opposition to UK participation in the war reinforced the impression of its subservience to London and its inability to act as a voice for Scotland.
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The dynamics of Labour’s territorial politics altered from after the Scottish party was defeated and after when the British party also lost power. Indeed, from onwards the Scottish party was shaken by repeated electoral setbacks in both Holyrood and Westminster elections. Electoral defeats and the SNP’s powerful performance inevitably produced pressure for more autonomy for Scottish Labour and a more stratarchical pattern of power within the party as a whole. This had both policy and organizational effects. Johann Lamont, elected party leader in December , called for the boundary between devolved and reserved issues to be redrawn in favour of Holyrood, for example by giving it more control over the setting of income tax rates and over aspects of social welfare. The British party, including most Scottish MPs, was unenthusiastic. MPs and MSPs were in increasing competition to assert their roles as representational custodians of Scottish interests—and to maximize their media coverage. Predictably, whilst MSPs consistently sought to widen the scope of the devolution settlement, MPs fought to maintain Westminster’s, and therefore their own, prerogatives. More generally the British party leadership feared that devolved fiscal and welfare powers threatened a crucial principle for the preservation of the Union and its wider rationale: ‘sharing’ and ‘pooling’ resources. Finally, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls was reluctant to relinquish powers he expected to inherit when in office. After a good deal of horse-trading, a compromise was hammered out, though it was soon overshadowed by the referendum. Centrifugal pressures were greater on matters of party organization. After the party’s defeat at the Holyrood elections, a working group was established into the party’s structure, led by Jim Murphy MP and Sarah Boyack MSP. Its recommendations, endorsed by both the UK and Scottish conferences, included: • The creation of the new post of leader of the Scottish Labour Party (previously leadership had been confined to the party in Holyrood); • The right of all Labour parliamentarians elected in Scotland to stand for the post of leader provided they pledged to seek election as an MSP; • The rearrangement of constituency Labour Party boundaries to correspond to Holyrood and not, as previously, Westminster boundaries; • Responsibility for setting the procedures for the selection of all Labour candidates in Scotland to be allocated to the SEC. These reforms were taken a step further in a package of reforms agreed by the new leaders of the Scottish and British parties, Kezia Dugdale and Jeremy Corbyn, in the wake of Scottish Labour’s near wipeout at the UK election. This gave the Scottish party full control over organization and the Scottish Conference was also given the right to formulate its own positions on reserved matters. These reforms, Kezia Dugdale claimed, meant that the Scottish Labour Party was ‘now on track to become fully autonomous’ (Dickie and Pickard ). The compulsions of a devolved system of government combined with an existential electoral challenge from the SNP had combined to radically reconfigure along more stratarchical lines—but, perhaps, rather belatedly.
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T I P S L
.................................................................................................................................. Scottish Labour’s institutional structure broadly replicated that of the national party. The party leader was to be selected by an electoral college comprising MSPs, the unions, and individual members. This later changed with the scrapping of the electoral college and the institution of a new method of electing the leader of the British party in . Henceforth, on the basis of a one member, one vote principle, leaders would be elected by a combination of full members, affiliated members (from trade unions) and supporters. This was the system used to elect both Kezia Dugdale in and Richard Leonard in . A Scottish Policy Forum was created in to formulate policies on devolved matters under the aegis of the Scottish Joint Policy Committee. Such policies would then be conveyed to the party’s decision-making authority, the Scottish Conference, for consideration and approval. Policies which secured the requisite majority would form part of Scottish Labour’s programme from which items for inclusion in the manifesto would be drawn. Responsibility for the framing of the manifesto was given to a committee equally chosen from the SEC and the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Group. In recent years scholars have traced what they see as the relentless concentration of power in the hands of parliamentary leaderships, irrespective of formal rules. This is seen as an outcome of a range of trends including the enfeeblement of the party on the ground, the waning of party–society linkages and networks and, in particular, the increasing professionalization of campaigning, communications, and policy formation (Katz and Mair ). A brief look at policymaking within Scottish Labour would seem to confirm this. There is little evidence that the Scottish Policy Forum had much impact on policy development as ordinary constituency members lacked access to the information and expertise available to the leadership whilst that leadership had and has at its disposal a range of managerial techniques it could deploy to ensure that the eventual outcome of the policy process (the manifesto) corresponded very closely to its preferences (Hassan and Shaw ). However, the fact that a party is not controlled by its members does not mean that it is run by a cohesive elite: elite pluralism would be a better description. The lack of New Labour-style leadership supremacy (as described in Minkin ) is best demonstrated by the chronic instability of leadership. With the exception of Jack McConnell, no leader has been in post for longer than three years. The list of nine leaders in twenty years is one of increasingly diminishing returns and insecure tenure: Dewar, McLeish, McConnell, Wendy Alexander, Iain Gray, Johann Lamont, Jim Murphy, Kezia Dugdale, to Richard Leonard. Since the most basic measure of leadership power is the ability to survive this rapid turnover suggests a certain infirmity of control. Indeed, The Guardian () called the Scottish Labour leadership ‘the poisoned chalice of British politics’. How can we account for this? Here it may be useful to consider briefly three main sources of power available to leaders in political parties, namely formal authority,
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legitimate power and remunerative power. By being vested with such enumerated powers, a leader is authorized to act according to his or her will in specified circumstances without the need to secure the approval of others. Legitimate power refers to a power relationship in which members accept that a leader has an ‘an acknowledged right to command’ and that they have ‘an acknowledged obligation to obey’ (Wrong : ). Remunerative power is the capacity to secure compliance through the ability to offer (or refuse) rewards: in effect, the power of appointment or patronage. The power of political leaders is contingent upon their access to, and ability to deploy, each of these sources of power though their scale, intensity, and availability will vary according to organizational traditions, ethos, and politics. A notable feature of a Scottish Labour leader’s formal role is the paucity of powers and duties clearly spelt out in the party constitution, in contrast to those of the SEC which are itemized in some detail. Prior to , the Scottish leader was formally only the head of the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Group and not of the Scottish party as a whole. However, from to the position of parliamentary leader was combined with that of First Minister with all the prestige, control over the administration, and access to expertise thereby attached. The period to witnessed a stabilization of leadership power as this combined role was occupied by Jack McConnell. Leadership then weakened with Labour’s eviction from power and its leader’s reduced to being simply head of Labour MSPs. In this changed and the parliamentary leader became formally leader of the party as a whole, but without being given any specific additional powers. As a result, in its horizontal, no less than in its vertical, aspect, the pattern of power within Scottish Labour continued to be stratarchical in form, with power dispersed amongst a range of institutions and interests and decision-making reliant upon continual negotiation and compromise. To be deemed worthy of support a leader needs either, or preferably both, personal legitimacy and popular legitimacy. Personal legitimacy refers to a willingness to comply with leadership decisions because the leader is held in high esteem or because of their possession of valued personal qualities. Popular legitimacy refers to respect for the leader deriving from his or her proven election-winning abilities. The problem for Scottish Labour leaders is that they have struggled to accumulate much of either form of legitimacy. Because the position of leader was a new one and, until , was confined simply to leadership of Labour MSPs, no great stature or prestige has attached to the post, reducing any ingrained disposition to defer to its incumbent. The problem has been compounded by their inability to amass either personal or popular legitimacy. With the exception perhaps of Donald Dewar, no leader has been perceived to have any exceptional merit. Equally, no leader has been able to demonstrate electionwinning capabilities as illustrated by the party’s poor electoral record (compare here Tony Blair). The consequences of all this is that leaders have had to rely heavily on remunerative power. Devolved government made available to Labour First Ministers a supply of selective benefits, notably ministerial positions, which could be used to construct a
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support base and bolster their grip on power. However, whilst the power of patronage is essential to any political leader, it rarely suffices. Whilst the shrewd distribution of rewards may be effective in the short term, being based on narrow and sometimes highly opportunistic calculations it is not easily converted into a durable basis of power or allegiance. No leader could be sure that the coterie of supporters he or she had assembled through patronage might not begin to disintegrate at times of crisis—as, indeed, has happened time and again. Of course, loyalties need not simply be based on patronage and, indeed, for most of its history ideological-based allegiances have also played a key role in Labour politics. Scholars have commonly distinguished between two types of internal party combinations, or ‘factions’: factions of principle, which are oriented towards the pursuit of collective goals, and which are held together by a shared set of beliefs; and factions of patronage whose adherents are primarily motivated by the pursuit of power, position, and advantage. The two types of groups and alignment patterns have always been interwoven in complex and fluid ways. As David Hume pointed out, factions ‘are seldom found pure and unmixed, either of the one kind or the other’. But notwithstanding, he added, they can be characterized ‘according to that principle which is predominant and is found to have the greatest influence’ (Hume ). A noticeable feature of Scottish Labour politics under devolution, at least until , is that the ‘predominant principle’ has been that of patronage. Its internal political life, especially in Holyrood, was characterized by the competitive struggle for power, position, and preferment. As one-party official observed, clashes were ‘about leadership: who you would support and who would support you—who got jobs, positions, junior ministerial positions—about power, about patronage. In terms of policy it meant nothing’ (interview). The currency of politics, a minister similarly recalled, was ‘loyalties, obligations and rewards’ (interview, Peter Peacock). Loyalties did not form on the basis of ideological preferences because such preferences did not structure cleavage lines within the party. A much more ideological tone to the Scottish party was introduced with the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the British party in , The radical left Campaign for Socialism (CFS), formed in and previously with negligible influence, converted itself into a Corbyn support-base and mobilized opposition to Kezia Dugdale, a critic of the new leader. Dugdale’s surprising resignation as leader in August accelerated the ideological polarization of the Scottish party which, with support for CFS rapidly rising, was by then well underway. The contest for the succession was between two MSPs, Richard Leonard, a former GMB official and left-winger, and Anas Sarwar, former MP and previously deputy leader of the party. It was a bitterly fought election which Leonard won by , votes (. per cent) to Sarwar’s , votes (. per cent) (BBC News, November ). The result not only effected a closer alignment between the Scottish and British leaderships but completed the process of displacing the old ‘factionalism of patronage’ by the ‘factionalism of principle’. Old personal rivalries and conflicting coteries were supplanted by a deep, emphatically ideologically grounded and often rancorous divide between the Corbynista left,
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organized and co-ordinated by the new powerful Campaign for Socialism now officially operated by the Momentum franchise in Scotland, and the rest of the party. The most publicized disputes erupted over policy on Brexit where staunch Remainers clashed with the Leonard leadership, which aligned itself with Corbyn’s ambivalent position, not least over the holding of a second referendum. Personal relationships also rapidly deteriorated. Leonard, as a long-standing trade union negotiator, had a reputation as a pragmatist and a conciliator and some anticipated that he would seek to contain intra-party tensions by consensus-building. However, he preferred to quell dissent by removing his principal critics, sacking Sarwar as Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and the highly regarded Jackie Baillie as Shadow Secretary for the Economy in October . It may be that Leonard’s natural conciliatory inclinations were overridden by the uncompromising instincts of his advisers, many of them drawn from the Campaign for Socialism. Whatever the truth, it hardly helped an ailing party. Leonard’s leadership failed to produce the ‘Corbyn bounce’ that many of his supporters had anticipated. Though widely liked within the party as a person, he failed to make any real impression on the wider public. More troubling, Scottish Labour’s standing in the polls remained low, and it was now consigned to the position of an alsoran third party.
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.................................................................................................................................. To what extent, in its policies, programme, and values, did Scottish Labour as a governing party offer a distinctive ideological profile, something that distinguished it from the party south of the border? The party has long presented itself as the guardian and stalwart exponent of the traditional social democratic values of community, equality, and social solidarity. In this the party has gone with the grain of a set of existing narratives about Scottish society: about collectivism and the perils of individualism, as well as the benefits of Scottish autonomy and public services. A number of commentators have suggested that this self-image is misguided, and that in practical policymaking there was little to distinguish Scottish Labour’s record in office from that of New Labour. Writing in , Finlay observed that ‘for all the talk of Scotland being more radical than England and of the nation being predisposed towards left-of-centre redistributive politics, these characteristics have not really manifested themselves in any meaningful way. There is little to differentiate between the policies pursued at Holyrood and those pursued at Westminster’ (Finlay : ). Mooney and Williams (: ) similarly claimed that the Scottish Executive has ‘adopted the language, rhetoric and increasingly the policy and practice of New Labour in England in relation to public sector reforms’ whilst Hopkin and Bradbury (: ) concluded
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that all Labour First Ministers ‘were comfortable with the Blairite New Labour agenda’. Others, however, disagree. For example, Keating and Freeman have both argued that, Scottish Labour adopted a more collectivist, traditionally social democratic stance on key policy issues than New Labour (Keating ; Freeman ). We suggest that this latter interpretation is correct. For New Labour the collectivist system of public service provision, associated with ‘Old Labour’ and long-standing social democratic traditions, was outdated, a fetter on efforts to ‘modernize’ the public sector. Thus, the thrust of its NHS policy was to revitalize and improve the efficiency of service delivery through market disciplines, material incentives, and competition from private providers. In Scotland, in contrast, this approach was not followed. Under Labour’s aegis, the internal market in the NHS was scrapped in favour of planning, co-operation and partnerships with professional associations and trade unions. Mooney and Poole (: ) maintained that ideological choices in Scottish welfare were formulated in the context of a ‘New Labour and neo-liberal agenda’. But none of the key NHS reforms implemented by New Labour— Foundation hospitals, payment by results, Independent Sector Treatment Centres (NHS operations carried out by profit-making firms) and incentivization—were adopted by Scottish Labour. The whole emphasis remained on promoting integrated healthcare, pooling resources, and the expansion of collaborative working methods. As a result, the health systems in England and Scotland have moved in significantly different directions, both in values and in the ways they have been enshrined in policies and institutions (Hunter ; Keating ). It is true that, controversially, whilst in office Scottish Labour championed—in the teeth of trade union opposition—the use of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) in which private sector consortia build and continue to own hospitals, schools, and so forth, which are then contracted out to public authorities. The motives were varied, with some claiming there was no alternative method of funding available whilst others were also persuaded (entirely wrongly, it transpired) that PFI was more cost-effective than standard public procurement. So there was a degree of alignment between the two parties. But Scottish Labour, unlike New Labour, was neither intellectually convinced by, nor ethically comfortable with, the New Labour enthusiasm for consumer choice, competition, and the entry of private providers (Vidler and Clarke ). It was still imbued by what Paterson (: ) has called ‘social democratic communitarianism’, the belief that only through membership of communities could people fulfil themselves. At root it continued to retain faith in ‘a more traditional social democratic model of public service delivery, based on universalism egalitarianism and cooperation with public service professionals’ (Keating ). This more traditional social democratic approach was reinforced by other factors, two of which are worth citing. First, not only were public sector unions and professional associations more powerful in Scotland than in the UK as a whole, but Scottish Labour had a long tradition of working in close collaboration with them, and this it had no intention of jeopardizing. Second, the SNP’s reinvention as a social democratic party tilted the party system decisively further to the left than the UK as a whole.
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If Scottish Labour had espoused the New Labour ‘modernization’ agenda it would have been even more mercilessly assailed by the SNP as ‘Blairite’ and a ‘sell out’. These ideas were rarely articulated in clear theoretical ways. By nature practical and down-to earth, the party was not given to theoretical disquisitions or self-analyses. Its belief system remained essentially social democratic but more as a set of inclinations and a sensibility than a coherent doctrine. It preferred to justify its divergences from the New Labour project by invoking special Scottish circumstances and not as the emanation of a competing vision. Indeed, it rarely publicized its attachment to a different model of public service provision so awareness of this by the public was low. For many years this was not much of a political problem because it had no real ideological challenger. But with the rise of an avowedly social democratic SNP, this ceased to be so.
T E D A
.................................................................................................................................. Scottish Labour has a long history of championing the cause of a Scottish Parliament. This was called ‘home rule’ in the party’s early days with Labour drawing from the rich Gladstonian tradition of radical liberalism; as the party’s electoral fortunes rose so its commitment to home rule weakened, and by , the party both in Scotland and at British levels was signed up to the British state and the politics of centralization. In , what had been implicit became explicit as the Scottish party formally turned its back on home rule, only for it return in under electoral pressure from the SNP (Bogdanor ; Keating and Bleiman ). Support for a Scottish Parliament consolidated in the s and became reality in (McLean , ; Hassan ). Scottish Labour’s commitment to devolution was developed through its contribution to the cross-party Scottish Constitutional Convention with the Liberal Democrats and Greens, along with the STUC, churches, and other bodies. After , Labour quickly legislated for a devolution referendum on the basis of a White Paper on devolution which was endorsed in the referendum by : and led to the passing of the subsequent Scotland Act . This drew on the Convention, but went further, identifying the reserved powers retained by Westminster, rather than listing individual devolved powers. The key Labour figure in this journey to a more coherent, far-reaching form of devolution was Donald Dewar, shadow Secretary of State for Scotland from to and Secretary of State from to overseeing the devolution referendum. Other key personnel in government were Henry McLeish, junior minister at the Scotland Office and Murray Elder and Wendy Alexander, Dewar’s senior advisers. Dewar’s political style was patient and bridge-building, well-suited to nurturing through the UK Parliament devolution legislation, and when the Scotland Bill was first published in December , Dewar read its first lines: ‘There shall be a Scottish
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Parliament’, paused, smiled, and then added, ‘I like that’ (quoted in The Herald, December ). With emphatic popular backing from the referendum and a Labour Commons majority of , the Scotland Act passed smoothly through the Commons and did not face any major obstacles in the Lords. There then followed the preparations for the first Scottish Parliament elections which saw Labour, like all parties, having to devise new systems of candidate selection, bringing together policy and campaigning. By running a national panel of approved candidates, as we have seen, the party faced accusations of centralist control and in future selections the system was effectively abandoned. Labour then faced the surprise of an election contest where the SNP pulled significantly ahead in the polls, forcing it to run a high-profile anti-Nationalist, antiindependence campaign. In the event, the party won comfortably more votes than the SNP, leading to Donald Dewar becoming First Minister. But Labour’s efforts in government and Dewar as First Minister did not go as smoothly as many thought it would. As well as the problems outlined earlier, Dewar proved to be a diffident leader, slow to protect his numerous relatively young and inexperienced ministers. As well as this there was another deeper problem in Labour’s devolution politics. By , Labour had been championing devolution for a quarter of a century: the party knew why it wanted a Scottish Parliament and it knew what kind of Parliament it wanted to bring about. What it had unfortunately spent little time on was what kind of Scotland devolution was meant to bring into being. Many of the ideas came from coalition bargaining between Labour and Lib Dems, as in the case of local government electoral reform, or in the case of free care for the elderly, because Henry McLeish wanted to differentiate from Westminster and wanted to make an impact. Further, Jack McConnell wanted to send a signal to party and public that the old Labour local fiefdoms were over. These and other cases showed that party processes and internal democratic debate did not supply enough policy proposals. Historically, the Labour Party has been a ‘bulwark of Britishness’. The Union was portrayed as having the potential to be a social democratic force for good: redistributing from rich to poor, shifting resources from the centre to the periphery, and ‘pooling’ and ‘sharing’ risk. This Labour idea of Britain served the party well for many years though it then began to struggle with the emergence of a more territorial-based politics. By the time of the independence referendum of Labour was out of office both in Holyrood and London. During the referendum campaign the party anchored itself in the assertion that the Union was ‘a social justice union’, a compact synonymous with fairness, equality, and progress. This was a time-honoured Labour message and it might well have helped the triumph of the Union cause but it did not stem the defection of many previously Labour voters to the independence camp. The fault lines and fissures which have emerged in ‘the Labour nation’ became even more deep-seated after with the European Union referendum, which saw the UK vote to leave but Scotland vote decisively to stay. This raised the spectre of years of complex constitutional wrangling: about Brexit, Scottish independence, and Irish unification, and posed problems for the kind of Britain that Labour were wanting to
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govern and create and the role of the Scottish party in it. There was, in the last stages of the referendum, talk from Gordon Brown of the UK adopting a near-federalist template, a position continued by Kezia Dugdale as leader, but no detail has ever been forthcoming. Scottish Labour is reliant on English Labour and the UK leadership realizing that the country needs sweeping democratization and even a new constitutional settlement, but there seems little interest or appetite for this from the British leadership for the foreseeable future.
A F S L?
.................................................................................................................................. The decline of the Scottish Labour Party has been dramatic, but it has been a manifestation of a wider pattern of social democratic crisis and disarray, whose other casualties include the French and Spanish Socialists, the Dutch Labour Party and, most recently, the German and Swedish Social democrats, all of whose performance at the polls has ranged from the poor to the disastrous. Ironically and unexpectedly, the British Labour Party under Corbyn was, in , the major exception. Yet, even in this climate of widespread retreat, Scottish Labour has fallen further and deeper than any of the above: the only party which has experienced a more severe decline being the Greek PASOK in the exceptional circumstances of Greece after the Euro crisis. Social democracy has, in the past, derived strength, sustenance, and resilience from a vibrant world of collectivist institutions, ideas, and identities. Everywhere in the developed world these are corroding as trade union memberships continue to shrink and retreat, traditional class and collective allegiances and solidarities ebb, and the politics and cultures of both individualism and ethnicity strengthen. The long hollowing-out of social democracy, combined with the related decline of mainstream centre-right politics, has opened up enormous political spaces which have been filled by the forces of populism, xenophobia, and right-wing nationalism, which has given voice to marginalized groups and an outsider politics once thought the preserve of the left. It is not an accident that so far this politics of anger, rage, and insurrection, has hurt parties of the left and social democracy relatively more than those of the right. Scotland has had a different experience in this from the rest of the UK and Europe with a centre-left SNP giving voice to what has been a progressive Scottish nationalism. This has had numerous advantages for Scotland, with the politics of insurgency and populism taken up by pro-independence forces in the referendum. But none of this offers much succour to Scottish Labour. Whilst the waning of Scottish Labour is part of a broader trend afflicting social democratic parties, it has been compounded by more territorially specific forces. The first is the SNP’s success in projecting itself convincingly as the most reliable and authentic advocate of Scottish interests, evicting Labour from a role it had long occupied. Constrained by both its status as the Scottish wing of a British party as well as by its commitment to the Union, Labour finds it hard to match the SNP’s
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unabashed claim to be ‘the party of Scotland’. Its association with New Labour, with its ambivalent attitude to the welfare state, its enthusiasm for so-called ‘middle England’ and its responsibility for the deeply unpopular involvement in Iraq, also became increasingly problematic. It facilitated the SNP’s efforts to portray Labour as rightwing and to position itself unapologetically on the centre-left as the most reliable custodian of social democratic values. The SNP have wooed and won over a section of Labour’s traditional constituency and it is not at all clear how Labour can win it back. There are opportunities, of course, notably the widening chasm between the SNP’s social democratic discourse of a fairer, more equal Scotland, and the realities of a country with structural inequalities, poverty, and strained public services. The Leonard leadership abandoned the cautious, pragmatic approach, which had long typified Labour, but there is little evidence that its alternative—attempting to recharge and revive class politics—made any real inroads into the party’s lost electorate. So far, it has shown little intellectual vitality and little disposition to query old verities. Equally, it inherited something of Scottish Labour’s ‘entitlement’ philosophy, its ingrained belief that it has a special insight about how the Scottish political mind works, and how its pulse beats. This air of certitude is particularly inappropriate in an increasingly fickle, unpredictable, and fluid world. Labour’s plight is that there are no easy solutions, and no obvious route through which it can regain its lost political eminence. In the course of twenty years, Scottish Labour has gone from giving the appearance of being omnipotent, to being defeated and ousted from power, and then reduced to a shrunken state as the third force of Scotland. Political cycles and climates change, and nothing lasts forever, but the current state of Scottish Labour shows little to indicate that the party understands what has happened to it, how to adapt to its new diminished state, and how to sketch a route map out of its current predicament. Scottish Labour needs to display more inventiveness and creativity. But territorially it faces a triple challenge: that emanating from its status as a Scottish party confronting a powerful competitor in the SNP; that as part of British Labour with whose future it remains entangled; and, not least, that of part of a wider social democratic movement which appears virtually everywhere to be in crisis. To adapt Karl Marx, parties make their own future but not in the circumstances of their making.
R Allison, J. . Guilty by Suspicion: A Life and Labour. Glendaruel: Argyll Publishing. Allison, J. . Report on Membership SEC // Mitchell Box. TD //. Béland, D. and Lecours, A. . Nationalism and Social Policy: The Politics of Territorial Solidarity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bogdanor, V. . Devolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bradbury, J. . ‘British Politics Parties and Devolution: Adapting to Multi-level Politics in Scotland and Wales’, in D. Hough and C. Jeffery (eds), Devolution and Electoral Politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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Dickie, M. and Pickard, J. . ‘Scottish Labour wins greater autonomy from UK party’, Financial Times, September. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/efafec-fdde-e-ecfbf. Eldersveld, S. . Political Parties. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Finlay, R. . Modern Scotland –. London: Profile Books. Freeman, R. . ‘Social Democracy, Uncertainty and Health in Scotland’, in M. Keating (ed.), Scottish Social Democracy. Brussels: Pieter Lang. Hassan, G. (ed) . The Scottish Labour Party: History, Institutions and Ideas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hassan, G. and Shaw, E. . The Strange Death of Labour Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hassan, G. and Shaw, E. . The People’s Flag and the Union Jack: An Alternative History of Britain and the Labour Party. London: Biteback Publishing. Hopkin, J. and Bradbury, J. . ‘British Statewide Parties and Multilevel Politics’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, /: –. Howell, D. . British Social Democracy: A Study in Development and Decay, nd edition. London: Croom Helm. Hume, D. . ‘Of Parties in General’, in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, On Line Library of Liberty. Available at: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hume-essays-moralpolitical-literary-lf-ed. Hunter, D.J. . The Health Debate. Bristol: The Policy Press. Hutchison, I.G.C. . Scottish Politics in the Twentieth Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Katz, R.S. and Mair, P. . ‘The Ascendancy of the Party in Public Office’, in R. Gunther, J.R. Montero, and J.J. Linz (eds), Political Parties: Old Concepts and New Challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keating, M. . Glasgow: The City That Refused to Die. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Keating, M. . ‘Social Inclusion, Devolution and Policy Divergence’, Political Quarterly, /: –. Keating, M. . The Government of Scotland, nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Keating, M. and Bleiman, D. . Labour and Scottish Nationalism. London: Macmillan. Knox, W.W. . Industrial Nation: Work, Culture and Society in Scotland –present. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kogan, D. . Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party. London: Bloomsbury. Kogan, D. and Kogan, M. . The Battle for the Labour Party. London: Fontana Books. Labour Party. . Inquiry into Party Organisation in Glasgow NAD //, by J. Buchan et al. NEC, February. Lynch, P. and Birrell, S. . ‘The Autonomy and Organisation of Scottish Labour’, in G. Hassan (ed.), The Scottish Labour Party. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Macwhirter, I. . Tsunami: Scotland’s Democratic Revolution. Glasgow: Freight Books. Marwick, W.H. . A Short History of Labour in Scotland. Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers. McKenzie, R.T. . British Political Parties: The Distribution of Power within the Conservative and Labour Parties. London: Heinemann Books. McLean, R. . Labour and Scottish Home Rule: Volume One: Mid-Lanark to Majority Government. Broxburn: Scottish Labour Action. McLean, R. . Labour and Scottish Home Rule: Volume Two: Unionist Complacency to Crisis Management. Broxburn: Scottish Labour Action.
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McLeish, H. . Scotland First: Truth and Consequences. Edinburgh: Mainstream Books. Miliband, R. . Parliamentary Socialism: A Study of in the Politics of Labour. London: Allen and Unwin. Minkin, L. . The Blair Supremacy. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mooney, G. and Poole, L. . ‘ “A Land of Milk and Honey”? Social Policy in Scotland after Devolution’, Critical Social Policy, /: –. Mooney, G. and Williams, C. . ‘Forging New “Ways of Life”? Social policy and nation building in devolved Scotland and Wales’, Critical Social Policy, /: –. Paterson, L. . ‘Scottish Social Democracy and Blairism’, in G. Hassan and C. Warhurst (eds), Tomorrow’s Scotland. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Ranney, A. . Pathways to Parliament. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Seyd, P. and Whiteley, P. . ‘British Party Members: An Overview’, Party Politics, /: –. Simpkins, F. . ‘The Conflicting Loyalties of the Scottish Labour Party’, in E. Avril and Y. Béliard (eds), Labour United and Divided from the s to the Present. Manchester: Manchester University Press. The Guardian. . ‘The Guardian view on Scottish Labour’s new leader: she must play the long game’. The Guardian, Editorial, August. Available at: https://www.theguardian. com/commentisfree//aug//guardian-view-on-scottish-labour-leader-kezia-dugdale. Vampa, D. . The Regional Politics of Welfare in Italy, Spain and Great Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Vidler, E. and Clarke, J. . ‘Creating Citizen-Consumers: New Labour and the Remaking of Public Services’, Public Policy and Administration, /: –. Wrong, D.H. . Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses. Oxford: Blackwell.
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.................................................................................................................................. T Scottish National Party (SNP) aims to achieve independent statehood for Scotland and to promote the interests of Scotland. Founded in , the party emerged from a fractured home-rule movement of the s. Thereafter the SNP remained part of a wider national movement for constitutional change. The modern SNP is more clearly an independence-seeking party, although debate exists on what independence means (Chapter in this Handbook). The party itself has undergone transformation on a scale few political organizations experience. In the twenty-first century, the SNP has enjoyed extraordinary electoral success and long-term governing status in Scotland, and has been an effective party of opposition in the UK; an established party of government but anti-establishment in another context. The party has been professional and cautious as a government but radical in its aim of Scottish independence, instrumental in the setting up of a referendum on Scotland’s constitutional status in . We focus on a number of key aspects of the SNP’s development, with the aim of understanding how the party has changed over time. First, we provide a brief account of the party as an electoral phenomenon. The SNP belongs to a family of West European nationalist and regionalist parties and is one of the most electorally successful of this party type (Mazzoleni and Mueller ). We demonstrate how the creation of the Scottish Parliament created an opening for the SNP to become a credible party. We then consider the values and ideological character of the SNP. We explore the party’s nationalism and how this relates to its other values; and we examine visions of independence in the party, outlining strategic debates on how to achieve it. We examine the SNP as an organization and as a party of government, charting its adaptation to devolution. In a relatively short period of time, the SNP transitioned from extra-parliamentary, movement party to parliamentary opposition party and
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then to long-serving party of government. Becoming a professional party was key to the SNP’s electoral success. Being a party of government involved a balancing of independence and domestic policy agendas. Finally, we analyse the SNP’s relationship with movement politics, historically and in contemporary times. The referendum campaign encouraged pro-independence alliances to form, and following the referendum the SNP attracted an extraordinarily large intake of new members. We explore some of the implications of these events and the SNP’s place in the modern Yes movement. The conclusions reflect on the challenges for the SNP.
T SNP’ E P
.................................................................................................................................. For the SNP, notable electoral impact occurred in with Winnie Ewing’s byelection victory in the previously safe Labour seat of Hamilton (Mitchell ). This followed Plaid Cymru’s success in Wales at the Carmarthen by-election in . The SNP made further ground in the s. Following the discovery of oil off the shores of North East Scotland, the party campaigned on the basis of ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’, developing a more credible economic argument for independence. This period saw constitutional change rise up the political agenda in Scotland, contributing to the SNP’s early electoral success (Mitchell ; Johns and Mitchell ). In the October general election, the party won eleven seats and per cent of the vote in Scotland. This put pressure on UK governments to deliver on devolution, although this would not occur for another two decades. From the s the SNP won and held seats in some rural areas of Scotland, such as Banff and Buchan and Moray, which had historically supported the Conservative Party. However, the SNP struggled for relevance in UK elections which were usually dominated by state-wide issues and based on a simple plurality (First-Past-The-Post) electoral system that advantaged Labour. For a long time, the Labour party’s hold on Scottish politics looked impenetrable for the SNP, especially in the West of Scotland and Glasgow. October marked the party’s high watermark at UK general elections until when the SNP won fifty-six of Scotland’s fifty-nine seats (Table .). In , following the referendum, the SNP attracted per cent of the vote in Scotland and benefited from the disproportional electoral system that had previously hindered the party, returning per cent of Scottish MPs. By , a modest revival of the Scottish Conservatives had occurred, campaigning against a second independence referendum. The SNP slipped back in the general election, losing twenty-one seats, but remained by far the largest Scottish party at Westminster (Table .). In , it advanced again to take forty-eight seats. The creation of the Scottish Parliament offered the SNP the opportunity to be a more substantial parliamentary force. Evidence from other sub-state elections highlights the bonus that parties like the SNP receive at such elections (Liñeira ; Elias ). Scottish Parliamentary elections boosted the SNP’s electoral prospects given the
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Table 15.1 SNP Performance in UK General Elections 1964–2019 Year 1964 1966 1970 1974 (Feb) 1974 (Oct) 1979 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005 2010 2015 2017 2019
Vote %
Seats (N)
Seats %
2.4 5.0 11.4 21.9 30.4 17.3 11.8 14.0 21.5 22.1 20.1 17.7 19.9 50.0 37.0 45.0
0 0 1 7 11 2 2 3 3 6 5 6 6 56 35 48
0.0 0.0 1.4 9.9 15.5 2.8 2.8 4.2 4.2 8.3 6.9 10.2 10.2 94.9 59.3 81.4
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
Table 15.2 SNP Performance in Scottish Parliamentary Elections Constituency
Region
Total
Years
Votes (%)
Seats (N)
Votes (%)
Seats (N)
Seats (N)
Seats (%)
1999 2003 2007 2011 2016
28.7 23.8 32.9 45.4 46.5
7 9 21 53 59
27.3 20.9 31.0 44.0 41.7
28 18 26 16 4
35 27 47 69 63
27.1 20.9 36.4 53.5 48.8
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
obvious prominence of Scottish issues but also because of the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system used for these elections (Chapter in this Handbook). Electors are offered the opportunity to vote for an individual candidate in a FirstPast-The-Post constituency ballot as well as a regional party list. The SNP initially benefited from the List vote, securing the majority of its MSPs this way in the first three Scottish elections, but winning more constituency than List seats in and , reflecting the strength of the party (Table .). The Scottish Parliamentary electoral system encourages coalition or minority government because it is extremely difficult for a party to win an overall majority.
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It is often argued that the system was designed to marginalize independence claims as a majority would be difficult to achieve for any party. In , the SNP defied the system and won sixty-nine seats, giving it a slim majority. Whilst the SNP retreated a little in , the election outcome was another notable success. The SNP retained its status as governing party and won more constituency seats than ever before.
T SNP’ I C
.................................................................................................................................. In its early years, the SNP brought together a variety of ideological perspectives, both left and right, but sometimes the party appeared rather non-ideological (Brand ; Finlay ; Lynch ). This ideological fuzziness was problematic for the SNP, allowing its opponents to attack it both as a party of the left and as ‘Tartan Tories’. As Lynch () documents, from the s, the SNP shed its ideological uncertainty and replaced it with a clearer social democratic vision of politics. This was combined with an anti-nuclear position, opposing the Polaris nuclear submarine base at Faslane and developing a non-nuclear energy policy. The ideological identity of a party can be shaped by external circumstances, and this applied in the case of the SNP. Alex Salmond’s leadership of the party began in which coincided with Margaret Thatcher leaving office as UK Prime Minister. The Thatcher governments were, to say the least, unpopular in Scotland. Conservative industrial policies were perceived as having particularly severe consequences for Scotland (Mitchell and Bennie ). The SNP shaped its ideological and policy character into a centre-left, social democratic model which challenged the ethos of UK Conservative governments. The party was critical of inequality, advocated investment in public services and was resistant to the Conservative tax-cutting agenda. At the same time, though, the party promoted a mixed economy that encouraged private business. This moderately centre-left, ‘progressive’ approach sustained the SNP as a party of opposition at Holyrood and in government from . Some criticized the SNP for ‘de-emphasizing’ its social democratic credentials when it became a governing party (Lynch ). Nevertheless, the SNP retained, at its core, a mix of social democratic attitudes (Mitchell et al. ). Its centre-left character crystallized under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon, who described herself as strongly motivated by social justice, gender equality, and tackling poverty (Rhodes ). This equality discourse has been present throughout her time as First Minister, manifested in opposition to the austerity agenda of UK governments. The SNP’s left-of-centre language was reinforced by the referendum on Scottish independence, the party increasingly presenting itself as successor to Labour in Scotland. The model of nationalism advocated by the SNP has been predominantly civic in form, not ethnic or cultural, with a focus on a shared sense of community of those living in Scotland, rather than any specific characteristics like race or religion.
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This emphasizes ‘a community of equal, rights bearing citizens’ who share a ‘set of political practices and values’ (Ignatieff : ); all residents of the civic nation qualify as citizens. Such an approach can be compared with ethnic nationalism, which assumes citizenship is determined by place of birth and ancestry. It is ‘exclusive, closed rather than open’ (Spencer and Wollman : ). Brand’s () account of the early years of the SNP indicates that the party’s nationalism was not strongly connected to language, race, ethnicity, or even national culture. It stood for ‘Scottish citizenship’ which was ‘the right of all who live in Scotland and not only of those who can in some sense belong to the Scottish race’ (Brand : ). As with most conceptual categorizations, there are problems with this one, not least the assumption that nationalism has positive and negative forms (Yack ; Schulman ; Smith ), leading Schulman (: ) to distinguish between the civic (territory, citizenship, political rights), ethnic (ancestry, race) and cultural (religion, language, race). Nevertheless, the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism has endured in Scottish political discourse, influencing both the SNP and the wider pro-independence movement. The modern party promotes a nationalism that is inclusive and liberal, based on residence and open citizenship, even more consistently so than in its formative years (Keating , ; Hepburn and McLoughlin ; Lynch ). In , Alex Salmond outlined the party’s approach as ‘peaceful, inclusive, civic nationalism—one born of tolerance and respect for all faiths, colours and creeds . . . based on a positive vision of what our nation can be’ (cited in Mitchell et al. : –). Academic studies of SNP membership confirm that support for independence is rooted in inclusive conceptions of nationalism (Mitchell et al. ; van der Zwet ). This is reflected in recent debates on international migration, where SNP leaders emphasize that Scotland is open and welcoming to refugees, asylum-seekers, and immigrant communities, an approach which is cast as more inclusive than that of the UK government, and also judged to be good for Scotland’s economy.
T SNP’ V I
.................................................................................................................................. When the SNP was formed, its objective was Scottish self-government and national sovereignty, or a form of home rule (Brand ). Independence ‘became the rallying cry later’ (Mitchell et al. : ). However, what independence actually means is contested and shifting. In recent decades, the SNP’s vision of an independent Scotland has rested on the idea that the small state can enjoy economic gains; and benefits of economic growth can be distributed in a socially just fashion. Drawing on the experiences of Nordic countries and the so-called ‘arc of prosperity’, this involved a model of progressive taxes, an active welfare state, universalism and a commitment to creating a more equal society—a social investment model (Keating and Harvey a; Harvey ).
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At times the SNP suggested that an independent Scotland would gain competitive advantage by creating a market-friendly, economically liberal environment. Ireland’s economic boom (from the mid-s to the late s) suggested low corporation taxes and business rates could attract investment, and the SNP appeared keen to emulate the Celtic Tiger economy. This led to some criticism that the party was too strongly influenced by ‘neoliberalism’ (Cuthbert and Cuthbert ). Over time, however, the party placed more emphasis on the principles of social investment. Despite the fact that many Nordic countries have experienced economic crises and restricted welfare and universal benefits, the ‘Nordic model’ remains a meaningful idea for the SNP (Keating and Harvey b). The party points to Norway’s oil fund as an alternative to the UK’s approach, allowing state investment and a buffer against economic problems, although this argument is less prominent (and less compelling) when oil revenues are in decline. The SNP’s economic and social blueprint for independence ultimately combines the characteristics of a social investment model and those of a business-friendly, mixed economy. Arnott and Ozga (: ) describe a ‘blending of social democracy and wealth creation’. The party commits to welfare spending, such as expansion of stateprovided child care, but is cautious about increasing taxes. It argues that a social investment strategy is desirable for Scotland but not possible without control over taxation and welfare—that only an independent Scotland would create these conditions (Sustainable Growth Commission ). In many respects, the modern SNP has emphasized the importance of interdependence with others, seen in its support for international organizations. The party’s approach to independence has been described as ‘fluid’, involving ‘degrees of independence for Scotland within various larger political frameworks’ (Hepburn ). This involves being part of a wider international community—co-operating with, rather than separating from, others—and alternative forms of ‘union’ to which Scotland might belong (Keating , , ; Lynch ; Jackson ). These might include economic, monetary, social, and cultural unions, conveying that Scottish independence does not mean being cut adrift or isolated. The question of security in an independent Scotland has not received much attention—Keating (: ) argues it ‘has been remarkable for its low profile’—but even here the SNP has leaned towards international co-operation as a support system, revealed in its positive stance on NATO since . The SNP’s commitment to interdependence is best demonstrated in its view of Scotland’s relationship with Europe (Chapters and in this Handbook). In the s, the SNP position was that the European Community represented a challenge to sovereignty and the ability of governments to pursue social and economic reform. The party campaigned against continued UK membership in the referendum (Dardanelli and Mitchell ). By , the party had adopted a policy of ‘Independence in Europe’, emphasizing the economic opportunities of EU membership for an independent Scotland, and presenting an image of the party as outward-looking and international (Keating , ). During the EU referendum campaign, the SNP vociferously argued that the UK should Remain. Following the vote, the SNP
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embarked on a high-profile attempt to convey the message that it desired continued international collaboration and that Scotland voting to Remain but the UK as a whole choosing to Leave provided justification for a second referendum on Scottish independence (Chapter in this Handbook). However, the SNP’s perspective on Europe should be understood as practical and qualified. Scotland’s changing demographic profile and economic needs suggest a demand for increased immigration; and whilst the SNP can be described as ‘an openly pro-European nationalist party’ its vision of Europe has never been fully integrationist, and lacks the ‘passion’ found in nationalist movements in other parts of Europe (Keating : ). Moreover, SNP voters have not been unqualified supporters of the EU (Keating , ; Curtice ). As for how Scottish independence can be achieved, various perspectives have existed in the party, traditionally conceptualized as fundamentalism and gradualism, or pragmatism, although this is a crude distinction. Fundamentalism was regarded as an uncompromising position on independence, associated in turn with a suspicion of working with others to promote devolution, a constitutional settlement which was seen as something short of the desired outcome, and which might make independence difficult to achieve. Mitchell (: ) described a belief in ‘independence—nothing less’ which was also associated with a reluctance to develop a clear left-of-centre ideological identity. Gradualism, on the other hand, was more focused on developing clear policy positions, building electoral support, and working with others to ensure greater autonomy for Scotland. This involved accepting that devolution could create the conditions for the achievement of independence in the longer term—a step by step or stepping-stone approach (Mitchell ; Lynch ). The party became predominantly pragmatic and gradualist, building the case for independence over time. The SNP’s Scottish Parliament campaign famously downplayed the question of Scottish independence—other policies were given more prominence in the party’s campaign literature, leading to some discontent in the party. Even the decision to seek independence through a referendum can be interpreted as pragmatic. Scotland would be independent when Scottish people gave their direct consent. To reach that goal, the SNP would, in the meantime, emphasize competence, effective leadership, and an ability to stand up for Scotland. The SNP has resolved some important strategic dilemmas faced over the decades. Before the publication of the SNP’s white paper on independence in , ‘independence was more a mobilising idea than a fully worked out constitutional option’ (Mitchell and Hassan : ). The long-term vision and the route to independence has also become clearer—success in Scottish Parliament elections, demonstration of governing competence, seeking and using increased powers for the Scottish Parliament, the achievement of independence through a referendum. Mike Russell, a leading figure in the SNP, argues that ‘the party has clarified exactly what it wishes to achieve and has become explicit in how it is to be achieved’ (Russell : ). The SNP is also strongly committed to legality in the delivery of a referendum (Cetrà and Harvey ). Its preference has always been for a negotiated legal agreement with
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the UK to hold such a referendum (as matters relating to the Union are reserved), in contrast to a consultative ballot which would be legally questionable. Non-legally binding consultative ballots have been used elsewhere—by the Basque government in and in Catalonia in —but their constitutional legitimacy is challengeable.
T SNP P G P
.................................................................................................................................. As the SNP evolved as a political party, it widened its agenda and became more professional in its organization and campaigning approach. This process began before the creation of the Scottish Parliament but accelerated thereafter. With parliamentary status, the SNP became increasingly like an election-focused, professionally run, ‘conventional’ party, emphasizing leadership and organizational effectiveness. The party moved from an amateur-activist to an electoral-professional model (Mitchell et al. ). During the party’s amateur-activist days, a rather organic, branch-based form of organization encouraged grass-roots involvement and allowed activists considerable influence (Brand ; Mitchell et al. ). With few financial resources and only a handful of elected representatives, there was a culture of collective leadership, and party leaders juggled their political roles with full-time occupations (Mitchell and Hassan ). Alex Salmond, during his first period of stewardship of the SNP (in the s), was more commanding than his predecessors, but constitutionally the party remained amateur-activist. When the SNP became a fully fledged parliamentary party in , nearly all of its most prominent figures became MSPs, and under John Swinney’s leadership (–) the party restructured internally. Reforms included creating a formal position of leader (formerly chair and then national convener), the introduction of one-member-one-vote (OMOV) for leader and deputy leader elections and selection of election candidates, and the creation of a national database of members. Swinney aimed to transform the party from one of protest to a ‘party of government’ (Mitchell et al. : ). In effect, the reform process placed greater influence in the hands of the party’s leadership (McAngus ). This extended to political campaigning and communication, which became more leader-focused, polished and skilled in approach, making use of technology and sophisticated campaign techniques. The SNP successfully blended professionalization and the use of party members and activists on the ground (Bennie ). Effective leadership has been important for the SNP. In the devolution era, the party experienced remarkable stability in leadership, in marked contrast with Scottish Labour (Table .). The SNP’s three leaders since (Salmond serving two separate terms) compares with ten people who have performed the role for Scottish Labour,
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Table 15.3 Fifty Years of SNP Leadership (Chair, Convener, Leader) Leader Billy Wolfe Gordon Wilson Alex Salmond John Swinney Alex Salmond Nicola Sturgeon
Years 1969–1979 1979–1990 1990–2000 2000–2004 2004–2014 2014–present
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
twelve if two acting leaders are included in the calculation (and they performed the role more than once). Looked at another way, in five decades, the SNP has experienced only five leadership changeovers. Scottish Labour has changed its leader more than a dozen times since (fifteen inclusive of acting leaders).¹ This gave the SNP an advantage, creating an image of continuity and ‘being in control’, certainly since when the SNP leader became First Minister. In the Scottish Parliament, SNP leaders outperformed their Labour counterparts. Leaders of other parties, most notably the Conservatives’ Ruth Davidson, were the more serious challengers in parliamentary debates. Modern SNP leaders have been regarded as some of the most able in the UK, not just in Scotland, with good performances in the media, parliamentary arenas, and in state-wide leadership debates, making them widely recognized across the UK (Yougov ). Salmond and Sturgeon were particularly formidable leaders, backed by strong ministerial teams. There were remarkably few publicly aired internal disputes, and an unusual consistency in ministerial roles (Cairney and McGarvey ). The SNP formed the first minority devolved administration in Scotland in , and became the first nationalist–regionalist party to lead a devolved administration in the UK. The party had little decision-making experience and lacked a network of relationships with public sector professionals, businesses, and trade unions (Keating ). Nevertheless, the SNP governed competently as a minority party, working flexibly with other parties to ensure the passage of legislation (Lynch ). The party’s approach to policymaking was based on co-operation, consensus, and partnerships with local government, the third sector, and agencies (Arnott and Ozga ). The SNP renamed the ‘Scottish Executive’ the ‘Scottish Government’, representing a new assertive approach to devolution.
¹ Since devolution, there have been four Conservative leaders in Scotland (McLetchie, Goldie, Davidson and Carlaw); and four Scottish Liberal Democrat leaders (Wallace, Stephen, Scott, and Rennie).
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When the SNP won a majority in , there was no need to rely on support from other parties to pass legislation (including the symbolic Scottish Independence Referendum Bill), and the party was able to numerically dominate the parliament’s committees. Majority government proved to be the exception rather than the rule when the election left the SNP short of a majority. There was a continuation of SNP government and a return to working with others in order to deliver devolution. The SNP demonstrated its capacity to operate as a competent party of government, and was then able to campaign on a governmental record (McAngus ). These are important ingredients in the party’s electoral success—what political scientists call ‘valence politics’ (Clarke et al. , , ). With the decline of attachments to parties, voters increasingly rewarded parties for competence, political leadership, and effectiveness of delivery. The SNP met the ‘key valance yardsticks’ of perceived competence, a positive agenda or image, and popular leadership (Johns et al. ). This combined with a perception that the party ‘stood up for Scotland’ (Johns et al. ). The SNP introduced social democratic policies. Legislation scrapping higher education tuition fees was supported by parliament. The government phased out medical prescription and eye-test charges and introduced free school meals for young school pupils. In many policy areas, the party maintained or extended the approach of previous administrations. Free personal care for the elderly was continued and there was less emphasis on public–private partnerships than elsewhere in the UK. There was demonstrable public policy success, including the extension of free child care, minimum pricing for alcohol, and the development of renewable energy. However, prominent policies such as a local income tax did not progress, and the party’s opponents accused it of being centralizing and ‘statist’. The creation of Police Scotland and the Named Person policy were not popular initiatives. The SNP government was criticized for lacking redistributive radicalism—being overly managerial, low-key, and not matching its social democratic aims. In some policy areas there was evidence of poor performance, such as in education. SNP governments did not change the fact that Scotland remained a country with significant public policy challenges. The SNP opposed the UK government’s austerity agenda but oversaw substantial cuts to public services in Scotland. The manner in which funding is allocated to Scotland meant difficult spending decisions had to be made. The Scottish Government now had more tax levers at its disposal but this did not result in a more radical taxation policy in order to channel more money into public services. Increased tax-raising powers for the Scottish Parliament were managed carefully and cautiously, resulting in a slightly more progressive tax regime in Scotland. The Land and Building Transaction Tax, applied on new house purchases, was marginally more progressive than elsewhere in the UK. Changes to income tax meant that high earners in Scotland contributed more, but, again, slightly more. The SNP emphasized that most Scottish taxpayers paid less than their UK counterparts. Overall, commitment to public service provision was combined with support for the business community (keeping business rates low) and cautious use of Scotland’s increased economic powers.
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T SNP S I R() ..................................................................................................................................
Historically, many in the SNP had argued that independence would be negotiated when the party won a majority of Scottish Westminster seats. From , the party’s position was that a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament would trigger independence, but this would be subject to a referendum. This approach allowed the SNP to build electoral support, encouraging those who were unconvinced by independence to vote for the party. As well, it provided the opportunity to democratically legitimize independence. Short of a majority in , the SNP had to rely on the capacity of the executive rather than the legislature to discuss the constitutional issue. The Scottish Government’s National Conversation was a series of government publications, online consultations, and public engagement events designed to involve the public in the issues around Scottish independence and forms of devolution. The process had limited success and became a forum for the public to engage on everyday policy matters rather than independence (Harvey and Lynch ). Following the SNP’s electoral success in , the Scottish Parliament supported the principle of holding a referendum, and this was not challenged by the UK government. After constructive negotiations between the UK and Scottish governments, Prime Minister David Cameron and First Minister Alex Salmond signed the Edinburgh Agreement which, importantly, granted the Scottish Parliament the capacity to set the date of the referendum (Cetrà and Harvey ). The campaign confirmed the SNP’s vision of social democracy and interdependence (Chapter in this Handbook). The party offered ‘social democracy with distinctly Nordic overtones but without the tax increases’ (Biagi : ); and it declared a desire to remain connected to the UK, maintaining a UK monarchy and currency, the Civil Aviation Authority and DVLA (Scottish Government ). The SNP emphasized maintaining the extensive social and family bonds that exist between Scotland and the rest of the UK. Jackson (: ) describes the attempt to ‘reassure anxious voters that the journey to independence is an incremental progression from today’s devolutionary settlement rather than a radical rupture’. On Europe, the party argued that Scotland would become a member state of the EU, with influence on decision-making and access to the single market. However, there was considerable debate on whether an independent Scotland would automatically gain entry to the EU (Dardanelli and Mitchell ). Whilst the SNP’s proposals were rejected in the referendum, the per cent who voted Yes far exceeded support for independence at the beginning of the campaign. Moreover, these levels of support remained remarkably consistent in the years that followed (whatscotlandthinks.org; Curtice , ). This suggests that the referendum reaped significant rewards for the SNP, boosting and embedding support for
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60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
Feb–Mar May–Jun Mar 2015 2014 2014
May 2015
Apr–May Jun 2016 Nov–Dec Apr–May May–Jun Jun 2017 2016 2016 2017 2017
Support Scottish independence
May 2018
Would vote SNP if general election held
. Intention to Vote SNP and Support for Independence (British Election Study –)
independence. Independence was normalized as a viable constitutional option. Support for independence also appeared to align more closely with party support (Figure .). Nevertheless, the SNP was some distance from winning independence. Polling work pointed to perceived weaknesses in the party’s proposals, not least plans to retain a UK currency. The SNP embarked on detailed work on an independent Scotland’s economic position, examining some of these perceived weaknesses. The findings of the Sustainable Growth Commission were published in . The widely reported headline was that an independent Scotland would retain the pound for a lengthy transition period, possibly for a decade or longer. This would involve Scotland subscribing to the monetary policy of the Bank of England and moving to a separate currency only when some very stringent economic tests were met. Although presented as an independent report, the emphasis, typical of the SNP, was on caution, stability, and, to an extent, continuity in economic relationships. This leads to the question of a second referendum on Scottish independence— whether and when to stage one. Following the EU referendum in , the party faced demands to plan for a second independence vote, in the light of Scotland’s support for EU membership. In the Scottish Parliamentary elections, the SNP had campaigned on a manifesto which stated that if such a result arose it would provide a mandate to hold another independence referendum. Sturgeon declared that legislation would be introduced to allow a referendum to take place before the UK left the EU. The election had resulted in a Parliament that housed a pro-independence
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majority given the presence of the Greens. However, the prospect of a second independence referendum produced greater opposition from the pro-UK parties. In this context, the SNP leadership judged that conditions were too uncertain until the final shape of Brexit was clear (Chapter in this Handbook).
T SNP’ S B
.................................................................................................................................. The electoral success of the SNP is incontestable but debate exists on the nature of the party’s support and how this has changed over the decades. When the SNP began to make an impact on electoral politics in the s, it lacked a distinctive vote base, but over time the party became direct competitors of Labour in Scotland, vying to be ‘protectors of working class and Scottish interests’ (Bennie et al. : ). The SNP gradually became more closely associated with some voting groups, especially those with a strong Scottish national identity and the working class (Bennie et al. ; Johns and Mitchell ). Most voters have a complex and overlapping sense of national identity, with feelings of Britishness and Scottishness existing simultaneously and without contradiction, but most people feel Scottish at least slightly more. Historically this did not necessarily translate into support for the SNP (Chapter in this Handbook; Miller ; McCrone ). Many of those who felt ‘Scottish’ the most intensely were working class, and tended to vote for Labour. However, by the s, the SNP was attracting more voters with a strong Scottish identity. It had also become increasingly attractive to working-class voters. A significant proportion of this group prioritized their Scottish identity above a British one and were relatively sympathetic to independence and voting SNP. Religious affiliation has, in the past, been important in party support in Scotland (Chapter in this Handbook). Labour did well amongst Irish Catholics, many of whom had settled in and around Glasgow and were employed in heavy industries. The Conservatives were successful amongst Protestants, in particular those with some link to the Orange Order. As society became more secular, the relationship between religion and voting weakened but did not disappear. The SNP, who sought to win over Labour voters, was often viewed with suspicion by Catholics (Lynch ). To challenge Labour’s status, particularly in its central belt heartlands, the SNP actively sought the support of Catholics, Muslims, working-class Labour voters, and those who identified (at least in part) with Britishness. At the same time, the SNP recognized that an election-winning strategy involved appealing ‘across the sociological board’, developing a ‘cross-class’ approach (Johns and Mitchell ). This was partly an acknowledgement of sociological changes, with a shift towards white-collar, service employment (McCrone ). It created an opportunity for the SNP due to the related decline in traditional attachments to parties.
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Table 15.4 SNP Vote Share by Socio-demographic Characteristics Scottish Parliament Referendum 2011 (Constituency 2014 (Yes vote) voters)
General Election 2015
Scottish Parliament General 2016 (Constituency Election vote) 2017
Sex Female Male
43 48
42 48
48 51
44 46
36 38
Age 18–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60+
41 47 51 47 44
49 51 49 46 39
55 56 54 50 45
42 43 50 48 42
37 35 42 40 33
Religion None C of Scotland Catholic
48 46 40
51 39 54
53 47 55
47 41 49
41 32 46
Occupational class AB C1 C2 DE
44 42 48 48
40 42 51 53
43 50 54 58
41 42 47 51
36 32 37 41
Self-identification Middle class Working class
42 46
35 49
39 56
– –
– –
% Vote
45
45
50
47
37
Source: Johns and Mitchell 2016: 226; Scottish and British Election Studies. (Thanks to Rob Johns and the election study teams for providing the data.)
The modern SNP’s electoral base resembles that of a ‘catch-all’ party (Kirchheimer ). Table .. displays the socio-demographic characteristics of SNP voters since . It demonstrates that the party has been successful due to its broad appeal amongst voters—of all economic and socio-demographic groups—not because of support from a specific class or section of society (Curtice et al. ; Carman et al. ). In , the party’s vote base was ‘remarkably uniform across Scottish society’, even though gains came from traditional Labour territory (Johns and Mitchell : ). In , the SNP made electoral gains from those who voted Yes (Denver ). Comparison of SNP voters in and suggests an increase in the proportion of Catholic voters, working-class identifiers, manual workers, renters, and young people (Johns and Mitchell : ). This looks like a ‘referendum effect’, given that it resembles the profile of Yes voters in . Nevertheless, as Johns and Mitchell () argue, it is also clear that the SNP support base in remained a coalition of classes and interests. Since , this catch-all character has been retained. The SNP appears to have overcome its traditional difficulties with Catholics; by the party attracted per cent of all
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votes, but nearly half— per cent—of Catholic voters. Working-class voters are marginally more supportive of the SNP than the middle classes, and the oldest voters a little less so than other age groups. However, these differences are small. The most marked feature of SNP support is the even spread across sociodemographic groups. Over the years, women have appeared a little less likely than men to support the party and even less supportive of the case for independence (Johns et al. ; McAngus and Rummery ). Some studies show a narrowing of the gender gap in party support, but differences appear variable, ebbing and flowing, rather than clearly declining over time (Curtice et al. ; Johns et al. ). Exactly why this is the case is not well understood. Since , there have been suggestions that Scottish politics is undergoing realignment, less along left-right lines and more along a nationalist-unionist divide (Johnston et al. ). It might seem that voting SNP would mean supporting independence but in the past the link was by no means clear. Sections of the electorate backed the SNP despite its support for independence, not because of it (Carman et al. ). From , a closer relationship developed between support for independence and voting for the SNP (as seen in Figure .). Yes voters largely remained committed or switched to the SNP, whilst some No voters moved away from the party, but to fragmented unionist parties (Curtice ). However, there is an underlying complexity in contemporary voter identities that means it is too early to conclude that the ‘old politics of class and sector’ has been replaced by a ‘new politics of nationality and territory’ (Keating : ). Scotland remains culturally more working class than other parts of Britain (McCrone : ). Political debate in Scotland (and the UK) since has, if anything, been more classbased than in recent decades, and constitutional issues connect to these debates in unpredictable ways. In the EU referendum of , significant numbers of Yes supporters voted to Leave, and similar numbers of No supporters voted to Remain (Curtice , ; Greene et al. ).
T SNP M P
.................................................................................................................................. The SNP has always co-existed with movement politics. Social movements are bound by collective identities and involve radical proposals for change, identifiable networks, and variety in forms of organization and activism (della Porta and Diani ; Johnston ). Political parties are expected to be more moderate in their demands, and organizationally more hierarchical and self-contained. In practice, many parties exist within movements. In the same way that other parties can be seen as constituent parts of different movements—environmental, labour, and so on—the SNP was a part of a national movement for constitutional change.
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A Scottish home-rule movement emerged alongside similar movements in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, displaying a ‘collective identity and capacity for action’ (Keating : ). This took a political party form in the early decades of the twentieth century, the SNP itself forming in the s (Keating and Bleiman ; Keating ). Accounts of the SNP’s early years document its wide-ranging connections, placing it within a nationalist movement alongside campaigning groups, rival organizations and representatives of other parties (Brand ; Wilson ; Lynch ). From the middle of the twentieth century, the SNP assumed a leading role in this movement. Lynch () describes the SNP ‘family’ of key individuals in the party’s history, well-networked in many organizations as well as the party, with an emphasis on collective ideas amongst participants. As the SNP improved its position electorally, it became more dominant in the movement for constitutional change, although this has been interpreted as moving away from movement politics. Lynch (: ) argues that by the time of devolution ‘the “movement” aspect to the SNP was largely historical’. In the period that preceded the creation of the Scottish Parliament, the SNP had become an increasingly modern, electoral-professional type of party. At times, this coincided with caution about working with others to affect change, withdrawing from the Scottish Constitutional Convention at the end of the s, wary of being dominated by Labour in the campaign for devolution. However, the SNP had been a willing participant in the campaign against the poll tax (community charge), advocating a form of civil disobedience through non-payment of the charge, ‘committed to organising an “army” of , non-payers’ (Lynch : ). In effect, the party’s movement qualities have waxed and waned during its lifetime. The SNP has looked more movement-like when less ‘successful’ as a political party. When it became an official party of opposition in , and then went on to experience the constraints of governmental power, movement aspects were less apparent. From , focus was less on grass-roots campaigns, and more on policy and office success. More generally, this was not a time of vibrant, movement-type activity in Scottish politics. However, the electoral success of the party was critical in generating a new wave of movement politics in Scotland, if indirectly and unintentionally on the SNP’s part. The election victory provided the mandate to progress with a referendum on independence and this sparked an unprecedented ‘movement moment’ in modern Scottish political history. The SNP set up the infrastructure of the campaign, it inevitably dominated due to its organizational resources, and it provided a detailed account of what an independent Scotland might look like in the form of Scotland’s Future (Scottish Government ). However, the SNP were by no means the only relevant actors in this campaign. Yes Scotland was an umbrella organization that brought together myriad groups and parties, including the Scottish Green Party, the Scottish Socialist Party, trade unions, and other non-party groups like the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) and Women for Independence (WfI) (Gillen ).
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As the campaign developed, elements became community-based, ‘active and positive’ (Adamson and Lynch ). The fluid and creative nature of some of the campaigning, enabled by social media, surprised many observers and reflected social movement forms of action. Visible activism included street stalls, well-attended public meetings, and a large amount of ‘political carnival’ (Lynch ). Alex Salmond described the period as a ‘democratic sensation’, with Scotland providing a model of political engagement for other countries (Salmond ). The campaign of the ‘Yes’ groups and parties was relatively united, and patently more dynamic and energetic than that of Better Together (Pike ). Yet the pluralist, multi-group approach was in tension with the party approach as radical and left-wing voices were frustrated by the exposure given to what they viewed as moderate SNP ideas (notably the SNP position on NATO, the currency, and the monarchy). The Scottish Greens were highly critical of the SNP’s portrayal of oil as an economic resource to be exploited for years to come. Some of the ideas discussed during the campaign were radical and antiestablishment. These came from across the political spectrum, but were predominantly left of centre. Particularly in the later stages of the campaign, there was widespread discussion of tackling social deprivation and the opportunity to create a more socially just, equal Scotland. Whilst the more radical voices existed in other groups and parties, the SNP took part in this egalitarian narrative, emphasizing the transformative opportunities of independence (Macwhirter ; Geoghegan ; Lynch ). The debate was interpreted as one where ‘redistributive and democratic issues have been emphasised over traditional ethnonationalist concerns’ (della Porta et al. : ). In some respects, the events that succeeded the referendum were even more remarkable. A ‘normal’ post-election defeat would involve a party being deflated, activists demotivated. Following the referendum, a very different dynamic took hold, with new members joining the SNP in droves. In the year after the referendum, membership increased five-fold. Similar but smaller-scale surges took place amongst other independence-supporting parties. Combined, this was a unique event in the history of political mobilization.² The new members were pragmatic in their approach to a second independence referendum, largely supportive of the leadership, and not unlike the established members socio-demographically and ideologically (Mitchell et al. ). On balance, the party’s social democratic credentials were enhanced (Mitchell et al. ; Bennie et al. forthcoming). Whilst the most visible aspects of the movement surge subsided, there was a longer-term impact. The SNP’s membership remained buoyant, the party reporting , members at the end of , in some respects looking like a modern mass membership party. Some of the joiners lapsed but there were ² These events and their consequences are being investigated by Lynn Bennie (Aberdeen), James Mitchell (Edinburgh), and Rob Johns (Essex) via the ESRC-funded project ‘Recruited by Referendum’ (award RG-).
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mini-surges of members following other political events like the Brexit vote. Maintaining such a large membership has been an achievement for the party, with advantages far outweighing any disadvantages. Most members are not active participants at party meetings or conferences but they bring valuable resources to the party (Mitchell et al. ; Bennie et al. forthcoming). The SNP can draw on its members for financial and campaigning support in a way that other parties cannot, as seen in studies of UK election campaigns (Cowley and Kavanagh ). The SNP remains part of a wider pro-independence movement. Whilst some of the groups formed in the run-up to the referendum faded from the political scene (for instance, the cultural and creative group National Collective), others, like the Radical Independence Campaign and Women for Independence, remained active (McAngus and Rummery ). New groups formed or emerged from older iterations of Yes groups, and membership overlapped with that of independence-supporting political parties, as seen in All Under One Banner, organizing high-profile marches and other events. Being situated within this movement provided the SNP with an opportunity to build support for independence. However, the diverse organizations that formed the Yes movement had different priorities and perspectives, with different visions of independence.
C
.................................................................................................................................. The SNP has evolved over time, revealing different characters, roles, and statuses. It has moved from the fringes of Scottish politics to being a strikingly successful electoral force, keeping the constitutional status of Scotland at the top of the political agenda. In doing so, the SNP has balanced the different facets of its identity, as a political party seeking governmental office and as an important actor in a wider movement for Scottish independence. Key to understanding the SNP’s success is its ‘catch-all’ appeal. It has been attractive to a core electoral base by promoting the cause of independence whilst broadening its support by highlighting its credentials as a party of government. Like most accounts of the SNP, we have emphasized the party’s successes. Since devolution, the SNP has been in power in Scotland longer than any other party. Following the and UK general elections, it became the third largest party at Westminster. In membership terms, the SNP was the UK’s second largest party organization, with more members than the state-wide Conservative Party. These are no mean achievements for a nationalist–regionalist party; demonstrating power and influence at both sub-state and state-wide levels and continuing to mobilize support. The SNP has resolved some traditional dilemmas. It is unequivocally an independence-seeking party—the old debates between ‘radical’ proponents of independence and more moderate home-rulers are no longer a concern. However, new strategic dilemmas have emerged for the SNP relating to its status as a governing party and as a party campaigning for constitutional change, made more pronounced by
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changing political and economic contexts. Not least, the ‘road to Scottish independence’ looked more uncertain in the light of Britain’s exit from the EU, given that the party’s vision of independence had for so long rested on continued links with Europe. In these circumstances, the best time to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence was less than clear. Scotland’s support for staying in the EU provided justification but public appetite for a referendum in the short term appeared lukewarm. Pragmatic support for a second referendum ‘when the conditions were right’ was widespread amongst party members, allowing manoeuvrability on the part of the leadership (Mitchell et al. ). However, the SNP faced pressure from parts of the pro-independence movement to deliver a referendum sooner rather than later. The SNP’s vision of independence was also challenged by other independence campaigners. There are different views within the independence movement on policy and strategy, such as the currency that a future independent Scotland might use, and how green and equal Scotland should be. Some argue that the SNP is timid in its vision (Hassan and Barrow ). As a party of government, the SNP has been cautious, professional, and moderately progressive in approach, qualities that have ensured long-term electoral success. Whilst the modern SNP is more clearly redistributive than in the past it is keen to present itself as economically responsible and supportive of the business community. This sometimes sits uncomfortably within an independence movement containing demands for radical social, economic, and political change. In some respects the SNP is the Scottish establishment now. Enhanced powers for the Scottish Parliament increase the stakes for SNP governments. Public policy problems cannot easily be blamed on state-wide governments. Nevertheless, the SNP remains anti-establishment in its demand for constitutional change. Positive news for the party is that the constitutional debate is alive and kicking in Scotland, and support for independence is higher than before . However, the SNP must simultaneously straddle governance and campaigning for Scottish independence in a highly turbulent state-wide political environment, which is no easy task.
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Lynch, P. . SNP: The History of the Scottish National Party, nd edition. Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press. Lynch, P. . ‘From Social Democracy Back to No Ideology? The Scottish National Party and Ideological Change in a Multi-level Electoral Setting’, Regional and Federal Studies, : –. Lynch, P. . IndyRef to ScotRef: Campaigning for Yes. Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press. Macwhirter, I. . Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won a Referendum but Lost Scotland. Glasgow: Cargo Publishing. Mazzoleni, O. and Mueller, S. . Regionalist Parties in Western Europe. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave. McAngus, C. . ‘Party Elites and the Search for Credibility: Plaid Cymru and the SNP as New Parties of Government’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. McAngus, C. . ‘Do Stateless-Nationalist-Regionalist Parties Differ from Other Party Types? Comparing Organisational Reform Processes in Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party’, British Politics, /: –. McAngus, C. and Rummery, K. . ‘Campaigning for the Female Vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum: Comparing Women for Independence and Women Together’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. McCrone, D. . Understanding Scotland. London: Routledge. McCrone, D. . The New Sociology of Scotland. London: Sage. Miller, W. . The End of British Politics? Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mitchell, J. . ‘Recent Developments in the Scottish National Party’, The Political Quarterly, /: –. Mitchell, J. . Strategies for Self-Government. Edinburgh: Polygon. Mitchell, J. . ‘From Breakthrough to Mainstream: The Politics of Potential and Blackmail’, in G. Hassan (ed.), The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –. Mitchell, J. . Hamilton : The By-election that Transformed Scotland. Edinburgh: Luath Press. Mitchell, J. and Bennie, L. . ‘Thatcherism and the Scottish Question’, British Elections and Parties Yearbook, /: –. Mitchell, J. and Hassan, G. (eds) . Scottish National Party Leaders. London: Biteback. Mitchell, J., Bennie, L., and Johns, R. . The Scottish National Party: Transition to Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, J., Bennie, L., and Johns, R. . ‘Referendum as Platform: The SNP and Scottish Green Membership Surge’, Political Insight, /: –. Pike, J. . Project Fear: How an Unlikely Alliance Left a Kingdom United but a Country Divided. London: Biteback Publishing. Rhodes, M. . ‘Nicola Sturgeon’, in J. Mitchell and G. Hassan (eds), Scottish National Party Leaders. London: Biteback, –. Russell, M. . ‘Leadership in Perspective’, J. Mitchell and G. Hassan (eds), Scottish National Party Leaders. London: Biteback, –. Salmond, A. . The Dream Shall Never Die: Days that Changed Scotland Forever. London: William Collins. Schulman, S. . ‘Challenging the Civic/Ethnic and West/East Dichotomies in the Study of Nationalism’, Comparative Political Studies, : –.
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Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Smith, A. . Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History, nd edition. Cambridge: Polity Press. Spencer, P. and Wollman, H. . Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage. Sustainable Growth Commission. . Scotland—The New Case for Optimism. A Strategy for Inter-generational Economic Renaissance, Edinburgh. Available at: https://www. sustainablegrowthcommission.scot/report. van der Zwet, A. . Operationalising National Identity: The Cases of the Scottish National Party and Frisian National Party’, Nations and Nationalism, /: –. Wilson, G. . SNP: The Turbulent Years –. Stirling: Scots Independent. Yack, B. . ‘The Myth of the Civic Nation’, in R. Beiner (ed.), Theorizing Nationalism. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Yougov, . The Most Famous other UK Public Figures in the UK. Available at: https:// yougov.co.uk/ratings/politics/fame/other-uk-public-figures/all.
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.................................................................................................................................. M commentary and analysis naturally examines the role of major parties, how they compete and their performance in parliament and in office. This is understandable given that the main competition for office is fought out between larger party options. Yet this focus misses an important point. Smaller political parties can also be important actors in party systems. This chapter examines the role of smaller parties in the Scottish party system from onwards. It is argued that small parties in Scotland have played a number of roles in the post-devolution party system. In some areas they have been trailblazers for broader developments, whilst in others they have met some success but had little longer impact. Understanding this is crucial for a broader understanding of party competition and the Scottish party system. Discussion revolves around three main sections. The first section addresses thorny theoretical issues around what counts as a ‘small’ party, and the relation between smallness and relevance. The second section discusses key small parties that have had some level of success in Scotland. These include the Greens, Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), UK Independence Party (UKIP), Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party, and the ‘Others’ who have also been successfully elected in Scotland. Controversially, discussion will also include the Liberal Democrats, given their changing fortunes over time. The third section considers reasons for the rise of smaller parties, whilst examining the broader effect on the Scottish party system and putting Scotland into comparative perspective in relation to the role of small parties.
T P ‘S’
.................................................................................................................................. Writing during an earlier phase of party system research, Fischer () suggested four interlinked reasons to explain why small parties had been overlooked in comparative
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political science. A focus on major parties made analysis of party politics more manageable. The omission of smaller parties made data collection easier. At the same time, minor parties were reckoned to have little impact on public policy. As a consequence, small parties were largely dropped from comparative analyses, being seen as essentially dysfunctional aspects of party systems. Such an approach has tended to remain dominant. Despite what they might tell political scientists about party competition, small parties have not been consistently analysed, either individually, collectively within countries, or comparatively. This view has nonetheless not been uncontested. Theoretical considerations around small parties, their definition, functions, and place in party systems have raised important issues and controversies in political science. This has caused difficulties, for example, in relation to the very definition of political parties. A common, but minimal, definition of political parties is that of Sartori (: ) who suggests that ‘a party is any political group that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through elections, candidates for public office’. Compare this with Pedersen’s (: ) definition of parties, which he proposes in order to capture small and emergent parties: ‘an organization—however loosely or strongly organized—which either presents or nominates candidates for public elections, or which, at least, has the declared intention to do so’. What matters to Pedersen is the intention to nominate, rather than the capacity of such organizations to have candidates elected. This allows smaller organizations to be objects of analysis. As Pedersen (: ) notes, without this ‘an important part of the party systems, and especially their development, is missed’. The emergence of small parties can be a consequence of changes in the social structure, new institutions, and opportunity structures (such as a new parliament or electoral system), and the evolution of new political cleavages and issues. The introduction of proportional electoral systems is generally highlighted in this regard as providing small parties with the opportunity to be elected, although this depends on formal and informal thresholds within those electoral systems. In Scotland, the establishment of the parliament in and the introduction of the additional member electoral system might be thought to have considerably increased the chances of small parties being elected. Alternatively, the presence of small parties might influence how party competition has developed, in addition to changes in broader public policies and public debate by introducing new issues into political discourse (Herzog ). Implicit in many theoretical discussions about smaller parties is the idea that they contribute in a variety of ways to the conduct of democratic politics. Copus et al. (: ) suggest that such parties ‘provide new channels of citizen engagement, political activism, participation and new avenues for political accountability’. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of organizations which either nominate candidates or go so far as to register as political parties. In May , there were so-called political parties registered across the UK with the Electoral Commission. The challenge for analysts is screening out ephemeral organizations, whilst at the same time including those organizations which have achieved some degree of success.
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One solution is to set a threshold, with parties falling below that being classified as small. Mair () suggests a threshold of per cent at the upper level, whilst setting a lower barrier to inclusion of per cent of the national vote. Another solution would be to include those organizations who have had some success in having their candidates elected to public office, at whatever level. Inevitably these decisions involve a degree of arbitrariness. There are two additional difficulties involved. When considering small parties in a stateless nation like Scotland, which is part of a larger political entity yet has its own distinctive political system and patterns of party competition, the level of analysis against which smallness is defined is critical. The SNP for example have historically been a small party at Westminster, with at best, prior to at least, MPs, but more normally no more than six. The SNP’s UK-wide vote share, was . per cent in , and even in , peaked at . per cent. By these figures, the SNP would be classified as a small party if the focus was solely on Westminster, and indeed has been by some (for example, Meguid ). This level of analysis can mislead. The SNP is a major political actor in the UK, having been a party of government since , becoming the third largest party in the House of Commons in , having led a pro-independence movement which could have led to the break-up of the United Kingdom in the independence referendum, and playing a major role in opposition to Conservative-led efforts at Brexit. Its recent leaders, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, have been major political figures in the UK in their own right. Second, there has been terminological confusion around this topic. So far, the discussion has referred to small parties, following Mair’s () usage. Other terms are also in use. Often, all parties outside the mainstream are grouped together in an omnibus ‘Others’ category, making it hard to distinguish between individual organizations. Some use the term ‘minor party’ in a more or less interchangeable way with small party (for instance, Pedersen ; Herzog ; Copus et al. ; Clark ). Kefford () offers a three-fold classification of major, minor, and peripheral parties. Clark (: chapter ) refers to non-mainstream parties which are those that have achieved some success by having candidates elected, even in second-order elections. Others take up the notion of ‘new’ parties, offering distinctions in relation to the functions those parties play within their party systems. Harmel (: ) talks of ‘new’ parties adding new dimensions of conflict to party competition. Within this, Rochon (: –) proposes two categories. Mobilizing parties are associated with new political cleavages, such as environmentalism or regionalization, whilst challenger parties challenge existing parties on their own political territory by claiming that they no longer represent the interests of their original supporters. Challengers are easier to establish and often formed through party splits, whilst mobilizing parties are likely to have longer-term prospects as they are not so vulnerable to having their proposals poached by their mainstream competitors. More recently, a literature has identified what has been termed the niche party. Wagner () suggests, for example, that niche parties succeed by de-emphasizing traditional economic issues and focusing on noneconomic issues such as immigration, the environment or European integration.
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On those issues they tend to be more radical than mainstream parties. Such a definition means that electoral performance is not a defining characteristic of niche parties, at least as Wagner presents them. Pedersen () highlights four thresholds relevant to the analysis of small parties. The first is declaration, when the organization declares its intent to offer candidates. The second is authorization, when the organization meets certain formal requirements such as for nomination or registration. The third threshold is of representation, when the party achieves the milestone of winning seats. The final threshold is of relevance, when a small party is needed for coalition formation or has broader blackmail potential (for example, Sartori ). Within this Pedersen () discusses the lifespan of small parties. Mostly, small parties rise, have a level of success and then decline. Normally, this lifecycle is unimodal, reaching a single peak of success. However, small parties’ electoral fortunes vary from election to election. Some parties can and do decline from being significant actors to being almost wiped out in subsequent contests. More than one election is often needed to see this direction of travel clearly. Party fortunes can also, however, go in the other direction, gradually building success and significance on more than one occasion. The length of time over which a small party has had success is also important (Pedersen ). Whether or not the small party rose quickly, then faded away gradually, or alternatively, built gradually before declining sharply provides an important way of understanding party system change. Although these ideas suggest an inevitable decline over time, in some countries an additional element to this trajectory has become evident when small parties have served in government as junior coalition partners (Deschouwer ). The fate of smaller parties under these circumstances can be problematic. Whilst they may have success in influencing policy whilst serving in government, smaller parties are often blamed for government unpopularity and suffer accordingly at the subsequent election. Instead of being a backwater of political science, there is, then, a range of theoretical and analytical perspectives through which the rise of small parties, or whatever term is chosen, can be seen. Scotland has been no exception to this broader comparative phenomenon. Following Clark (), the next section now develops these issues by examining smaller parties in Scotland which have met the threshold of representation. In other words, despite being smaller parties, they have taken the significant step of winning seats in either the Scottish or European parliaments.
S P S
.................................................................................................................................. The tradition of independent politics in some parts of Scotland meant that mainly northern and islands councils were dominated by non-party councillors, even if larger parties gradually intruded. Nonetheless, this tradition persists. In their study of small
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parties and independents in Scottish local elections between and , Bochel and Denver () highlight a range of organizations, including Ratepayers Associations, the Communist Party, other left-wing alternatives such as Scottish Militant Labour in , in addition to Progressives, Independent Conservatives, Independent Labour and Independent Nationalist candidates. As they put it ‘there is no simple way to summarise the number and impact of minor parties and independents in Scotland since ’ (Bochel and Denver : ). There were peaks and troughs of small party and independent candidatures declining between and , before increasing from , and then falling again in . Given the first-past-the-post nature of the local government electoral system up until these did not have much success in being elected. However, the introduction of the single transferable vote for council elections from seemed to lead to an over-representation of small party and independent councillors (Clark ). At national level, smaller parties also came and went. For example, a breakaway from the Labour Party, the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) was formed by Jim Sillars, Alex Neill, and others in and was active until . This won a handful of council seats and was represented in parliament by two MPs until , one of whom was Sillars. The high-profile Sillars went on to become an SNP MP and Deputy Leader, before later falling out with the leadership, whilst Neill eventually held several ministerial positions for the SNP Scottish government between and . More recently, Figure . provides an overview of the development of small party performance on the regional list tier of the additional member electoral system in the five Scottish parliament elections between and . Of the political parties registered with the UK Electoral Commission in May , around per cent,
14 12
Percentage
10 8 6 4 2 0
1999
2003
2007
Scottish Greens Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party Lib Dems
2011 Scottish Socialist Party UKIP Others
. Smaller Party Voteshare (%), Scottish Parliament Regional List
2016
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or , of those had indicated that they would field election candidates in Scotland. These include single issue parties such as the National Health Action Party, obscure organizations with names like Interactive Democracy, Freedom Party or Real Democracy, old favourites like the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, whilst organizations calling themselves English Independence and the English National Party both also claim to offer candidates in Scotland. Nine of those registered parties have Scotland or Scottish in their name. In addition to the more familiar SNP and Scottish Green Party, these include: Scotland’s Independence Referendum Party; the Scottish Democratic Alliance; the Scottish Democrats; the Scottish Family Party; the Scottish Libertarian Party; the Scottish Socialist Party; and the Scottish Unionist Party. Other organizations can also be found. For example, RISE (Respect, Independence, Socialism and Environmentalism), which emerged out of the independence referendum has been registered since December . There are also branches of state-wide parties which can be classified as a small party in the Scottish context; for example, UKIP’s Scottish branch has been registered since .
Scottish Liberal Democrats Including the Scottish Liberal Democrats in a chapter on smaller parties is likely to be controversial. They were central actors in the Scottish Constitutional Convention which campaigned for a devolved Scottish parliament from . They were central to the development of devolution during the first two terms of the Scottish parliament (–), and acted as the junior coalition partner in the then Labour-led Scottish Executive. Jim Wallace, Scottish leader until mid-, was Deputy First Minster and served as Acting First Minister on three occasions between and . Consequently, the Scottish Liberal Democrats were generally perceived to be one of the four mainstream parties at Holyrood (Lynch ). The party also had broader resonance at the UK level. Its UK leader from to , Charles Kennedy, was MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber and its predecessor seats, whilst North East Fife MP Menzies Campbell was the party’s UK-wide foreign affairs spokesperson (–), deputy leader (–) and briefly also party leader (–). The party still supplies high-profile MPs, such as UK-wide Liberal Democrat deputy leader (from ) and short-lived party leader (in ) Jo Swinson and former minister Alistair Carmichael, MP for Orkney and Shetland from . The Scottish Liberal Democrats highlight a key issue in the small party literature well. If Mair’s () per cent cut-off is accepted, Figure . and Table . shows that the Liberal Democrats, even at the height of their Scottish success, never achieved close to that on the regional list vote, winning at best . per cent in . Although the party won up to thirteen seats on the constituency section of the AMS electoral system in , nationwide this only just squeezed over the threshold at . per cent vote share, whilst . per cent in the constituencies in led to the party winning two fewer seats. It has been downhill since, with the party achieving just under
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Table 16.1 Liberal Democrat Performance, Scottish Parliament Elections Year
Constituency
Regional List
1999 2003 2007 2011 2016
14.2 15.4 16.2 7.9 7.8
12.5 11.8 11.3 5.2 5.2
Source: House of Commons Library Research Papers.
per cent in constituencies and just over per cent in regions, yielding five seats in both and . In short, the Scottish Liberal Democrats have electorally fallen under the small party threshold more often than not. The Scottish Liberal Democrats can nonetheless claim to have had relevance from to , in the Sartorian () sense. The party had coalition potential and used this to good effect in coalition with Labour for two terms. Assessing this period of devolved government, one former Labour Scottish First Minister suggested that ‘the Liberal Democrats have probably gained more from devolution than any other party’ (cited in Laffin : ). The Liberal Democrats delivered a range of key party policies. These included the abolition of up-front tuition fees and their replacement with a ‘graduate endowment’ payable after graduation. They also included the extension of free personal care for the elderly and a more extensive Freedom of Information regime than the rest of the UK. Successes in the second term included electoral reform for Scottish local government and free dental and eye tests. Roddin () suggested that two-thirds of the policy initiatives in the first Scottish executive originated from the Liberal Democrats, and only a third from Labour. Similarly, Laffin (: ) suggested that Liberal Democrats achieved all their policy demands in and . Nonetheless, the party’s weaknesses have been organizational, geographical, and political. Politically, even at the time, the party’s successes were disputed (Bennie and Clark ). It decided to go into opposition in rather than talk to the SNP about some form of support. Its message of a federal UK has been squeezed between pro- and anti-independence campaigns, whilst Liberal Democrat co-operation in government with the Conservatives at Westminster between and had severe electoral consequences at Holyrood, reducing the party to a rump of MSPs in . Geographically, the party had always been reliant on support in the peripheries—in the Highlands and Islands and Borders for instance. Even in a period of relative success in , Clark () could note declining membership, around two-thirds of local parties being little more than ‘paper branches’, and little organizational presence in the densely populated Glasgow and West of Scotland regions. The introduction of the single transferable vote (STV) for local elections, introduced after Liberal Democrat pressure, cost the party council seats in (Denver et al. ).
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The Scottish Liberal Democrats have struggled since . Whilst clearly in the broadly interventionist social liberal tradition, estimates of the Scottish party’s ideological positioning placed them with both Labour and the SNP to their left, and broadly in the centre of the left–right spectrum, with only the Scottish Conservatives to the party’s right (Clark ). However, the party’s social liberal territory has been squeezed by the broadly centre-left offerings of the Greens, SNP and, to a lesser extent, Labour. The ‘catch-all’ nature of the SNP programme and support from has further colonized some of the centrist territory formerly occupied by the Liberal Democrats (Johns and Mitchell ). The state-wide party’s coalition at Westminster with the pro-austerity Conservative Party from to , in which Scottish Liberal Democrat MPs served as Ministers, also resonates north of the border. This has made it hard for the Scottish party’s social liberal arguments to be made, and heard, credibly, and accounts for the party’s decline from onwards. Constitutionally, the party’s federal vision for the UK has equally been squeezed by the polarization of the debate, both during and since the independence referendum, between an SNP and Green-led pro-independence campaign and Conservative-led pro-unionist views. In short, the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ competitive space has decreased and the party has found it difficult to counter such incursions into its previous territory by other larger and better resourced competitors.
Scottish Green Party The Scottish Green Party can trace its lineage from the growth of environmental concern in the s (Chapter in this Handbook). Originally formed in Edinburgh in November as a Scottish branch of the British Ecology Party, the Scottish Green Party became independent from the Green Party in England in . Ideologically, the Scottish Greens have echoed the shift elsewhere from survivalist ecological approaches in the s, to a more pluralist left-oriented programme (Bennie , ). In the Holyrood elections, the party’s manifesto was sceptical about economic growth for growth’s sake, and sought to achieve, amongst other things, a Scotland which was an environmental leader, with a sustainable Green economy, investment in low-carbon technology, land reform, and empowering communities. Alongside this, there was concern for social justice, including fair funding of public services, various welfare, equality, and diversity measures, and the promotion of various aspects of connectivity (Scottish Green Party ). The Scottish Greens are pro-independence, and played an important role in the Scottish independence referendum. The Scottish Greens fielded their first parliamentary candidate in the general election, and had their first regional councillor elected in . The introduction of the additional member system (AMS) for the new Scottish parliament gave the Greens an opportunity to win parliamentary seats. An effective threshold of around per cent in each region would, most likely, be enough to see a small party elected, whilst the amount required for candidates’ deposits was substantially less than for fielding a full slate of constituency candidates. Consequently, the Greens have tended, with just a
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Table 16.2 Green Party Regional List Performance, Scottish Parliament Elections Year
Regional List Candidates
Number Elected
%
1999 2003 2007 2011 2016
41 58 53 45 65
1 7 2 2 6
3.6 6.9 4.0 4.4 6.6
Sources: Bennie (2004); House of Commons Library Research Papers.
handful of exceptions, to only contest regional List seats in Scottish parliament elections. As Table . shows, this has been a successful strategy for the party. In , the Scottish Greens had the first ever Green representative elected to any assembly in the UK, Robin Harper MSP, elected from the Lothians list. The party’s best performance occurred in , with seven MSPs elected from every region except Central and West of Scotland. Green representation fell back to just two MSPs in both and , from Glasgow and Lothian lists. The Greens improved considerably in to have six list candidates elected, giving them representation from every region except for Central, North East, and South Scotland. The party has also had some success in local government elections, particularly since the introduction of the single transferable vote in . In that first round of STV elections, the Greens elected eight councillors, following this up in with fourteen, and winning nineteen seats in . Green candidates proved attractive for second preference transfers from a range of other parties’ voters, including the SNP, Labour, Liberal Democrats, and smaller left-wing parties (Bennie and Clark ; Denver et al. ; Clark ). Organizationally, the Scottish Greens have had a small and fluctuating membership. Membership rose to , in off the back of environmental concern in the late s. Organization was, however, fairly loose and membership fell back to between – in the s, and was somewhere around in (Bennie : ). A survey conducted in showed that achieving the party’s political aims had been the main reason for members joining the party (Bennie : –). Figure . shows that membership stabilized at around , to , between and . The independence referendum proved to be a good recruiter for the party. From , the party saw a sharp increase to , with most of the increase occurring just after and being attributed to the referendum. This rose to , in , but fell back to , in as some of the new post-referendum members lost their enthusiasm. In , party accounts suggested that the Greens had twenty branches, up from sixteen in and seventeen in . The party’s average income from to was around £,, with income of £, in , £, in and £, in , although in many years expenditure outstripped income. From , the Scottish Green Party has been led by a gender-balanced team of two co-convenors.
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10000 9000 8000 Members
7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
. Scottish Green Party Membership, – Source: Party accounts registered with the Electoral Commission.
The Greens have had influence in the Scottish parliament and more widely. From , Robin Harper was able to build alliances with other MSPs and raise the profile for environmental issues (Bennie ). The SNP have relied on Green support on a number of occasions when they were a minority government at Holyrood. These have included to have Nicola Sturgeon invested as First Minister in , in addition to allowing the Scottish budget to be passed. In March , the Green Party supported a vote to allow Nicola Sturgeon to claim a parliamentary mandate to negotiate a Section order with the UK government in an attempt to allow a second independence referendum to happen. Although the general election seemed initially to have halted moves towards a second referendum, the Greens have played an active part in building support for independence, particularly amongst more radical groups who perceive the SNP government as somewhat managerial. As a mobilizing party, representing a broad evolving cleavage (Rochon ), the Greens’ future in Scottish politics appears relatively sustainable. They have a much broader role to play both in constitutional debates and in wider environmental discussions and policy than their number of seats might suggest (on these wider debates, see Chapter in this Handbook).
Scottish Socialist Party The Scottish Socialist Party at one point had one of the most high-profile MSPs in socialist firebrand Tommy Sheridan. It held six regional List seats between and . The SSP’s historical and ideological roots can be traced back to the Trotskyite Militant Tendency in the s, through the anti-poll tax movement, to Scottish Militant Labour (SML) in the mid-s, before a merger between SML and other small left-wing groups led to the creation of the Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA) in and eventually in the SSP. The SSP was Trotskyite in origin, and offered a detailed critique of capitalist economics (Sheridan and McCombes ). Whilst
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radical, this was a more pluralist and liberal form of socialism than its Militant predecessors offered (Bennie ). The SSP was pro-independence, and argued for an independent socialist Scottish Republic. Its manifesto, for example, argued for the scrapping of council tax in favour of a Scottish service tax, the provision of free school meals, the introduction of a £. per hour minimum wage for public sector workers (inflation adjusted to around £ in ), job creation through a -hour working week, ending privatization and the private finance initiative, and an antinuclear and anti-war Scotland (SSP ). As a classic challenger party (Rochon ), the SSP argued that traditional working-class constituencies had been betrayed by the Labour Party and its move to the centre under Blair. The SSP won one seat in the first post-devolution Scottish parliament in with Sheridan winning per cent of the vote in the Glasgow regional list. In , it offered seventy-six regional list candidates, who won over , votes and a regional vote share of . per cent, electing six MSPs in the process. It also offered seventy constituency candidates, but failed to have any elected. Organizationally, the party claimed to have over seventy branches in (SSP ), although Kane (: ) suggests it was loosely organized and more like ‘a cross between a political party and a social movement’. Its MSPs lived on the average salary (£, at the time) and donated the balance of their salary to the party. One limited survey of SSP members suggested that most members had not previously belonged to a political party, whilst those who had, had previously been members of the Labour Party (Kane ). The SSP lost all its seats in the election after a bitter internal feud between Sheridan, who had stood down as convenor in , and the party’s other MSPs over allegations in a tabloid about Sheridan’s private life. Sheridan subsequently split from the SSP, launching another socialist organization, Solidarity. This also failed to win any seats. In , the SSP fielded forty-six list candidates, but achieved less than per cent of the vote. SSP results have declined to the point where they are now routinely grouped within the ‘Others’ category and difficult to establish, although it remains active and registered as a political party. Party activists can be seen regularly running anti-austerity street stalls in the centre of Edinburgh. The size of the party can be roughly estimated by the fact that party accounts lodged with the Electoral Commission report that only around branch delegates and visitors attended its conference in Dunblane. Although party income was over £, in –, by it was as low as £, although it had risen in subsequent years and stood at £, in . Nonetheless, the SSP’s representation at Holyrood did leave a lasting legacy. Sheridan’s private members bill against warrant sales and poindings was a significant piece of legislation which changed Scottish law on debt collection. Its success might suggest a potential pro-independence left-wing niche in Scotland available to be exploited by a charismatic leader. The left has been hampered in doing so by infighting and division, between the SSP and the Sheridan-led Solidarity in the Holyrood and local elections for example. Any such organization would also be competing with the Greens, discussed earlier. Nonetheless, attempts to exploit this gap continue.
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Former and current SSP activists had been involved in the formation of a new alliance in late , even if the SSP remained a separate organization. RISE: Scotland’s Left Alliance was established in late out of the experience of the independence referendum. A movement-based alliance of socialists, trade unionists, and left-wing campaigners, in favour of abolishing Trident and establishing a Scottish Republic, its initials summarize its programme: Respect; Independence; Socialism; and Environmentalism. It has yet to establish a clear voice or leadership, or achieve any electoral success, winning less than per cent in the Holyrood contest.
UKIP The Anti-European populists of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) were largely reliant on England for electoral support. Previous policies aimed at replacing Scottish parliament, Welsh and Northern Irish assembly MSPs/AMs/MLAs with MPs and replacing the Barnett Formula were unlikely to win the party favour outside of England. Accordingly they were eventually modified to a somewhat grudging acceptance of the devolved institutions (Clark ). UKIP has largely been an irrelevance in Scottish parliament elections. It fielded forty-one candidates on regional lists in , thirty-seven in and twenty-six in . It has never elected a representative to Holyrood. UKIP has never achieved more than per cent of the regional list vote in a Scottish parliament election. This notwithstanding, UKIP more than doubled its votes from , in to , in , achieving a per cent regional list share in , with Highlands and Islands being the party’s best result at . per cent of the regional list vote and the party’s lowest list result being . per cent in three regions (Hawkins ). In UK elections in Scotland, UKIP won , votes and a . per cent share in its surge in , an increase of . percentage points. This compared poorly with the . per cent UKIP polled across the UK, however. By , the party’s Scottish vote had fallen back to around , votes and a . per cent vote share. UKIP’s best electoral result in Scotland came in the European elections, in which the party at the UK-wide level came first with a vote share of . per cent. In Scotland, UKIP polled , votes, equating to a share of . per cent, an increase of . percentage points on but a level substantially below the UK-wide party. Nonetheless, UKIP did well enough in a low turnout election to come fourth, ahead of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, thereby winning a seat in the European Parliament for its Scottish leader, David Coburn. This gave UKIP a platform it had not previously had in Scotland. Indeed, UK leader Nigel Farage being chased into an Edinburgh pub by protesters in seemed a more appropriate metaphor for UKIP in Scotland since it had, until , no representatives north of the border. Although Coburn regularly appeared in the media, his contributions seldom appeared to be taken very seriously given Scotland’s very different political discourse to that of England. Coburn announced a short-lived bid to challenge for the UK-wide UKIP leadership in , but had suffered the indignity of losing his deposit in the general election only days
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earlier. The party seemed unlikely to trouble the main Scottish parties overly; in the only two sets of accounts registered with the Electoral Commission for and , UKIP Scotland’s income was only £, and £, respectively. Coburn resigned from UKIP in December over its move towards an anti-Islamic platform. Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party also failed to make a breakthrough in the European elections of , gaining one MEP (at the expense of UKIP) and coming second but scoring less than half the percentage vote it gained across the UK, where it topped the poll.
Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party The so-called – ‘Rainbow Parliament’ also saw representation from the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party (SSCUP), who ran candidates alongside the Pensioners Party (Scotland), although due to an electoral pact between them neither stood against the other. Both parties fielded nineteen candidates each and each achieved . per cent of the regional vote and over , votes. SSCUP had one high-profile candidate in in former Celtic player Billy McNeill, and were successful in having John Swinburne elected in the Central Scotland list. In an ageing country, senior citizens’ issues could have been an important long-term cleavage. In , the party polled approximately , more votes on regional lists than four years previously, achieving a share of . per cent. However, because this vote was more widely spread across Scotland, rather than concentrated as in , SSCUP failed to win a seat (Herbert et al. : ).
Others A range of other candidates and organizations have contested post-devolution Scottish elections, and won seats. The elections saw former Labour MP Dennis Canavan run, and win, as an independent after not being selected by Labour to contest the Falkirk West Scottish parliament seat. In , , and , former SNP MP and MSP, Margo MacDonald, was elected as an independent on the Lothians list after falling out with the party and being lowly ranked in the SNP’s list for the elections. A former GP, Jean Turner, won the Strathkelvin and Bearsden constituency seat in with almost , votes and per cent vote share campaigning on health and hospital closure issues, before losing it to Labour again in . An anti-Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) organization, The Fishing Party, was also relatively prominent in , but failed to get elected. Scotland also has a tradition of independent politics, particularly in geographically peripheral areas such as the Highlands (Bochel and Denver ). Indeed, independent candidates contested the local elections, in , and in (Clark ; Bennie and Clark ; Clark ). Often these are geographically oriented organizations and candidates. A Highlands and Islands Alliance was expected to do well in the Scottish parliament elections, but failed to win a seat. The Angus
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Independents beat the Liberal Democrats in Angus South into fifth place in , whilst The Borders Party has also contested local elections, winning two council seats in and .
S P S P S
.................................................................................................................................. Scotland has therefore seen some significant smaller parties since devolution. These have made politics more diverse than at Westminster. There are a number of reasons for this. Central to this is institutional change with the establishment of the Scottish parliament itself and the introduction of the additional member system for Scottish parliament elections. Small parties are always unlikely to do well under First-Past-ThePost (FPTP) unless they can muster geographically concentrated support. Moreover, contesting FPTP seats was always likely to be costly for small organizations with limited funds since £ deposits were more likely to be lost than retained. Thus, the introduction of the second, proportional regional list tier of the AMS system represented an opportunity for small parties. Consequently, most small parties choose not to contest constituency seats for Holyrood, but concentrate their efforts on regional lists. The Greens provide a good example of this. They seldom, if ever, contest constituency seats. Instead, they have explicitly campaigned for regional list votes, using, in early elections, a ‘Vote ’ slogan to remind voters to use their second regional list vote for the party. Ticket-splitting voters have therefore been part of the explanation for the success of some small parties. House of Commons research papers on each of the Scottish elections allow this to be estimated at the aggregate level, although sometimes the ‘Others’ category includes parties like the SSP and Greens, other times not. In , the difference between constituency and regional list vote shares was around per cent in favour of ‘Others’ and in Lothians as much as . per cent. In , this had risen to . per cent across Scotland, with a remarkable per cent difference in Lothians. This reversed itself in . By switching was back at per cent in favour of ‘Others’, with per cent doing so in the Lothians region and per cent in the Glasgow region. In , the difference for Greens and ‘Others’ combined was . per cent. At the individual level, data from the Scottish election study (Carman et al., ) suggest that . per cent (N=) of its respondents cast a vote for small parties on the regional list. This did not include the Liberal Democrats but included per cent of respondents voting Green, a further . per cent for both UKIP and ‘Others’ and Independents. Explaining this, per cent (N=) said this was a tactical vote, per cent suggested it was a second preference, and per cent because their preferred party had no chance of winning List seats. The electoral system has changed the electoral opportunity structure. Ticket-splitting voters are clearly part of the explanation for smaller party success.
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That this has been possible suggests that there is some latent support for smaller party options in Scotland. For example, Scottish Social Attitudes data suggest that there is a steady, if small, group of people who identify with such parties. Thus, Green and ‘Other’ party identification was at a combined to per cent in –, per cent in , then regularly at or around to per cent before climbing to per cent in in advance of the independence referendum (What Scotland Thinks ). In local elections using the single transferable vote, the Greens have proved attractive and received second preferences from a range of other parties’ voters. In , where larger parties did not offer teams of candidates, per cent of SNP voters gave their second preference to the Greens, per cent of second preferences came from Liberal Democrat voters, just under per cent of second preferences from Labour voters and even just under per cent of second preferences from Conservative electors (Clark ). This suggests that the Scottish Greens are well placed to benefit from disappointment with other parties. They fall under the category of what Rochon () calls a mobilizing party, given that their appeal is based on the environmental cleavage, which differentiates them from their competitors, and they bring a left-wing social justice orientation to debates. This gives a degree of sustainability to their programme, given that the predominant discourse in Scotland is centre-left-oriented. Their proindependence views resonate with those who may be disappointed in the SNP’s moderate centre-left position and caution towards a second independence referendum under Nicola Sturgeon. Whilst there is certainly a strong tradition of liberalism in parts of Scotland, the Liberal Democrats’ federal vision does not resonate to the same extent in the polarized constitutional debate, and the party has been discredited by coalition at Westminster from to with the Conservatives. Indeed, asked which party they would prefer to see as a coalition partner, per cent (N=) of respondents to the Scottish election study suggested the Liberal Democrats, whilst per cent said the Greens. A right-wing party such as UKIP has little space to develop as a ‘niche party’ on anti-EU and immigration issues (Wagner ), which get little airing in Scotland. Left-wing ‘challenger’ parties such as the SSP and Solidarity have proved a temporary phenomenon, as Rochon () might have expected, even with a figurehead like the eventually discredited Tommy Sheridan. Whilst there seems to be potential for a left-wing party to exploit, this has remained the case even in the aftermath of the independence referendum. Even though the launch of RISE: Scotland’s Left Alliance was met with some fanfare in late , it appears to be run on a shoestring with its accounts no more than a page long and recording an income of only £,. What does this mean for the Scottish party system? Bennie and Clark () argued during the first term at Holyrood that the Scottish party system was akin to moderate pluralism. Two to five parties were in competition for a place in a coalition administration. Competition for government was mainly centripetal, with little ideological distance on the left–right spectrum, although the cross-cutting constitutional cleavage complicated this somewhat. Nonetheless, it sometimes seemed that the SSP and Greens were making much of the running, also pulling party competition in a centrifugal, leftwing and pro-independence direction. Whilst competition over government formation
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Table 16.3 Effective Number of Parties, Scottish Parliament Year
ENEP
ENPP
1999 2003 2007 2011 2016
4.36 5.64 4.71 3.52 3.70
3.34 4.23 3.41 2.61 2.99
Source: Gallagher (2016).
remained centripetal in –, small parties clearly had more of an impact in that period. As Table . shows, a key measure of party system fractionalization, the effective number of electoral parties (ENEP), rose from . in to . in , whilst the effective number of parliamentary parties (ENPP) also grew from . to .. This gradually went into reverse from , with the SNP’s landslide victory in reducing ENEP to . and ENPP to .. Both increased slightly in , with the Greens in particular doing well out of disappointment with the other parties. Mair () and Clark () classify comparative party systems for the influence or otherwise of their small parties. Both offer a four-way classification between largeparty systems, weak large-party systems, small party systems and fragmented party systems. Following the approach taken in this chapter, which classifies the Liberal Democrats as a small party, the three main parties—SNP, Labour, and Conservatives— were grouped together, with the remaining vote share being grouped as small parties. This shows that the Scottish party system can be classed as a large-party system in virtually every Scottish parliament election and in both constituency and list elements of those contests. The one exception is , when the combined vote share of the three main parties fell below two-thirds on the regional list. Consequently, in Scotland would have been classified as a weak large-party system. Returning to Sartori’s () terminology, SNP dominance from , at both Holyrood and for elections to Westminster, means that Scotland now arguably has a predominant party system, with one party, the SNP, most likely to win or govern alone whether as a minority or majority. This might seem to limit the power of small parties. Yet, with majority government only once between and in Scotland, there are several strategies open to smaller parties to influence mainstream parties short of a majority. These include forming a coalition, as the Scottish Liberal Democrats did successfully with Labour for two full terms between and . Interestingly, this provides a counter-example to the common argument that smaller parties suffer by taking part in coalitions. This did not happen to the Liberal Democrats as a result of either of these coalitions. An alternative strategy might instead include offering support on an issue by issue basis. For example, the SNP has needed Green Party support in parliament in for a ‘mandate’ to negotiate a Section order to seek powers to hold
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a second independence referendum. It has relied on Green support for budgetary and other measures, and has also relied on support from other parties during its time in office. Consequently, it is possible to argue that the Scottish party system has evolved into one of ‘limited pluralism’, where smaller parties such as the Greens can, and occasionally do, have power to influence political outcomes. Indeed, as Clark () and Costello and Thomson () note, small parties can have such influence, even when they are in opposition, when mainstream parties pick up on ideas originally floated by their smaller competitors. Little research has been done into this in Scotland, and this would seem a potentially interesting line of inquiry to take for future work into small parties.
C
.................................................................................................................................. Smaller parties have played an active role in the development of the post-devolution party system. Indeed, the semi-proportional additional member system adopted for the Scottish parliament has provided smaller parties with the opportunity of contesting and winning seats in a more cost-effective manner than would be possible under only a FPTP system. Organizations mainly from the left, but also the right of the spectrum, and both pro- and anti-independence have met with some degree of success. These have included the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the SSP, the Scottish Senior Citizens’ Unity Party, UKIP and a range of independents and ‘others’. These parties have raised a range of issues, some of which have become wider concerns. They can clearly be influential when larger parties need support for legislative measures in parliament. Smaller parties contributing to coalition administrations or in formal confidence and supply arrangements, although looking unlikely from the post-IndyRef perspective of SNP dominance, remain a future possibility under the AMS electoral system. Yet, it is perhaps surprising given the additional member electoral system and the electoral fluidity which has contributed to the SNP’s rise that small parties have not made more progress. Using the analytical tools set out above, more research is clearly needed into these organizations and the effects that they can have on mainstream parties, party competition, and public policy in Scotland. Whilst Scotland may therefore be classified as a large-party system, small parties are nonetheless likely to experience ‘fluctuating fortunes but a permanent presence’ (Copus et al. ) in future Scottish elections.
R Bennie, L. . ‘Exploiting New Electoral Opportunities: The Small Parties in Scotland’, in G. Hassan and C. Warhurst (eds), Tomorrow’s Scotland. London: Lawrence and Wishart, –. Bennie, L. . Understanding Political Participation: Green Party Membership in Scotland. Aldershot: Ashgate.
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Bennie, L. and Clark, A. . ‘Towards Moderate Pluralism: Scotland’s Post-Devolution Party System, –’, in C. Rallings et al. (eds), British Elections and Parties Review Volume . London: Cass, –. Bennie, L. and Clark, A. . ‘The Transformation of Local Politics? STV and the Scottish Local Government Elections’, Representation, /: –. Bochel, H. and Denver, D. . ‘Minor Parties and Independents in Times of Change: Scottish Local Elections to ’, Local Government Studies, /: –. Carman, C., Mitchell, J., and Johns, R. . Scottish Election Study, . [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: . Available at: http://dx.doi.org/./UKDA-SN-–. Clark, A. . ‘Between Iraq and a Hard Place? The Scottish Local Government Elections of ’, Representation, : –. Clark, A. . ‘Community Politics? Grassroots Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Parliament Elections’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. Clark, A. . ‘Breaking the Mould or Fiddling at the Edges? Ireland’s Minor Parties in Comparative and Systemic Perspective’, Irish Political Studies, /: –. Clark, A. . ‘Second Time Lucky? The Continuing Adaptation of Parties and Voters to the Single Transferable Vote in Scotland’, Representation, /: –. Clark, A. . Political Parties in the UK, nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Copus, C., Clark, A., and Bottom, K. . ‘Multi-Party Politics in England? Small Parties, Independents and Political Associations in English Local Politics’, in M. Reiser and E. Holtmann (eds), Farewell to the Party Model? Independent Local Lists in Eastern and Western European Countries. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, –. Copus, C., Clark, A., Reynaert, H., and Steyvers, K. . ‘Minor Party and Independent Politics Beyond the Mainstream: Fluctuating Fortunes but a Permanent Presence’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Costello, R. and Thomson, R. . ‘The Fulfilment of Election Pledges’, in M. Gallagher and M. Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted : The Full Story of Ireland’s General Election. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, –. Denver, D., Clark, A., and Bennie, L. . ‘Voter Reactions to a Preferential Ballot: The Scottish Local Elections’, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, /: –. Deschouwer, K. . New Parties in Government: In Power for the First Time. Abingdon: Routledge. Fischer, S.L. . ‘The Decline of Parties Thesis and the Role of Minor Parties’, in P.H. Merkl (ed.), Western European Party Systems. New York: Free Press, –. Gallagher, M. . ‘Election Indices’. Available at: www.tcd.ie/PoliticalScience/staff/ michael_gallagher/ElSystems/Docts/ElectionIndices.pdf, accessed February . Harmel, R. . ‘On the Study of New Parties’, International Political Science Review, /: –. Hawkins, O. . Scottish Parliament Elections . London: House of Commons Briefing Paper CBP. Herbert, S., Burnside, R., Earle, M., Edwards, T., Foley, T., and McIver, I. . Election . Edinburgh: SPICe Briefing /. Herzog, H. . ‘Minor Parties: The Relevancy Perspective’, Comparative Politics, /: –. Johns, R. and Mitchell, J. . Takeover: Explaining the Extraordinary Rise of the SNP. London: Biteback.
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Kane, L. . ‘The Educational Influences on Active Citizens: A Case Study of Members of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP)’, Studies in the Education of Adults, /: –. Kefford, G. . ‘Rethinking Small Political Parties: From Micro to Peripheral’, Australian Journal of Political Science, /: –. Laffin, M. . ‘Coalition Formation and Centre-Periphery Relations in a National Political Party: The Liberal Democrats in a Devolved Britain’, Party Politics, /: –. Lynch, P. . ‘Partnership, Pluralism and Party Identity: The Liberal Democrats after Devolution’, in G. Hassan and C. Warhurst (eds), Tomorrow’s Scotland. London: Lawrence and Wishart, –. Mair, P. . ‘The Electoral Universe of Small Parties in Postwar Western Europe’, in F. Müller-Rommel and G. Pridham (eds), Small Parties in Western Europe: Comparative and National Perspectives. London: Sage, –. Meguid, B.M. . Party Competition between Unequals: Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pedersen, M.N. . ‘Towards a New Typology of Party Lifespans and Minor Parties’, Scandinavian Political Studies, /: –. Rochon, T.R. . ‘Mobilizers and Challengers: Toward a Theory of New Party Success’, International Political Science Review, /: –. Roddin, E. . ‘Has the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats Proved More Successful in the Partnership for Scotland Coalition? An Initial Assessment’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Sartori, G. . [] Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Colchester: ECPR Press. Scottish Green Party. . A Better Scotland Needs a Bolder Holyrood: Manifesto . Edinburgh: Scottish Green Party. Sheridan, T. and McCombes, A. . Imagine: A Socialist Vision for the st Century. Edinburgh: Canongate. Wagner, M. . ‘Defining and Measuring Niche Parties’. Party Politics, /: –. What Scotland Thinks. . ‘Political Party Identification’. http://whatscotlandthinks.org/ questions/party-political-identification-#table [//].
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.................................................................................................................................. A the role played by religious belief, or identity, in political life is a hazardous task, and it is one largely neglected or discounted by political scientists (Kettell ; but see Chapter in this Handbook). The subject can appear at once too vast and too individualistic; it can be the primary descriptor of a nation or a community or a private affair. It can be an inescapable reference point or an elusive variable that polls and surveys fail adequately to capture. The commonplace bracketing of religion with controversy and conflict can make people reluctant to discuss it or admit to its importance. In Scotland in recent times there has been a particular eagerness surgically to remove it from political debate, notwithstanding the scholarly attention paid to the issue of religious sectarianism in Scottish society (Rosie ; Walker ). Religion, if measured by indices such as church membership and attendance, is clearly in retreat in contemporary Scotland. This is especially the case in respect of the ‘national’ Church of Scotland to the point where media commentators ruminate about ‘the country without the Kirk’, and academics ponder the implications of the growing numbers professing to hold ‘No Religion’ (Clements ; Garavelli ). Yet the relevance of religion to Scottish political life should not be dismissed: even those today who adamantly disavow any religious label or set of beliefs may still be influenced by the profoundly religious-shaped history of the country. It should not be forgotten that a distinctive religious tradition—Presbyterianism—has been central to the preservation of Scottish national identity within the multinational construct of the United Kingdom, and to notions of ‘Covenant’ and contract that have arguably been crucial to the recent re-examination of the UK Union and the questioning of its benefits (Bowie ; Kidd ). Colin Kidd has made the vital point that religious disputes and controversies were the main sources of tension and division between Scotland and England within the framework of the Union until well into the twentieth century (Kidd :
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chapter ), whilst other scholars have related the disputatiousness and taste for forensic argument on the part of Scots to the austere Calvinism that has otherwise been blamed for cultural narrowness (Beveridge and Turnbull ; Storrar ; Reid ). Scotland’s other major faith in modern times—Roman Catholicism—has also contributed signally to the political development of the nation, and in recent years the growing multi-ethnic character of the country has raised many pertinent political questions regarding identity, allegiance, and assimilation. This chapter will explain the relevance of religion to the development of Scottish party politics over the past century. It will show that religion was for a long period of time a key cleavage in Scottish politics, and that it remains relevant to matters of identity notwithstanding the secular character of the contemporary context. The chapter will be concerned with both the Scottish dimension to the unitary British political context of the twentieth century, and the new political world of devolution and the Scottish Parliament from . Religious divisions over the Scottish national question will be highlighted where significant, and the challenges of a multifaith and ‘no faith’ society for the political parties will be identified.
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.................................................................................................................................. Amongst the most salient features of modern Scottish political history is the allegiance given to the Labour Party for so long by the Catholic community. On one level this was a marriage of convenience driven by the socio-economic profile of this community, concentrated as it was in the heavily industrialized west-central Lowlands. The Labour Party’s social programme had an obvious appeal to disadvantaged working-class Catholics who made up a disproportionate share of those in unskilled low-paid work and poor living conditions. From another vantage point, it was fortunate for Labour that the Liberal Party was riven beyond repair following the First World War; Catholics in Scotland, overwhelmingly Irish or, increasingly, of Irish descent, had previously aligned themselves with this party on account of its promotion of the cause of Irish Home Rule from the mids. In effect, Labour was given a free pass as the party most likely to challenge the Conservatives whose opposition to Irish Home Rule had been carried before the war to the point of supporting Ulster’s planned paramilitary resistance. Then there was the position of the Catholic Church whose opposition to socialism was trenchant; however, the factors facilitating a tactical alliance with Labour were the threat of communism, or ‘bolshevism’, to Labour’s left, and Labour’s willingness to give political cover to the defence of the Education Act which had brought Catholic schools into the state system in Scotland, leaving the Church with effective control and removing a heavy financial burden from the Catholic community. The Church may also have recognized that the extension of the franchise in to the less well-off required a new kind of political flexibility for the age of mass democracy (McLean , chapter ; Smyth ).
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The Irish troubles of – reverberated in those parts of Scotland marked by substantial Irish immigration from the middle of the nineteenth century. Catholic Irish immigration accounted for some three-quarters of the total, and ‘the Catholic vote’ in several industrial seats came to be highly prized. One such constituency, that of Motherwell, provides an illuminating commentary on the formative political period following the First World War. The seat was won by a coalition government candidate in but then seized by a Communist, Walton Newbold, in amidst Liberal and Conservative/Unionist divisions (Duncan ). Newbold estimated that around per cent of his vote came from the Irish Catholic community that he claimed to have radicalized in defiance of their clergy over developments in Ireland.¹ Sectarian tensions over the Irish question were undoubtedly behind the subsequent victory in Motherwell of Hugh Ferguson, an Orangeman and champion of Ulster’s struggle, in ; amongst Ferguson’s later contributions to debate at Westminster were broadsides aimed at the Education Act and warnings about trouble in Scotland if the newly created Northern Ireland was to be forced into the Irish Free State, as the twenty-sixcounty territory became after . The Motherwell seat was then won by a radical Presbyterian clergyman, Reverend James Barr, in the Labour Party interest in by which time Newbold believed that the Catholic Irish had settled down, accepted the outcome of the Irish question, and reverted to obeying their church. The Catholic Church in turn, in Newbold’s view, had satisfied itself that the Labour Party possessed no real socialist intent and had rid itself of Communist associations.² Barr’s victory, and his subsequent hold on the seat apart from the somewhat exceptional Parliament of –, spoke to Labour’s capacity to appeal across the religious divide in westcentral Scotland, although there were also seats where class interest could not always trump religious and ethnic identity from the s through to the s. It needs also to be kept in mind that Catholic workers had been cultivated for the cause of Labour by John Wheatley, one of the Labour movement’s key organizers and strategists in the early twentieth century, through his Catholic Socialist Society (CSS). Wheatley clashed bitterly with the hierarchy of the Church, but his groundwork paid off in the turbulent post-war years, and he himself went on to become perhaps the sole ministerial success story of the first, short-lived, Labour government in – (Wood ). In the s, following Wheatley’s death, the key ‘broker’ figure marshalling Catholic political energies was Patrick Dollan who became Glasgow’s first Catholic Lord Provost in . Dollan was instrumental in rebuilding Labour’s organization following the split with the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in ; up until that point, the ILP had supplied most of the electoral activity and campaigning drive of Labour politics in Scotland (McKinlay and Morris ). Dollan’s political prominence reflected the way the Labour Party and also the trade unions could offer a vehicle for Catholic advancement in public life, and scholars have duly noted the significance of involvement in Labour politics as a means to integration ¹ Newbold Papers, John Rylands Library Manchester, Box , file on ‘Marshalling the Irish’. ² Newbold Papers, Box , file entitled ‘The parting of the ways’.
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with wider Scottish society (Gallagher : chapters and ; Bruce : chapters and ). This could also be said of the effects of the Education Act over time, although there has to be simultaneous acknowledgement of the degree to which separate schooling and a distinctive Catholic block vote for Labour, so notable through the decades, also served to reinforce a communal or tribal identity that remained alert to suggestions of anti-Catholic prejudice (Boyle and Lynch ; McCaffrey ). Such prejudice could in turn be fuelled by perceptions of Catholic Church pressuring of Labour politicians over matters of education, birth control, and, in the second half of the twentieth century, abortion (Walker : –, –). In November , one week after the Abortion Act was passed at Westminster, liberalizing the law, the Labour government suffered a sensational by-election defeat to the Scottish National Party (SNP) at Hamilton in Lanarkshire. This had been a solid Labour seat and contained a strong Catholic vote. James Mitchell, in his study of the contest, has remarked on Labour’s fear of a backlash around abortion, and the party was duly made to suffer (Mitchell , ). Labour veteran and former Scottish Secretary of State Arthur Woodburn wrote afterwards of the ‘large Catholic community’ being ‘outraged’ over the abortion reform and how the SNP candidate, Winnie Ewing, ‘made great play about the English Parliament finding plenty of time to pass this legislation’.³ With hindsight, the Hamilton by-election may be regarded as the opening battle of a long war for the Catholic vote fought between Labour and the SNP. Hitherto looked upon with suspicion by the Catholic community, the SNP began to attract Catholics who resented Labour taking their votes for granted. However, the seismic shift in Catholic support between the parties would not occur until the early twenty-first century. The Labour Party, after all, still had strong cards to play: it was the party of the welfare state and the National Health Service (NHS) which had been put in place after the Second World War; it was the party that had been most accommodating of the Irish identity of the Catholic community—prominent party figures in certain areas were members of fraternal organizations like the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH); it was the party apparently most committed to separate Catholic schooling although no other political party took an opposing stance on the issue after the war; and it was the party that held power at the local level in areas where it could convincingly argue that it looked after Catholic interests (Allison : chapter ; Bruce : –). By the closing years of the twentieth century there had been an unbroken run of Labour Catholic Lord Provosts of Glasgow stretching back almost thirty years, and, as the sociologist Steve Bruce has observed, political power through local government impacted decisively on the distribution of public goods such as council employment and housing (Bruce ). By the s surveys of social attitudes appeared to reveal Catholics adopting an unqualified Scottish national identity—‘Scottish, not British’—more readily than either Protestants or those claiming to have ‘no faith’; and Catholic support for devolution in ³ Woodburn Papers, National Library of Scotland (NLS), Acc. //. Woodburn also claimed that Ewing herself did not disclose her personal views.
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the referendum of was at least as strong as that of Protestants (McCrone and Rosie ; Bruce : –). A general election survey suggested that some per cent of Catholics had voted SNP in contrast to the previous figure of seven per cent (Brand and Mitchell ). Catholic support for the SNP in the election, which brought Labour back to power after eighteen years in opposition, dropped back to per cent, but it is plausible that Labour’s commitment to devolution was a crucial cause of this (Bennie et al. , chapter ). A rallying cry to Labour amongst Catholics in may also have been prompted by the Monklands controversy that rocked the Scottish political world three years earlier. This affair centred on a Lanarkshire District Council controlled by the ruling Labour Party which was alleged to have practised favouritism on a religious basis, the local party in question being entirely Catholic in composition. Monklands lay in the parliamentary constituency of the then UK Labour Party leader John Smith, whose death in ensured that the subsequent by-election would be fought out in an atmosphere of sectarian tensions. In the event Labour’s majority of some , was slashed to , with Protestants voting heavily for the SNP to register their disgust for a perceived ‘Catholic Mafia’ in local politics. The victorious Labour candidate, Helen Liddell, accused the SNP of playing ‘the Orange Card’, a charge the Nationalists vigorously denied (Torrance : –; Walker : –). Monklands revealed some familiar problems arising from a ruling party holding power for too long but in this case it also gave rise to sectarian animosities long considered moribund by Scottish political commentators. It was, in retrospect, the catalyst for the intense public debate over the extent to which religious sectarianism remained a problematic issue in Scotland, which was to be such a feature of political life from the end of the twentieth century.⁴ Although it had been the beneficiary of the ‘anti-Mafia’ vote in Monklands, the SNP was alert to the setback the affair caused to its attempts to cultivate Catholic support, and under the leadership of Alex Salmond the party took great care to try to lay to rest notions of the party harbouring anti-Catholic sentiment. An indication of the party’s intent was its call soon after for repeal of the Act of Settlement that barred Catholics from the throne (Torrance : –, , ; Johns and Mitchell : –).
P I P P
.................................................................................................................................. A notable correlation between Protestant religious identity and Conservative voting has been a feature of Scottish politics at least from the point at which Catholics came to be identified with the Labour Party. However, important qualifications to this have to
⁴ See the section on Devolution and Indyref in this chapter.
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be registered at the outset: first, ‘Conservative’ was not the political label used until the mid-s (Chapter in this Handbook), rather, the political right mobilized under the more populist umbrella term of ‘Unionist’; second, Protestant voting behaviour was never as focused on one party as Catholic support; and third, appeals to class interest transcended religious divisions increasingly as the twentieth century progressed. Scotland’s political scene had been dominated by the Liberals before the First World War. However, the Liberals’ sponsorship of Irish Home Rule had brought about an alliance between the Conservatives and those ‘Liberal Unionists’ who had broken with their party over the issue. They came together formally in to set up the Scottish Unionist Party in what Mitchell and Convery have dubbed ‘the ultimate act of communion’ with the Ulster Unionists (Walker and Officer ; Mitchell and Convery ). Thus the Union in question was that of Great Britain and Ireland and, from , Great Britain and Northern Ireland, not the Anglo–Scottish Union whose role in day-to-day Scottish politics was marginal until the late s. However, the settlement of the Irish question in – brought out the pragmatic qualities that were to characterize the Unionists in Scotland during the coming decades. The Anglo-Irish treaty of December was viewed as a betrayal by the Orange Order, the Protestant fraternal society that had grown in Scotland with Protestant Irish immigration and which had proven its value to the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists in mobilizing working-class electoral support (McFarland ). The Order was given representation on the Western Divisional Council of the Unionist Party in , but severed its ties in protest over Irish developments in . Thereafter, the Unionists still largely acquired ‘Orange votes’, particularly in certain constituencies in the west of Scotland, but the alliance was more tactical than ideological and always brittle. The Unionists, as has been astutely observed, were able also to benefit from anti-Catholic prejudice without being seen overtly to encourage it (Mitchell and Convery ). The records of the Glasgow Unionist Association during the inter-war years reveal sectarian attitudes and grievances in abundance,⁵ yet the party was always too circumspect to allow its agenda to be driven by Protestant extremism, as became the case in nearby Northern Ireland (Walker ). It should also be noted that it was women’s Orange lodges in particular that gave the most committed organizational support to the Unionists at election time; recent research has indicated that the Order had difficulty keeping male members from being attracted to Labour and socialist alternatives (Butcher ). Orange Order and militant Protestant pressures on the Unionists to address what were seen as problems created by Irish Catholic immigration—a viewpoint shared by the Church of Scotland in the inter-war era (Brown ; Walker b)—achieved no meaningful result. In this respect the broader British political context helped to defuse the capacity of sectarian issues to gain traction; although distinctively Scottish, as signalled by their choice of name, the Unionists were still part of the broader Conservative organization and its MPs integral
⁵ See, for example, Scottish Unionist Papers, NLS Acc. ,/, and ,/.
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to the party’s voting strength in the House of Commons. The situation was perhaps best encapsulated by the Conservative government’s passing of the Catholic Relief Act at Westminster in in the midst of so much Protestant ‘angst’ in Scotland over the character and values of the country being supposedly threatened (Finlay ). Protestant frustrations did find outlets in local politics in the s, but the electoral impact of the Scottish Protestant League (SPL) in Glasgow and Protestant Action (PA) in Edinburgh proved ephemeral (Bruce ). Concerns over Irish Catholic immigration also exercised key figures in Scottish Nationalist circles such as Andrew Dewar Gibb and George Malcolm Thomson, and the Scottish National Party that emerged in , steered to a significant extent by former Unionists, campaigned for Home Rule within the Empire (Finlay ; Cameron : –). A certain blurring of Nationalist and Unionist lines was also evident in the years following the Second World War when the Scottish Convention movement in favour of a devolved Scottish Parliament used the distinctively Presbyterian symbolism of a National Covenant to demonstrate popular support (MacCormick ). Indeed, in , a delegation from the Scottish Convention paid a courtesy visit to Northern Ireland’s Unionist Premier, Basil Brooke, as part of a fact-finding trip concerning the workings of the Stormont system about which they were reportedly enthusiastic (Walker ). In the light of such developments it is perhaps unsurprising that Catholics considered Labour to be their only plausible political home. The push for Home Rule stalled in the s as the new post-war welfare settlement took hold and the Conservative–Labour two party system reached its peak of voter alignment in Britain as a whole. In Scotland, whilst Labour’s strength gradually increased, the Unionists scored some striking electoral successes; in the general election they won over half the Scottish vote. This remained an overwhelmingly Protestant vote, in particular a churchgoing Protestant vote. In a period of high church membership, the Unionists prospered (Seawright ). This was in a way ironic, given that, in the post-war years, the Kirk reversed its rightward political drift. Indeed, by the late s and into the s there was a significant disjunction between the liberal-left stances taken by the Kirk on many issues pertaining to both domestic and foreign policies, and the Conservative voting habits of its membership (MacDonald : –). The secularizing turn of the s thus helps to explain the political decline of the Unionists, more so, arguably, than the name change to ‘Conservative’ adopted by the party in . The Conservatives’ problems were primarily cultural: as the Protestant churches lost their influence in people’s lives, the advent of popular music, more widely accessed television, and more subversive art and literature all combined to create an anti-establishment mood and the decline of deferential attitudes to institutions and authority on the part of a younger generation. The Conservatives seemed to represent the past, and a repressive past in the eyes of many (Brown ; Devine , –). Moreover, as secularization gained pace, it was the Protestant denominations, significantly more than the Catholic Church, which suffered the loss of worshippers and the turn away from organized religious observance (Walker b).
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Growing disillusionment with the big two parties and anxiety over the future of the Scottish economy, when added to this dynamic cultural climate, opened the way for the SNP finally to become a major political player in the two general elections of . At the latter of these the party won almost per cent of the Scottish vote. Whilst shaping up as a serious challenger to Labour in the west of the country, most of the SNP seats were in rural and less industrialized areas, and the party’s base of support has been shown to have been, in religious terms, decidedly Protestant or, perhaps more accurately, non-Catholic (Brand : –; Miller : –). From this point until the advent of devolution the distribution of Protestant votes in general elections becomes even more widely spread across the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal, and SNP parties whilst the Catholic concentration on Labour remains virtually constant (Seawright : ). The impact of Thatcherism and eighteen years of Conservative rule left the Tories in Scotland in a parlous state by the century’s close although, as Seawright has demonstrated, the party’s vote was still disproportionately Protestant (Seawright : ). Even before devolution, it was clear that those claiming to have ‘no religion’ were predominantly from a Protestant background and were rejecting traditional political as well as religious affiliations. As Johns and Mitchell point out, the SNP found it easier to attract such voters than those with a fixed religious identity (Johns and Mitchell : –). From the s through to the early years of devolution the Labour Party was generally the dominant political force in Scotland. It secured its success by tending to its industrial heartlands and, within this context, managing sectarian tensions and divisions of an ‘Orange and Green’ nature. This was always challenging, particularly in the light of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland that raged from through to the mid-s. Episodes like Monklands notwithstanding, the party contrived to hold sectarian antagonisms and respective Irish and Ulster allegiances in check, even if this could often mean bowing to local prejudice in, for example, the selection of candidates (Allison ; Canavan ). However, more positively, it was the party’s focus on ‘bread and butter’ issues of jobs, housing, health, and living standards that allowed it to obtain the votes of largely non-churchgoing working-class Protestants who could never be comfortable with voting Tory, and whose Unionism, for the most part, put the SNP off-limits. As Jackson shrewdly puts it: ‘Class politics were essentially Unionist politics’ (Jackson : ). Labour politics, indeed, functioned more than any other factor as the cornerstone of the Union in the twentieth century (Walker a, ).
D ‘I’
.................................................................................................................................. The constitutional changes introduced by the Labour government after it came to office in were intended to modernize the UK and put the ‘Union State’ on a new footing (McLean and MacMillan ; Mitchell ). The appearance of a Scottish
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Parliament as part of the devolutionary measures affecting all parts of the UK with the exception of England, was intended to meet the clear desire for a new politics befitting a country in the throes of significant social and cultural change. Devolution created a new political context and set of dynamics. The Additional Member electoral system was designed to make it difficult for any party to govern alone or acquire an overall majority. The first sets of elections to the Parliament in and duly produced coalition governments involving Labour as the main partner along with the Liberal Democrats. The main political battle, however, was between Labour and the SNP with the latter party fully alert to the opportunities that devolution offered to develop increasingly distinctive Scottish issues and policies. Labour and the SNP were both positioned to the left of the political spectrum on social and economic matters; however, Labour clearly faced the potential liability of the declining popularity of the government at Westminster, and weaknesses in the workings of the devolution project at the centre (House of Lords ). The struggle between Labour and the SNP for the all-important Catholic vote intensified in this new devolutionary context. The Catholic Church moved quickly to exert influence in the early days of the Parliament, the defence of its schools being the main priority (Steven ; Bonney ). Cardinal Thomas Winning, a combative figure who clearly revelled in political lobbying, led the opposition to the first Labour– Liberal Democrat coalition government’s decision to repeal the legal restriction on the teaching of homosexuality in schools, the so-called ‘Section ’ (Brown ; McGinty ). Winning, indeed, had previously warned Labour not to take Catholic support for granted, and he seemed to be signalling to the SNP that there was a major prize to be won if Catholic interests and concerns were addressed. Catholic support for Labour, however, remained strong in the first two Scottish Parliament elections and even held at per cent in the election of that resulted in a minority SNP government (Curtice et al. : –). Notwithstanding the commanding personality of Cardinal Winning, the Church was fighting an uphill battle in persuading its adherents to follow strictly the Church’s teachings on sexual issues, and its moral authority was to be profoundly damaged by revelations of sexual abuse from around . Devolution resulted in issues whose impact had been contained within the broader UK political context taking on a heightened significance in the new Scottish one. Such an issue was religious sectarianism. Shortly before the opening of the Scottish Parliament in , the classical music composer James MacMillan gave a well-publicized address to the Edinburgh Festival alleging that anti-Catholicism in Scotland was ‘endemic’ (Devine ). The controversy to which this speech gave rise ensured that it was taken up in the political sphere, prompting a succession of working groups, commissioned reports, media inquiries, and, at different junctures, legislative measures (Walker ). Sectarianism, in fact, was to become a staple issue of public and political debate in Scotland in the twenty-first century. The political significance of this debate lies in the way it could be said to have fed into the development of ‘identity politics’ in the new Scotland. Whilst the politics of social class interests remain vital, the claims and distinctive agendas of groups with clear
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identity markers such as ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality, have disrupted older patterns of Scottish politics (Kettell ; Macwhirter ; Chapters and in this Handbook). As the party perhaps most obviously bound to an earlier political era, Labour has suffered from the fragmentation of political life and the capacity of a politics of identity or recognition to complicate its traditional stress on such issues as housing, health, unemployment, and poverty. ‘Identity politics’, on the other hand, is terrain on which the SNP is better fitted to operate with ‘catch-all’ arguments for a broad concept of Scottishness and for independence as the best means of achieving a more just and progressive society (Johns and Mitchell : –). In relation to religious identity, the attempt by the Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition government led by First Minister Jack McConnell from to ‘crusade’ against sectarianism had serious consequences for the Labour Party. McConnell clearly wished to be seen to be tackling what the media had taken to labelling ‘Scotland’s Shame’ following the MacMillan intervention. From one perspective this appeared to be a case where devolution could indeed make a difference: a Scottish government addressing what was assumed to be a Scottish problem with apparent public support. Hence the high-profile government summits and the encouragement given to influential pressure groups around the issue, such as ‘Nil By Mouth’ (Walker ). McConnell, however, was insufficiently cognizant of the weakness of his own position. When he made claims about eradicating sectarianism he did so from a political base in Lanarkshire that was deeply compromised by sectarianism and tribalism and still shadowed by the Monklands controversy. After being forced to step down over a financial matter, Henry McLeish, McConnell’s predecessor as First Minister, wrote scathingly about cliques, sectarianism, and a ‘Lanarkshire Mafia’ in a clear attack on McConnell (McLeish : ). In , indeed, McLeish had been embarrassed along with the then Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern when the local Lanarkshire Labour Party operation—for its own mysterious reasons—effectively prevented the latter’s planned visit to unveil a monument to Irish Famine victims at Carfin (Edwards ). In addition, McConnell could also be said to have sacrificed one of Labour’s proudest historical achievements: that of bridging sectarian gulfs and uniting people around social and economic concerns. By ostentatiously and uncritically endorsing the idea of sectarianism as ‘Scotland’s Shame’, McConnell in effect made it impossible for the Labour Party to highlight its own record and to reaffirm the primacy of class-based politics. The fore-grounding of sectarianism in the newly devolved Scotland was allowed to take place with little or no acknowledgement of the way the Labour Party had built a secular unionism and bolstered a common social citizenship that had transcended sectarian and ethnic divisions (Jackson ). It may even be argued that such was the intensity of the media and political gaze on the question of sectarianism in early twenty-first-century Scotland that atavistic passions and grievances were given licence. The impact on the Catholic community was ambiguous: on the one hand, the attention given to sectarianism and the highlighting of historical episodes of discrimination may have persuaded many that Scotland was now a changed place with no tolerance of anti-Catholic prejudice; on the other, the very
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nature of the public debate seems to have made some Catholics, if anything, more inclined to perceive such prejudice still lingering and more defensive about symbols of community identity such as separate schools. One of the research findings of the Advisory Group tasked by the Scottish Government in to report on how to tackle sectarianism was that there remained ‘acute sensitivity in the West of Scotland Catholic community’ (Advisory Group on Tackling Sectarianism ). In the groundbreaking Scottish Parliamentary election of , which saw the SNP win an overall majority, the percentage of Catholics voting for the party was the same as that for Protestants, although it has been observed by scholars of the election that ‘cultural Catholics’, those born in the faith but not practising it on a regular basis, were more likely to make the leap from Labour (Carman et al. : –). The category of ‘cultural Catholics’ is useful: it reflects the drift from religious observance whilst acknowledging the continuing sense of tribal and group allegiance which, arguably, had been reinforced by the public scrutiny of the sectarianism question. The SNP now represented no sense of threat to such Catholics; the party was probably reaping the benefits of First Minister Alex Salmond’s strong defence of Catholic schools in when he gave the symbolically significant Cardinal Winning lecture. Since coming to power the SNP has not challenged the apparent orthodoxy of the ‘Scotland’s Shame’ narrative, despite allegations from Labour that it was downgrading the issue and the political difficulties encountered by its badly thought-out legislation on offensive behaviour at football matches (Flint and Kelly ). The election victory transformed Scottish—and UK—politics. The SNP kept its manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on independence ensuring that Scotland entered an era of ‘one-issue’ dominance with almost everything in the political arena being filtered through the national question. The country duly delivered its verdict in favour of preserving the UK Union in September by a – margin, only for the SNP to enjoy a further upsurge of electoral support in the UK general election of . In this contest the SNP won fifty-six out of the fifty-nine Scottish seats and wiped out Labour in its former heartlands. In such constituencies it was the SNP that now enjoyed Catholic support and Labour had to face the prospect of not being able to govern again in the UK on its own until it won such voters back. Moreover, the religious breakdown of those in favour of independence in the referendum told a striking story. Some per cent of Catholics voted ‘Yes’ compared to per cent of self-identifying Protestants. Some per cent of those of ‘No Religion’ voted ‘Yes’, the bulk of these being from Protestant or non-Catholic backgrounds. Catholics appeared decisively to have overcome any doubts about their future in an independent Scotland, and moved away from identification with the broader Britishbased Labour movement in whose history they had played a substantial role (Geoghegan ; Devine ; Johns and Mitchell ; Walker ). The referendum outcome indicated that support for the Union was predominantly Protestant with the danger of the national question becoming increasingly ‘sectarianized’ in the future. Church of Scotland members were apparently fearful of a further loss of status and influence in a future context of independence, given that devolution
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and continuing membership decline had already diluted its claims to be a voice of the nation (Bonney ; Gay ). The Kirk’s loose structures had inhibited its ability to intervene effectively in the new Scottish politics (Bruce : ). Another Protestant slice of the ‘No’ vote also invites comment: that of the ‘Loyalist working-class’ element identified in the Advisory Group’s report of as ‘more distinct from the secular and Protestant mainstream of Scottish society than Catholics’ (Advisory Group on Tackling Sectarianism ). These working-class Protestants were resentful of the way Labour and the SNP had competed for so long for Catholic support and had, in their view, used the idea of sectarianism as a national shame in their power struggle in the new Scotland. They were also alienated by the trend of the sectarianism debate towards a focus on Catholic grievances and away from any serious consideration of the social and cultural impact of segregated schooling (Bonney ; Walker ). Such people felt scapegoated and marginalized in the context of the Scotland of the twentyfirst century; and such feelings were compounded by the ‘No’ side’s deliberate exclusion of the Orange Order in the referendum campaign. The Order instead waged its own campaign and may have exercised some influence in those west-central Scotland areas where it still had strength (Walker ). Whilst the Conservatives enjoyed something of a revival in the Scottish Parliament election of by appearing to be the most unequivocally pro-Union party, this owed little to those disaffected Protestants for whom Scotland had become a politically uncongenial place. The independence referendum and its aftermath also indicated the extent to which Scotland had become a multifaith and ‘no faith’ society. The debate over sectarianism had in a sense obscured this: it had focused exclusively on time-worn Protestant– Catholic and ‘Orange and Green’ quarrels as if religion in Scotland could be reduced to such a phenomenon. In fact, Scotland was becoming more religiously pluralist with a sizeable Muslim population making a political impact through individual Members of the Scottish Parliament such as Humza Yusuf—an SNP government minister from —and Scottish Labour leadership contender in , Anas Sarwar. The Muslim community is largely Pakistani in origin and, like the Catholic Irish before them, were supporters of the Labour Party before moving towards the SNP in more recent years (Bruce ). As with Catholics, Labour voting proved compatible with conservative social values for a long time, and ethnic identity considerations were clearly no barrier to an enthusiastic Scottish nationalism as the SNP successfully broadened its appeal in the age of devolution. The Iraq war was also a significant factor in the Asian community’s disillusionment with Labour (Johns and Mitchell ). Given the experience of Sarwar, who was reportedly told by a Labour Councillor that Scotland was not ready for a party leader of his religion and ethnicity, the ‘Muslim vote’, if such it can be called, is unlikely to return to Labour (The Scotsman ). However, this controversy also underlines the continuing under-representation of ethnic minorities in Scottish politics more generally (Chapter in this Handbook). Notwithstanding the heat generated by the sectarianism debate and instances of Islamophobia, the overall outward appearance of Scottish politics is a largely secular one. Increasing numbers disavow religious denominational labels—‘No Religion’ was
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the biggest single category in the census around this question (Bruce : appendix)—even if this may not mean that they have ceased to believe in a higher power or have no interest in spiritual matters. The Catholic Church and leading lay Catholics in the public eye, such as James MacMillan and Kevin McKenna, have become increasingly concerned with what they view as a militant secularist campaign to sideline religion in public life. Political parties that have been formed in the new era of devolution specifically to advance religious goals or principles have only achieved meagre electoral returns (Bruce ), and a leading Church of Scotland minister and ‘Yes’ campaigner in the referendum has recently surmised ruefully that current First Minister Nicola Sturgeon ‘does not do God’ (Gay ).
C
.................................................................................................................................. For the greater part of the twentieth century religion functioned as an important political variable in Scotland and produced a notable cleavage in voting behaviour between the Labour and Conservative parties. In the later decades of the century religion’s political significance declined in the context of the profound social and cultural changes associated with secularization. Yet falling numbers of church-goers did not result in religious labels or identity becoming redundant. A deep-rooted Protestant–Catholic tribalism persisted, particularly in the west of the country. This long-standing divide in society was subjected to scrutiny in the new devolved Scotland of the early twenty-first century. The debate that ensued was often fractious, somewhat circular, and inconclusive about the extent and nature of the problem. However, politically, the controversy over sectarianism was illustrative of the unsettling effects of devolution on the old pattern of politics in Scotland, and it contributed to a profound stir in Scottish life. It blended in ambiguous ways with the onset of the ‘Indyref ’ campaign and the polarization that resulted from this landmark episode in Scottish political history. Even residual religious identities matter for people’s sense of how well they think they fit, or do not fit, with the idea of an independent Scotland. On the one hand there has clearly been a decline in religious belief systems and a weakening of religiously based traditions in Scottish life; on the other, it might still be contended that religion is relevant to the identity politics that have emerged so forcefully in the country, and to which the now long-running controversies over sectarianism have contributed. Religion could be said to tie up with contemporary nationalist-unionist cleavages and multicultural issues. The sectarianism debate in a way has reconfirmed religion as a topic of public discourse in Scotland albeit that it has done so in a way that does not reflect the religious mix of contemporary Scotland. An old quarrel is being fought out in a new Scotland and has, to date, been linked very significantly to the unfolding political power struggles of the devolved Scotland, most notably in the changing fortunes of the Labour Party and the SNP.
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R Advisory Group on Tackling Sectarianism. . Tackling Sectarianism and its Consequences in Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Allison, J. . Guilty by Suspicion. Glendaruel: Argyll Publishing. Bennie, L., Brand, J., and Mitchell, J. . How Scotland Votes. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Beveridge, C. and Turnbull, R. . The Eclipse of Scottish Culture. Edinburgh: Polygon. Bonney, N. . ‘Religion and the Scottish Independence Referendum’, Political Quarterly, /: –. Bowie, K. . ‘Popular Resistance, Religion and the Union of ’, in T.M. Devine (ed.), Scotland and the Union. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Boyle, R. and Lynch, P. (eds). . Out of the Ghetto? Edinburgh: John Donald. Brand, J. . The National Movement in Scotland. London: Routledge. Brand, J. and Mitchell, J. . ‘Identity and the Vote: Class and Nationality in Scotland’, in British Election and Parties Yearbook. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Brown, C. . The Death of Christian Britain. London: Routledge. Brown, J. . ‘ “Outside the Covenant”: The Scottish Presbyterian Churches and Irish Immigration’, Innes Review, /: –. Brown, T. . ‘Scotland’s Turbulent Priest’, New Statesman Scotland, February. Bruce, S. . ‘Out of the Ghetto: The Ironies of Acceptance’, Innes Review, /: –. Bruce, S. . Conservative Protestant Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bruce, S. . Scottish Gods: Religion in Modern Scotland. –. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Butcher, D. . ‘Ladies of the Lodge’, PhD thesis, University of North London. Cameron, E. . Impaled Upon a Thistle. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Canavan, D. . Let the People Decide. Edinburgh: Birlinn. Carman, C. . More Scottish than British: The Scottish Parliament Election. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Clements, B. . ‘Religious Change and Secularisation in Scotland’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Curtice, J., McCrone, D., McEwen, N., Marsh, M., and Ormston, R. . Revolution or Evolution? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Devine, T. (ed). . Scotland’s Shame? Edinburgh: Mainstream. Devine, T. . Independence or Union. London: Penguin. Duncan, R. . ‘Motherwell for Moscow’, Journal of Scottish Labour History Society, : –. Edwards, O.D. . ‘Ireland and the Liddell Re-conquest of Scotland’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Finlay, R. . ‘Nationalism, Race, Religion and the Irish Question in Inter-war Scotland’, Innes Review, /: –. Finlay, R. . ‘ “For or against?”: Scottish Nationalism and the British Empire, –’, Scottish Historical Review, /: –. Flint, J. and Kelly, J. (eds). . Bigotry, Football and Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gallagher, T. . Glasgow: The Uneasy Peace. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Garavelli, D. . ‘Can you imagine the country without its Kirk?’, Scotsman, August.
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Gay, D. . ‘The Kirk and the Union’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Geoghegan, P. . The People’s Referendum. Edinburgh: Luath Press. House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution. . The Union and Devolution. Report published May by the Authority of the House of Lords. HL Paper . Jackson, A. . The Two Unions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johns, R. and Mitchell, J. . Takeover: Explaining the Extraordinary Rise of the SNP. London: Biteback. Kettell, S. . ‘The Militant Strain: An Analysis of Anti-secular Discourse in Britain’, Political Studies, /: –. Kettell, S. . ‘Do we need a “Political Science of Religion?” ’, Political Studies Review, /: –. Kidd, C. . Union and Unionisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacCormick, J. . Flag in the Wind. Edinburgh: Birlinn. MacDonald, F. . From Reform to Renewal. Edinburgh: St. Andrews Press. Macwhirter, I. . Tsunami: Scotland’s Democratic Revolution. Glasgow: Freight Books. McCaffrey, J. . ‘Roman Catholics in Scotland: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in C. Maclean and K. Veitch (eds), Scottish Life and Society: A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology. Volume : Religion. Edinburgh: John Donald. McCrone, D. and Rosie, M. . ‘Left and Liberal: Catholics in Modern Scotland’, in R. Boyle and P. Lynch (eds), Out of the Ghetto? Edinburgh: John Donald. McFarland, E. . Protestants First. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. McGinty, S. . This Turbulent Priest: A Life of Cardinal Winning. London: Harper Collins. McKinlay, A. and Morris, R.J. (eds). . The ILP on Clydeside. Manchester: Manchester University Press. McLean, I. . The Legend of Red Clydeside. Edinburgh: John Donald. McLean, I. and MacMillan, A. . State of the Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McLeish, H. . Scotland First. Edinburgh: Mainstream. Miller, W. . The End of British Politics? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, J. . Devolution in the UK. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mitchell, J. . Hamilton . Edinburgh: Luath Press. Mitchell, J. and Convery, A. . ‘Conservative Unionism: Prisoned in Marble’, in D. Torrance (ed.), Whatever Happened to Tory Scotland? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Reid, H. . The Soul of Scotland. Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press. Rosie, M. . ‘Tall Tales: Understanding Religion and Scottish Independence’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Seawright, D. . An Important Matter of Principle. Aldershot: Ashgate. Smyth, J. . Labour in Glasgow –. Edinburgh: Tuckwell Press. Steven, M. . ‘The Place of Religion in Devolved Scottish Politics’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Storrar, W. . ‘Three Portraits of Scottish Calvinism’, in R.D. Kernohan (ed.), The Realm of Reform. Edinburgh: The Handsel Press. Torrance, D. . Salmond: Against the Odds. Edinburgh: Birlinn. Walker, G. . Intimate Strangers. Edinburgh: John Donald. Walker, G. . ‘Scotland, Northern Ireland and Devolution, –’, Journal of British Studies, /: –.
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Walker, G. a. ‘Scotland’s Sectarianism Problem: Irish Answers?’, Political Quarterly, /: –. Walker, G. b. ‘The Religious Factor’, in T.M. Devine and J. Wormald (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walker, G. . The Labour Party in Scotland: Religion, the Union, and the Irish Dimension. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Walker, G. and Officer, D. . ‘Scottish Unionism and the Ulster Question’, in C. M. M. MacDonald (ed.), Unionism in Scotland, –. Edinburgh: John Donald. Wood, I. . John Wheatley. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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I
.................................................................................................................................. I little over five years, voters in Scotland were asked to cast votes in no less than two General Elections, two referendums, two local elections and one Scottish Parliament election. With neither of the referendum topics (Scottish independence and UK withdrawal from the European Union) settled, how ethnic and racial minorities feature in these developments is understudied. On the one hand this is surprising given related questions about the nation and the constitution have become central points of concern, such that ‘all the political parties of Scottish politics are engaged in trying to establish a persuasive vision of the nation’ (Meer a: ). On the other hand, perhaps this oversight is illustrative of a wider tendency in which the issues of race and ethnicity have found less resonance in Scotland than in England (Liinpäa ). One of the opportunities that comes with focusing on ethnic and racial minorities in relation to the Scottish nation is that it brings together two interests: the first, on multinationalism, which foregrounds multilevel governance, constitutional devolution, and federalism, alongside questions of identity and citizenship (McEwen et al. ); and the second on multiculturalism, which is broadly interested in the integration of migrant and post-migrant groups typically termed ‘ethnic minorities’. The tension between these trajectories centres on the extent to which the two are co-constituting (in remaking nationhood and forms of common belonging) or seek to proceed in a hierarchy (with the majority precedence given to ‘old’ over ‘new’ Scots). In recent years, political elites in Scotland have sought to overcome this tension through a turn towards ‘civic nationalism’, which, in contrast to the ‘blood and soil’ tendency of ethnic
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nationalism, conceives membership in terms of residence, civic participation, and perhaps also political engagement. Whilst this approach is broadly prevailing, there is a notable disjuncture in the rhetoric and reality of Scotland’s ‘aspirational pluralism’ (Meer a). The study of elite political actors in Scotland is relatively sparse, but is consistent with a broader tendency where social and political scientists ‘too rarely “study up”’ (Ostrander : ). Elite political actors are, of course, prominent in nationalism studies literature, some of which maintains that ‘cultures and politics are forged by small minorities, usually by one kind of elites or other’ (Smith : ). Were we to assess the normative premises of such views, we would inevitably encounter a dense literature elaborating upon the continuing disputes over the creation of nations, national identities, and their relationship to each other and to non-rational ‘intuitive’ and ‘emotional’ pulls of ancestries and cultures, and so forth. What we are interested in, in this chapter, is specifically elected members of local and devolved Scottish Government, and the ways in which they approach the place of ethnic and racial minorities in the context of ‘an already significant level of national attachment’ (Leith and Soule : ). To elaborate on this and the broader issues this heralds, the chapter will, first, explore the status of a Scottish multicultural citizenship broadly conceived, especially in terms of elite political discourse. In this first section of the chapter, and drawing upon qualitative interview data, we find that three predominant clusters emerge. The first centres on an aspirational pluralism, in so far as political elites are less inclined—in contrast to counterparts in some other minority nations—to place ethnically determined barriers on membership of Scottish nationhood. The second concerns the competing ways in which the legacy of Scotland’s place in the British Empire is appropriated by actors of different political hues, and so assumes a multiform role. The third cluster points to potential limitations in minority claims-making and recognition, especially in terms of formal multilingualism and corporate multifaithism, something that may partly be explained by the tension between multinationalism and multiculturalism. What is uncertain is how the national-level elite discourse is translated into a successful model of political participation. This question is taken up in the second section of the chapter which explores ethnic minority participation and engagement in local government. Amongst other findings, this second section charts how, alongside women and disabled groups, ethnic minority populations are disproportionately under-represented in local government across Scotland, in ways that do not compare favourably either across the UK or elsewhere in Europe. The chapter therefore shows how, in this crucial sphere of citizenship, there is a disjuncture between the claims of political actors in government—here referred to as political elites—and local level political engagement. As a whole, the chapter illustrates that whilst elite political actors can play a vital role in ensuring that appeals to nationhood in Scotland can be meaningfully calibrated to include minorities too, the exercise of citizenship requires bottom-up approaches to ensure ethnic minority political participation and engagement.
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S’ E M
.................................................................................................................................. It has been said questions of multinationalism and multiculturalism in Scotland ‘have managed to fire past each other’ (McCrone : ). Despite this, there is a prevailing assumption that a ‘civic’ and inclusive ‘big tent’ national identity is a shared aspiration (Keating ). Yet it remains unclear where ethnic and racial minorities, sometimes dubbed the ‘new Scots’, might come to rest in debates about nationalist politics, identity, and contemporary nationhood more broadly. It has been argued that this may result from the comparatively smaller presence of such groups in Scotland, or that such minorities have not become politicized, either as the ‘object’ of political discourse or the locus of electoral mobilization, in a manner comparable to England (McCrone : ). Some researchers have therefore queried the inclusiveness of contemporary nationhood in Scotland (Mycock ). The implication being that since ‘all civic and democratic cultures are inevitably embedded into specific ethno-national and religious histories’ (Bader : ), Scotland cannot rely on the view that in promoting itself as ‘impeccably civic’ (Keating : ) it will be able to secure a future in which ethnic and racial minorities are included. Certainly, there is a smaller ethnic minority population in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK: at the last Census, four per cent of Scotland’s . million population considered themselves ‘minority ethnic’ compared to fourteen per cent in England (Audickas : ; Scottish Government ). Within this population, there are also different demographic dynamics. In Scotland, the largest ‘visible’ ethnic minority group were Scottish Asian populations at . per cent (compared to eight per cent in England), whilst African, Caribbean, and Black populations made up . per cent (compared to three per cent in England) (ONS ; Scottish Government ). The populations marked notable increases in both populations: Scottish Asian populations had doubled since (from . per cent), whilst African, Caribbean, and Black populations quadrupled (from . per cent). In the coming decades, these dynamics are likely to continue and the ethnic minority population in Scotland is predicted to double what it was in , approaching ten per cent by the middle of the century. Yet, as recent survey work has shown, about a third of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups in Scotland continue to report experiences of racial discrimination, and a slightly higher number consider racial discrimination to be a widespread issue in Scotland (Meer , ). Interestingly, the same research reports that per cent of respondents who had experienced discrimination in the last five years did not report it to any kind of authority. This was despite per cent of the entire sample insisting they would encourage a friend or family member to make a formal complaint if they thought they had experienced discrimination. What this implies is that significant degrees of both low-level and more obvious experiences of racial discrimination can go under-reported. How should we understand this? One means is to focus on everyday practice, in which surviving racial discrimination is a normalized strategy. Whilst
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limited, the lens of ‘racial microaggressions’ is useful here. With a provenance in Critical Race Theory (CRT), the concept of racial microaggressions describes the ‘brief and common place daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicates hostile, derogatory or negative racial slights and insults’ (Sue et al. ). If we accept that the understanding of race and racism cannot be reduced to a microaggressions alone, it might be adopted with caution to explain how BAME groups compartmentalize or bracket off racial experiences in their wider negotiation of social life. Of course this is a complex social practice, and as an explanation it is limited without qualitative data, but this reading is supported by studies that have undertaken precisely this type of work. Moreover, whilst we are talking here about subjectivity or people’s perceptions, it equally tied to material and institutional inequalities, something quite easily demonstrated by pointing to structural outcomes in Scotland that are consistent with those outlined as being true of the UK too (Meer ). What is the evidence that appeals to nationhood might be suited to address these challenges? In interviews in with twenty-one (then) members of the Scottish Parliament, we find divergent expressions across political parties of the nation-building project, which also provide insight into how, and the extent to which, ethnic pluralism features in elite imaginings of contemporary Scotland. One approach situates pluralism within historical precedent and in references to Scotland’s historical multinational diversity, as illustrated by the following extract: If you’re in Scotland, or you’re in Wales, you know, it’’s abundantly clear. Because you’re in a small part of Britain, the smaller nations within Britain, it’s very clear that Britain is a union of nations. It’s inherently a multinational, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural entity. It can’t be anything else. (Scottish Green Party MSP)
In this first comment, ethnic plurality is ‘inherently’ tied to the history of the Scottish nation in ways that frame contemporary appeals to national identity. This first approach contrasts with a second, which takes the view that political actors are actively directing Scottish nationhood in an inclusive direction in which ethnic and racial minorities are included: So, we’ve captured nationalism and made it something positive, and made it civic, so that’s been, you know, eight decades worth of work. It doesn’t happen overnight . . . If you don’t have this alternative nationalism, national movement, national political party that a nationalist might be civic, then the EDLs of the world, and the BNPs and the National Fronts, they fill that void. (SNP MSP)
Arguments for both approaches can be tested. For instance, in a survey of attitudes of Scottish majorities to claims-making by minorities on nationhood in Scotland, McCrone and Bechhofer (: , ), highlight a small but consistent ‘ethnic
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penalty’ that associates being ‘Scottish’ with ‘being white’. They also note a weak relationship between residency and national identity and a strong relationship between markers such as accent and parentage. Alongside ample evidence of historic exclusions of ethnic minority groups from Scottish nationhood (Miles and Muirhead ; Jenkinson ; Hill ; Meer ), these trends challenge the narrative of an inherent and inherited national plurality. Whilst higher rejection rates towards nonwhite populations in Scotland compared with England is concerning, Bechhofer and McCrone argue that it is important not to exceptionalize Scottish attitudes, for although they are slightly more exclusionary than English attitudes, they are not radically so. Interestingly, in their follow-up study, Bechhofer and McCrone (: ) found a closer pattern between England and Scotland when they looked to see whether national identity ‘discriminates in terms of judging claims’, something statistically affected by levels of education and/or age. Either way, these findings need to be understood alongside ways in which minorities in Scotland are more likely than their counterparts in England to appropriate hyphenated self-defined identity categories such as Scottish-Pakistani. As a trend in self-identification this is something identified over a decade ago with Scottish-Pakistanis in research by Qureshi and Moores (: ) and Saeed et al. (: ). Our understanding of this was profoundly deepened in Hussain and Miller’s (: ) findings. The latter observe that ‘[b]ecause spatial [territorial] identities are not the primary identities for a majority of [Scottish] Pakistanis; they find it easier to adopt a Scottish identity’. An SNP MSP described this latter trend: there’s something in that Scottishness, and a separate Scottish identity, or nationalism [that] is not about choosing one identity over the other, and maybe identity can be multi-layered, can be fluid, and can exist cohesively, rather than be juxtaposed, and constantly in conflict with one another. (SNP MSP)
Where this latter trend might not be attributed to historic plural nationhood, it has been used as an example of what an active, inclusive nationalist project could achieve. Of course, as Kymlicka (: ) observes, political elites ‘have a powerful incentive to recruit immigrants to their national projects, both to disprove charges of ethnic exclusion and to build internal consensus’, and Scottish politics has not been above instrumentalizing its progressive approach to minority groups for political gains within the devolved context (Hill ). ‘Better in terms of realpolitik to draw the boundary around as many as possible; better to have them inside the tent than out of it if one was trying to govern the kingdom’ (McCrone : ). Nonetheless, and whilst political elites are not placing obviously ethnically determined barriers on claiming nationhood, and civic nationalism provides a productive framework for ‘hyphenated’ identities, it is not without ideological inconsistencies. For example, where the ‘civic’ is not responsive to ‘difference’ it risks reproducing majority culturalism precedence rather than balancing it out by elevating minority cultural status (Meer ). Moreover, as we discuss above, the mobilization of history in the process claiming a precedent for plural nationhood exhibits an amnesia regarding the historic exclusion of ethnic minority
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groups in Scotland. This extends to the topic of Empire, in which Scotland played a significant role. In our interviews, however, political elites notably did not ‘forget’ about Empire, but rather, as Mycock () predicts, mobilized it in positive terms to think about Scotland’s relationship with ethnic minority populations. As one MSP put it: I mean, we’ve always been an outward looking society; Scots have traditionally had no inhibitions about setting forth usually to the, kind of, wettest, windiest parts of the world . . . But, again, you have a look at the example of Orkney, the Hudson Bay Company exploration, North West Passage, the Antarctic Whaling Fleet, none of those would have happened or been sustained without Orcadians very much in the mix. I think the more outward looking you are, the more prepared you are to go out and experience different cultures and societies; the more receptive probably your community is to that reverse process. (Liberal Democrat MSP)
Empire was also used in some approaches to claim solidarity with colonized peoples— something also evident in Hussain and Miller’s study, which noted that it was common for Scottish ethnic minorities to maintain that ‘Scots understand colonialism—from their past history they understand what ethnic minorities feel’ (Hussain and Miller : ). Whilst the topic of Empire is therefore not subject to the total amnesia surrounding historic ethnic and racial discrimination within Scotland, its profile is inconsistent, so that, for instance, the strength of debate in academic circles about Scotland’s imperialism (Liinpäa ) is not mirrored in other institutions, including government. Third, though the active, aspirational pluralism evident in the approaches above has created a rhetorical climate of ‘welcome’, research indicates that reality is somewhat different. As we note in our introduction above, BAME populations in Scotland consider racial discrimination to be a widespread issue. Meanwhile, though the rhetoric of ‘aspirational pluralism’ professes a parity of citizenship between all those who live in Scotland, outcomes that show that ethnic minorities are subject to ethnic penalties that ‘permeate life chances in education and employment’, ‘suggest that Scotland has some way to travel’ before this is reflected in social relations (Meer b: ). Policy work that has increasingly addressed ethnic and racial inequality in Scotland shows that, in some cases at least, political elites are neither unaware of, nor complacent about, ethnic and racial disparities in Scotland. However, these attitudes are not reflected in the approaches above, in which the narrative push of aspirational pluralism occurs at the expense of acknowledging the persistent infrastructural barriers and penalties encountered by ethnic minority populations. Arguably, of course, the disclaimer here would be that pluralism is indeed aspirational rather than reality; however, we might question how, in these approaches, existing inequalities are expected to improve when active, aspirational pluralism is accompanied by rather passive anti-discrimination and anti-racism. Where, with some consistency, elites from across the political spectrum in Scotland identify ‘aspirational pluralism’ as a model to reconcile (relatively) progressive attitudes
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to migration and ethnic plurality with a commitment to nationhood, the model itself contains inconsistencies in (a) its appeals to historical precedent and contemporary conditions and (b) its approach to tackling racial inequality. However, what is less certain is how the national-level elite discourse translates into precedents for ethnic minority political participation in practice, and it is to this we now turn.
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.................................................................................................................................. Descriptive representation refers to the consensus that democratically elected bodies should also reflect the people they represent (Fisher et al. : ). However, in Westminster, for instance, visible ethnic minorities, who make up per cent of the UK population, are per cent of the total Members of Parliament. Yet, with reference to ethnic minority representation in other forms of government in the UK, Westminster fairs comparatively well. Across local, devolved, and national government, Scotland does not have a strong record of ethnic minority representation. Between and ethnic minority representation at all levels of Scottish Government has hovered around . per cent (see Table .), compared to the per cent in Scotland’s total population. The gap is historic: in a report into ethnic minority representation in Scottish local government in , Arshad () noted a significant
Table 18.1 Ethnic Minority Representation in Scottish Elections 2012–2017 Year
Election
2012 2015 2016 2017 2017
Local Governmenta General Electionb Scottish Parliamentc General Electiond Local Governmente
Seats available
1222 59 135 59 1227
Total ethnic minority representation/ per cent 17 1 2 0 N/A
1.4 1. 1.5 0 1.6
Ethnic minority women/per cent 4 1 0 0 N/A
0.3 1.7 0 0 N/A
Notes: a Results from Haria (2012). b Results from Hawkins et al. (2015: 63). c Results from Aiton et al. (2016: 14). d Results from Curtice et al. (2017: 63). The only 2015 ethnic minority MP, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, lost her seat in the 2017 election (Brian 2017). e Projected results from Haria (2017). Results from a post-election survey of local councillors in 2017 found only 0.4 per cent of councillors identified as ethnic minority Improvement Service (2017: 14–15). Source: Authors’ own compilation.
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gap between the profile of Scottish councillors and the make-up of Scottish society. Looking back a decade later, she notes that the trend continues to persist (Arshad, )—something Kenny and Mackay have also observed at the national and devolved level (Chapter in this Handbook; Kenny and Mackay ). Arguably, within the devolved settlement of UK government, Scotland presents additional opportunities for people of all backgrounds to be involved in politics, including ethnic minority populations. As Meer and Peace (: ) note, ‘the devolution settlement has added a layer of democratic representation for ethnic minority political participation’. In addition to Westminster constituencies and council wards, the Scottish Parliament created new constituency and List seats. Over the last five years, in Scotland there has been ample opportunity for government and political parties alike to engage with issues of representation and (in)equality. In this context, and with the additional level of devolved government, the persistent under-representation of ethnic minorities at all levels of government in Scotland is therefore disappointing. Across government levels in Scotland, the lack of ethnic minority representation is stark: ethnic minority representation falls well below Scotland’s ethnic minority demographics, and is particularly precarious at the level of national government, resulting in a complete absence of ethnic minority representation for Scotland in Westminster following the General Election. In over a decade since its opening, the Scottish Parliament has seated only four ethnic minority MSPs (McNab ). There is some improvement evident at local government level between and : forty-two ethnic minority candidates standing in compared to thirty-two in , but still even the most optimistic projections see ethnic minorities making up . per cent of the total of those standing for election (Haria ). Table . gives the figures for local government. In intersectional terms, the picture is even worse. Ethnic minority women are particularly under-represented in Scottish politics. Between and , there
Table 18.2 Projected Local Government Election Results/Ethnic Minority Candidates Party Scottish National Party Scottish Labour Party Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party Scottish Liberal Democrats Scottish Green Party Independent Other Source: Haria (2017).
Total fielded candidates
Total fielded BME candidates
Proportion BME
639 446 387
12 15 2
1.88% 3.36% 0.52%
254 218 507 163
4 1 6 2
1.57% 0.46% 1.18% 1.23%
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were no elected female ethnic minority local councillors; in , four women from ethnic minority backgrounds were elected (Haria ) making up per cent of ethnic minority councillors and . per cent of the total elected councillors. An ethnic minority woman has never been elected to the Scottish Parliament (Curtice et al. ). Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, the Scottish Westminster cohort’s only ethnic minority MP and ethnic minority woman MP subsequently lost her seat (Brian ). Meanwhile, the growing ethnic diversity within visible ethnic minority populations in Scotland is not proportionally reflected at any level of Scottish Government. The two MSPs elected in from ethnic minorities were both of Scots Asian backgrounds, as is Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh. Of the seventeen ethnic minority local councillors elected in , the majority—fifteen—were of a South Asian background, whilst one councillor was of a Chinese background and one of an African Caribbean background (Haria ). These additional trends highlight that political deficiencies are not simply a matter of the under-representation of ethnic minority populations in Scotland, but are also a matter of under-representation of the demographic make-up of ethnic minority populations in Scotland.
B P S
.................................................................................................................................. Taken both separately and cumulatively, this under-representation of ethnic minority groups is far removed from the vision of ‘aspirational pluralism’ presented in elite political rhetoric, and suggests there is a gap between the rhetoric of egalitarianism and its instrumentation. This disjuncture is important (and we return to it below), but it is not the sole factor in representative trends in politics. It has been argued that the under-representation of ethnic and racial minorities in Scottish public and political fields is the result of the comparatively smaller presence of minority groups in Scotland. Certainly, proportionally, there is a smaller ethnic minority population in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, as we discuss above. In this context, population size has an impact on (under) representation because currently data collection models are not calibrated to the small numbers that make up ethnic minority populations in Scotland. Meer and Peace (: ) note, there is an ‘astonishing lack of quantitative data collection of BME electoral participation in Scotland [which] stems from the reliance on sample sizes that do not sufficiently take into account the smaller ethnic minority presence in Scotland’. There is no formal requirement for political parties at local, devolved, and national levels to report the demographics of their candidates and representatives. If ethnic minority populations are likely to lack visibility in data about political and civic activities, they are also likely to lack visibility within these fields. This may have consequences for (a) demographic diversity and intersectional issues, which are even less likely to be visible in an already limited data pool, and (b) the division and allocation of resources that might aid ethnic minority political organization and participation. For
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instance, in the Referendum on Scottish Independence, BAME voters ‘found it less easy to find information on how to cast their vote in the referendum ( per cent vs per cent), or on what would happen if there was a Yes vote ( per cent vs per cent) or a No vote ( per cent vs per cent) compared to the white Scottish electorate’ (Electoral Commission : ). It also means that ethnic minority representation is reliant on people in government and politics working actively to include groups and communities that do not necessarily show up in the data. Whilst there are initiatives, particularly within the Scottish Government and the third sector, designed to improve dialogue with so-called ‘hard to reach’ groups (discussed below), there is also qualitative work that suggests that the ethnic minority populations that fall between the gaps in data collection feel there is a lack of local, devolved, or national government awareness of their presence in Scotland (Hill, ).¹ As it has the potential to inhibit targeted and suitable efforts to increase ethnic minority political representation, the mismatch of demographics and data collection methods might therefore be considered a feature in the underrepresentation of ethnic minority groups in Scotland. Where a lack of information about the electoral participation of ethnic minority voters has a knock-on effect in terms of allocating resources and support to increase political representation, party political norms, particularly at local level, also have an impact on the recruitment and retention of potential candidates. The perception that politics remains ‘male, pale and stale’ and does not welcome people from minority backgrounds runs alongside evidence of racism and discrimination towards ethnic minority party members (Haria ; Khan and Sveinsson ). Direct racism and discrimination within political parties may (a) deter people from minority backgrounds from entering politics; (b) cause people from minority backgrounds to withdraw from politics and; (c) mean that party members are not selected for candidatures for which they are qualified (Khan and Sveinsson : ). Indirect discrimination—such as choosing meeting places or times that ethnic minority members may find difficult to attend (Haria )²—may also mean that minorities may encounter additional barriers to potential candidature. In the eventuality than an ethnic minority party member is successfully recruited and elected, they may also be subjected to racism within the political sphere, as highlighted in by MSP Anas Sawar, who launched a Cross Party Working Group on Tackling Islamophobia, following racist abuse from Glasgow councillor, Davie McLachlan (McNab ). Internal party mechanisms also have an impact on how candidates are selected for an election, and how they might be fielded. This includes how and which candidates are fielded—the extent to which potential candidates are subject to representative mechanisms such as quotas—and where they are fielded—in both ‘safe seats’ (Ozarow ) ¹ For instance, with a population of , Somali groups in Scotland are unlikely to be visible in data about ethnic minority political participation in Scotland, and any specific needs or barriers experienced by Somali groups are likely to be left unaddressed (Hill ). ² That is, if meetings are held exclusively in pubs, or at times when other responsibilities (such as childcare) take precedence.
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and geographical location. Both of these mechanisms have potential to impact ethnic minority candidates. In UK and Scottish politics, representative mechanisms, such as quotas, shortlists, ‘zipping’, ‘twinning’, and ‘leadership programmes’ (Kenny and Mackay ) have been adopted to varying degrees by political parties aiming to tackle gender inequality in political representation. Mechanisms such as quotas or shortlisting are designed to address gendered barriers to politics by actively promoting the equal representation of women standing for election. Such mechanisms are not unanimously accepted— for instance, in Scotland, the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party prefers a ‘merit-based’ approach (Peterkin ); however, political systems that have adopted quota-based approaches have tended to see improvements in gendered representation (APPG Women in Parliament ). Representative mechanisms for ethnic minority populations are not as widespread and solutions for gendered representation are not necessarily appropriate for ethnic minority representation. However, in the absence of overt strategies for the inclusion of ethnic minority groups in Scotland, party political approaches to gender equality might signpost how they might think about selection and how these processes could impact ethnic minorities. Interestingly, in Table . above, the party with the strongest track record in gendered representation (Scottish Labour) (Peterkin ) not only fielded the highest percentage of ethnic minority candidates, but also fielded a percentage that was close to the national demographics. Similarly, the parties that fared worse on elected gender representation (Scottish Conservative and Unionist and the Scottish Greens) also fielded a low percentage of ethnic minority candidates. Representational mechanisms are also influenced by party political electoral strategy—the question of which candidate in which seat would yield the best outcome. In electoral strategy, the Runnymede Trust reports that party political approaches tend towards ‘colour coding’—that is, parties earmark ethnic minority candidates for ‘minority issues’ and are likely only to field ethnic minority candidates in areas with significant ethnic minority populations (Khan and Sveinsson ), thus creating a culture in which ethnic minority candidates are seen as single-issue candidates, qualified only to speak for ethnic minority populations on issues of race and ethnicity (Haria ). Table . gives the figures by regions of Scotland. Racialized and ethnicized penalties extend beyond party attitudes to voter attitudes, and impact electoral strategy. Research suggests that some ethnic minority candidates are likely to gain an electoral bonus from some ethnic minority populations, though this is not unanimously the case (Martin ).³ On the other hand, ethnic minority candidates—especially people of colour—are likely to face an ‘electoral penalty’, by which white voters are more likely to vote for a white candidate in the same field (Stegmaier et al. ). In local elections, both these trends have impacted the party
³ Martin () finds that candidates of Pakistani backgrounds might receive an point bonus from populations of Pakistani backgrounds; however, this trend is not evident for other ethnic minorities.
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Table 18.3 Ethnic Minority Representation by Area 2012–2017 Year
Election type
Area
2012
Local Governmenta
2015 2016
General Election Scottish Parliamentb
Glasgow North Lanarkshire East Dunbartonshire Aberdeen Dumfries & Galloway Dundee East Lothian Ochil & South Perthshire Glasgow
Total 7 3 2 1 1 2 1 1 2
Notes: a Haria (2012: 7). b Audickas (2016). Source: Authors’ own compilation.
selection of ethnic minority people as candidates: ‘if ethnic minority candidates tend to have an electoral disadvantage and most do not receive an electoral bonus, then selecting a minority candidate may still be seen as a risk outside a safe seat’ (Khan and Sveinsson : ). In Scotland, this dynamic becomes particularly problematic when the distribution of ethnic minority populations is also taken into consideration. Ethnic minority populations are mostly located in urban centres (Glasgow, Edinburgh Dundee, Aberdeen), and are concentrated within specific areas such as in Glasgow South. In fact, in General Elections, this means that of the fifty-nine Scottish Westminster constituencies, the ethnic minority electorate are only visible in sixteen (five in Edinburgh, seven in Glasgow, two in Aberdeen and in Dundee) (Meer and Peace : ). This dynamic does not just have an impact on national elections, but extends to devolved and local elections too, insofar as there are both () very few locations in which an ethnic minority candidate might receive an electoral bonus and () a high proportion of locations in which they may be penalized by white voters. In Scotland, therefore, the chance of ethnic minority selection outwith areas with relatively high ethnic minority populations is therefore potentially very limited. Whilst they are illustrative rather than evidential, patterns in the Scottish local government elections show a concentration of ethnic minority councillors in the Central West of Scotland, particularly in the areas in and around Glasgow. This pattern is currently also repeated for the Scottish Parliament representatives. By design or not, the approaches that might cause these patterns do little to address the perception that ethnic minority candidates are only ‘minority issue’ candidates, or that ethnic minority candidates can represent areas with majority white populations. Certainly, they do little to address the impression that ethnic minority populations and their concerns are city-specific rather than Scotland-wide issues.
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E I A E M R S P
.................................................................................................................................. Though trends in ethnic minority under-representation in local government persist in Scotland, there is evidence at the national level that more recently, the Scottish Government has recognized the need to make improvements. In , in a first in UK politics, the Scottish Government proposed to allow all EU and non-EU nationals resident in Scotland, including asylum seekers and refugees, to vote in local and devolved elections (Shedden ). In , the Scottish Parliament passed the Scottish Elections (Franchise and Representation) Bill, allowing all foreign nationals with leave to remain, including refugees, the right to vote, thereby increasing the proportion of Scotland’s ethnic minority population with access to political citizenship (Scottish Government ). The Scottish Government’s Race Equality Action Plan sets out targets for (a) the development of a Participation Framework by the end of ; (b) the development of a Strategic Participation Panel to target ethnic minority youth participation in politics; (c) work with ethnic minority women’s groups to increase political access; and (d) work with ethnic minority community groups on the mobilization of the Community Empowerment Act (Scottish Government b: ). Increasing ethnic minority political representation is also tied into the Scottish Government’s Consultation on Electoral Reform, which states, The Scottish Government believes that fair, proportionate representation at both local and national levels is essential to achieving equality. It is important that those individuals and communities who are at greatest risk of lower representation are enabled to contribute to decision-making, in order to reach relevant solutions and build capacity and wellbeing. (Scottish Government a: )
Outside of Scottish Government commitments, a coalition of anti-racist, disability, and gender-equality organizations has recently sought to address ethnic minority underrepresentation with the Equal Representation in Politics Toolkit, launched in March , which encourages local branches of political parties in Scotland to self-assess their current practice regarding ethnic minorities, women, and disabled people (Equal Representation Project ). The Toolkit aims to get political parties to () commit to meaningful representation, () improve auditing practices, () set targets and quotas, taking into account intersectional issues, and () address racist barriers to electoral participation. The Scottish Government has committed to ‘monitor’ the results of the Toolkit and make recommendations at the end of a three-year period (Scottish Government, b). If successful, the results of the Toolkit could begin to answer the critique levelled at the Communities and Local Government Committee, that equalities initiatives set by government and party political leadership are rarely reflected in the
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everyday recruitment, selection, and electioneering practices of political parties (Communities and Local Government Committee ). Taken together, these recent developments in policy and monitoring concerning ethnic minority representation in local Scottish politics are encouraging. However, as previous initiatives have found, changing the often entrenched, exclusionary environments of local political parties is a challenge not to be underestimated. In order for improvements to be made consistently across all parties in all locations, the Scottish Government may need to take an increasingly active role in promoting the aims of the Toolkit.
A P E M P R: R R?
.................................................................................................................................. This chapter has provided evidence and analysis of how ethnic and racial penalties for ethnic minority groups are evident at all levels in Scottish politics. Ethnic minority populations face both micro and macro-level ethnic and racial discriminations—from racist attitudes in local party branches to racially inflected electioneering—at all stages of political engagement—from getting information about politics, to joining a political party, applying for a candidature, being selected, fielded, and elected, and being a political representative. As our discussion highlights, these trends, encountered by ethnic minority populations in political systems across the UK, occur alongside dynamics particular to Scotland, such as the issues resulting from problematic data collection and the size, demographics, and distribution of ethnic minority populations. The combination of these factors has resulted in the under-representation of ethnic minorities in Scottish politics across all parties, at local, devolved and national level, for each election in the last five years and beyond. Political under-representation is particularly chronic for ethnic minority women. This record of political under-representation clearly does not map onto the ‘aspirational pluralism’ espoused by politics elites at the beginning of this chapter. For a model of citizenship predicated on civic participation and parity of access, this record necessarily raises questions; namely, how are ethnic minority populations to fulfil their civic obligation of participation in a system that is stacked against them? Current approaches to ‘aspirational pluralism’ rely on a vision of society where all ethnic groups have equal access to the trappings of citizenship. The trends in political (under) representation that we identify above highlight that (a) this vision has not been achieved; and (b) the barriers caused by ethnic and racial stratification will not be resolved unless actively addressed. Initiatives from the Scottish Government and external organizations have recently started to do some of this work; however, the structural barriers to, and ethnic penalties for, political participation and representation
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faced by ethnic minorities in Scotland should not be obscured or underestimated. The under-representation of ethnic minorities in political fields runs in parallel with broader trends in social inequalities (IPPR ). Meer and Peace (: ) note, ‘the obvious point is that political participation is not simply about electoral participation but about the social and political field in which—in our case—BME groups in Scotland are confident and audible’. Whilst elite political initiatives can play a vital role in ensuring that appeals to nationhood in Scotland can be meaningfully calibrated to include minorities too, the exercise of citizenship also requires bottom-up approaches to ensure ethnic minority political participation and engagement.
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Equal Representation Project. . Equal Representation in Politics Toolkit. Edinburgh: Equal Representation Project. Available at: equalrepresentation.scot/about/, accessed June . Fisher, S.D., Heath, A.F., Sanders, D., and Sobolewska, M. . ‘Candidate Ethnicity and Vote Choice in Britain’, British Journal of Political Science, /: –. Haria, J. . Information, Motivation, Representation: Minority Ethnic Participation in the Scottish Local Government Elections. Glasgow: Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights. Haria, J. . Minority Representation in Scottish Politics (or rather a lack of). Glasgow: CRER. Available at: crer.scot/single-post////Minority-or-lack-of-Representationin-Scottish-Politics, accessed June . Hawkins, O., Keen, R., and Nakatudde, N. . General Election . London: UK Government. Available at: researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-/ CBP-.pdf, accessed June . Hill, E. . ‘Welcoming Nations? Hospitality as a Proxy for National Identity: A Consideration of British and Scottish Contexts’, in A. Haynes, M.J. Power, A. Dillane, and J. Carr (eds), Public and Political Discourses of Migration: International Perspectives. Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, –. Hill, E. . Somali Voices in Glasgow City: Who Speaks? Who Listens? An Ethnography. PhD. Edinburgh: Heriot-Watt University. Hussain, A.M. and Miller, W.L. . Multicultural Nationalism: Islamophobia, Anglophobia, and Devolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press on Demand. Improvement Service. . Scotland’s Councillors: –. Livingston: Improvement Service. Available at: improvementservice.org.uk/documents/research/scotlands-councillors-.pdf, accessed June . IPPR. . The Democracy Commission: Reforming Democracy to Combat Political Inequality. London: IPPR. Available at: ippr.org/read/the-democracy-commission-reformingdemocracy-to-combat-political-inequality#, accessed June . Jenkinson, J. . ‘Black Sailors on Red Clydeside: Rioting, Reactionary Trade Unionism and Conflicting Notions of ‘Britishness’ Following the First World War’, Twentieth Century British History, /: –. Keating, M. . ‘Nationalist Movements in a Comparative Perspective’, in G. Hassan (ed.), The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, –. Kenny, M. and Mackay, F. . ‘Less Male, Pale and Stale? Women and the Scottish Local Government Elections’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Khan, O. and Sveinsson, K. . Race and Elections. London: The Runnymede Trust. Available at: http://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/RaceandElectionsFINAL_inter active.pdf, accessed June . Kymlicka, W. . ‘Multicultural Citizenship within Multination States’, Ethnicities, /: –. Leith, M.S. and Soule, D.P.J. . Political Discourse and National Identity in Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Liinpäa, M. . ‘Nationalism and Scotland’s Imperial Past’, in N. Davidson, M. Liinpäa, M. McBride, and S. Virdee (eds), No Problem Here: Understanding Racism in Scotland. Edinburgh: Luath Press, –. Martin, N.S. . ‘Do Ethnic Minority Candidates Mobilise Ethnic Minority Voters? Evidence from the UK General Election’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –.
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McCrone, D. . Understanding Scotland. London: Routledge. McCrone, D. . ‘Who Do You Say You Are? Making Sense of National Identities in Modern Britain’, Ethnicities, /: –. McCrone, D. and Bechhofer, F. . ‘Claiming National Identity’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –. McEwen, N., Swenden, W., and Bolleyer, N. . ‘Intergovernmental Relations in the UK: Continuity in a Time of Change?’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. McNab, S. . ‘Anas Sarwar calls on Sturgeon to tackle “everyday racism” ’, The Scotsman. Available at: scotsman.com/news/politics/anas-sarwar-calls-on-sturgeon-totackle-everyday-racism--, accessed June . Meer, N. a. ‘Looking up in Scotland? Multinationalism, Multiculturalism and Political Elites’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –. Meer, N. b. Race Equality in Scotland: Challenges and Opportunities. Glasgow: University of Strathclyde. Available at: strathprints.strath.ac.uk///MeerN_IPPI__Race_ equality_in_Scotland_challanges_and_oppurtunities.pdf. Meer, N. . ‘Self-reported Discrimination in Scotland’, in N. Meer (ed.), Scotland and Race Equality: Directions in Policy and Identity. London: Runnymede Trust. Meer, N. . Scottish BME Poll. Survation. Available at: http://survation.com/wp-content/ uploads///Final-Scotland-BME-University-of-Edinburgh-Tables-lp-.pdf Meer, N. . ‘Race Equality after Enoch Powell’, Political Quarterly, /: –. Meer, N. and Peace, T. . The Election: BME Groups in Scotland. London: Runnymede Trust. Available at: core.ac.uk/download/pdf/.pdf, accessed June . Miles, R. and Muirhead, L. . ‘Racism in Scotland: A Matter for Further Investigation?’, Unit for the Study of Government in Scotland, University of Edinburgh. Mycock, A. . ‘SNP, Identity and Citizenship: Re-imagining State and Nation’, National Identities, /: –. Office for National Statistics (ONS). . Ethnicity and National Identity in England and Wales: . London: Office for National Statistics. Available at: ons.gov.uk/ peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/ethnicity/articles/ ethnicityandnationalidentityinenglandandwales/--, accessed June . Ostrander, S. . ‘ “Surely You’re Not In This Just To Be Helpful”: Access, Rapport, and Interviews on Three Studies of Elites’, in R. Hertz and J. Imber (eds), Studying Elites Using Qualitative Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, –. Ozarow, D. . The Unrepresentative House: The Inconvenient Truth about our Members of Parliament. Open Democracy. Available at: opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/danielozarow/unrepresentative-house-inconvenient-truth-about-our-members-of-parliament, accessed June . Peterkin, T. . ‘Party quotas to give women equal representation’, The Scotsman. Available at: scotsman.com/news/politics/party-quotas-to-give-women-equal-representa tion--, accessed June . Qureshi, K. and Moore, S. . ‘Identity remix: Tradition and translation in the lives of young Pakistani Scots’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, /: –. Saeed, A., Blain, N., and Forbes, D. . ‘New ethnic and national questions in Scotland: post-British identities among Glasgow Pakistani teenagers’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –.
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Scottish Government. a. Electoral Reform Consultation. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Available at: gov.scot/Resource//.pdf, accessed June . Scottish Government. b. A Fairer Scotland for All: Race Equality Action Plan –. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Available at: gov.scot/Resource//.pdf, accessed June . Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Census: Ethnic Group Demographics. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Available at: gov.scot/Topics/People/Equality/Equalities/DataGrid/ Ethnicity/EthPopMig, accessed June . Scottish Government. . Right to Vote Extended. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/news/ right-to-vote-extended/, accessed February . Shedden, S. . ‘Refugees in Scotland to be given the right to vote’, The Scotsman. Available at: scotsman.com/news/politics/refugees-in-scotland-to-be-given-right-to-vote--, accessed June . Smith, A.D. . The Cultural Foundations of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell. Stegmaier, M., Lewis-Beck, M.S., and Smets, K. . ‘Standing for Parliament: Do Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Candidates Pay Extra?’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Sue, D.W., Capodilupo, C.M., Torino, G.C., Bucceri, J.M., Holder, A., Nadal, K.L., and Esquilin, M. . ‘Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice’, American Psychologist, /: .
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.................................................................................................................................. S devolution and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in , Scotland has seen a number of ambitious, even pioneering (McEwen and Bomberg ) environmental policies. Apart from some perhaps less convincing cases where the Scottish Government either underwhelmed analysts (Hinde ) and green campaigners (Dunion and Scandrett ) or effectively delayed decision-making, awaiting more evidence (Stephan ), environmental commitments have been by and large ambitious and notably different from the rest of the UK. The environmental policy framework that now emerges is influenced by an arguably unique and close-knit network of environmental activists, politicians, and government officials who engage in an increasingly assertive and determined environmental policy discourse. What gives these participants a comparatively strong and almost-symbiotic bond is an implicit (and at times: explicit) connection between environmentalism and Scottish nationalism (Brown ). Whilst Scotland continues to navigate its interest representation within the complex, multidimensional post-devolution (and pre-Brexit) setting of the UK, environmental actors in Scotland utilize a range of constitutional and discursive tools that enable them to pursue their own environmental policy narrative. This environmental narrative is constructed consistently with the wider constitutional debate in mind. Certainly in the case of environmental politics and policy, the constitutional issue is a permanent and persistent feature and very much alive. This chapter examines the environmental discourse in Scotland and identifies key determinants that shape Scotland’s position in green politics. It starts by briefly outlining the general study of green politics, then goes on to identify a number of investigative themes, before applying these to the Scottish context. To illustrate the main trends and debates in Scottish green politics, the chapter offers some insights into the climate change discourse in Scotland whilst also referring to a representative selection of other environmental agendas such as nuclear energy, fracking, and land use, where political actors have shown varying degrees of commitment and policy
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success. The chapter concludes with a summary of key findings and offers a preliminary commentary on the impact that Brexit may have on Scotland’s ability to shape its own green destiny.
I G P
.................................................................................................................................. The politics of the environment (or green politics) features a number of core characteristics that need to be considered first in order to understand the environmental discourse in Scotland. Without delving into the extensive and interdisciplinary literature of environmental politics (e.g. Pepper ; Dryzek ; Dobson ) and sustainable development (Dresner ; Sachs ; Blewitt ), environmental politics essentially centres around the use of natural resources and human attempts in addressing the consequences of over-exploitation and degradation of these resources. By and large, environmental politics literature has been constructed on the foundation of the Anthropocene (Crutzen ; Steffen et al. ) and more specifically the notion that we are now witnessing a geological epoch that is not only unprecedented but also distinctly human-made and with consequences that are ultimately irreversible. In particular, the literature highlights the impacts of human activity on our ecosystems, species, and societies. Early influential studies include biologist Rachel Carson’s bestseller titled Silent Spring () and geographers Meadows et al.’s The Limits to Growth reports (from onwards) as well as studies such as Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons () and Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (), which explore the more normative and economic dilemmas, implications, and possible solutions associated with environmental challenges. With the acknowledgement of resource pressures and environmental degradation, particularly in the late s and early s, green awareness in social and political circles was elevated. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when modern environmental discourse started. Many scholars would herald the UN Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm. This international meeting followed other significant events such as the US’s Earth Day of , the founding of Friends of the Earth () and Greenpeace (), the establishment of the first Green Parties (New Zealand and the UK in ) and the creation of the first Departments for the Environment (such as in the UK in ). Since then we have seen the emergence and development of a complex, multidimensional discourse (and the institutional structures to match) that goes well beyond the original environmental theme of conservation and protection of natural resources. As the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN Agenda , ) and many other policy documents testify, we have moved on to more holistic and intricate environmental policy frameworks that now acknowledge and embrace the interdependency of social, economic, and environmental needs and strive towards intra- and intergenerational equity that respects the environment, be it at local, national, or global levels.
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The resulting discourse and with it the composition of actors and their behaviours is not only inherently complex, it actually stretches across several generations, interest clusters, and levels of governance. Furthermore, it transcends traditional policy network boundaries in that previously closed and polarized networks are increasingly permeable, fluid, and somewhat unpredictable. Whereas in the past the environment tended to be quite compartmentalized if not marginalized in mainstream politics, recent years have seen a significant shift towards more complex vertical and sectoral interdependencies and a certain policy convergence between different sets of actors and policies. No longer can energy and the environment be considered separately; climate change compels us to consider both issues simultaneously. With increasing complexity and interdependencies, actors have displayed an interesting adaptation to the new world of environmental politics, by addressing multiple levels of governance simultaneously and by tuning their campaigns and actions in a more assertive, vocal, and more professional manner. There are many groups, strategies, and approaches out there; some groups emphasizing paradigm shifts and actions at the individual level, whilst others taking a more holistic and global approach and even embracing ‘hybrid multilateralism’ with other actors (Bäckstrand et al. ). The extent to which these efforts and policies have borne fruit depends on what environmental issue and context we are looking at. There are many state-centrist studies that explore the relative effectiveness of various environmental ambitions and actions and a multitude of performance indicators and studies (Sustainable Society Index, ; Environmental Performance Index ). Findings vary, often depending on investigative variables, intended outcomes, methodologies, and associations with funding organizations and other stakeholders. Studies comparing systems of governance that cannot be categorized as ‘state’ are few and far between with McEwen and Bomberg () noting what amounts to ‘methodological nationalism’ (citing Wimmer and Glick Schiller ), whilst Hinde () also notes a lack of academic work examining environmental performance in Scotland specifically. Whilst there may be variations and gaps in evidence on environmental performances, it is still fair to say that we have come a long way since the UN Conference of . Nevertheless, much more needs to be done to understand and address the wicked problems (Rittel and Webber ; Levin et al. ) that we face today, including climate change, biodiversity loss, water and air pollution, and the impacts on our ecosystems of plastic waste.
A S E
.................................................................................................................................. In many respects, Scotland displays the key features, actor groups, and discourse progression as described above. First, we have seen the recognition of environmental problems and an active engagement of a number of actor groups including political parties—with the Scottish Green Party taking the lead on green issues—non-governmental organizations and their umbrella groups (e.g. Scottish Environment LINK), as
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well as important green agents such as the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). Furthermore, we have seen typical environmental policy responses and measures as well as a trend towards a more complex, holistic yet intricate search for answers to complex environmental problems. These environmental policy developments have increasingly involved crossovers between policy spheres and networks and occasionally the co-framing of two or several policy narratives, such as between transport and the environment. In the policy areas of climate change and energy, we have seen a distinct convergence of objectives, actors, and processes. In line with environmental discourses elsewhere, there is both an active discourse in more traditional areas, such as conservation and land use, as well as discourses and policy responses on new and emerging issues such as the tackling of plastic and household waste. In many cases, Scotland set a precedent for similar policies elsewhere and it is fair to say that Scotland has represented a favourable terrain for environmental politics. This relative frontrunner position has been facilitated by a number of factors, including the additional member electoral system to select Members of Scottish Parliament, which allows for a comparatively strong representation of environmental interests through the election of the Scottish Greens and inherently compels other political parties to ‘green’ their own political manifestos (Bennie : ). These somewhat favourable factors have helped establish Scotland as a green leader. For example, the Scottish Parliament adopted a policy to ban plastic straws in early February with a view to banning straws altogether by , whilst a similar ban has only recently entered Westminster discussions as part of a consultation process (BBC a; The Independent a). Whilst Scotland features many of the green politics capacities and characteristics found elsewhere, when we look further into the details, there are some features that render Scottish environmental politics and policy unique. To put it simply, the environmental discourse of Scotland is very much context-driven. True, some contributing factors can be found in other systems of governance, for instance the energy trilemma (Heffron et al. ) of meeting climate change, energy security, and affordability targets. However, there a number of specific, circumstantial, as well as long-term factors that shape environmental actor alliances, behaviours, and policies in Scotland in their own particular way. It is therefore important to consider in more detail the wider temporal, spatial, as well as socio-economic and political features specific to Scotland.
U G P S
.................................................................................................................................. Sabatier’s () advocacy coalition framework emphasized two sets of factors that influence policymakers and stakeholders involved in policy discourses: ‘fairly stable’ factors, and ‘quite dynamic’ factors (Sabatier and Weible : ). Sabatier’s
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relatively stable parameters include the distribution of natural resources as well as the constitutional structure. It is noticeable how Scotland’s abundant natural resource availability, as well as its intricate (and somewhat fluid) constitutional structure, have fed into Scotland’s support of, and reliance upon, renewable energy, which represents a crucial component of Scotland’s green ambitions. Scotland’s comparatively large distribution of natural resources (Scotland’s State of the Environment Report ) as well as its geographical profile have facilitated the adoption and implementation of some ambitious environmental targets such as the phasing out of nuclear energy, the persisting moratorium on fracking, and support for the renewables sector. According to data from March , Scotland’s renewable electricity generation capacity stood at . GW with an additional .GW of capacity either under construction or consented (with the majority being wind generation projects) and a total capacity (including pipeline projects) expected to be . GW (Scottish Government a). With these figures, Scotland is making a ‘disproportionate contribution’ to the UK’s efforts in ‘cleaning up our energy system’, according to Scottish Renewables (). Indeed, Scotland saw a record year in renewable energy generation with . per cent of electricity being generated from non-fossil fuel sources, representing an increase of per cent from the year before. According to the Scottish Government (), this represents ‘ percentage points more than the equivalent figure for the rest of the UK’. As noted in the media (The Independent b; The Scotsman ), Scotland outpaces the rest of the UK in renewables output and progression. This emerging gap is not just down to Scotland’s green ambitions. As Wood and Baker (: ) point out: ‘whilst there is little doubt that [Scotland] has pursued a far more progressive strategy than that inflicted on England and Wales, the gulf between Scotland and the rest of the UK is significantly widened by the scale of Westminster’s failures’. Scotland’s drive to out-perform the rest of the UK is possible simply because devolution has given Scotland a capacity to take action in a number of devolved policy areas. This includes fiscal (Weber ), legal, and political powers, and in the case of climate change, the Scottish Government utilized the issue not only to pursue its own policy but also to link it into the narrative surrounding Scottish identity and independence. This sentiment of national identity and, to a certain extent, defiance vis-à-vis Westminster, is illustrated by Scottish Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse’s statement from March : ‘Despite damaging policy changes from the UK government that will soon come into full effect we continue to harness, galvanise and support Scotland’s renewables potential, both in generation and infrastructure’ (Scottish Government ). Intergovernmental relations between Scotland and the UK government are not the only focal points for Scottish actors: the Scottish Government entertains bilateral collaborations with various actors such as the Government of California (Climate Change: Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of California, April ) and likes to present itself as an environmental champion at the international level. Scottish Government statements such as ‘[w]e see Scotland as a responsible global citizen with a moral obligation to contribute to the challenge and influence
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others to do the same’ (Climate Change Plan: rd Report on Proposals and Policies –, : ) therefore come as no surprise. In sum, it is noticeable how the natural resource policy framework is connected and reinforced by Scotland’s constitutional situation. As this discourse is ongoing and still evolving—having covered the milestones of post-devolution, then post-referendum, and now pre-Brexit—it certainly shapes decision-making by the Scottish Government and large parts of Scottish society when these address fundamental problems such as climate change and other environmental issues. It seems that on almost all policy innovations, from the introduction of a ban on plastic straws and plastic cotton buds to tough landfill targets, Scotland measures well against the rest of the UK. Where factors such as resource availability permit and public support are favourable, Scotland tends to go the extra mile in both established policy areas such as in hydropower as well as new, up-and-coming policy areas such as plastic waste. It is the co-framing of environmental goals and national identity (Brown ) that has had a particularly positive impact on Scotland’s progressive stance towards the environment.
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.................................................................................................................................. A prominent example illustrating this green yet national stance is Scotland’s climate change policy. The Climate Change (Scotland) Act currently sets out a statutory obligation to ensure the reduction in all greenhouse gas emissions to per cent compared to emission levels by and per cent by . In addition, the Act includes a number of wide-ranging targets and reporting provisions in areas as diverse as energy efficiency, waste reduction and recycling, forestry, and ‘varying timings of muirburn (the burning of vegetation—gorse, heather and grass—to stimulate new growth)’. The Act is complemented by Scotland’s Low Carbon Scotland: Meeting the emissions reduction targets – (), which further acknowledges the sheer scale of Scotland’s climate ambition, and will in the near future see a successor in a Climate Change Bill, moving from the per cent target by to a per cent (possibly per cent) target by . Recently, the Scottish Government produced a Climate Change Plan: rd Report on Proposals and Policies – (RPP) () and conducted a public consultation that attracted , responses (Climate Change Bill, Consultation Summary Report, December ). Throughout, Scottish actors have set climate targets that have been distinctly (and intentionally) tougher and more ambitious than in the rest of the UK. For instance, with regards to the targets, Scotland committed to a per cent reduction of emissions based on levels whilst the rest of the UK opted for a per cent target. Similarly, Scotland committed to annual reviews of targets, moving away from the UK -year reviews, and included amongst other categories emissions from international aviation and shipping whilst the rest of the UK excluded these until (House of Commons Committee ). Whilst Scotland is sending ambitious signals on climate change, it is noticeable how
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the Scottish Government connects the environmental narrative with that of energy. Not only does policy articulation on climate change coincide with that of sustainable, affordable, and equitable energy, the Scottish Government is also explicitly crossreferencing between the two policy spheres. This can be seen, for instance, in the wording of both The Future of Energy in Scotland (December ) and The Climate Change Plan: The Third Report on Proposals and Policies – documents, which explicitly refer to each other as ‘companion documents’. In short, Scottish policymakers address climate change and energy in conjunction and consider both policy areas as two sides of the same coin. Before turning to some of the limitations in Scottish environmental politics, one dynamic aspect worth considering is the interplay between public policy path dependency (Pierson ; Greener ) and critical junctures in public policy that follow socalled seismic events (Capoccia ). Path dependency refers to a process whereby political actors tend to follow ongoing, well-established policy patterns. Conversely, this policy embeddedness may be disrupted by seismic events that are significant enough to steer policymakers off the previous path. This dynamic matters in Scottish environmental politics as the Fukushima Daicchi nuclear disaster of has shown. The Fukushima disaster impacted on Scotland’s approach to nuclear energy in that the seismic event, although external to Scotland, re-affirmed the Scottish Government’s decisively anti-nuclear stance. The two remaining nuclear power stations—Hunterston B and Torness—are due to finish operation in and respectively and a new fleet of nuclear power stations, currently envisaged by the Westminster Government, is dismissed by the Scottish Government as environmentally and economically indefensible. The recent media coverage highlighting cracks found in one of the Hunterston B reactors does not help the nuclear energy cause, in fact, the reactor will go offline for months whilst the problem is being investigated, and output will be halved as a result of this investigation (BBC b).
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.................................................................................................................................. The connection between environmental and constitutional narratives outlined above leads us to the second, more dynamic, set of contributing parameters that Sabatier () would label external events. Apart from major environmental disasters such as the above-mentioned Fukushima disaster of , which led to a re-enforcement of environmental policy, we can add other external events to the equation that may inhibit Scottish policymakers’ drive for innovative environmental policies. For instance, changes in economic conditions and performance, as well as changes in governments and network coalitions external to the actual environmental issue, can impact on politics and policy in that these changes have the potential to constrain
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environmental progress. Changes in parliamentary representation as well as evolving network coalitions and overall power constellations can explain why the current Scottish Government shies away from some more radical, arguably more determined, environmental policy steps. Furthermore, where the Scottish Government anticipates a backlash with existing network coalitions, it tends to take a rather precautionary approach. This careful manoeuvring can be seen in areas such as land use governance and specific green fiscal tools. For instance, a ‘pay as you drive’ tax as proposed by Reform Scotland, although welcomed by environmental groups as an innovative policy tool, met with stern opposition by motoring organizations such as the AA. As this tax was perceived as placing an additional burden on commuters, especially from rural communities, it was not pursued further by the Scottish Government (The Scotsman ). Adopting such a carbon emission fiscal tool would hold the risk of tipping carefully constructed alliances with influential actor groups and networks. Dunion and Scandrett (: ) describe the Scottish Government’s careful manoeuvring, particularly on carbon taxes, as strategic ‘opportunism’ whereby the government can alternate between ‘espousing green principles’ whilst at other times ‘shying away’ from some measures such as the just mentioned ‘pay as you drive’ tax or a climate change levy on Scottish industry. Further limitations in Scottish green ambitions can be found in a number of other areas. Critics would, for instance, point out that Scotland’s land reform, whilst abolishing an out-dated land and tenure system going back to feudal times, nevertheless missed an opportunity in creating a more sustainable and equitable framework on land use and environmental stewardship. Elsewhere, such as in the case of nuclear waste storage, the Scottish Government has shied away from a more determined and longterm policy direction, taking instead an evidence-based approach, which some observers such as Stephan () would interpret as a delaying strategy with the intention of awaiting more favourable political power and coalition constellations. If we tie this strategy to the already mentioned constitutional issue, the Scottish Government has taken a more determined stance on environmental issues whenever it was able to synchronize this with, what Stephan (: ) would call, an anti-Westminster storyline. In turn, whenever the environmental issue could not be synchronized with the constitutional issue and instead the government focused on immediate government-stakeholder coalitions and economic interests, the environmental policy approach has been less determined if not lukewarm. An example of this strategic manoeuvring can be seen in the handling of the Air Passenger Duty for flights to Scotland. The Scottish Government had intended to replace the Air Passenger Duty with a new, devolved Air Departure Tax, which would then include a per cent cut and eventual scrapping of tax once ‘resources’ allowed such a move. Confronted with opposition, including the Scottish Greens’ implied threat to not support the next budget, the Scottish Government shelved the new tax, citing the issue of Highlands and Islands airport exemption. The Scottish Government had pursued an exemption for journeys from airports in the Highlands and Islands in order to boost their economic competition and connectivity; this exemption is now considered a stumbling
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block with existing EU (and UK) competition rules and the Scottish Government is blaming the UK government for not clarifying its support of the decision. For Scottish Greens’ MSP Patrick Harvie this ‘legal quagmire’ with the tax was a handy ‘technical pretext to spare [the Scottish Minister’s] blushes’ in not being able to push the new tax scheme through (BBC ). These examples would suggest a certain autonomy on the part of the Scottish Government in weighing up pros and cons before taking environmental policy decisions. Of course, the Scottish Government is not completely autonomous and there are many instances where the Scottish Government’s ability to define a policy approach is scuppered by other actors or structural-legal obstacles inherent in the devolved settlement. The moratorium on fracking in Scotland is an interesting and recent example. In October the Scottish Government converted the -month moratorium on fracking effectively into an indefinite ban, which in turn compelled petrochemical firm Ineos and Aberdeen-based firm ReachCSG, to call for, and win, the right to a judicial review of the decision. Indeed, Ineos claimed that the Scottish Government was in ‘breach of human rights’ (The National ). Friends of the Earth Scotland, in return, was given permission by the Court to make a formal counter-submission in the ‘public interest’ (The Herald ). The company’s success in winning a court hearing was short-lived, however, as Judge Lord Pentland ruled in June that the companies’ complaint was unfounded as the Scottish policymaking process on fracking was ‘still ongoing’ and the previous Scottish Government’s anti-fracking statements had been misleading (Outer House, Court Session ). This legal wrangling coincided with the Scottish Government’s decision to extend Ineos’s Petroleum Exploration and Development Licence (PEDL) for another year until June , which in turn caused irritation with green campaigners and anti-fracking opponents such as Friends of the Earth Scotland, who deemed the licence extension as ‘disappointing’, as well as opposition parties such as the Scottish Labour Party who denounced the Scottish Government’s handling of the fracking issue as ‘a shambles’ (Energy Voice ). Stumbling blocks posed by different parts of Scottish society compel the Scottish Government to tread very carefully and, at times, send out ambiguous messages. The fracking case demonstrates that legal and indeed political challenges such as the one described above need to be taken into consideration when studying Scotland’s ability (or inability) to deliver green objectives. Last but not least, the contrast in approaches to Brexit between Scotland and Westminster impacts on the environmental cause in that the disagreement plays into the constitutional debate, thereby boosting Scotland’s green determination with many policies demonstratively in line with EU environmental legislation. However, there are already serious concerns on the Scottish side that Westminster will use Brexit to not only constrain Scotland’s ability and capacity in pursuing environmental goals but actually drain Scotland’s ability in making environmental progress. This bleak view stands in complete contrast to the notion that Scotland may be able to use Brexit as a means to repatriate powers for ‘more policy autonomy and divergence’ (Keating : ). As Scottish Environment Minister Roseanna Cunningham put it in a press release
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titled Brexit Threatens Environmental Ambition: ‘Imposing a UK-wide framework for the environment risks undermining the significant progress Scotland has made, which has seen us win international recognition for our work on climate change and the circular economy’ (Scottish Government b). Whatever the individual assessments on the impact of Brexit may be, it is quite clear from the above observations by Scottish politicians and scholars that green politics in Scotland will continue to be framed within the wider context of Scotland’s constitutional destiny and will furthermore evolve over the next few years and decades as policymakers and stakeholders navigate around a number of stable and dynamic factors that shape the Scottish political and societal landscape.
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.................................................................................................................................. Addressing environmental challenges and the wicked problems that we face today, is no mean feat. In green politics we are witnessing multiple complexities that stretch across regions, generations, and policy areas. Understanding the interconnections and developing solutions to our environmental problems are two fundamental goals that systems of governance face today and Scotland is no exception to this. Whilst Scotland shares with other systems of governance a common green political history as well as typical dilemmas and trilemmas in meeting environmental needs whilst allowing for socioeconomic needs also, it has developed a number of environmental policy responses that are not only distinctly (and intentionally) different from the rest of the UK, they are also amongst the most ambitious in the world. However, to assert that Scotland is an outright pioneering leader and an advocate of deep green politics would neglect all those instances where Scotland could have gone further. With the help of policy examples, this chapter illustrated how green politics has fared in Scotland and how green ambitions and targets have been shaped by a complex set of stable as well as circumstantial factors specific to Scotland. As the chapter argued, these factors do not always lead to outcomes that would please green campaigners. It is therefore important to acknowledge the variations in green commitment and continue to study in detail the context within which environmental objectives are developed and framed in Scotland. The chapter identified, and then applied, a number of factors adapted from Sabatier (), including relatively stable parameters such as natural resource availability and constitutional frameworks, as well as external events such as natural disasters or changes in network coalitions. It was noticeable how in many environmental policy cases Scotland displayed an ambitious and pioneering green track record (e.g. the introduction of the plastic straw ban), whilst in other cases Scotland could have gone the extra mile for the environment (e.g. the ‘pay as you drive’ tax). Ultimately, the fate of each individual environmental challenge depends on a number of interdependent factors or parameters as evidenced above. When an environmental cause can be tied to the notion of Scottish identity and the dynamic between green and territorial goals does
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not jeopardize issue-specific coalitions that matter at the time of discourse, there is a very good chance that the resulting environmental policy is far-reaching, pioneering, and ambitious. Conversely, if a direct causal link between environmental issue and national identity cannot be made and the Scottish Government would lose vital support with certain parts of Scottish society, then environmental policies are either somewhat less ambitious or are put on hold until constellations are deemed more favourable. The biggest potential obstacle in Scottish green politics is likely to be Brexit and its impact on intergovernmental relations with Westminster and the power-sharing between the two levels of governance. A hard Brexit and subsequent re-balancing of competencies in favour of Westminster does not necessarily lead to a complete disaster in environmental terms, as currently feared by green campaigners. Indeed, Hilson () would caution us against a ‘one-way traffic’ assessment of the Brexit impact on green politics in general. However, it would be safe to say that the Brexit scenario could severely undermine Scotland’s ability to direct its own destiny in environmental policy and sustainability. Scottish Environment Minister Roseanna Cunningham argued that ‘[p]rotecting devolution will allow us to drive forward our ambitious work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance environmental standards and create a cleaner, greener Scotland for everyone’ (Scottish Government b). This belief in Scotland’s green mandate is echoed in public opinion polls such as the one conducted in November when the Scottish public was asked the following question: Do you think the Scottish Parliament or Westminster should have control over the issues of food, fishing, farming and the environment when the UK leaves the EU? Sixty-two per cent of respondents wished to see the Scottish Parliament at the helm, whilst per cent preferred Westminster and per cent stated ‘don’t know’ (What Scotland Thinks ). In another opinion poll from the year before, per cent of the Scottish public were very satisfied and somewhat satisfied with the Scottish Government’s handling of environmental issues, per cent opted for somewhat dissatisfied, very dissatisfied, and per cent chose neither satisfied nor dissatisfied and don’t know (What Scotland Thinks ). It appears that the Scottish system of governance has the political mandate to pursue its own environmental politics and policy. It remains to be seen to what extent Scotland can address not only the constitutional conundrums that lie ahead but also the wicked problems of climate change and environmental challenges that will occupy Scottish society and policymakers in years to come.
R Bäckstrand, K., Kuyper, J., Linner, B.-O., and Lövbrand, E. . ‘Non-state Actors in Global Climate Governance: From Copenhagen to Paris and Beyond’, Environmental Politics, /: –. BBC. . ‘Scottish air passenger duty changes hit snag’, October.
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BBC. a. ‘Scotland ban announced for plastic cotton buds’, January. BBC. b. ‘Hunterston Q&A: What do cracks mean for future of power plant?’. May. Bennie, L. . Understanding Political Participation. Green Party Membership in Scotland. London: Routledge. Blewitt, J. . Understanding Sustainable Development. London: Earthscan. Brown, A. . ‘The Dynamics of Frame-Bridging: Exploring the Nuclear Discourse in Scotland’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Capoccia, G. . ‘Critical Junctures and Institutional Change’, in J. Mahoneyand K. Thelen (eds), Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carson, R. . Silent Spring. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Climate Change: Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of California. . Letter of co-operation between the Government of California and the Scottish Government on climate change, https://www.gov.scot/publications/california-government-climatechange-agreement/ (accessed December ) Climate Change Plan: rd Report on Proposals and Policies –. . https://www. gov.scot/publications/scottish-governments-climate-change-plan-third-report-proposalspolicies-/ (accessed December ) Crutzen, P. . ‘Geology of Mankind’, in Nature, /: . Dobson, A. . Environmental Politics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dresner, S. . The Principles of Sustainable Development. London: Earthscan. Dryzek, J. . The Politics of the Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dunion, K. and Scandrett, E. . ‘The Campaign for Environmental Justice in Scotland as a Response to Poverty in a Northern Nation’, in Agyeman et al. (eds), Just Sustainabilities. Development in an Unequal World. London: Earthscan. Energy Voice. . ‘Scottish Government causes fracking confusion with Ineos licence extension’, July. Available at: https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas//scottishgovernment-causes-fracking-confusion-with-ineos-licence-extension/, accessed November . Environmental Performance Index. Available at: https://epi.envirocenter.yale.edu/ (accessed December ) Greener, I. . ‘The Potential of Path Dependency in Political Studies’, Politics, /: –. Hardin, G. . ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, /: –. Heffron, R.J., McCauley, D., and Sovacool, B.K. . ‘Resolving Society’s Energy Trilemma through the Energy Justice Metric’, Energy Policy, : –. Hilson, C. . ‘The Impact of Brexit on the Environment: Exploring the Dynamics of a Complex Relationship’, Transnational Environmental Law, /: –. Hinde, D. . ‘It’s our Environment: Two Terms of SNP Environmental Policy’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee. . Emission Targets and Progress in Scotland. Keating, M. . ‘Brexit and Devolution in the United Kingdom’, Politics and Governance, /: –. Levin, K., Cashore, B., Bernstein, S., and Ault, G. . ‘Playing it Forward: Path Dependency, Progressive Incrementalism, and the “Super Wicked” Problem of Global Climate Change’, IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, /.
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McEwen, N. and Bomberg, E. . ‘Sub-state Climate Pioneers: The Case of Scotland’, Regional & Federal Studies, /: –. Meadows, D., Meadows, D., Randers, J., and Behrens, W. . Limits to Growth. Washington, DC: Potomac Associates. Outer House, Court Session. . OPINION OF LORD PENTLAND In the petition INEOS UPSTREAM LIMITED and another Petitioners and FRIENDS OF THE EARTH SCOTLAND. P/. Available at: https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/cosgeneral-docs/pdf-docs-for-opinions/csoh.pdf?sfvrsn=. Pepper, D. . Modern Environmentalism. An Introduction. London: Routledge. Pierson, P. . ‘Increasing Returns, Path Dependency and the Study of Politics’, American Political Science Review, : –. Rittel, H. and Webber, M. . ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences, : –. Sabatier, P.A. . ‘An Advocacy Coalition Framework of Policy Change and the Role of Policy-oriented Learning Therein’, Policy Sciences, /–: –. Sabatier, P.A. and Weible, C. . ‘The Advocacy Coalition Framework. Innovations and Clarifications’, in P.A. Sabatier (ed.), Theories of the Policy Process. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Sachs, J. . The Age of Sustainable Development. New York: Columbia University Press. Schumacher, E.F. . Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row. Scottish Government. a. Energy Statistics For Scotland. June, available at: https://www. gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Business/Energyii Scottish Government. b. Brexit Threatens Environmental Ambition. Press release, August. Scottish Government. . Record Year for Renewables Generation, https://www.gov.scot/ news/record-year-for-renewables-generation/, accessed April . Scottish Renewables. . Renewables in Numbers. https://www.scottishrenewables.com/ forums/renewablesinnumbers/, accessed April . Steffen, W., Crutzen, P.J., and McNeill, J.R. . ‘The Anthropocene: Are Humans now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?’, Ambio, /: –. Stephan, H. . ‘Discursive Politics of Unconventional Gas in Scotland: Drifting Towards Precaution?’, Energy Research & Social Science, : –. Sustainable Society Index. Available at: http://www.ssfindex.com/, accessed December . The Herald. . ‘Ineos facing legal challenge in battle with Scottish Government over fracking’, April. The Independent. a. ‘Scotland plans to ban straws by the end of ’, February. The Independent. b. ‘Scotland produces record amount of energy from renewables as green schemes generate two-thirds of electricity’, March. The National. . ‘Judge rules Ineos can sue Scottish Government’, February. The Scotsman. . ‘Replace road tax with “pay as you drive” scheme’, October. The Scotsman. . ‘Scotland’s wind turbines boost power to grid by per cent’, April. UN Agenda . . ‘Transforming our World: The Agenda for Sustainable Development’. Available at: https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES//& Lang=E, accessed December .
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Weber, M. . Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. What Scotland Thinks. . ‘How satisfied are you with the Scottish Government’s handling of environmental issues?’, Opinion Poll, April. Available at: http://whatscotlandthinks. org/questions/how-satisfied-are-you-with-the-scottish-governments-handling-ofenvironmental-i#line, accessed June . What Scotland Thinks. . ‘Do you think the Scottish Parliament or Westminster should have control over the issues of food, fishing, farming and the environment when the UK leaves the EU?’, Opinion Poll, November. Available at: http://whatscotlandthinks.org/ questions/do-you-think-the-scottish-parliament-or-westminster-should-have-control-overthe, accessed June . Wood, G. and Baker, K. . ‘Introduction: Aye, Naw, Mibbe’, A Critical Review of Scottish Renewable and Low Carbon Energy Policy. Switzerland: Springer Nature.
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.................................................................................................................................. T United Kingdom remains de jure a unitary state, with an uncodified constitution based upon the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, that laws passed by the UK Parliament carry precedence over all other state institutions. Parliamentary sovereignty has historically played a substantive role in political debate in the UK, with foundations in the battles between the Crown and Parliament in the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century to the present-day discussions about the UK’s relations with the European Union. The constitutional theorist A.V. Dicey () argued that: parliamentary sovereignty is [therefore] an undoubted legal fact. It is complete both on its positive and on its negative side. Parliament can legally legislate on any topic whatever which, in the judgment of Parliament, is a fit subject for legislation. There is no power which, under the English constitution, can come into rivalry with the legislative sovereignty of Parliament. No one of the limitations alleged to be imposed by law on the absolute authority of Parliament has any real existence, or receives any countenance, either from the statute-book or from the practice of the Courts.
Legally, the UK holds true to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, at least in theory. In practice, the last century has seen significant change to the UK’s constitution, and relations both internal (between the component nations of the state) and external (between the UK and the EU, which it joined in and intended to leave in ) have played a significant role in altering the extent to which parliamentary sovereignty remains ‘the bedrock of the British constitution’ (UKHL ). The establishment of devolved institutions in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, later in London, and the establishment of metro-mayors and provision of city deals and economic powers to
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regions across the UK has challenged this to a degree. Nevertheless, devolution is not federalism—though some have gone so far as to describe the UK as a ‘quasi-federal system’ (Bogdanor ; Gamble ; Flinders ). According to Convery (), federalism ‘involves two central principles: a formal division of sovereignty between two levels of government; and a guarantee that the division of powers between the federal government and sub-state governments cannot be altered without the latter’s permission’. Federalism thus demands a more equal relationship between the state and the sub-state level, a more equal relationship that the UK’s investment with the principle of parliamentary sovereignty simply does not allow for. In most cases, too, federalism displays a different distribution of powers than the UK model—for whilst devolution is top-down, with powers delivered from the centre to created institutions that depend upon the centre for their powers, the federal institutions at the centre derive their powers from the sub-state institutions in a bottom-up process in which the sub-state institutions are equal actors in the process. Given the UK’s affection for the model of parliamentary sovereignty (as outlined by Dicey) the concept of federalism has been given short shrift by politicians of all political hues in the UK. Nevertheless, decentralization, in the form of devolution, was an acceptable means of sharing a level of sovereignty, and over the past two decades, has imbedded itself as a key aspect of the UK’s governing apparatus. Whilst recognizing that the UK’s membership of the EU also constitutes a significant extent of pooled sovereignty, this chapter focuses on the consequences of the process of devolution in the UK initiated by the Labour government in the late s for this principle. In the wake of the establishment of these institutions in , Vernon Bogdanor (: ) argued that ‘devolution is the most radical constitutional change this country has seen since the Great Reform Act of ’. What does this mean for Dicey’s conception of parliamentary sovereignty? In legal theory, it appears that the principle remains (Chapter in this Handbook). In practice, as this chapter will illustrate, the UK has de facto become a decentralized polity. Devolution, rather than federalism, meant that despite this decentralization, the centre maintained a degree of authority in the system. The UK Parliament retains the theoretical sovereign power to dissolve any of the devolved institutions it has created, but (and, particularly since those institutions were delivered by a popular mandate through referendums) it is constrained politically.
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.................................................................................................................................. The system of devolution designed by the Labour government in the late s was asymmetric in nature and took into account the diverging bottom-up demands for decentralization—and, when that demand was not apparent, as was the case in the north-east of England which rejected a devolved institution in a referendum, it was abandoned. Of the UK’s component nations, this left the English majority—with
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the exception of London, which saw a Mayor and Assembly created under Labour’s devolution plans—without a devolved institution to represent its interests. In Scotland, a referendum in September —just four months after New Labour’s landslide election victory that brought Tony Blair to Downing Street—saw the Scottish electorate approval of both the proposal to establish a Scottish Parliament (. per cent) and to give that institution a tax-varying power (. per cent). The pre-legislative referendum did two things: first, it entrenched the principle of a devolved Scottish institution as the preference of the Scottish electorate, binding the UK Parliament (politically, if not legally) to deliver legislation to that end. Second, the margin by which Scotland had voted in favour ensured that delivery of the legislation should be rapid, and that the devolved competences should be extensive. In particular, the vote in favour of tax-varying powers gave credence to the argument that the parliament should be much more than the ‘assembly’ that had been offered in the previous devolution referendum in . The result was the Scotland Act , which established the Scottish Parliament. The Act utilized a Reserved Powers Model, detailing only the powers which would be reserved by the UK Parliament—issues such as defence and foreign affairs, social security, energy, and constitutional matters. By subtraction, anything that was not named under the reserved powers section was within the competence of the Scottish Parliament. This included exclusive powers over health, education, and justice. As Scotland had continued to have separate legal and education systems after the Act of Union, devolution of competence in these areas was both practical and desirable for the UK government. Initially, vertical congruence in governing parties—with Labour in majority government at the UK level and leading a coalition for the first two terms of the Scottish Parliament—meant that any potential tension derived from the distribution of competences between levels was limited, and most often dealt with informally within the Labour party. Whilst more formal channels were created with the devolution settlement—in particular, the Joint Ministerial Committee, established to assist in co-ordination of public policy across government levels—it was used infrequently and, as a consultative body, to limited effect (Chapter in this Handbook; Cairney ). The Welsh devolution referendum occurred one week after the Scottish referendum, and was a much closer affair. On a turnout of just . per cent, the Welsh electorate voted narrowly for the National Assembly for Wales by just , votes, . per cent of those voting. The ‘inauspicious start’ such a narrow mandate provided for devolution in Wales meant that devolution was not universally popular (Rawlings ). As a result, the form of devolution delivered by the Government of Wales Act created an institution without constitutional precedent, a unique scheme of elected executive devolution which had as its purpose not the devolution of new powers to the new Assembly but the democratization of the existing functions of the Secretary of State for Wales (Trench ). The administrative powers that had been vested in the Welsh Office were now given over to the new National Assembly for Wales as a corporate body—to the institution itself rather than individual ministers
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themselves. This lack of an institutional division between the executive and deliberative functions of the National Assembly for Wales led to significant problems and confusion in the early years of the Assembly’s existence (Trench ). The result was a ‘remarkable degree of constitutional volatility’ and a process that has evolved in a flexible and ad hoc manner (Trench : ). Since the devolution referendum in , Wales has seen four Wales Acts (, , , and ), three commissions (Richard, Holtham, Silk), a convention, a review of procedures and a further referendum which itself has provided the National Assembly for Wales with legislative powers that the original Government of Wales Act did not envisage (Harvey ). It is clear that the asymmetrical nature of devolution meant that questions about the extension of Welsh devolution to mimic the Scottish model were never far away (Wyn Jones ). The experience of devolution taught both institutions the limitations of their powers, and pressed upon members—even those without nationalist leanings— the desire to extend their remit beyond that which had originally been granted. Thus devolution in the Welsh setting, which started out with limited powers over secondary legislation, rapidly saw discussion about constitutional change become a part of the political agenda. Northern Ireland is a case apart, predominantly due to the volatile history of the region. In the wake of the Irish War of Independence and the establishment of the Irish Free State, which Northern Ireland opted out of, the Parliament of Northern Ireland was established in . Originally constituted as a ‘Home Rule’ Parliament by the Government of Ireland Act , which would have created a similar institution in Southern Ireland, before it was overtaken by events, the institution had near free rein over all domestic issues affecting Northern Ireland, with the exception of the monarchy, foreign policy, armed services, and some taxes. As a result of the increased levels of violence in Northern Ireland in the s, the Parliament was suspended in , and direct rule from the UK government through Orders in Council was instituted. The Sunningdale Agreement in was the UK government’s first attempt to reestablish devolution in Northern Ireland but with limited support amongst both Unionist and Nationalist communities, the Agreement collapsed in . A further attempt was made in , and whilst an assembly was established, it did not achieve the substantive devolution expected, and was subsequently abolished again in . Direct rule was restored until the Good Friday Agreement of . Passed by referendums in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement contained provisions to advance the peace process in Northern Ireland. As well as dealing with issues of policing and weapons decommissioning—two controversial issues in Northern Ireland—the Agreement saw the UK government repeal the Government of Ireland Act and in its place establish a devolved legislature and power-sharing executive. Like the Scottish institution, a reserved powers model was utilized, though this consisted of three tiers of powers, rather than two. ‘Excepted matters’, such as powers over currency, the monarchy, defence, and taxation, are powers which remain the purview of Westminster and are not suitable for devolution. ‘Reserved matters’ in this context are powers which remain under Westminster control
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but which may be suitable for devolution. These include issues such as control over civil aviation, firearms, and telecommunications. Any competences which are not explicitly named under these two sections in Schedule and Schedule of the Northern Ireland Act are known as ‘Transferred matters’ and the Northern Ireland Assembly has the power to legislate in these areas. These matters includes similar areas to those which are devolved to Scotland and Wales, such as health, education, and justice, and further powers which Scotland and Wales do not have, such as legislative power over pensions, social security, and child support.
T P D
.................................................................................................................................. Devolution, in the words of Ron Davies, is a ‘process, not an event’. And as Davies (: ) explained further, devolution is not a ‘journey with a fixed end point’, nor an ‘end in itself but a means to an end’. When Davies made this oft-quoted declaration, he was Secretary of State for Wales in the UK government, attempting to balance the wafer-thin support for the Assembly indicated in the referendum with the desire by some to see a more powerful body in Cardiff whilst assuaging the fears of Welsh Labour MPs that devolution would supplant their roles. Nevertheless, his comment was prescient in two ways. First the devolution of powers was never intended to be an end. Instead, it allowed a different institutional body the responsibilities in areas in which it could deliver policy divergence: a means to deliver different ends in different places where different policies were required. Second, devolution was a new principle for the UK constitution, and without having historic experience of regional legislatures, it was difficult for the UK government, civil service, or indeed expert witnesses to be certain about the roles and responsibilities that would best fit the specific requirements of each institution. Thus, although former Labour leader John Smith described devolution as ‘the settled will of the Scottish people’, the devolution settlements themselves were never intended to be final. Devolution has been a decades-long process in the UK thus far, and with the constitution firmly on the political agenda as a (partial) result of the electoral and policy success of nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, as well as the ongoing power-sharing settlement in Northern Ireland, it shows no signs of disappearing. The institutions in the four UK component nations were designed differently, serving different purposes in each. In Scotland, on the back of a long-standing significant demand, tested in a referendum that delivered a clear mandate, a Scottish Parliament with a single tax-varying power was created. In the early years of devolution, the constitutional arrangements were largely absent from political debate in Scotland, but this changed towards the end of the Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition government, when the Liberal Democrats established their own party-level commission to examine the case for extending the Parliament’s powers to include fiscal power as a precursor to a federal UK (Steel Commission ). The election of the SNP, first
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as a minority (–) then a majority (–) government changed this. The SNP Scottish Government established ‘A National Conversation’, a government consultation on the constitutional future of Scotland; their rival opposition parties established the Calman Commission to explore further devolution. The two processes continued in parallel, without actively engaging with one another, creating a decidedly ‘disjointed constitutional debate’ (Trench : ). In the space of three years or so, the constitutional debate in Scotland had moved on from discussions as to whether change was required to the shape and form that change should take (Crawford ). A second Scotland Act was the outcome, which provided the Scottish Parliament more control over some taxes, including stamp duty, landfill tax, and a portion of income tax, as well as borrowing powers. The independence referendum—and the fear that independence would win—prompted the leaders of the three largest UK parties, including the Prime Minister, to announce their commitment to bestow further powers to the Scottish Parliament if Scotland voted to remain in the Union. ‘The Vow’ became the Smith Commission, which became the Scotland Act and included devolution of all income taxes, a proportion of VAT, increased borrowing powers, as well as the permanence of the Scottish Parliament to be enshrined in UK legislation. The UK government took as their reference point for extending the powers of the Scottish Parliament a consideration that there was public support (evidenced by support for the SNP, or for independence) for a more powerful parliament. The same principle held for the National Assembly for Wales, although enacted somewhat less exactly. Since the National Assembly of Wales was established in , constitutional reform has had a near permanent place in elite-level debate in Wales. The weak mandate devolution received in the referendum (passing by only , votes) saw the Assembly created with a ‘body corporate’ model, limited to secondary legislative power and without any recourse to raise revenues. Commission after commission followed: the Richard Commission in , to consider improvements to the system; the One-Wales Convention in , to consider a referendum on further powers; the Holtham Commission in , to consider the financial settlement in Wales; and the Silk Commission in , to consider further devolution. Further Wales Acts were passed in (to alter the ‘body corporate’ model, creating a separate executive, and to lay the groundwork for primary legislative powers); in (to legislate for some of the changes recommended by the Silk Commission); and in , which moved Wales to a Reserved Powers Model, akin to the Scottish Parliament, and to provide borrowing powers to the Assembly. Further powers that were delivered through the Government of Wales Act were only fully enacted after a referendum in . This set a precedent so that, unlike in Scotland, any further devolution of powers to Wales would also require a referendum. Whilst the Northern Irish Assembly has been suspended five times as a result of historic tensions and distrust between Unionist and Nationalist parties and communities and the inherent difficulties of maintaining a power-sharing agreement between the two sides, the competences of the Assembly have largely remained as established by the Good Friday Agreement. The longest suspension, between and was only
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concluded after talks between the UK and Irish Governments and the political parties in Northern Ireland produced a substantive outcome: the St Andrews Agreement. The Agreement stipulated that, in exchange for the nationalist Sinn Féin moving to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland (which had historically been much more favourable to the Unionist Protestant communities), the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) agreed to enter a power-sharing arrangement in the Assembly. This was reestablished in May , with small changes to the devolution settlement included in the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act , which focused on processes rather than new competences. The St Andrews Agreement itself had included provision for policing and justice to be devolved soon after the Assembly was restored, but this was delayed, once again, by tensions within the power-sharing executive. After a further threat of collapse, and two weeks of negotiations, the Hillsborough Castle Agreement between Sinn Féin and the DUP saw competences over policing and justice devolved. However, the issue of devolution and powers in the Northern Irish Assembly is largely connected to power-sharing and consociationalism—neither of the two community groupings are pushing for further powers on an extensive basis—rather, powers for a purpose, and with the agreement between the main actors, is the main push factor here. And what of England, the largest component nation in the UK? The obvious solution to the ‘English Question’, to create a separate English Parliament with powers similar to the current devolved legislatures, has limited support in England. Instead, and immediately after the Scottish electorate registered a ‘No’ vote in the independence referendum, the Prime Minister announced his intention to legislate for what he called ‘English Votes for English Laws’ (EVEL). The plan reflected the need to deal with the growing resentment surrounding the perceived generous powers and financial settlements to the devolved nations—and, particularly, the planned expansion of powers available to the Scottish Parliament. The theory behind the EVEL proposals was straightforward: if intended legislation would affect only England (being devolved elsewhere in the UK), then only English MPs in the House of Commons would be permitted to vote upon the bill. In principle, the proposed legislation is sound: English MPs would effectively become an English Parliament, taking on devolved functions without the need for an entirely separate institution. However, a number of issues arise in practice. First, the identification of English-only legislation is controversial, with much in the way of cross-border spillover effects evident (for example, in the field of healthcare). Second, there is concern about House of Commons processes. The argument has been made that non-English MPs would have a reduced role in the legislative process, as the SNP put it, becoming ‘second-class MPs’. Alongside this is the role of the Speaker, and the potential for politicization of the chair, whose role it would be to determine whether legislation qualified for EVEL. Third, there is the issue of finance. Changes to the block grant for the devolved nations are, as outlined above, dependent upon spending in comparable areas in England. The argument made by the SNP is that English-only legislation (in, for example, health spending) would have knock-on financial effects for the budgets of the devolved nations, and as such, the
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legislation should not be identified as ‘English-only’. The response to this particular concern would seem to suggest that, rather than denying England a form of quasidevolution, reform of the Barnett Formula would be a more appropriate solution (Chapter in this Handbook). Few disagree that something requires to be done to eliminate the constitutional imbalance that puts the English electorate at a disadvantage to their counterparts in the devolved nations. However, agreement on what that solution should be remains elusive.
T G M
.................................................................................................................................. When the Scottish Parliament was established, there was a clear intention to demarcate it from how the UK Parliament operates (Chapter in this Handbook). This was intended to be a more European-style consensus model, with the chamber arranged as a horseshoe rather than the traditional government versus opposition, adversarial setup seen at Westminster. The committee system of the Parliament was designed as a scrutineering body, where cross-party consensus activity could take place to introduce and improve legislation. And the Parliament was underpinned by a semi-proportional electoral system, electing nearly half its membership through the Additional Member System. As a result of this, majority government was unlikely (though not impossible, as the SNP demonstrated in ) which meant that parties would have to work together more closely, either in coalition government, as existed between and , or on an issue-by-issue basis during periods of minority government. Whilst in the s this changed at Westminster—which experienced its own coalition and minority governments in this period—this had been a significant departure from the single-party large-majority governments at UK level who required little input from political opponents. This consensus style never materialized in the way it was intended. Despite coalition government for the first two sessions forcing Labour and Liberal Democrat co-operation, this did not extend beyond governance—and during the SNP’s first term in office, as a minority government in , consensus was only sought on an issue-by-issue basis, especially on budget-setting, as a mechanism to keep the government in place. As a result, government in the Scottish Parliament thus closely mirrors the experience of UK governments. In the case of the SNP particularly, discipline has been remarkably tight, with virtually no rebellion to speak of. The First Minister appears to have the same level of policy authority as the Prime Minister does with their cabinet, and hiring and firing prerogatives broadly align with the governing party’s strategic priorities. Ministers, including the First Minister, are questioned on a weekly basis, mimicking the system at Westminster. These sessions, like at Westminster, tend to be adversarial, an opportunity for partisan point-scoring and short soundbites to be captured for news bulletins, rather than a significant attempt to hold government to account.
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T P P
.................................................................................................................................. Whilst the Scotland Act established the Scottish Parliament, the electoral system, and the internal governing arrangements outlined in the previous section, it did not specify the powers that the new institution would have. Rather, it spelled out in detail the powers that it would not have—the powers that would be retained by the UK Parliament at Westminster. This Reserved Powers Model, as it became known, was a stark contrast to the model adopted in the Wales Act , which noted the specific areas in which the National Assembly for Wales would have powers (and, in that case, secondary legislative power only). The benefit to the Scottish Parliament was that only those powers specifically outlined in the Scotland Act were reserved—if a competence were not explicitly named as reserved, it was a responsibility for the Scottish Parliament. The reserved powers were, broadly, the competences associated with the core functions of a sovereign state—defence and foreign affairs, currency and taxation, welfare policy, and the like (Table .).
Table 20.1 Reserved Powers and Devolved Powers (Scotland Act 1998) Reserved Powers
Devolved Powers
The constitution, crown, and parliaments Foreign affairs The EU Civil Service Defence Fiscal, economic, and monetary policy Currency, financial services, and markets Elections Immigration and nationality National security Emergency powers Extradition Import and export control Telecommunications Post Offices Energy policy Social security policy Employment and health and safety Abortion Broadcasting
Health Education Transport Justice Local government Housing Planning and economic development Police and fire services Agriculture and food Forestry Fishing Sport Statistics, public registers, and records Training Social work Tourism Environment Natural and built heritage The Arts Culture
Source: Author’s own compilation.
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Outside of these powers, the Scottish Parliament was given competence over all policy areas, which cover health, education, transport, justice, and rural affairs. Much of these policy areas flowed from the administrative competences of the old Scottish Office which, in turn, had been granted the opportunity to administer them for historic reasons. Despite the Acts of Union in , Scotland had maintained its own legal and education systems, and as a result, administration of these areas had been done by the Scottish Office since its establishment in . Later, partially as a result of the geography of Scotland, other quasi-autonomous boards were added to the Scottish Office, and the competences of health, transport, agriculture, and fishing were administered there. As a result, these became natural competences to devolve to the new Scottish Parliament, which took legislative control of each of these policy areas when it was established. A solitary tax power—the ability to vary the basic rate of income tax by p—was also devolved, the result of a positive response to the second question in the devolution referendum. This power was never utilized, and was eventually superseded by later legislation. Those later devolution acts—the Scotland Act and the Scotland Act —built upon the Scotland Act , accepting the premise of the Reserved Powers Model but explicitly devolving further powers in a raft of areas, including on income tax. Two clear principles were important in these later acts. First, the so-called ‘entrenchment’ of the Scottish Parliament as an institution was embedded in the legislation. Whilst, legally, this does not change the standing of the Parliament (any piece of UK legislation is repealable by an incoming government, as governments cannot bind their successors) it was a powerful statement which makes its abolition near impossible. Second, the sovereignty of the UK Parliament and its ability to legislate for Scotland was reiterated in the new legislation.
T S C
.................................................................................................................................. Where there was agreement on devolved issues (or, occasionally, when Scottish ministers felt it politically prudent to allow an issue to be dealt with at the UK level) a non-binding mechanism, the Sewel motion, was utilized in order to allow the UK Parliament to legislate. The Sewel motion is a classic example of how the UK constitution operates through convention as well as formal Acts of parliament. Sewel was intended as a time-saving mechanism—if the Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament held a common legislative objective, and the UK Parliament was going to enact legislation in this area, it made sense for the Scottish Parliament to simply allow this legislation to proceed in the UK Parliament and have that legislation extended to Scotland. The Sewel motion was the mechanism to give the UK Parliament ‘permission’ to legislation for Scotland as well as the rest of the UK when that legislation was on a devolved matter—in formal terms, it is known as a Legislative Consent Motion. By providing permission for the UK Parliament to act, this would avoid the perception
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that the UK Parliament was intruding on devolved matters. However, as a convention, the Sewel motion is not binding on either of the actors. What this means is that, in areas of devolved competences, the UK Parliament does not have to wait for the Scottish Parliament to ask it to legislate for it through a Sewel motion. It reserves the right to act unilaterally: in constitutional theory, the UK Parliament remained sovereign. Whilst the Scotland Act was clear that ‘the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament’, it was also at pains to point out that the UK Parliament remained sovereign, and as a result, did not require this permission, this was broadly a political answer to a thorny constitutional question. This is the heart of what devolution rests upon: the devolved institutions exist as extended legislatures, and sub-units, of the sovereign Parliament of the UK at Westminster. The Sewel motion was used frequently during the first two Scottish Parliamentary sessions (seventy-six times between and ), limiting the need for the two parliaments to co-ordinate or pass duplicate legislation and further emphasizing the informality of intergovernmental relations (Cairney ). Indeed, prior to , the only occasion where the Scottish Parliament had voted against providing consent for the UK Parliament to legislate in a devolved area was in , on aspects of the Welfare Reform Bill. On the remaining occasions since , the Scottish Parliament has passed LCMs, usually as a result of informal discussions between ministers and civil servants at both levels to ensure that any potential controversies or conflict is dealt with prior to the publication of the bill. On a number of occasions, the Scottish Parliament has actually asked for the UK government to extend legislation in England and Wales into what are devolved areas in Scotland—for example, with the Civil Partnerships Act —in an attempt to both ensure consistency across the UK and so as not to duplicate the required work in producing legislation. Conflict has largely been avoided even when the congruence of governing parties has disappeared, though on several occasions conflict has allowed the Scottish Parliament to utilize its competence in particular areas to alter UK Parliamentary intentions in others. For example, the – Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition UK government developed a new UK-wide energy policy (building on work by the previous Labour government) which incorporated significant use of nuclear energy, including the construction of a number of new nuclear power stations across the UK. Significantly, one of the proposed sites for a new power station was in Scotland. The Scottish Parliament— with a majority SNP government, and with support from other parties in the institution—had indicated its opposition to nuclear power, preferring to promote more renewable sources. Whilst energy policy remains a reserved competence, and as a result, a competence that the UK government retains the authority to act, the planning system is a devolved area, and Scottish ministers were required to consent to the construction of new plants under the Electricity Act. The Scottish Parliament, as a result, was able to utilize its devolved competences to shift UK Parliamentary policy— and a revised plan for new nuclear power stations included sites in England and Wales, but not Scotland.
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B D
.................................................................................................................................. Recent internal developments have further strengthened the devolved institutions. The Scotland Act takes as its starting point the near-entrenchment of the Scottish Parliament, and provides tax and (for the first time) welfare powers to Holyrood. The UK’s vote to leave the European Union, Brexit—and, importantly, the fact that the UK’s component nations voted differently, with England and Wales voting to leave the EU, Scotland and Northern Ireland to remain—has created further constitutional tension. Significantly, the Scottish First Minister instantly asserted the Scottish Government’s intention to fulfil the wishes of the Scottish electorate and attempt to remain in the EU—putting a second independence referendum on the table. Northern Ireland, which has a land border with the Republic of Ireland that would become a ‘hard EU border’ when the UK leaves, is also in a difficult constitutional position. Irish nationalists immediately called for a Border Poll to ascertain the wishes of the Northern Irish population on remaining in the UK or reuniting with the Republic of Ireland (and thus remaining in the EU). The Welsh Government found itself in a bind. A significant majority of Welsh Assembly Members—and Welsh Members of Parliament—were in favour of remaining in the UK, and the Welsh Government continued to articulate its opposition to Brexit, despite the Welsh electorate’s narrow support for leaving the EU. The larger devolution issue, however, came with the EU Withdrawal Bill. The Scottish Parliament’s Finance and Constitution Committee was employed in a scrutinizing role on the EU Withdrawal Bill, and made recommendations that the Scottish Parliament withhold consent for the bill insofar as it impinged upon Scottish Parliamentary powers. The argument made by the committee—and furthered by the Scottish Government and the Parliament’s Law Officers—was that the Scotland Act was clear in outlining a ‘reserved powers’ model for the devolved settlement in Scotland. This, as outlined above, indicated that the powers that were named in the Act—and only those powers—should be reserved to the UK Parliament. It followed that any powers that were not so named would be the preserve of the Scottish Parliament. The Act did not countenance the UK leaving the EU, thus the powers that had been ceded to the EU were not considered reserved. As a result, the Scottish Parliament argued, the powers that were scheduled to be repatriated to the UK from the EU after Brexit should, where they were not explicitly reserved to Westminster, be immediately devolved to the Scottish Parliament. This position was solidified by cross-party support in two ways. First, the Scottish Government, decided to introduce what they called the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill in February , with the purpose of ensuring that the legal system in Scotland would continue to function exactly the same way after Brexit had been completed. The Scottish Government sought and was granted the opportunity to fast-track the bill using the Scottish Parliament’s emergency bill procedure, and the bill itself largely mirrored the UK
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government’s equivalent bill, with additions specific to the devolved institution and the role of Scottish ministers. When brought to the Scottish Parliament at stage three, all MSPs bar the Scottish Conservatives and one Scottish Liberal Democrat voted in favour of the Scottish Government’s position. However, this position was complicated by the fact that, even though the Law Officers offered their support, the Presiding Officer suggested that such a bill did not fall within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament. As a result, the bill was referred to the UK Supreme Court for consideration. Second, a Legislative Consent Motion (LCM) was brought before the Scottish Parliament, utilizing the Sewel process outlined above. Consent on the EU Withdrawal Bill was formally withheld through a vote on the LCM in the Scottish Parliament in May —when all bar the Scottish Conservatives voted not to provide consent. The EU Withdrawal Bill proved much more controversial to the devolved institutional framework, and to a significant majority of the Parliament who voted against the LCM. The Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union case, in which the ability of the government to utilize the Royal Prerogative to trigger Article and the process of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU was challenged, also had implications for the devolved administrations in the UK. Whilst the Miller case was upheld, and the UK government was required to obtain parliamentary permission from the House of Commons to trigger Article , it was not compelled to discuss with, much less obtain support from, the devolved institutions. Whilst this was not a component question in the initial case, the devolved administrations brought an addendum to the case, suggesting that not only should these institutions be consulted but, because Brexit affected devolution, and more particularly, the competences of the devolved institutions, the UK Parliament required the consent of these institutions to move forward with this process. The UK Supreme Court rejected this argument, maintaining that the UK Parliament retains sovereignty over the devolved institutions. In addition, the ruling in Miller argued that, as a convention, the Sewel process of LCMs was nonbinding. The intricacies of legal and constitutional nuance were exacerbated by political opportunism. The Scotland Act includes the word ‘normally’ when suggesting that the UK Parliament will not ‘normally’ legislate in devolved areas without the permission of the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Conservative MSP (and constitutional lawyer) Professor Adam Tomkins argued that not only was Brexit not a ‘normal’ circumstance, the Scottish Government itself had conceded this point by pushing its EU Legal Continuity Bill through the Scottish Parliament under emergency procedures. As a result, he considered that the UK Parliament was perfectly entitled to act on behalf of the Scottish Parliament, irrespective of the latter’s vote against the LCM. But the Scotland Act has been amended by two further devolution acts in relation to Scotland and these provide further consideration of the relationship between the UK and Scottish Parliaments. The Scotland Act , for example, discusses the fiscal framework within which devolution operates, and the principle that neither parliament should act in a way that would cause ‘detriment’ to the other was included, both as part
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of the Smith Commission recommendations and as part of the Act itself. The Scottish Government has long argued that Brexit would have a detrimental impact on the Scottish Parliament and, as a result, the UK Parliament should not legislate on behalf of the Scottish Parliament—especially when the Scottish Parliament has expressly rejected an LCM to allow it. The historic principle of parliamentary sovereignty suggests the UK Parliament retains sovereignty over the institutions it itself has created, and thus should legitimately be able to act here—and the UK Supreme Court agreed with this principle, rejecting the devolved institutions’ argument that to move Article would also require the unanimous consent of those institutions. However, the existence of the Supreme Court itself—established only in —serves to undermine the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, dealing as it does with disputes between the centre and the devolved institutions. Further, the UK government subsequently challenged the Scottish Parliament’s legislation, which had been passed as the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Act, in the Supreme Court. Whilst the Court was somewhat equivocal in its findings, it broadly found that the legislation was ultra vires, that is, outwith the competence of the Scottish Parliament. In each of the cases outlined in this section, there is clear evidence of the significant challenges, not only of an uncodified constitution within which convention plays a significant role, but also the challenges of devolved legislatures within a unitary system, especially when the political leanings of the devolved legislatures are at such variance from the centre. In short—whilst precedent and convention continue to shape the constitution of the UK, the future direction of these arguments probably depends upon which precedents and which conventions are followed, since some of these appear to directly contradict one another.
C
.................................................................................................................................. Hazell (: ) described the UK as a union ‘that works in practice but not in theory.’ Whilst the ‘practice’ of governance in the UK has been tested in recent years with partisan vertical incongruence (since , no party in the UK has been in government at both UK and devolved level) there is a sense that, whatever barriers appear to be in place, actors find a way to operate within the structures in which they find themselves and the system simply works. Since the original devolution acts passed in , conflict between the centre and the devolved institutions has largely been avoided. This has been achieved in a number of ways. Informal channels, as a result of vertical congruence or partial congruence in governing parties, have allowed discussions to take place internally, within parties or within active civil service relationships, taking care of concerns privately, and prior to legislation moving forward. Intergovernmental relations through more formal channels, such as the Joint Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council, have allowed concerns to be discussed in more transparent fora, and again, conflict has been largely avoided insofar as legislation has been delivered
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with support from the devolved legislatures when required. Brexit has changed this dynamic (Chapter in this Handbook). The UK’s uncodified constitution, with its flexibility in relation to devolution and internal constitutional dynamics, relying as it does on convention and precedent, has allowed for the concerns of the devolved institutions to not only be aired publicly, but to cause real tensions between the centre and these institutions. Exacerbated in Scotland by the divisions already apparent through the independence referendum, the SNP continuing in government, and the fact that Scotland voted significantly to remain in the EU, the UK’s devolution agreements are being tested in ways they hitherto have not.
R Bogdanor, V. . Devolution in the United Kingdom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bogdanor, V. . Devolution in the United Kingdom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cairney, P. . ‘Intergovernmental Relations in Scotland: What was the SNP Effect?’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. Convery, A. . ‘British Conservatism and Federalism: A Step Too Far?’, Paper for Conference on Conservatives and Unionism in the st Century, Conservatives and Conservatism Specialist Group, Political Studies Association, University of Ulster Belfast Campus, October. Crawford, B. . ‘Ten Years of Devolution’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Davies, R. . ‘Devolution: A Process not an Event’, The Gregynog Papers, vol. . Dicey, A.V. . Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. London: Macmillan. Flinders, M. . ‘Constitutional Anomie’, Government and Opposition, /: –. Gamble, A. . ‘The Constitutional Revolution in the United Kingdom’, Publius, /: –. Harvey, M. . ‘How to Lose a Referendum in Seven Ways: Thoughts on the Upcoming Welsh Powers Referendum’, Regional and Federal Studies, /: –. Hazell, R. . ‘The English Question’, Publius, /: –. Holtham Commission. . ‘Fairness and Accountability: A New Funding Settlement for Wales’, Final Report of the Independent Commission on Funding and Finance for Wales, London: The Stationery Office. Rawlings, R. . Delineating Wales: Constitutional, Legal and Administrative Aspects of National Devolution. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Steel Commission. . Moving to Federalism: A New Settlement for Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Liberal Democrats. Trench, A. . ‘Introduction: The Second Phase of Devolution’, in A. Trench (ed.), The State of the Nations. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Trench, A. . ‘Wales and the Westminster Model’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. UKHL. . [] (Regina [on the application of Jackson and others] v Attorney General) (Lord Bingham) ( October ). Wyn Jones, I. . ‘From Assembly to Parliament’, Institute of Welsh Politics Annual Lecture.
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T C S S
.................................................................................................................................. T civil service of the Scottish Government sits at the intersection of two bodies of theoretical understanding: intergovernmental relations theory on the way that resources are mobilized and exchanged to produce territorial policy outcomes, and theories of public bureaucracy about the role of permanent officials in the political process. The result is a balance between innovation and derivation that develops over time, structured by laws and institutions. The devolved Scottish system of public administration has been weak on distinctive theory in both areas, producing a pattern of derived practice that is more marked than in devolved politics or service delivery. Fundamentally, the civil service and structure of government in Scotland are subsidiary aspects of UK traditions of public bureaucracy and the organization of public business. The Scottish model is a variant of the ‘Westminster model’ of a non-partisan, meritocratic, intellectually elitist bureaucracy at the centre, coupled with technical experts at local level (Page ; Parry ; Aucoin ). Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have similar models of a non-partisan service, and changes within them (usually in a direction of greater ministerial control) have retro-influenced the progenitor system (Grube and Howard ). India and South Africa have different political contexts, but a shared inheritance of an elitist single administrative service encompassing national and intermediate government. The Westminster model stands in contrast to European bureaucratic structures that are much more technically credentialized, legally rooted and politically influenced and it remains the dominant normative orientation of Scottish government.
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Because Scotland had no coherent state, government structures, or public administration before the nineteenth century—unlike its strong independent antecedents in church, law, and education—it came to use the forms of the British state of which it was a part from . In , the Scottish Office was formed as a London-based support to the new office of Scottish Secretary in the UK government. There were also Scottishbased boards in functional areas such as education and agriculture, in many cases with service delivery by local authorities. In , the various boards and departments were united in Edinburgh as a single-entity Scottish Office (Parry ). Some policy staff are now in Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, but the seat of Scotland’s devolved executive branch remains firmly in the capital. After further accretions of responsibility over the years, the Scottish Office was transposed in to be the Scottish Executive (renamed the Scottish Government in ), the administration responsible to ministers put in office by the new Scottish Parliament. But at the managerial level Scottish officials remain part of the UK’s Home Civil Service, with autonomy similar to that of a UK government department, though accountable exclusively to devolved ministers. Continued incorporation of Scottish officials in the Home Civil Service (now under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act , its first ever codification in law) prevented the devolved system from instituting a different model of the civil service task. As it turned out, the politicians did not wish to—even the Scottish National Party (SNP), which in its election manifesto called for a separate service like Northern Ireland’s, did not press the point when in government. Just as important in practical terms, the theoretical complete reservation of civil service management to the UK did not constrain local initiatives. Scotland adopted local versions of the UK Modernising Government agenda because they shared a common vision of management reform—leaner hierarchies with cuts in the cost of senior staff, better policymaking, and joined-up government. In these kinds of initiatives, they kept open channels to their Whitehall colleagues who maintained a sociological confidence in their capabilities and a detached respect for their different political mandate. The Scottish Government has preserved the UK civil service’s principles of recruitment on merit. It has benefited from the delegations given to all UK government departments to operate their own gradings and recruitment processes at middle and junior levels. It has the additional freedoms of no direct Treasury control of running costs and (since ) of no restriction on the number of non-impartial special advisers it can employ as civil servants. By there were fourteen as against the initial upper limit of twelve, including the First Minister’s chief of staff and heads of communications and policy, roles sometimes in the past performed by career civil servants, but this is no more of a politicization than had become the case in UK departments (see https:// beta.gov.scot/publications/special-advisers-february-/). Elite senior civil servants in the Scottish Government remain under the pay methodology of the British Senior Civil Service, which is based on job evaluation scores reflecting the importance of the posts. Even the nominally separate Northern Ireland Civil Service has found it convenient to retain this methodology to avoid the need to make decisions on an alternative approach. Their numbers are small. As of , there
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were Scottish officials in the Senior Civil Service (SCS). Forty-eight are in the three highest SCS grades (–) whose names and salaries are published. Grades and come within the Senior Leadership framework of the civil service: the Cabinet Office is consulted about moves within them and boards are chaired by a Civil Service Commissioner. In contrast, , more civil servants are in the Scottish Government’s autonomous A, B, and C grades, each divided into three pay ranges, with a total of , devolved civil servants in the Scottish Government Main collective bargaining unit (Scottish Government a: ). Most large executive agencies such as prisons and courts staff are outside this unit and have their own grades and bargaining arrangements. In the same way, Scottish Government has found UK-led pay constraints to be convenient even in the many parts of the public sector where it could set pay itself. UK pay freezes and subsequent pay caps have been followed on the grounds that no block grant money was available to depart from them. A per cent pay cap was removed from – but in practice the market for workforce recruitment and retention, some of which is influenced directly by the UK government policies, has been the determining factor. Although per cent of public sector employees in Scotland work for the devolved system, only . per cent of them are core Scottish Government civil servants (Parry : , updated to ). Indeed, most civil servants in Scotland work for UK departments rather than the Scottish Government, though the share is reducing— per cent in and per cent in (Parry , updated).
T E C C–L F
.................................................................................................................................. Scottish Government has had to manage the implications of a lack of symmetry between responsibilities, employment presence, and access to resources. Even after expansions in and , only half of the Scottish budget is financed by taxes rather than grant transfers from the UK level. The civil servants of the Scottish Government might appear to represent ‘the government of Scotland’ but in many of their actions they are projecting a level of control over policy and resourcing that does not fully exist. For public sector managers, devolved powers have to be exercised within a partly unpredictable and uncontrollable pattern of resource input. A main task of Scottish Government officials, advised by the Scottish Fiscal Commission (an analogue of the UK Office for Budget Responsibility) is to plan the generation of resources to allow Scotland’s public services to be maintained at the traditionally higher per capita level than the UK average. Since , more of the budget is now buoyant up or down according to economic conditions—the assigned share of VAT and the yield of income tax at any given tax rates—and are hard to predict (Chapter in this Handbook). The Scottish central bureaucracy faces little challenge at local level, because within Scotland the complex multilevel government issues typically found in European
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systems are absent. Complex historical patterns of local government were swept away in under a process to create entities large and competent enough to fulfil their functions (Chapter in this Handbook). One alternative approach—to build up large regional entities with functions and spending power rivalling that of the Scottish-level administration—was in place between and . But the nine regions were abolished in in favour of thirty-two all-purpose local authorities and the undoubted sub-national political tensions within Scotland were no longer expressed by strong institutional structures. Again characteristic of wider UK practice, the central devolved level has not allowed local government access to buoyant revenue sources capable of full expansion to pay for services, in freezing council tax as part of a ‘Concordat’ that gave an extra grant to the councils to finance spending in conformity with, but not beyond, central targets and consolidated many specific grants. The ability to export political responsibility and spending constraints to subordinate levels of government that may be controlled by other political parties retains its attractions after twenty years of devolution (Kenealy : ). Regions have gone but an implicit area level of around fifteen units has not. Health Boards have been stable on this basis since (except when one failed financially in and was split between its two neighbours). Pilot direct elections to two of them coupled with strong local councillor membership created the impression of democratic control. The experiment of direct elections was abandoned in . Finance and policy remain under firm central control in what seems the preferred territorial structure of civil servants.
C C P S
.................................................................................................................................. Devolution promised change in the processes as well as the policies of government. The Scottish Parliament was conceived as a new kind of legislature, with organizing principles of accountability designed from the bottom-up by an all-party Consultative Steering Group (CSG). Drawing on international models, the group produced a modern legislature that rejected many of the practices and styles of the UK Parliament. An important theme was the strengthening of scrutiny and accountability by subjectarea committee that would both investigate policies and consider legislation in detail. For officials, three variables of this approach were important: i) The CSG did not properly account for, and indeed largely excluded, the impact of party politics and party whipping (similarly evident in the review of its report conducted in by a Commission on Parliamentary Reform). Far from being the instrument of backbenchers, the committees became an extension of party control;
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ii) The Parliament created a volume of demand-side pressure on civil service time through parliamentary questions (with an important decision in that they could be asked when Parliament is not in session) and appearances at committees. Initially this simply created more work; later it promoted more economical and less hierarchical styles of briefing, preparation, and signing-off; iii) The CSG did not reconceptualize the relations between ministers and officials. Officials served their ministers, not the Parliament as a whole, and carried over assumptions and behaviours about how the groups should relate. The Parliament was implicitly much less formal than Westminster, but the executive branch inherited more than a century of notably formal working styles in the old Scottish Office. With no steering group on the Scottish Executive to parallel the one on the new Parliament (the nearest the system came to it was in a Financial Issues Advisory Group on budgetary procedures) and a very short preparatory period between elections and handover in , officials replicated and perpetuated what they knew (Parry and Jones ). A virtue was made of this—the new system was to inherit the highest standards of public administration. But it was impossible to make it work in terms of scale. The first shock was that there were so many ministers (). This made it impossible to scale up the provision of private offices and ministerial transport; ministers were diminished as charismatic leaders, and patterns of informality in working with them were uncomfortable to some senior officials. As designed by the proportional voting system for the Parliament, ministers came from more than one party, an unprecedented situation for officials and one for whose subtleties they lacked training. The response was to rest policy on an agreed ‘Programme for Government’ that superseded the parties’ own manifestos. Devolved government experience of this was of influence in the formation of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat UK coalition of .
M–C S R D P C
.................................................................................................................................. The devolution settlement was rooted in a paradox—it could only be implemented when the Labour Party, dominant in Scotland since the s, had a UK-wide majority, but at that point a major argument for devolution—that it would prevent the imposition of Conservative policies on Scotland—would have ceased to be the case. System diversification occurred only slowly. There was a continuity of personality in senior roles, especially Donald Dewar, Secretary of State for Scotland (UK) from to and then First Minister (devolved) until his sudden death in . His successor Henry McLeish had also been a UK minister but in a product of the devolved system who had never served at Westminster, Jack McConnell, took the top job. All senior officials
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also transferred in and were gradually succeeded over the years—some retiring early—by those whose primary formation had been under devolution. A Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition lasted from to and became more difficult to manage for officials when the emollient Jim Wallace was replaced as Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy First Minister by the more combative Nicol Stephen in . When a single-party government did take office (the Scottish National Party in ) it was in a minority, but gained an absolute majority in . SNP Government raised difficulties for the civil service on the independence issue but it also created a single focus of loyalty. With a much smaller Cabinet and a single-party but minority government, what might have seemed a potential crisis of nationalists coming to power turned out to be a stable context for the civil service as policies were brokered through without intervention from UK parties (Parry ). SNP ministers embraced pragmatic and informal ways of conducting business (Cairney ). There was no longer any need to defer symbolically to the UK level: the Executive was (initially unofficially) rebranded The Scottish Government. Typical of sub-national bureaucracies, Scottish Government staff became representative of the society and culture from which it emerged. But just as important were protocols on service to ministers rather than to the law or the Crown or the state.
L L S C S
.................................................................................................................................. Pre-devolution, Scotland had a balance of a vertical elite system that connected with UK counterparts and a horizontal one that supported careers wholly within Scotland. After , that might have been expected to attenuate in favour of a common leadership cadre in which a sufficient size of leadership pool would be achieved by movement between all parts of the public sector. The fact that this has not happened represents the perpetuation of the civil service’s sense of distinctiveness from local government. At the most senior level, the Permanent Secretaryship of the Scottish Government, all four of the incumbents have come from within the civil service. Their personalities reflect four phases of devolution. The first, Muir Russell, carried over from the Scottish Office; his appointment to the top job there in anticipated devolution and meant that there would be a continuity of style and orientation. The concept was of preservation of civil service standards under the pressure from local politicians. Training to staff emphasized this and in particular resisted any idea that the new Members of the Scottish Parliament might have direct access to, or means of constraint on, officials in the manner of local government. The next phase was of a technocratic leader. Russell left his post early in —to become Principal of Glasgow University, an elite sideways move. His successor,
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John Elvidge, emerged from a field of contemporaries heading the departments within the Executive, probably owing something to the support of the First Minister Jack McConnell, who had worked with him in Education. Elvidge was interested in system performance and ways of measuring it. He also promoted local versions of the more systematic approaches to ‘fit for purpose’ leadership and performance management being done in Whitehall, with external scrutiny. The Scottish exercise ‘Taking Stock’ in revealed communications failures within the Executive and left Elvidge looking beleaguered as he set up a new Strategic Board that did not include all the departmental secretaries. He recovered with a deft facilitation of the SNP’s advent to power (Parry , –). The third phase, under SNP government in , was the total surprise of an import from London. Elvidge retired at fifty-nine and a Whitehall Permanent Secretary, Peter Housden, was drafted in on a level transfer, meaning that the post did not even have to be advertised. This took remarkable self-confidence on the part of First Minister Alex Salmond. The advantage was that Housden had no Scottish baggage at all and could focus on his previous speciality of service delivery without becoming a principal adviser on constitutional matters. Housden’s Whitehall connections enabled the system to navigate as an honest broker in the face of accusations that Scottish officials might either owe loyalty to the unionist cause or have been taken over by nationalism. From , the system expressed the consolidation of devolution and its final detachment from sociological aspects of the pre-devolution Scottish Office, in which ministers were distant, public scrutiny limited, and female leaders absent. Housden’s succession by Scotland’s first female civil service Head, Leslie Evans, reverted to the pattern of the promotion of the second-tier official judged to be the most successful and most favoured by ministers. Changes to Whitehall practices in meant that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon formally had the last word on her preferred candidate. The original position in was that the UK Prime Minister had to approve the most senior devolved appointments, and the process is still run by the Head of the Civil Service and the Civil Service Commission in direct relation to the First Minister. The unified Home Civil Service meant that the ministerial role was devolved through an indirect process, with the First Minister an analogue of a UK departmental minister. Staff transfers between the devolved and UK levels have attenuated since the start-up period in , but Evans told the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee () that about eighty Scottish Government officials were on loan to other departments, mainly to the UK Scotland Office and Office of the Advocate General, both of which draw on a common personnel pool with their devolved interlocutors; ten were loaned the other way (Q/). Evans is on the Civil Service Board and confirmed that she attended regularly the Wednesday morning Permanent Secretary meetings in Whitehall and seemed to revel in the task of getting her colleagues to visit Scotland (Q/). This perpetuates the engagement with Whitehall promoted by Muir Russell in .
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T S S G—A UK A
.................................................................................................................................. The issue that has faced devolved Scottish government is how far its structures can evolve in directions reflecting its own political choices. The nineteenth-century starting-point was a structure of department and boards staffed by civil servants and governed by ministers, and local government responsible to local politicians. But through the twentieth century this fragmented into a diverse landscape of public bodies with varying governance arrangements that distanced the performance of functions from direct political responsibility. The structure of Scottish government borrows the UK pattern where most of central government is not in civil service departments. The ‘National Public Bodies Directory’ (gov.scot/Topics/government/public-bodies) gives a structural breakdown of Scottish devolved central government in : thirty-eight executive and six advisory nondepartmental public bodies; eight tribunals; five public corporations; twenty-three health bodies (fourteen health boards and nine all-Scotland bodies); seven executive agencies; six commissioners and ombudsmen; eight non-ministerial departments; and nineteen ‘other significant national bodies’ (including police and fire). But the conceptualizations are inconsistent, especially about whether members of staff are civil servants. One approach has been to demarcate agencies that are civil servant-based but include professional staff from other parts of the public sector—Education Scotland, Transport Scotland, Community Justice Scotland, Social Work Scotland, and the forthcoming Public Health Scotland. They sustain a plethora of strategies and plans that attempt to give coherence to the institutional landscape. The legal definitions in the Scottish governance landscape are based on UK models and are generated by a mixture of preponderant funding, appointment rights, employment position of staff, and the wider legal categories of charities and companies. Ultimately the Office for National Statistics (ONS) will classify bodies by sector following international methodology and resist attempts to conceal effective public funding and control by corporate forms that are nominally private or third sector. This causes similar problems of governance control in both UK and Scotland bodies, with nominally autonomous boards vulnerable to civil service steering and intervention (Heald and Steel ). Scotland has not contributed greatly to international debate on ‘hybridity’, the development of novel mechanisms to manage public business (Denis et al. ). There was interest in new kinds of non-profit funding mechanisms for infrastructure (currently a planned activity of a new Scottish National Investment Bank) but in the event major projects were funded in conventional ways. UK government accounting rules have limited risk exposure, and borrowing rights are limited; basically, the Scottish Government cannot fund a public sector deficit. Resistance on both ideological and pragmatic grounds to contractorization and public–private mechanisms of deferred payment has been a further element.
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The two limitations of incomplete powers and reliance on imported institutional categories hamper the Scottish system’s capacity for ‘design thinking’ about new ways of producing public policies (Clarke and Craft ). Scotland, not England, is now the repository of traditional UK structures. Unlike England, Scotland has retained nationalized industries in functions privatized in England, such as Scottish Water, Calmac (ferries) and Highlands and Islands Airports. Internal Scottish railways are run since by the Scottish Government, which has attempted a more integrated version of a model of franchising set at UK level. After a brief introduction of NHS Trusts on the English model, Scotland reverted in to area health boards and national boards for certain functions that are part of central government.
O A UK S R
.................................................................................................................................. Many other aspects of the task affecting civil servants bear the imprint of the UK inheritance. The UK has a long tradition of a direct line of audit by Parliament that is independent of ministers. The National Audit Office reports to the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons, always chaired by an opposition member, and senior officials are nominated as Accounting Officers who may be asked to appear before that committee. The self-policing aspects of this system are as important as the formal ones and were replicated in the Scottish devolved system. The Scottish Parliament has what is now called a ‘Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee’ and civil servants are ‘accountable officers’. Audit Scotland was created as a new body responsible for both central and local government accounts. As well as a constant stream of annual audit plans for Scottish public bodies, its reports have ranged widely into public sector management issues. Ministers and officials have resisted Scottish Parliament pressure for an American system where key public officials are nominated or confirmed by MSPs. To give an example, in all opposition parties called for the next chair of the Scottish Police Authority to be nominated by a committee of MSPs, citing the precedents of the Auditor-General and Childrens’ Commissioner. The Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act specified ministerial appointment and this duly happened. On freedom of information, Scottish legislation (the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act ) is somewhat freer than the UK law of , reflecting Liberal Democrat influence, by using the word ‘substantially’ in the test of prejudice or inhibition to the conduct of public affairs that would result from the refusal of a request. But in practice the Scottish Government has been firm in resisting political pressure to reveal the existence as well as the content of official advice, with court referrals on the financial implications of replacing council tax with local income tax () and on whether an independent Scotland could assume EU membership (). A report
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from the Information Commissioner in June suggested that the Scottish Government may have tried to run a slow response track to requests from journalists and researchers, breaching applicant-blind principles, and gave a useful picture of the relations between ministers, special advisers, and permanent officials (Scottish Information Commissioner ). On public employment, Scotland has an inherited pattern of secure, rule-based personnel structures in the public sector, defended by trade unions stronger than in the private sector and allied to centre-left political parties. In many respects the SNP has joined Labour in this protection. The civil service always had a tradition of meritbased appointment without politician influence, and pre-devolution changes in practice swept away most of the political patronage in the filling of local authority jobs. The large-scale reorganizations of local government and the NHS found in England have been rejected (Chapter in this Handbook). Instead, the centre has taken powers to impose ‘special measures’ on outlying delivery agencies that seem unable to perform their functions as well as their comparators.
T S C S L—N M
.................................................................................................................................. The Scottish Government has made a serious, and in comparative terms, unusual, attempt to break down institutional ‘silos’ of large government departments. The Scottish Office after retained nominally separate departments such as education, home, health, and agriculture, but in the s these lost their separate finance and personnel capability and under devolution corresponded less and less well with ministerial portfolios. In the Permanent Secretary persuaded the incoming SNP Government to abolish departments. Directorates (by , thirty-five in number) were left free-floating, their Directors relating directly to ministers. Directors-General (DGs) corresponded to the previous heads of department and continued to form the central decision-making group of officials, since known as the Corporate Board, having previously been called the Management Group, Strategic Board, and Executive Board. Its agenda and minutes are published on the Scottish Government website but are unrevealingly worded. In a way now typical of corporate structures in the UK civil service, there are also six non-executive directors (paid by the day) with business and third sector experience. Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister made a serious effort at both ministerial and official level to secure gender equality. In July , the DGs were reshuffled into six. Two are programmatic: one is a catch-all of Education, Communities, and Justice, the policy aspect of services largely administered by local government. But the other post, Health and Social Care, is also Chief Executive of the NHS in Scotland, which accounts for one-third of all devolved public expenditure and public employment. Both the
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brand (the National Health Service) and the concept (universal services free at the point of use) remain shared with the UK level. Although nominally run by health boards, accountability for service standards quickly falls on Scottish Government ministers and officials and has become a defining indicator of their performance. Two DGs are economic—‘Economy’ (including agriculture) and ‘Scottish Exchequer’; these roles equate to the traditional ones of Chief Economic Adviser and Director of Finance. Reversing traditional gender stereotypes, these were held by women in and the programmatic commands by men. The last two DGs do political and organizational work and, through the challenges of independence and Brexit, were both headed by ‘survivors’, fast-stream entrants to the pre-devolution Scottish Office: Ken Thomson for Constitution and External Affairs and Sarah Davidson for Organisational Development and Operations. Thomson sat on the ‘People Board’ of the Home Civil Service and so had a wider influence, now an untypical example of a level of Whitehall orientation that was once normal.
T ‘S M’—N O C P
.................................................................................................................................. From, the start, devolution raised the question of what was to be the primary level of government in Scotland. Income transactions with citizens largely bypassed the Scottish Government and their staff did not run many face-to-face services. One response was to make the Scottish administration the centre of a network of public services that it would join up. John Elvidge coined the phrase ‘Scottish model of government’ with its own approach to policymaking to describe the system he helped to put in place as Permanent Secretary (Elvidge ; Cairney ; Chapter in this Handbook). This included sixteen ‘national outcomes’, political and social end states whose achievement was not within the power of the Scottish Government or indeed government at all, linked to a ‘Scotland Performs’ website that continues to publish performance indicators (Scottish Government b). These survived the party transition in and reflect long-term technocratic, consensual and elite-driven aspects of Scottish government. Connolly and Pyper (Chapter in this Handbook), discuss the evolution of the National Performance Framework under the SNP. A parallel system of community planning brought together local actors from all parts of government under the auspices of local authorities. Community Planning Partnerships in the thirty-two local authorities started in and were expanded by the SNP into ‘Single Outcome Agreements’ explicitly relating national and local objectives. Senior Scottish Government officials were matched up with two authorities each and asked to visit and advise them in a mixture of networks and hierarchies (Parry ). Third sector organizations are also important partners: research by Lindsay et al. () suggested that the community planning approach has promoted a localist agenda to
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set alongside contractual and top-down themes. The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act gives more specific statutory purpose and duties to the process and widens the numbers of public bodies involved.
S D C K P A
.................................................................................................................................. In recent years some important choices on organization and reorganization of public services have been made. In , a Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services chaired by Campbell Christie emphasized the need for integration and collaboration in a likely era of resource constraint. Themes of empowerment, collaboration, and preventative spending were set out in a sea of rhetoric that did not address existing organizational structures and employment positions. This set the tone for a range of responses. Theme , Integration: This involves bringing together cognate services that were previously in different parts of government. In , thirty-one integration authorities for health and social work were created corresponding to all but one of the local authority areas (the smallest, Clackmannanshire, merging with Stirling in this service). In theory, they took over budgets for adult primary health care, emergency hospital admissions, and adult social care. Some have taken on children’s health care and social care and criminal justice social work although here the budgetary crossover is less. The purpose is that the most cost-effective care provision can be planned and health budgets raided for cheaper social care provision. The vision is set out in the Health and Social Care Delivery Plan of December , of similar character to the Christie report. The difficulty is that neither the NHS brand nor the employment positions of staff are dismantled. The boards and chief officers exist but float above the pre-existing system without full managerial engagement. Central control of staff recruitment and workforce planning is particularly strong in the NHS, which is part of central government. A new NHS general practitioners’ contract in addressed the challenges of urban medicine with high demand and health need, but correspondingly disfavoured rural areas with equal recruitment challenges. Again the devolution paradox was faced—how do you diverge from the past, or from England, without disfavouring a politically prominent group? Theme , Regionalization: The problems of scale associated with local government reorganization have prompted continuing interest in recreating the regional level in most of Scotland. This has always been the pattern in health. In education, the scale is wrong at the secondary school level, with catchment areas not making sense and access to specialist advice for schools dependent on the accident of local authority size. In , the Education Secretary John Swinney proposed regional directors relating directly to head teachers, which attracted criticism as a possible move in an English direction of head teachers as budget-holding leaders and was modified into ‘Regional
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Improvement Leads’. Similar considerations arise in social work, where there are eight Community Justice Authorities implementing council responsibilities for criminal justice social work, and much joint-working under health and social care integration. Theme , Centralization: Implicitly an all-Scotland level makes sense in terms of population, but it can represent a politically contentious withdrawal of local political control. After , further education colleges became a national body and in Scottish Water, a public corporation performing functions previously with regional councils, was formed after an interim stage of three regional authorities. But for other ex-regional functions, police and fire, the interim stage was bypassed. Maintained as joint local authority boards after , the functions went direct to a single Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue in . The new social security powers given by the Scotland Act required major organizational decisions (and posed pressures on staffing and budgets analysed by Audit Scotland ()). In , a new fifty-staff devolved body, Revenue Scotland, had been created to manage the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax, the successor to Stamp Duty, and the Landfill Tax (Kenealy : ). In contrast, the practicalities of tracking taxpayers has led to the administration of the Scottish Rate of Income Tax (from renamed Non-savings Non-dividend Income Tax, now totally devolved to Scotland) being left with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). It has a Deputy Director for Devolution who briefs Scottish Parliament committees. For this purpose HMRC in effect reports to both UK and Scottish governments whilst legally remaining a UK government department (a comparable arrangement to what the SNP had in mind in for the Bank of England under independence). When the devolved system gained control of mainly disability-related social cash benefits in , and the ability to create others, the image in Scotland of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was so poor that the political impulsion to create a separate civil service delivery organization with its own values and practices was irresistible. From , a Scottish Social Security Agency came into being as an executive agency of the Scottish Government with its main office in Dundee, another major site in Glasgow and an unspecified local presence. During and , they started paying supplements to UK benefits for carers, children, and funeral expenses. With over , jobs at stake the new agency prompted a fight over location familiar in all systems. Scottish ministers remain dependent on the DWP for client data and processes in what seems set to be a long transitional period of benefit-by-benefit migration to the new Scottish agency. Four issues arise with the important decision on social security that boosts the Scottish Government workforce by per cent. The first is that the executive agency route that has been chosen avoids the need to set up a new corporate entity by legislation: the new entity sits alongside prisons, courts, and student support as a large but managerially submerged entity that can be given as much autonomy as ministers wish. The second is that there will be parallel working with the DWP even on devolved benefits: important and expensive ones like Attendance Allowance and Personal Independence Payments are administered at a central British level.
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The DWP will continue to run its Job Centre Plus network and its area-by-area introduction of the controversial Universal Credit system that integrates working age benefits and encompasses clients with employability and disability issues that are potential users of the Scottish system also. Following a Northern Ireland precedent, the Scottish Government has gained discretion for its recipients to choose fortnightly rather than monthly payments and payment of rent direct to landlords and this was implemented in . The third issue is the continuation of the post-war UK tradition of keeping cash benefits out of the hands of local authorities: they run Housing Benefit on central guidelines until it is absorbed in Universal Credit, and have powers of direct payment to social care and family clients, but their weak revenue base keeps them out of this high-spending area. The fourth is that the Scottish system is setting up a public bureaucracy with competing values to UK colleagues from which they may be recruited. Given that all UK public servants ostensibly work under a stated value system of respect and propriety—the problems arise from the rules they operate to contain spending and clientele—this is an important development. The common motif of these changes is one of ‘simplification’, the title applied to the SNP’s public service reform proposals of (later ‘streamlining’ was also used). It is a misnomer. The UK tradition of ‘quango-culling’ attracts a political premium on the crudest grounds of reduction of numbers of separate bodies (in Scotland by per cent in four years), but it also involves the preservation of complexity where this is convenient. Scotland never went as far down the road of absorption into the central civil service as did Wales (industrial promotion and training remain outside) and in some respects the system itself resembles an IT network where new connections have been grafted on over the years and it is difficult and risky to try to start from a zero base.
M B: T C N
.................................................................................................................................. Creations of new nation states out of existing ones raises potential issues of secession, sedition, and treason that are difficult for civil services. The Catalan referendum of claimed the Scottish referendum of September as a precedent, but in doing so showed how unusual the Scottish one had been. It was organized by the Scottish Government and its officials, fully legally, under a temporary adjustment of devolved powers by the UK government in to allow a poll on Scottish independence outside the UK to be held before the end of . The civil service in Scotland handled the independence referendum by transposing its clear position that officials serve their duly constituted ministers exclusively, and not any other level of government. Scottish officials could thus advise upon, and promote, independence like any other SNP policy. Correspondingly, officials in UK departments,
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including the Scotland Office, would advise upon and promote the unionist position of their ministers. Officials would be a passive instrument of ministerial will. Senior UK civil service management (especially the Head, Sir Gus O’Donnell) supported this position (set out in managerial advice to officials) against political contentions that Scottish officials had some kind of loyalty to the UK or unionism or that protocols on policy matters did not apply to this existential challenge to the nature of the political system. A difficulty was that the SNP, using civil service advice, developed a detailed scenario of policy in an independent Scotland if SNP Government continued. Did this go beyond normal official advice and should it have been promoted by the Yes campaign rather than the Scottish Government? Two lines of defence were available to these contentions. Advice on the sufficiency of existing powers—what the devolved system was prevented from doing by the present settlement but would be able to do if that changed—was routinely being offered. And long-term strategies going beyond the present parliament and requiring the government to be re-elected had become commonplace at the UK level. What might have seemed a defensible position as an aspect of civil service neutrality on the issue—that officials should refuse to give advice on what might happen after independence—did not really work. Indeed, the Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans suggested to the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee () that the independence referendum raised fewer, not more impartiality issues than the civil service handled already: ‘it was very clear to differentiate between a referendum and an election and to do that very early on. A referendum was about a government policy but was not an election. Therefore, ministers were entitled to support from the civil service. The other point was to be very clear about what “impartial” meant. Impartial is one of the values, of course, but it does not mean neutral. We are civil servants who support the Government policies of the day, the elected Government’ (Q ). Evans’s own iteration of the modernizing project, ‘SG’, emphasizes joined-up and partnership working, and a closer relationship between ministers and officials in policy development and back-office support (https://civilservice.blog.gov.uk/// /working-in-partnership/). The Scottish Government’s Communications Plan – (December ) ties in with the SNP’s A Nation with Ambition; the Government’s Programme for Scotland – (September ) and the latest version of the National Performance Framework (May ) projecting Scotland as a confident, outward-looking nation, a good place to grow up in or migrate to. This model of a progressive, liberal nation is influenced by non-governmental organizations and norms of rights and respect and represents an alignment of political and official orientations under the SNP. The absence of Conservative Party policy perspectives is more significant than any constitutional issues. This approach has avoided some of the tensions between political and administrative elites that Richards and Smith () identified at the UK level. Whereas they saw an erosion of the symbiosis between politicians and administrators as politicians inconsistently praise and criticize traditional models, Scotland has seen a different kind of
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accommodation. In , special advisers helped politicians to manage the independence issue whilst permanent officials got on with service delivery. Even in such a politicized context, the ‘public service bargain’ between politicians and administrators, which has been subject to so much challenge and redefinition worldwide, broadly held in place (Hood and Lodge ; Shaw and Eichbaum ). The bargain also survived a moment of strain in when a new internal policy on sexual harassment attracted retrospective complaints against former First Minister Alex Salmond, and his successor Nicola Sturgeon stood behind the civil service’s procedural approach in the face of legal action by Salmond on due process grounds and an unprecedentedly high level of attention on the Permanent Secretary.
S F H P
.................................................................................................................................. The final issue is about the role of the civil service in the stabilization and system maintenance of government in Scotland. A networked ‘deep state’ may be suggested with both UK and Scottish aspects and transcending particular governments. Cooperation on defence, security, and international trade promotion requires ongoing official networks; tax collection and calculation of benefit entitlements are unified; health and social care professional structures and the NHS brand are aligned; local government has been kept under tight central control; and audit and accounting protocols remain similar across UK governments. At the Scottish level, the courts, police, judicial appointments, criminal procedure, and prisons—important parts of any deep state—were devolved in . There is no UK-level police force beyond the small British Transport Police on the railways (beloved of unionists but set to lose its Scottish functions). There is much co-operation on intelligence, counter-terrorism, and organized crime but it is between equals. This allowed Scotland to become quite quickly a ‘proper’ government with little external legal or political grip on its activities and operating as an even more enhanced partner in intergovernmental councils when high-level constitutional issues were at stake (McEwen ). The secretariat of the Smith Commission to consider enhanced powers for the Scottish Parliament after the independence referendum was formed jointly of Scottish and UK officials (Kenealy et al. ). Brexit required intensive engagement at civil service level about whether powers in devolved areas recovered from the EU would require a UK-wide common legal framework. These were described as ‘deep dive’ sessions between the governments, held ‘without prejudice to the views of ministers in each administration’. The phrase came from the Memorandum on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and the Establishment of Common Frameworks agreed between the UK and Welsh—but not Scottish— governments on April .
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Brexit provided heady times for Scottish officials as non-subordinate actors in high politics. The Lord Advocate—the chief Scottish law officer who is part of the Scottish Government and can speak in the Parliament, though most have been non-partisan— asserted the competence of a new Scottish law allowing the amendment after Brexit of previous EU legislation in devolved areas (referred to in short as the Scottish Continuity Bill). The Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, required also to advise on competence, took a different view and a referral to the UK Supreme Court on the validity of the law by the UK government followed (although the substance of UK control was reasserted, without the consent of the Scottish Parliament, in the EU Withdrawal Act ). The Supreme Court’s verdict in December disagreed with the Presiding Officer’s line of reasoning and gave qualified support to the Scottish Parliament’s power to legislate in these areas. This fitted with a trend of generally devolution-friendly UK Supreme Court judgments and with its refusal to intervene on the direct referral of a case from the Scottish courts to the European Court of Justice, resulting in the judgment of December that an EU member state could rescind a withdrawal made under Article during the notice period.
C: A S B D F
.................................................................................................................................. The intergovernmental rather than interdepartmental nature of Brexit discussions showed that the Scottish devolved system’s lack of its own civil service had rapidly and surprisingly ceased to be a problem: the UK level had no wish to enforce managerial consistency and indeed emerged as a defender of strict single-channel ministerial accountability. Anthropomorphic structures of public sector organization, contracts, and accounting are shared with the UK and give further checks against malpractice. In performance terms, the Scottish system has often been seen as an exemplar rather than a warning to the UK as a whole. It has avoided the worst of the problems associated with faults of ‘meta-governance’ at the UK level, in which the centre attempts to impose tighter control over an ever more complex pattern of delivery bodies (Dommett and Flinders ). All this has made the Scottish civil service a skilled navigator of constitutional and managerial change. Shielded by the UK-centricity of media channels, and with its own doings of scant interest as a news story, the bureaucracy has managed rapid constitutional development and the ultimate challenge of possible secession. Nationalism apart, the SNP’s political success enabled the civil service to work with a moderate, non-ideological and realistic party committed to both the welfare state and economic growth. Historical curiosities of the British state mean that Scottish Government stands apart from most comparative patterns of intergovernmental organization. These would posit
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the availability of autonomous bureaucratic resources alongside legal and financial ones in a coherent structure of territorial politics. Numerous federal and multilevel systems operate in this way. Scotland’s devolved system started off with an unbalanced pattern of high legal resources, mostly exercised exclusively and not shared with the centre, low financial ones, or strong but derivative bureaucratic ones. Eventually, these rebalanced and even income tax rates were wholly devolved. But autonomy of structure and public bureaucracy was not secured as the UK tried to design a non-federal, asymmetrical system networked through political parties and civil society. Gradually, the Scottish administrative system escaped from practical or intellectual subordination to the UK centre, but its modalities and practices were still bound by UK categories and norms. In this respect, it makes a lesser contribution to comparative political analysis than do other aspects of the Scottish political system.
R Aucoin, P. . ‘New Political Governance in Westminster Systems: Impartial Public Administration and Management Performance at Risk’, Governance, /: –. Audit Scotland. . Managing the Implementation of the Scotland Acts. Available at: www. auditscotland.gov.uk/uploads/docs/nr__managing_scotland_acts.rtf. Cairney, P. . ‘Intergovernmental Relations in Scotland: What was the SNP Effect?’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. Clarke, A. and Craft, J. . ‘The Twin Faces of Public Sector Design’, Governance online, March. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/./gove.. Denis, J-L., Ferlie, E. and van Gestel, N. . ‘Understanding Hybridity in Public Organisations’, Public Administration, /: –. Dommett, K. and Flinders, M. . ‘The Centre strikes back: meta-governance, delegation and the core executive in the UK –’. Public Administration, /: –. Elvidge, J. . Northern Exposure: Lessons from the First Twelve Years of Devolved Government. London: Institute for Government. Grube, D.C. and Howard, C. . ‘Promiscuously Partisan? Public Service Impartiality and Responsiveness in Westminster Systems’, Governance, /: –. Heald, D. and Steel, D. . ‘The Governance of Public Bodies in Times of Austerity’, British Accounting Review, /: –. Hood, C. and Lodge, M. . The Politics of Public Service Bargains. Oxford: Oxford University Press. House of Commons Public Administration And Constitutional Affairs Committee. . The Future of the Union Part Two: Inter-institutional Relations in the UK. Sixth report –, HC and oral evidence March HC . Kenealy, D. . ‘The Economy and the Constitution under the SNP –’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Kenealy, D., Eichhorn, J., Parry, R., Paterson, L., and Remond, A. . Publics, Elites and Constitutional Change in the UK. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lindsay, C., Osborne, S.P., and Bond, S. . ‘The “New Public Governance” and Employment Services in an Era of Crisis: Challenges for Third Sector Organisations in Scotland’, Public Administration, /: –.
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McEwen, N. . ‘Purpose and Power in Intergovernmental Councils in the UK’, Regional and Federal Studies, /: –. Page, E. . ‘Has the Whitehall Model Survived?’, International Review of Administrative Sciences, /: –. Parry, R. . ‘The Centralisation of the Scottish Office’, in R. Rose (ed.), Ministers and Ministries. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Parry, R. . ‘Reshaping Structures of Government across the UK’, in G. Lodge and K. Schmuecker (eds), Devolution in Practice . London: Institute for Public Policy Research. Parry, R. . ‘The United Kingdom Civil Service: A Devolving System’, in A. Massey (ed.), International Handbook on Civil Service Systems. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Parry, R. . ‘The Service and Intergovernmental Relations in the Post-devolution UK’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. Parry, R. . ‘Civil Service and Machinery of Government’, in D. McTavish (ed.), Politics in Scotland. Abingdon: Routledge. Parry, R. and Jones, A. . ‘The Transition from the Scottish Office to the Scottish Executive’, Public Policy and Administration, /: –. Richards, D. and Smith, M.J. . ‘The Westminster Model and the ‘Indivisibility of the Political and Administrative Elite: A Convenient Myth whose Time is Up?’, Governance, /: –. Scottish Government. a. Equality Outcomes and Mainstreaming Report . Available at: http://www.gov.scot/Resource//.pdf. Scottish Government. b. Scotland Performs Update, December . Available at: http:// www.beta.gov.scot/publications/scotland-performs-update-/. Scottish Information Commissioner. . Intervention Report Scottish Government June . St. Andrews: Scottish Information Commissioner. Shaw, R. and Eichbaum, C. . ‘Politicians, Political Advisers and the Vocabulary of Public Service Bargains: Speaking in Tongues?’, Public Administration, /: –.
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.................................................................................................................................. T chapter unpacks the challenges of public service reform in Scotland and examines the extent to which opportunities for engendering effective national public value leadership and management have been missed since . In Scotland, network governance and multilevel stakeholder relations and interests characterize an increasingly complex landscape in the management of public service reform. Accused by some of being ‘fuzzy’ (Rhodes and Wanna ; Williams and Shearer ), public value has nonetheless become the centre of major academic debates, which have gravitated around whether it is a distinctly new paradigm, superseding new public management (NPM) (Stoker ). The strategies, processes and mechanisms for pursuing public value in a network governance context, from a national leadership perspective, are also inextricably linked to macro-political interests regarding ‘how best’ to reform the public sector in order for outcomes (or values) to be achieved. For Scotland, the approach to public value leadership has been to define public value through the language of ‘national outcomes’, which have been set out within a National Performance Framework (NPF). This is based upon implementing a localism-focused ‘empowerment’ model of political leadership whereby the NPF necessitates network governance actors operating at meso-levels (e.g. in partnership contexts via health authorities, police services, and local government) to be the change agents or catalysts of public value leadership and management, with integration efforts by these agents centring on creating public value in line with national outcomes.
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This chapter highlights how a ‘hard’ empowerment-focused leadership approach by the Scottish Government led to missed opportunities for achieving public value leadership as a consequence of governance deficits between the macro-level (Scottish Government) and meso-levels, and the exacerbation of this by national policy distractions towards constitutional affairs (the Scottish ‘independence question’). We maintain that the empowerment approach to public service leadership has created crippling structural complexities which, taken together, have resulted in the impairment of public value leadership and management. We question the extent to which effective public value leadership and management is possible for public managers operating within such an environment (notwithstanding the challenges of austerity). The network governance literature highlights the dangers of poor network governance in terms of the risks of fuzzy accountabilities and blame-gaming, as well as increased transaction costs because of forced partnership working (Hindmoor ; Resodihardjo et al. ). Increasing localism, fragmentary policy systems, and structural reforms (including the acute impact of austerity) have also featured in public administration developments in England and Wales, yet what differentiates Scotland is the acute level of policy focus upon constitutional matters—leading to ‘policy distraction’, which have ultimately undermined network governance. Focusing on the period since the election of the SNP Government in , this chapter is informed by qualitative interviews with key public sector actors who have network management and leadership roles in local government and in public services in Scotland. Extrapolating from the Scottish case, we argue that there are lessons and implications for sub-national governance arrangements more generally.
P V L N G
.................................................................................................................................. Modern governance requires leaders of public service reform to be aware that strategic success depends on the nature of the governing context within which strategies are implemented. The academic literature highlights the fact that network governance in the context of public service reform is associated with several strategies but these tend to be sculpted around public value, network management, and outcomes-based approaches (Moore ; Stoker ; Alford and Hughes ; Williams and Shearer ; Bryson et al. ; Hartley et al. ; Bryson et al. ). Such themes emphasize leadership approaches that can be described as participative, delegative and collaborative (Van Wart : –), with less emphasis being placed on directive or autocratic approaches. This is because network governance is synonymous with ‘integration’ on the basis that ‘multiple actors with multiple interests create a common vision of, and work together to create, public value (the common good, or public interest)’ (Morse : ). Within the academic terrain of understanding reform
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within the context of a network governance environment, there is no shortage of concepts (which are often related to each other). In this respect it is prudent to note what we mean by the dominant terms that are important for contextualizing the discussion in this chapter (see Table .). The academic literature considers public value leadership in the context of network management (Moore ; Stoker ; Alford and Hughes ; Williams and Shearer ; Bryson et al. ; Hartley et al. ). Public value leadership is inextricably linked with public management, hence the use of the phrase ‘public value leadership and management’—meaning that ‘management matters’ in leading public governance reform (Wright and Pandey : ). Public value leadership and management are associated with, inter alia, empowering those organizations and agencies within the public sector to operate in an outcomes-focused way (Moore ; Alford and Hughes ; Stoker ; Williams and Shearer ; Bryson et al. ; Hartley et al. ; Bryson et al. ). As noted above, these phenomena have a tendency towards an approach to public value leadership that generally reflects participative, delegative, and collaborative models of leadership (Van Wart : –)—with less emphasis on strategic or directive models of leadership.
Table 22.1 Key Underpinning Terms for Understanding Public Value Leadership Public value
Public value centres on the important roles that public managers can play in maintaining the integrity of public sector bodies. Ideas of public value embrace notions of efficiency and effectiveness but do so on the basis of meaningful citizen involvement in public service reform (see Moore 1995). This means that lines of accountability are geared towards citizens as well as political masters. This is linked to the rise in participatory governance perspectives in public service design, including co-creation and co-production.
Network management
Network management, in public value terms, can be understood as the process of involving and managing multiple stakeholders in order to achieve value for society (or outcomes) but doing so in such a way that complex lines of accountability are managed carefully (to ensure that checks and balances are in place).
Outcomes-based approaches
This concerns instilling a culture of evaluation (which is impact-focused) in public sector management. For public managers this means that reform should be planned on the basis that programmes, policies, and interventions can be evaluated, ensuring that new initiatives are ‘evaluable’ so that it is possible to discern what contribution such initiatives have made to broader societal outcomes—for example, reductions in health inequalities, reductions in the educational attainment gap, increased economic prosperity, and so on (see Wimbush 2011; Connolly 2016).
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
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Meso-level public sector leaders in Scotland (those operating across partnerships) tend not to report that such an approach to leadership is negative per se. However, they do perceive the extant network governance environment in Scotland as requiring more directional modes of leadership in order to foster processes and styles of governance that elucidate what can be described as ‘bilateral transformative leadership’ (Grundstein-Amado ). The Scottish Government has communicated its transformative leadership approach through empowering measures enshrined within a NPF, which is intended to provide ‘direction and ambition’ for Scotland (Scottish Government ; Chapter in this Handbook). Reform initiatives include delegated drivers for the renewal of localism in an effort to rejuvenate citizen-service deliberation and participation in the design of public services; the integration and cross-sector collaboration of public services towards increasingly joined-up public governance (including with the third sector); and the community empowerment agenda (enshrined in the Act) (Campbell ; Christie ; Collins and Donaldson ). These initiatives focus on the integration of public services across partnerships and, simultaneously, localism, citizen engagement, and the empowerment of local actors to take ownership of the delivery of outcomes. In short, this approach to public value leadership in Scotland has been based on an ‘empowerment-heavy’ approach within a network governance landscape. We can now examine how public service reform in Scotland has arrived at this point.
P S R S: C, O, C
.................................................................................................................................. Political representation in Scotland is centred on elections to the UK Parliament at Westminster, the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in Edinburgh, the European Parliament, and the Scottish local authorities. Within the context of the policy spheres devolved to Scotland, governance is structured around a Parliament (normally elected every four years), from which the Scottish Government emerges in the form of the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretaries with specific policy portfolios (plus non-Cabinet level ministers). This political leadership is served by the largest element of the Scottish-based civil service (which remains part of the unified, British civil service— other civil servants working in Scotland are based in UK government departments, for example, the Department for Work and Pensions), organized in Directorates and Executive Agencies. Non-civil service public servants of varying types manage an array of Scottish public bodies (including Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Water), the local authorities (thirty-two unitary authorities, elected every five years), and the health service (NHS Scotland, structured around fourteen regional NHS Boards, seven Special NHS Boards, and one public health body).
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Since the advent of devolution, political power has resided with Labour–Liberal Democrat coalitions (–; –) and Scottish National Party administrations (– and – as a minority government; – as a majority government). Under the SNP, the post of First Minister was occupied in turn by Alex Salmond (from ) and Nicola Sturgeon (from ). The Scottish independence question became a major issue following the SNP election victory in and has continued to dominate Scottish politics since then (Chapter in this Handbook). Apparently settled by a decisive ‘no’ vote in the referendum (the winning margin was . per cent to . per cent) the issue was reignited by the SNP, who secured all but three of the seats in Scotland at the May UK General Election. Subsequently, at the June referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union the vote in Scotland was overwhelmingly in favour of ‘remain’, and this was seized upon by the SNP as the rationale for a further referendum on Scotland’s future (Chapter in this Handbook). Increasingly fractious intergovernmental relationships have developed in this context, with tensions arising from the political dynamic of a pro-independence government in Scotland and a unionist UK government at Westminster. This political and constitutional context is important for the argument we put forward here. In brief, the challenges associated with strategic public value leadership in Scotland have become more acute due to the policy distractions that the constitutional debate has produced. Devolution in was accompanied by considerable rhetoric about the scope for a ‘new politics’ to emerge, and as part of this, for fresh approaches to be taken to the management and delivery of public services (Hassan and Warhurst ; Cairney and McGarvey ; Chapter in this Handbook). Given this rhetoric, the relatively small scale of the public policy and public service community in Scotland, and the arguably unnecessary degree of organizational complexity created by the existence of different leadership and staffing cadres and overlapping roles and responsibilities flowing from the structures summarized above, one might have expected rationalization and modernization to have been major priorities post. Although specific initiatives emerged around interagency collaborations, joint service delivery, integrated public services, and partnership working, the prevailing assumption was that the existing mosaic of public service bodies in Scotland was more or less ‘a given’. The exception to this was the distinctly problematic, poorly managed, and hitherto unsuccessful move from a regionally based structure to a centralized, single Police Service of Scotland in (Thomson et al. ). In this context, the task was to maximize the co-ordination of the work of these bodies (and link them with the private and not-for-profit sectors) in order to enhance service delivery. In , the Scottish Government established a commission of inquiry headed by Campbell Christie, the former General Secretary of the Scottish TUC, to make recommendations for the future delivery of public services in a time of financial constraint, and this body produced its report in June (Christie ; Campbell ). Although broadly welcomed by the Scottish Government, public sector, and voluntary sector organizations, the report was criticized by academic and media commentators
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for its relative vagueness in terms of specific recommendations on the detail of a proposed reform programme (Campbell : ). Christie called for political leadership to take the principles and recommendations of the report forward via a programme of reform. In summary, Christie: • Critiqued the extant arrangement of Scottish public services as fragmented, lacking responsiveness to individuals and communities, lacking accountability, focused on the short-term, and averse to joint working. • Established a set of reform objectives which would see public services built around people and communities, working together to achieve outcomes, prioritizing prevention and reduction of inequalities, and pursuing ongoing performance improvements and cost reductions in a spirit of openness, transparency, and accountability. • Made a series of recommendations, including: the introduction of interagency training to reduce ‘silo mentalities’, drive service integration, and build a common public service ethos; standardize commissioning and procurement; enable community participation in service design and delivery; and establish new duties and powers for public services focused on improving outcomes via preventative actions and tackling inequalities. The Scottish Government’s formal response to this was the proposal for a reform agenda framed around the key principles and themes of ‘prevention’; ‘partnership’; ‘workforce development’; and ‘performance’ (Scottish Government ). ‘Public service reform’ became based upon the Scottish Government’s core agendas relating to ‘Efficiency and Transformational Government’, ‘Community Planning’ and ‘External Scrutiny’. The Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act of , despite its title, was less strategic than one might have expected, but instead set out a range of detailed changes across specific public service areas. Within these approaches were located matters of important detail including the outcomes agreements with public service providers, efficiency savings targets, and the greater use of shared services in response to one of the recommendations of the Christie Report. By , the key policy instruments driving the public services reform agenda in Scotland were the NPF, the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act, and the integration agenda for health and social care via the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act. The NPF, introduced in as an element of the spending review, was initially a ten-year vision, drawing on an outcomes-based performance model used in the state of Virginia. Refreshed in (Campbell ), in (Scottish Government ), and in following a process of review, public consultation, and revision (Scottish Government ), it is ‘a single framework to which all public services in Scotland are aligned’. The framework comprised a series of High Level Targets (Growth, Productivity, Participation, Population, Solidarity, Cohesion, Sustainability) and five Strategic Objectives (Wealthier & Fairer, Smarter, Healthier, Safer & Stronger, Greener), all of
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which were aligned with ‘national outcomes’¹ which were, in turn, linked to National Indicators² to enable tracking of progress: The National Performance Framework provides a strategic direction for policy making in the public sector, and provides a clear direction to move to outcomesbased policy making. This outcomes-based approach is reflected across Government policy and in strategic policy documents. (Scottish Government, )
The NPF was explicitly linked to the spirit and content of the Christie Report, and stressed that ‘the reform journey is a partnership with local government and the third sector that helps ensure our public services are sustainable, meet the needs of citizens and improve the lives of Scotland’s people’ (Scottish Government ). Community empowerment legislation and the integration of health and social care were two major policy initiatives within the outcomes-focused approach highlighted in the NPF. First, the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act refers to the NPF by placing a duty on the Scottish Ministers to ‘consult on, develop and publish a set of national outcomes for Scotland’ and gives ‘local communities a right to challenge local public service delivery if it is not meeting their needs’. It also legally constitutes community planning structures, with the effect of requiring services to be planned, delivered, and monitored across partnerships (including the health service, local authorities, the police services, community groups, and the third sector). It was this duty, stemming from the Act, which drove the review of the NPF resulting in the revised version. Second, the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act is the legislative framework for the integration of health and social care. This created new public organizations (‘Integration Authorities’) aimed to break down barriers to joint working between NHS Boards and local authorities, and sought to produce budget efficiencies of £ million to £ million. For each area, the NHS and local authorities were required to submit jointly an integration scheme setting out which functions would be delegated to the new Integration Authorities (see Burgess ). Collectively, these policy instruments enshrine an approach which eschews grappling with the bigger, strategic issues around public service leadership and structures, in favour of centrally devised policy drivers which in turn exacerbate the complexities of network governance by engendering a ‘micro’ approach to Scottish Government interventions at local levels. Before setting out this argument, however, we examine the saliency of public value leadership within network governance as an analytical lens in the context of Scotland’s public services reform agendas.
¹ Originally sixteen, scaled down to eleven in : the original set featured ‘our public services are high quality, continually improving, efficient and responsive to local people’s needs’. ² Originally fifty-five, increased to eighty-one in .
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D E P V L C N: C C S?
.................................................................................................................................. Assessing the effectiveness of networks as the mechanism for achieving public sector reform involves trying to make sense of network governance in terms of ‘successes’ and ‘failures’. Marsh and McConnell () and McConnell () have advanced our understanding of policy success in the context of a complex policy landscape, with Howlett () doing the same when it comes to policy failure. Understanding successes and failures in network governance in its entirety, which relies on multiple and varied relationships that range from being strong, moderate, and loose responses to changing contexts in which there are shifting power dependences, is the academic equivalent to trying to eat an ice-cream cone on a roller coaster. Indeed, studies that seek to establish success and failure (and areas in-between) in the context of network governance need to ring-fence an aspect or level(s) of governance in order to take account of political, economic, and social drivers affecting the architecture of complexities within a systems-based environment. From this perspective, understanding the experiences of those operating at the partnership/meso-level in Scotland is important because the policy strategy of the Scottish Government relies on network actors operating across boundaries and partnerships to be the instruments for achieving success. This section of the chapter is therefore supplemented by interview data with network actors who have such leadership roles within public service networks (e.g. territorial Health Boards or in local government) in policy sectors which are intended by national agencies to be ‘boundary spanning’ (Williams ).³ Howlett (: –) notes that the ways to capture policy success and failure can be considered in terms of Extent, Duration, Visibility, Avoidability, Intensity, and Intentionality. • Extent: The aspects and level of successes and failures, that is, which dimensions have failed or been a success more over others at policy, political, and programme levels. • Duration: Whether failures are incremental, accumulated or sudden events, with successes being about minimizing the space for failures to manifest. ³ The eight interviewees (purposively sampled) all work within cross-sectorial areas and have key roles in, and lead, partnerships. In this respect, although employed by, or hosted within, the NHS or Local Authority, they have key roles in shaping cross-organizational strategies on public sector reform in the context of the post-Christie Commission and health and social care agenda. The interviewees are denoted by interviewee A–E. The interviews were funded by a NHS Health Scotland-funded study that examined the lessons to be drawn from the sustainability of outcomes-based approaches to public sector reform. NHS Health Scotland is Scotland’s national public health agency.
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• Visibility: The extent of ‘publicness’ of the failures and level of public scrutiny/ awareness. Successes are often ‘non-events’ and noteworthy for their lack of controversy, for example, achieving what was set out to be achieved. • Avoidability: The extent to which failures could have been anticipated, predicted, planned for and mitigated against. Success is when failures are avoided. • Intensity: The level of agreement between actors within networks about the degree of success and failure, that is, the aggregate level of intercommunity/network consensus on the extent of success and failure and the implications for subsequent processes and decision-making. • Intentionality: Failures can emerge from the politics of intended or unintended self-defeating behaviours of actors due to efforts to re-frame issues/problems driven by, for example, ideological preoccupations. Success, at a political level, is marked by the lack of propensity for reframing policy strategies due to shared agendas, commitments, norms, and values. With regards to Extent, the Scottish Government’s approach to promoting outcomes through the NPF has provided a vision for public governance and, it is fair to say, this has not been met with a significant degree of macro-political contestation between Scottish political parties. However, the limitations of public value and management can be grouped around a sustained failure to address confused accountability structures, and structural dysfunctionalities under the auspices of localism in the context of austere times. This has had implications for both the management of processes and programmes. For example, an interviewee, who is responsible for managing across partnerships, recognizes the opportunities for national leadership in helping to ‘cut through’ the complexities and to build consensus amongst partnerships regarding how best to address national-level priorities (e.g. the outcomes with the NPF). At the same time, the interviewee confirmed that the context of public sector reform has led to a complex network landscape which is challenging to navigate—meaning that it is difficult to know ‘who is the leader’ when it comes to owning programmes of work. A senior partnership manager in Inverclyde Council noted that ‘it’s just quite a messy picture out there in terms of who’s doing what, where and how do you feed in’ (Interviewee C, ). A policy lead in NHS Ayrshire and Arran was asked about opportunities with regards to navigating through network complexity and noted that ‘I don’t know that any of us are actually managing to navigate our way through it’ (Interviewee D, ). Another interviewee, with reference to health and social care integration, considered that despite the language of ‘reform’ and ‘transformation’ at national leadership levels, in practice, incrementalism tends to be the norm but with an element of inertia: There are thousands of public sector staff who could be working in different ways and understanding the evidence behind why they might want to do that, but capacity is a huge issue . . . That’s difficult, but you can’t do everything all at once so you have to eat an elephant in bite size chunks, I guess. . . . But that does feel huge. (Interviewee E, , emphasis added)
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A policy lead in NHS Borders highlights the complexities, multiple processes, and, importantly, the lack of coherence in the multi-actor context: . . . it’s a mass of different processes that we’re using . . . We’ve got community planning on the one hand and health and social care on the other, trying to do some things around locality planning in parallel and [there is] a lot of anxiety at the moment about ‘are we being consistent?’ ‘Are we just confusing everybody, particularly the public and local communities?’ ‘And how do we bring that into some kind of coherence?’ (Interviewee B, )
This point about coherence, or lack thereof, would have been helped by national leadership to exploit the opportunities that a devolved policy environment brings. That is, to refashion Scotland’s public services around a genuinely inclusive and integrated model which could have moulded Scottish governance within an approach common in many European states, where the ‘civil service’ typically encompasses officials at central, federal and local levels (Bekke and van der Meer ). The aforementioned Christie Report, despite calling for more integration and partnership working in the public sector, failed to take a strategic approach to the issue of leadership. The result of this is that leadership cadres across the civil service, local government, the health and social services, and the other arms of the public service, have remained distinct and disaggregated. One of the vital prerequisites for an effective public value leadership strategy is a co-ordinated approach to recruitment, organizational culture and career development, and these have remained silo-based, and a driver for this is crippling complexities resulting from a lack of directive leadership strategies to public sector reform and, moreover, the prevalence of austerity. Duration brings with it the question of whether failures have been temporal or more long-standing. The evidence from those operating within and across partnerships suggests that austerity, prompted by the Scottish Government in response to UK-level cuts in public expenditure following the financial crisis post-, have been exacerbated by the impact of austerity but it is not the cause. This has been evident in terms of the health and social care agenda and working within Community Planning Partnerships to address multifaceted societal issues (e.g. mental health and well-being) in a time of austerity or, as a policy lead in NHS put it, ‘at a period when the public sector is contracting’ (Interviewee A, ). More broadly, there are fundamental questions about the level of sustained political leadership behind addressing acute problems in educational attainment and health inequalities; that is, demonstrating the ‘public value’ resulting from the NPF. In health policy, for example, the performance of the NHS in Scotland against key indicators revealed significant failings, with waiting time targets for diagnostic tests, A&E patients, outpatient appointments, and commencement of treatment for acute conditions, all being missed on an ongoing basis (BBC , ). Similarly, in the sphere of education, teacher shortages in key subjects, a lack of progress on closing the attainment gap between pupils from relatively affluent and relatively deprived areas, coupled with poor comparative performance, prompted calls
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for systemic reform which were accepted by John Swinney, the Deputy First Minister, whose portfolio changed to include education policy. The revelation in December that Scottish schools had dropped down the world rankings (the Programme for International Student Assessment—PISA) and were performing less well even than the schools in other parts of the UK (BBC ) led Swinney to acknowledge that the results ‘do not make comfortable reading’ (Swinney ). Beyond these specific policy areas, the outcomes from the NPF revealed significant challenges for the Scottish Government, with only per cent of the National Indicators showing performance improving, albeit in the context of there being substantial ( per cent) indicators with missing data or data to be confirmed (Scottish Government ). The policy challenges of health and education in Scotland have been subject to a high degree of Visibility in that there is increasing political awareness amongst the public regarding the impacts on core service areas, including education and health and that these have been significant problems for the SNP Government. This visibility has increased due to the fact that a senior SNP politician, John Swinney, was given the Education brief shortly followed by further pressure being put on Nicola Sturgeon in April to sack her former Health Secretary, Shona Robison, due to a number of acute criticisms regarding GP recruitment, waiting times for ambulances, and the endemic maladministration at NHS Tayside (which used charitable endowment funds to pay for backroom support functions, instead of frontline patient care) (McNab ). Audit Scotland also reported that both NHS Highland and NHS Ayrshire and Arran face major financial performance challenges which require the government to implement recovery plans (Audit Scotland a, b)—in other words this national agency called for more directive leadership from the Scottish Government. The day after the Audit Scotland reports were published it was reported that Jim Sillars, a former deputy leader of the party, had accused the First Minister of avoiding tackling the problems in housing, education, health, and the economy and was reported as saying that ‘the leadership does not think philosophically’ (quoted in Deerin ). On this point of Avoidability it is fair to say that austerity was unavoidable for the SNP Government. However, the creation of a Scottish public service, although placing additional strains on local actors, might have formed a reasonable element of a broad counter-austerity strategic response. Undoubtedly, the creation of a Scottish public service would have required the successful negotiation of a series of legislative and organizational obstacles. Two broad strategic issues required consideration. The first concerned the impact on the unified civil service. However, as the devolution process developed, the elements of the civil service in Scotland and in Wales had become accustomed to operating within their own distinct cultures and behaviours, whilst adhering to the common principles that govern the unified civil service (see, for example, Burnham and Pyper ; Parry , ; Rhodes et al. ; Chapter in this Handbook), so accommodation of a further organizational and operational shift in Scotland would not have necessarily been an insurmountable obstacle, and the idea of a single Welsh public service (see Prosser ) had been floated by Rhodri Morgan
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during his period as First Minister of Wales (–). The second set of issues concerns the most suitable relationship between the civil service and other public services within a ‘public services’ model. On one occasion when this issue arose for consideration, the Cabinet Office () disparaged the idea of ‘creating one large and unwieldy organisation to design and deliver all public services’. The head of the civil service in Scotland at that point, Sir John Elvidge, argued strongly against any attempt to bring public sector staff within ‘a single employment structure’ (Scottish Parliament Finance Committee ; Chapter in this Handbook). These establishment views were mirrored in the entrenched defences of local authority ‘autonomy’ by those who feared the impact of a combined public services approach on the career structures and established cultures of the councils. However, change of this type, if properly managed, could have helped secure joined-up government, integration across a range of service areas, efficiency gains and the freeing-up of resources for front-line services, one-stop shops for the users of public services, clarified lines of accountability, and opportunities to address perceived gaps in leadership or other specialized skills. Supporters of this model would argue that it would not have required fundamental reform of local government and need not have had an adverse effect on the principle of local democracy. Admittedly, the unwillingness of the leadership of the civil service in Scotland to countenance any move away from the concept of the unified British civil service was a factor (see, for example, the opposition of Elvidge in ) but the de facto (if not yet de jure) federalization of the civil service across the UK created an environment in which such a change could have been accommodated. In the Scottish context, Parry () sets out evidence of increasing civil service distinctiveness and ‘tartanization’. A move towards a combined public service model might have been taken forward (and, arguably, could still be progressed) via two possible routes, whose concomitant organizational and structural changes would engender a more directive, strategic approach to the challenge of public service leadership. A radical, ‘big bang’ reform agenda, implying a swift move involving extensive legislative change with only the basic required consultation and experimentation, would be out of sync with devolution’s inherent commitment to engender an inclusive, cross-party culture and ethos. The pragmatic, incremental approach would involve establishing key building blocks for reform, developing practices and processes from extant pilot schemes, and moving from these to create selected experiments with public service integration, spanning, inter alia, local government, the health service, and the civil service. The challenge with an incremental model approach, which features in the sub-texts of the Christie Report, and is illustrated by Parry (), is that it fails to address the challenge of engendering a strategic approach to public value leadership. If the ‘shared services’, ‘integrated public services’ agendas, and their associated offshoots, are isolated from clearly enunciated commitments to broader strategic reform, they can simply spawn a plethora of units and cross-cutting task forces and, ultimately, add to the problem of initiative overload. This risks negating the required transparency, accountability, and improved service delivery at an operational level, let alone providing strategic coherence in the
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leadership context. However, there has been no appetite for the challenge of a holistic, strategic overhaul of the public services landscape, and, as has been made clear repeatedly by leading figures in these administrations, there has been a strong degree of policy distraction by the post- governments in Scotland towards the independence question. At a systemic level, Howlett () cautions analysts of public policy and administration, who seek to make judgements about successes and failures of governmental approaches, to take into account the perspectives of those actors within the policy system that are actually responsible for co-ordinating and implementing reform. The Intensity of policy failures are, therefore, about the levels of agreement between actors within networks about the degree of failure, that is, the aggregate level of intercommunity/ network consensus on the extent of failure and the likely associated effects/outcomes. There was a consensus between our interviewees in the Scottish public sector that key failures have been with regards to capacity building, the fragmentary approach to policy direction on public service reform, and a confused approach to Scottish Government expectations regarding evidencing public value. This does not mean that localism is not welcomed by network actors, but the absence of national strategic leadership has left a directional vacuum between the macro- and meso-levels. An integration partnership manager refers to the lack of support from national agencies: . . . Some of the things that I’m grappling with is trying to make [mental health planning] relevant across a community planning partnership and a strategic framework . . . and what would be the national indicators that would show collectively that we’re making a difference, and how can we be confident. Whilst we can bang the drum about who’s most at risk, can we be confident in saying well actually what you’re proposing there will plausibly do that. (Interviewee E, )
An interviewee also noted how the Community Empowerment Act () only served to highlight the lack of synchronicity between national strategic level expectations by government and local capacity for demonstrating outcomes: Every single community planning manager will tell you that measuring the impact of outcomes is important (sigh) . . . I mean, have you achieved those outcomes? What’s the impact you’ve had on your communities? . . . The Community Empowerment Act, when that first came out, everybody was like, ‘what’? There was just a lack of national support to deliver it. You’re talking about empowering community organisations to do things and build assets. And they need to demonstrate how they are actually making a difference. And you think, ‘well how would they possibly be able to do that’. (Interviewee C, )
Academic analysis of the Community Empowerment Act’s local implementation indicates that it has suffered from the lack of an overarching strategy and from the persistence of both ‘structural and social barriers to meaningful community empowerment’ (Elliott et al. ).
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Overall, therefore, it is clear that network governance deficits in public value leadership stem in part from the failure to move beyond providing a vision about the end objectives and outcomes for networks, to additionally identifying the means by which these can be achieved at a methodological level through focused and strategic leadership. This confusion at a national level has led to uncertainty within networks when identifying the best type of evidence to demonstrate public value against nationally defined outcomes. Capacity issues regarding the best methods for demonstrating public value were persistent themes across the interviews with network managers in the public sector. This is a daily battle in the sense that policy actors are ‘overloaded’ with a multitude of local planning initiatives, which makes it difficult ‘to see the wood for the trees’ and, inevitably, produces work based on short-termism rather than longer-term outcomes (Interviewee H )—quite contrary to the narrative of the NPF as the strategic framework for public service reform in Scotland. Finally, Intentionality refers to the outcome of intended or unintended behaviours that essentially reframes policy priorities. This can be based on distractions towards other aspects of the political agenda or being preoccupied with ideological concerns. Overall, the Scottish Government’s mixed performance across a number of key policy spheres has been shaped by a self-acknowledged policy distraction towards constitutional matters (Sturgeon ). This has become more acute following the referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, which prompted the SNP to make a commitment to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence, contingent upon the impact on Scotland of the UK government’s Brexit deal. The First Minister has argued that the independence issue ‘ultimately transcends the issues of Brexit, of oil, of national wealth and balance sheets and of passing political fads and trends’ (Sturgeon ). One consequence of this has been that the option of carving out a distinctive Scottish approach to the management and delivery of public services has been de-prioritized. The broader macro-political agenda is important to consider since, as Provan and Kenis () argue, studies of network governance should seek to understand the relationships between governance and operational interactions. In Scotland, there are clear links between ideological prioritization and the outcomes of the opportunity costs that result in terms of performance deficiencies in national public value leadership, which relate directly to the effectiveness of public service reform.
C
.................................................................................................................................. Although this chapter has identified a number of performance gaps regarding national leadership, it has also highlighted opportunities for improvement. In practical terms, addressing the meaning and operationalization of integration, and support for measuring it, would be a positive step forward (and this was a consistent theme raised by network managers in the public sector). Otherwise, national-level narratives on
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integration will not align with the organizational cultures of those who are supposed to be ‘empowered’ to deliver on outcomes. These findings echo a recent analysis of the meshing of traditional policy and governance hierarchies with complex networks that stresses the importance of leadership: (Network leaders) cannot escape the need for at least some hierarchy and the power of command, just as hierarchical leaders will have to master network skills. The most effective leaders will be able to determine and clarify goals for whatever group they are leading, and mobilize the group’s energies to achieve them, whether that group is a hierarchy, a network, or, most likely, some of both. (Slaughter : )
Slaughter is influenced by Keohane’s approach to leadership, which emphasizes the need for clear direction in the interest of achieving collective goals (Keohane : ). The testimony of policy actors above indicates that, in the Scottish context, the plethora of cross-cutting initiatives, and performance indicators, imposed across an unnecessarily complex landscape of governance and policy, speaks to a paucity of this type of clear direction and strategic leadership for public value. It is only fair to emphasize that Scotland is not the only example of a devolved governance context which appears to have mishandled the opportunity to carve out a fresh, distinctive, and manageable approach to its public service policy and delivery challenges, deploying astute public value leadership. Within the other UK devolved polities too, where there were the most obvious opportunities for holistic, corporate approaches to be taken to the issue of public service reform, the impression is of degrees of disaggregation, with limited evidence of genuine ‘joined-up’ thinking and strategies. In the UK, perhaps the closest we have come to this was the post- Review of Public Administration in Northern Ireland (see Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister ; Knox and Carmichael ). Even this was partial, however, as although it spanned most of the public services, including health, local government, social welfare, and school education, it excluded the Northern Ireland Civil Service and the executive agencies. In Wales, as in Scotland, there have been some debates on this question of a more holistic, strategic approach to public services reform over the period since , but, despite the rhetoric about central steering, a fairly dispersed approach to the public services reform agenda was the norm. Whilst recognizing the similar ‘lost opportunities’ across the other devolved polities in the UK, five key points can be captured from this research for Scotland. First, it is important to note that in the context of public service reform and public value leadership, small can be beautiful—close-knit policy communities create opportunities. However, this does not mean that the overarching strategic role of national leadership is not needed. With this in mind, devolved governance contexts should seize the opportunities available to them to contextualize their approach within a broader constitutional and political/governance framework, and ensure that they effectively deploy all of the powers at their disposal. Second, an open approach to lesson-learning
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and policy transfer is helpful—even if seeking to learn and transfer from entities with different political leaderships. Being precious about national/regional policy ‘culture’ is not helpful. Third, structural reforms in isolation from a broader strategic approach will not solve problems of policy or service delivery, but ignoring the opportunities for structural change, and opposing such change ‘in principle’ or due to political factors, will severely limit the prospects for successful change and the engendering of strategic and focused leadership for public value in an excessively complex policy and governance network. Fourth, it is important to be aware of, and address, the challenges flowing from the political and organizational vested interests in the status quo—this downside of close-knit policy communities can lead to a form of ‘groupthink’ which eschews solutions and approaches (for example, structural changes), which do not align with these interests. Finally, policy distraction based on an incessant focus on longerterm political and constitutional goals can and will limit the time, policy commitment, and value-based leadership for other key domestic priorities such as enhanced service delivery. In sum, our research points to the need for further dialogue within the public value and public administration literatures on the impact of leadership approaches to public sector reform efforts within network governance contexts, particularly when such activities take place within an ‘empowerment-focused’ environment.
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Burnham, J. and Pyper, R. . Britain’s Modernised Civil Service. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cabinet Office. . Memorandum by the Cabinet Office (CSE ) to the Public Administration Select Committee March. Cairney, P. and McGarvey, N. . Scottish Politics, nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Campbell, A. . The Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services, SPICe Briefing. Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament. Campbell, A. . The National Performance Framework and Scotland Performs, SPICe Briefing. Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament. Christie, C. . Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services. Edinburgh: APS Group Scotland. Collins, M. and Donaldson, C. . ‘Resource Allocation in Integrated Care Settings: What Works? Case of Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland’, International Journal of Integrated Care, /: A. Connolly, J. . ‘Contribution Analysis as an Approach to Enable Public Managers to Demonstrate Public Value: The Scottish Context’, International Journal of Public Sector Management, /: –. Deerin, C. . ‘Nicola Sturgeon’s dominance has created division within the SNP—so what’s next for the party?’, New Statesman, October. Available at: https://www. newstatesman.com/politics/uk///nicola-sturgeon-s-dominance-has-createddivision-within-snp-so-what-s-next-party, accessed November . Elliott, I., Fejszes, V., and Tarrega, M. . ‘The Community Empowerment Act and Localism under Devolution in Scotland: The Perspective of Multiple Stakeholders in a Council Ward’, International Journal of Public Sector Management. Available at: http://nrl. northumbria.ac.uk//. Grundstein-Amado, R. . ‘Bilateral Transformational Leadership: An Approach for Fostering Ethical Conduct in Public Service Organizations’, Administration & Society, /: –. Hartley, J., Alford, J., Hughes, O., and Yates, S. . ‘Public Value and Political Astuteness in the Work of Public Managers: The Art of the Possible’, Public Administration, /: –. Hassan, G. and Warhurst, C. . The New Scottish Politics: The First Year of the Scottish Parliament and Beyond. London: The Stationery Office. Hindmoor, A. . ‘The Importance of Being Trusted: Transaction Costs and Policy Network Theory’, Public Administration, /: –. Howlett, M. . ‘The Lessons of Failure: Learning and Blame Avoidance in Public Policymaking’, International Political Science Review, /: –. Interviewee A. . Interview with the Author, January . Interviewee B. . Interview with the Author, January . Interviewee C. . Interview with the Author, February . Interviewee D. . Interview with the Author, February . Interviewee E. . Interview with the Author, February . Interviewee F. . Interview with the Author, February . Interviewee G. . Interview with the Author, February . Interviewee H. . Interview with the Author, February . Keohane, N.O. . Thinking About Leadership. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Knox, C. and Carmichael, P. . ‘Improving Public Services: Public Administration Reform in Northern Ireland’, Journal of Social Policy, /: –. McConnell, A. . ‘What is Policy Failure? A Primer to Help Navigate the Maze’, Public Policy and Administration, /–: –. McNab, S. . ‘FMQs: Nicola Sturgeon rejects call to sack Robison’, The Scotsman, April. Available at: https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/fmqs-nicola-sturgeon-rejects-callto-sack-robison--, accessed November . Moore, M. . Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Morse, R.S. . ‘Integrative Public Leadership: Catalyzing Collaboration to Create Public Value’, The Leadership Quarterly, /: –. Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. . Review of Public Administration in Northern Ireland. Belfast: OFM/DFM. Available at: http://www.rpani.gov.uk, accessed May . Parry, R. . ‘Reshaping Structures of Government across the UK’, in G. Lodge and K. Schmueker (eds), Devolution in Practice . London: Institute for Public Policy Research. Parry, R. . ‘Civil Service and the Machinery of Government’, in D. McTavish (ed.), Politics in Scotland. London: Routledge. Prosser, S. . Development of a Welsh Public Service. Cardiff: Institute of Welsh Affairs. Provan, K.G. and Kenis, P. . ‘Modes of Network Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, /: –. Resodihardjo, S.L., Carroll, B.J., Eijk, C.J., and Maris, S. . ‘Why Traditional Responses to Blame Games Fail: The Importance of Context, Rituals, and Sub-Blame Games in the Face of Raves Gone Wrong’, Public Administration, /: –. Rhodes, R.A. and Wanna, J. . ‘The Limits to Public Value, or Rescuing Responsible Government from the Platonic Guardians’, Australian Journal of Public Administration, /: –. Rhodes, R.A.W., Carmichael, P., McMillan, J., and Massey, A. . Decentralizing the Civil Service. From Unitary State to Differentiated Polity in the United Kingdom. Buckingham: Open University Press. Scottish Government. . Renewing Scotland’s Public Services. Priorities for Reform in Response to the Christie Commission. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . National Performance Framework—An Outcomes-Based Approach, Measuring What Matters. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s National Performance Framework. Available at: http://nationalperformance.gov.scot. Scottish Parliament Finance Committee. . Submission of Evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee Inquiry into Civil Service Effectiveness, SP Paper , July. Slaughter, A. . The Chess-Board and the Web. Strategies of Connection in a Networked World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Stoker, G. . ‘Public Value Management: A New Narrative for Networked Governance?’, The American Review of Public Administration, /: –. Sturgeon, N. . ‘Decisions about Scotland should be taken by those who live and work here’, The Sunday Herald, September. Swinney, J. . Statement from the Deputy First Minister, December. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.
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Thomson, B., Maudsley, G., and Payne, A. . The Thinning Blue Line. Edinburgh: Reform Scotland. Van Wart, M. . Leadership in Public Organizations: An Introduction, rd edition. New York: Routledge. Williams, P. . ‘The Competent Boundary Spanner’, Public Administration, /: –. Williams, I. and Shearer, H. . Appraising Public Value: Past, Present and Futures’, Public Administration, /: –. Wimbush, E. . ‘Implementing an Outcomes Approach to Public Management and Accountability in the UK—are we Learning the Lessons?’, Public Money & Management, /: –. Wright, B.E. and Pandey, K. . Transformational Leadership in the Public Sector: Does Structure Matter?’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, /: –.
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.................................................................................................................................. T articulation, aggregation, and organization of ‘interests’ is a core element of any democratic political system. Interest groups, defined as voluntary associations for which policy advocacy is a prime function, are important political organizations that connect citizens and formal political institutions (Jordan et al. ). The broader system of organized interests—which would include individual firms, governmental agencies, and individual citizens—is also highly salient in this respect. The study of organized interests and interest groups has generated a significant volume of academic attention in recent decades, mostly focused on the pressures, processes and outcomes of interest representation in long-established and strongly embedded political systems. The UK is one such system. As with so many aspects of governance at Westminster though, the appearance of continuity can mask a large degree of change. The introduction of devolution to Scotland (and Wales) in signalled the potential for significant change to the way in which organized interests would operate, particularly in the newly created devolved institutions but potentially also with an impact on the way interests would be articulated at Westminster. The evidence assembled since the introduction of the Scottish Parliament suggests that whilst devolution has had an impact in some respects, there remains a degree of stability in others. Whilst we are keen to avoid simply comparing the Scottish experience with the Westminster model, it is impossible to discuss the nature of the contemporary Scottish institutions without reference to the status quo ante. Similarly, considering the way in which the system of interest representation has evolved leads to some degree of comparison with Westminster. However, we offset the potential for myopia by also looking further afield and considering how elements of the Scottish experience relate to similar sub-state legislatures elsewhere.
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We begin by providing a brief historical overview of the system of interest representation in Scotland prior to before turning to consider the key relevant changes brought about by devolution. Situating this in the context of wider theoretical developments around ‘the rise of the meso’ (Keating ; Keating and Wilson ), we go on to explore three key themes in relation to the distinctiveness of the Scottish experience: the existence of a distinctively Scottish interest group landscape; the development of a distinctly Scottish policymaking style; and the practice of ‘venueshopping’ (Baumgartner and Jones ).
T I L S P
.................................................................................................................................. Those unfamiliar with Scottish politics might expect that devolution in represented a serious catalyst to the development of associational life in the form of interest groups at a purely Scottish level. After all, from onwards, the responsibility for policy decisions affecting Scotland lay at Westminster, meaning that on the surface at least, Scotland may seem to have had no more reason to possess a distinctive interest group ecosystem than, say, the north east of England. Looking through much of the literature on interest groups in the UK prior to does little to dispel this notion: perhaps unsurprisingly given the UK’s traditional unitary status, there has been a strong tendency to talk about interest groups at the aggregate UK level in a way which does little to suggest the existence of ‘a Scottish system’. This was increasingly challenged by scholars such as Jordan and Richardson (), Kellas () and Midwinter et al. (). These rebuttals were based first on the legacy of the Act of Union in and second on the relative strength and autonomy of the Scottish Office within the UK government: both of these factors ensured that a wide range of interests was represented in a (relatively) distinctively Scottish context long before . The Act of Union in saw the merging of the parliaments of England and Scotland. However, this was no simple assimilation. On joining the union, Scotland retained a range of civic society entities which ensured that a sense of national distinctiveness remained. For instance, Scotland maintained its own distinctive legal codes, its own education system, a different established church to those elsewhere in the UK, its own banks, and a range of distinctively Scottish newspapers, amongst others. In addition to acting as carriers of national identity (and, in the case of the Kirk, even claiming on occasions to act as a proxy Scottish Parliament), these institutions were indicative of the fact that certain aspects of political life operated somewhat differently in Scotland than elsewhere in the union. Different problems and priorities facing Scottish public life demanded a range of advocates to articulate these issues to the government in Westminster. As such, even long before it is very easy to see the
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existence of distinctive Scottish interest groups and advocacy coalitions pressing for support and/or sympathy for their cause(s) (for an excellent overview, see Kellas ). In addition to allowing for this distinctiveness to remain in these key areas, the Act of Union also created the post of Secretary of State for Scotland within the British government. The post was dissolved in following the failed second Jacobite uprising but Scottish affairs continued to be strongly represented into the nineteenth century in the form of the Lord Advocate. Although the post’s primary responsibility was to act as the Government’s chief legal adviser on Scottish legal affairs, from the post also incorporated some of the responsibilities which had previously been in the hands of the Secretary of State for Scotland. In , partly in response to growing pressure for Home Rule for Ireland, Lord Salisbury’s newly-elected Government engaged in a programme of constitutional reform, part of which involved the establishment of the Scottish Office as a distinct department within the British government, and the (re)creation of an accompanying Secretary for Scotland post to oversee its work. This was something of an anomaly at the time, in that most other government departments were arranged on a functional rather than a territorial basis (Kellas : ), but the Scottish Office combined the two. The division of responsibilities was far from clear-cut, with some policy areas remaining with the Home Office and others with the Privy Council, but the key fact from a pressure perspective is the existence of a clear focal point for Scottish interests. The Scottish Office took over responsibility for oversight of a range of public services in Scotland, including policing and prisons, fisheries, and public health. The existence of a distinctively Scottish pressure point (alongside Westminster, which remained the principal point of focus for all other policy areas) and the continued existence of distinctively Scottish civic institutions and professions (such as those in the fields of medicine, law, and the clergy) had important implications first for the representation of interests in Scotland, and second for the way in which policymakers with responsibility for Scotland responded to this. During this time, the Scottish Office enjoyed a degree of latitude with regard to certain policy fields and public expenditure. Processes such as pay negotiations for teachers took place entirely separately from the equivalent negotiations in England and Wales. The regulation of farming and fishing was another such ‘autonomous arena’. Some trade unions (particularly those representing workers in these arenas) organized exclusively in Scotland, albeit with links to sister unions in England and Wales (Keating , ). Umbrella organizations such as the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) had emerged, again with a focus on articulating distinctively Scottish interests. In short, the Scottish Office provided a door to knock on, and a wide range of organized interests were keen to knock. At the same time, numerous policy areas affecting Scotland remained outwith the preserve of the Scottish Office. So, even from the early days of representing organized interests in Scotland, it has been important for many pressure participants to maintain links with London as well as with Edinburgh: to use Kellas’s (: ) example, Scottish trade unions may have spent much time liaising with the Scottish Office, but on issues such as industrial closures it would have been more important to
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exert pressure on the Department for Trade and Industry in London, since it exercised UK-wide decision-making powers in this area. Even where particularly Scottish interests could be identified, it was only rarely that they would operate in a uniquely Scottish silo, so there was an incentive for many groups to organize in a way which allowed for this dual focus. The process could also work in the opposite direction, with some UK organizations creating branch offices to focus on the relevant Scottish dimension(s) of their work, such as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). As government activity expanded into more and more spheres of public life over the course of the twentieth century, so the volume of organized interests with views on these issues grew. The system of policymaking at Westminster offered a number of potential points of access for Scottish organized interests. Of these, the most prominent were executive consultations and parliamentary committees (Richardson and Jordan ). Between the two, direct contact with government was seen as by far the most effective: indeed, such was the relationship between organized interests and the executive, it led to a perceived marginalization of the legislative branch at Westminster (Self ). Richardson and Jordan (: ) show the extent to which groups can impact upon government ministers and civil servants, who can in turn impact upon the amendments made to government legislation passing through parliamentary committees. Such a situation raises questions about insider and outsider groups (Grant ): in other words, which groups are able to secure the attentions of government and civil servants? Jordan and Richardson () show that most government departments at Westminster maintained lists of groups/bodies whom they would consult on particular issues/policies. In addition, many departments would establish advisory committees made up of interested groups within a particular policy area. This led to the development of ‘group networks’ (Jordan and Richardson ), some of which were stable over time whilst others were less enduring and more episodic. Despite the selective access for some groups over others, the system allowed for the articulation of interests at the heart of the British government. However, in spite of this, much of the predevolution rhetoric amongst supporters and architects of the project focused on Westminster as a ‘negative template’, claiming that the voice of Scottish interests was not heard sufficiently well—arguably conflating the unresponsiveness of the electoral system to the wishes of voters in Scotland with systemic problems of consultation. As Jordan and Stevenson () argue, the idea that interests groups from Scotland were not heard is a mischaracterization: the Westminster government—including the Scottish Office—actually consulted extensively (Paterson ; Paterson et al. ; Mooney and Poole ). It is, however, worth noting that authors such as Kellas (: ) flag up a lack of strength and presence in the case of voluntary/civic groups when compared with England. This initially seems curious, given the ‘fetish of civic society’ (Lynch : ) which accompanied the pre-devolution rhetoric. Following the failed referendum of , much of the impetus for devolution was maintained by ostensibly apolitical civic society actors. This prominence led to a key role for civil society actors in the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly, Scottish Constitutional Convention, and Consultative Steering
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Group (CSG) on the Scottish Parliament. As the campaign for a Scottish assembly/ parliament gathered pace in the s and s, factors such as the perceived unresponsiveness of the Westminster system and the need to hear the voice of civic/ voluntary groups fed into the emergent rhetoric. Whilst the claimed influence of civic society in the devolution movement may have been somewhat overblown, it is nevertheless striking that the organization of interests in Scotland and developments such as the introduction (and subsequent struggles) of the Scottish Civic Forum have received comparatively little direct attention (although they have certainly been discussed as part of broader discourses on post-devolution politics) (Wright ; Lynch ; Keating ). Whilst several studies also make reference to the mobilization of support around particular policies (Cairney ) and others consider the impact of Scotland’s meso status on interest representation (Keating ), there has been relatively little explicit consideration of the nature of the broader group system. With regard to the changes affecting interest groups and policy communities in Scotland, the most obvious is the creation of new institutions in the shape of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government.¹ Whilst the Scottish Office (sometimes known now as Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland) continues to exist as a department of the UK government, much of Westminster’s role in policymaking for Scotland has been assumed by the Scottish Parliament and its executive branch. Both the legislative and executive branches represent attractive foci for interest representation. Given the traditional dominance of the executive in the Westminster system, it is unsurprising that studies of organized interests and interest groups in the British system have tended to focus very strongly upon their activity towards, and influence on, the executive branch, typically in the shape of government consultations, although there is a smaller body of work which considers the work of interest groups in relation to inquiries conducted by select committees at Westminster (Jordan et al. ). Similar to the UK executive, the Scottish Government is a cabinet-led administration drawn from the governing party (or parties) in the Scottish Parliament and represents a key focal point for many interest groups and lobbyists. The most notable locus of influence for interest groups is in the form of the pre-legislative consultation undertaken on any Bills proposed by the executive branch. The other key formal avenue of influencing the Scottish Government is through its numerous Stakeholder Groups and Steering Groups. These act as standing fora through which members can provide the Government with expert advice and opinion on current and prospective policies. Numerous such stakeholder groups exist, most of them meeting around half a dozen times each year to discuss matters of interest. Membership typically consists of key players within a particular policy field. For example, the Agriculture and Rural Development Stakeholder Group contains names such as the National Farmers Union Scotland, the RSPB, the Scottish Crofters
¹ From –, the Scottish Government was officially known as the Scottish Executive. We use the current nomenclature throughout, even when referring to events in the – period.
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Association and the Agriculture Industries Consortium.² Membership is typically by invitation only, immediately flagging up a degree of privileged access for the few invited to participate. The second key institutional arena is the Scottish Parliament. Devolved government in Scotland was never intended to simply replicate elements of Westminster practice. To this end, several elements in the institutional design of the Scottish Parliament clearly point to its architects’ desire to constitute the legislative branch as a more effective counterweight to the executive than is the case in Westminster. The key development was a powerful system of unitary committees which combine the functions of Select and Bill Committees at Westminster (Chapter in this Handbook). In addition to their powers of scrutiny and inquiry, the Standing Orders of the Parliament also provide them with powers of legislative initiative. The implication of this is the emergence of potentially valuable influence targets or pressure points. In particular, the influence of ‘civic Scotland’ upon the pre-devolution rhetoric, and the subsequent emphasis in the CSG report on the openness, accessibility, and participatory credentials of the new committee system, suggested a venue which would, in theory, be distinctive from Westminster practice. This ‘shifting of the sands’ begs questions about the extent to which the new landscape is distinctively Scottish in terms of its composition and its role in policymaking. To what extent has the creation of these new institutional arenas or venues affected the way in which interests are organized and articulated within Scotland?
D C: R/T
.................................................................................................................................. Questions around the redrawing of the Scottish system also resonate strongly with contemporary developments in the wider international literature on interest groups and sub-state politics. There is a growing body of work on the institutional development of sub-state politics in ‘meso’ regions that seek to re-draw their relations with the broader political system within which they reside (Keating ; Béland and Lecours ; Brenner ; Keating and Wilson ; Lopez and Tatham ). Wideranging comparative studies have been conducted on sub-national governance in recent years, resulting in increasingly sophisticated frameworks for comparison and contrast of cases like Scotland. Arguably the most sophisticated and ambitious of these so far is that provided by Hooghe et al. (), who developed a ‘Regional Authority Index’ (RAI) for more than forty democratic sub-state polities, with Scotland ranking relatively high on the compound metric of ‘self-rule’.³ ² Full membership list is available at: https://beta.gov.scot/groups/ard-stakeholders/. ³ Relatively recent developments such as the Scotland Act and Scotland Act would result in a significant upward reclassification of Scotland in respect of self-rule, based on the transfer of additional
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However, within this burgeoning literature, less has been said about the way this political autonomy impacts upon associational systems (although see Keating () for an overview of some of the best-known cases). As is well captured in the discussions of multilevel governance, non-unitary political systems present many and varied governance challenges. One relevant question relates to how organized interests react to variations in the division of political authority of the sort laid out by Hooghe et al. (). Put another way, how do variations in political systems—from strong federalism to strong unitary systems—shape the form in which groups are established and then develop over time? Crudely put, the prevailing belief appears to be that federal systems generate federated group structures: perhaps best referred to as ‘group federalism’.⁴ Perhaps the originator was Truman (), who claimed that federal systems would result in federal group structures. This makes sense if one assumes that power resides with the provincial/state level, because groups would be wise to design a structure where most resources and leverage power reside at the decentralized level. Conversely, discussions about nationalization of policy competence prompt talk of the centralization of hitherto decentralized group structures (see Warhurst with respect to Australian federalism and group structures). However, there are reasons why this straightforward rule of ‘federal systems produce federal group structures’ can be defied. Citing the Canadian case, Boatright suggests that groups might gravitate to where the power is, and that this is likely to vary—within and amongst federal systems—on substantive policy domain: ‘federalism depends on the nature of institutions and on the issues a group cares about’ (: ). Thus, one might anticipate groups to develop more federated structures—and structures where regional levels are strong—in policy areas where powers are heavily devolved to sub-national jurisdictions. Examining industry groups in Canada and the UK, Coleman and Grant () show that variation in the extent of federalism reflected in group organizational models is shaped by the type of industry and policy sector. Keating et al. () build on this work by developing the idea of ‘territorial policy communities’ in which traditional accounts of territory and function as the basis for the organization and representation of interests can be explored at the new meso level. Such work on ‘territorial policy communities’ argues that devolution has prompted changes in the interest landscape in Scotland. Whilst they argue that devolution did not—as is sometimes posited uncritically—lead to the creation of significant numbers of new groups (despite the appeal of the ‘new politics’ rhetoric around openness and participation for civic Scotland), it does appear to have catalysed a limited ‘rebuilding’ of policy communities. Particular changes include a greater pressure to ‘venue shop’
areas of legislative competence and significantly increased fiscal responsibilities since Hooghe et al.’s work was published. ⁴ There is also the argument that state tradition–liberal states are fragmented which encourages fragmented business organizations (industry specific versus encompassing structures, and a multiplicity of overlapping general organizations) (Streeck ).
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between the different levels of political authority, with some having to strike a balance between the opportunities offered by the new Scottish institutions and the dangers of focusing too heavily on the Scottish context and becoming marginalized from developments at Westminster (and arguably Brussels, too) (Keating et al. ). The regionalization/territorialization thesis provides a valuable conceptual frame for the analysis of contemporary interest group activity: when considering the Scottish case, to what extent do we see evidence of a distinctively Scottish system? Based on the arguments of Keating et al. (), we would expect to see the emergence of new actors and policy communities, as well as a degree of venue-shopping. A natural corollary of this might also be a degree of differentiation in respect of the process of policymaking. We consider each of these in turn.
T R I S?
.................................................................................................................................. The question of regionalization touches upon wider debates about whether the political life of sub-state polities is populated by state-wide groups (the ‘regions without regionalism’ thesis expounded by Pastori ()), by ‘indigenous’ sub-national groups, or by hybrid forms (state-wide groups with sub-state branches). In other words, how ‘regionalized’ are group systems in sub-national units of governance? This is of particular salience in cases where quasi-federal and federal nations contain sub-units with strong claims to more autonomy, which are also to varying degrees underpinned by claims of cultural (and sometimes linguistic) difference. Obvious examples that have received strong academic attention include Quebec in Canada, Scotland in the UK, Catalonia in Spain, and Flanders in Belgium. Based on the earlier discussion of regionalization, how might variations amongst these cases, in terms of levels of political autonomy and claims for cultural difference, map onto the sub-state character of the group systems they sustain? One might imagine several answers. One might expect groups to follow policy competence: the more powerful a region vis-à-vis the national level, the more likely the locus of attention will be in sub-national institutions, and vice versa. This seemingly obvious answer is perhaps qualified where sub-national divisions also overlap—or are reinforced—with cultural (and even linguistic) distinctions. We might ask how groups see their political community, their polity, and expect them to respond to this more directly than policy competence per se. For instance, groups are formed in such a way that reflects and embodies the cultural and/or linguistic distinctions; these groups, so established, tend then to pursue political activity with strong reference to their ‘home’ political institutions. The underlying assumption here is that variations in the level of power devolved to the sub-state level and different levels of cultural/linguistic differentiation from the
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broader state system are likely to drive different levels of sub-state group dominance in regional political life. As such, sub-state systems that have strong levels of devolved, decentralized, or federalized decision-making might reasonably expect to see this reflected in their group system. The assumption here is that, in aggregate, groups are established and develop where policy competence is greatest. This is the lesson from the new systems, such as the European Union, where new European groups were established as soon as competences started to flow to the supranational level. We expect similar dynamics to operate in the national context. This may manifest itself in formal changes in powers—through constitutional change, but may also occur owing to shifting practices in quasi-federal or federal systems. On this basis, it is perhaps unsurprising that many UK groups are said to have responded to devolution by internally devolving power to a newly-formed Scottish branch office in a way which tended to mirror the devolution of formal political power from Westminster to Holyrood. However, formal political power structures are not solely important here. We also expect that the cultural distinctiveness of a region—and its people—ought to have an impact on the regionalization of the group system. This makes sense if one accepts that groups, by and large, are the institutionalization of concerns, values, interests, and identities of civil society. Thus, where civil society has strong regional networks and weak external networks, one might then expect groups to be established on regional grounds, but also then to engage in regional political conversations. There is, of course, a linguistic dimension here too. Where the language of a region is different from the broader national language, then this might reinforce the tendency for separate regional and national political conversations. Thus, we might expect regional groups to engage in regional conversations owing to linguistic capacities. Halpin et al. () explore this proposition. Whilst there is almost complete synchronicity between Scotland and the UK in broad linguistic terms, there is nevertheless some cultural distinctiveness in the shape of institutions such as the distinctive legal and education systems, thus suggesting that the Scottish system should exhibit a moderate degree of regionalization. Using data based on the participation of interest groups (Halpin et al. b) in the work of the committees of the Scottish Parliament, they allocate each participant group to one of four categories: purely Scottish groups; Scottish branches of wider UK groups; groups with an exclusively UK identity; and Other/Not Elsewhere Classified (NEC) (see Table .). Around three-quarters of all groups active in the work of the Scottish Parliament over this timescale exhibit some degree of ‘Scottishness’, with the vast majority of these active only in Scotland. This is perhaps unsurprising: as described above, a healthy Scottish population of interest groups existed prior to devolution. In addition, the wide-ranging legislative competence of the devolved institutions may well have furthered this. Reporting on data from the Consultative Steering Group’s consultation exercise in , Keating (: ) reports that . per cent of respondents were purely Scottish groups (whether regional or national), . per cent were UK groups and
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Table 23.1 Regionalization of Group Systems, Scotland (1999–2007) and Québec (2000–2010) Group type
UK/Canadian group Scottish/Quebecois branch of UK/Canadian group Scottish/Quebecois group Other/NEC Total
Scotland
Quebec
Count
%
Count
%
273 138 767 38 1,216
22.5 11.3 63.1 3.1 100.0
75 25 1,086 28 1,214
6.2 2.1 89.4 2.3 100.0
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
. per cent were Scottish branches of UK groups.⁵ These two sets of figures are generated from quite different sources⁶ and as such must be read with caution. Caveats accepted, if we use the CSG figures as a proxy of the pre-devolution landscape and the parliamentary data as post-devolution, it suggests a greater relative presence in the more recent data of more Scottish and purely UK groups, along with a lower level of presence of Scottish branches of UK groups. Whilst the greater presence of purely Scottish groups is not particularly surprising, the lower presence of Scottish branches of UK groups and the greater presence of purely UK groups is more confusing. The apparently low level of representation of purely UK groups in the CSG consultation may be reflective of the fact that its initial consultation exercise would have held greater resonance for Scottish groups or Scottish branches of UK groups than for UK groups whose focus would likely still be on ‘business as usual’ at Westminster. In addition, the apparent increase in representation for purely UK groups might be attributable to the emergence of a ‘boomerang pattern’ of interest articulation (Keck and Sikkink ) whereby UK groups pushing unsuccessfully for change in a particular policy at Westminster temporarily redirect their attentions towards Holyrood, where a change in policy could resonate elsewhere in the UK. For example, the ban on smoking in public places and the introduction of a levy on plastic carrier bags in supermarkets are both examples of policies delivered in Scotland before subsequently being enacted for England at Westminster. Along with growth in the relative presence of purely Scottish groups, this might explain a proportionate ‘squeezing’ of Scottish branches of UK groups in the later data.
⁵ These percentages have been recalculated after removing the ‘multinational corporations’ and ‘private companies’ which are included in Keating () but are excluded from the dataset used in Halpin et al. (b). ⁶ The data from Keating () is based on responses to a one-off consultation and the Halpin et al. (b) data is from a ten-year dataset of evidence to parliamentary committees.
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A comparison of the Scottish data with equivalent data gathered for Quebec (Halpin et al. ) shows a considerably lower proportion of both national Canadian groups and branches of Canadian groups, whilst the proportion of groups operating exclusively in these sub-national polities is considerably larger in Quebec than in Scotland. The proportion of groups that are listed as distinct regional branches or divisions of a UK/Canadian group also points towards a greater degree of centre-periphery devolution within the Scottish interest group system as compared with Quebec. This appears to indicate that the lower degree of political autonomy/devolution and cultural distinctiveness in Scotland has prompted groups to recognize the importance of maintaining a presence which reflects the broader political governance arrangement: a degree of devolution beneath a parent institution which retains considerable control over key policy areas.
A D S P S?
.................................................................................................................................. In addition to the ‘Scottishness’ of the broad interest landscape, it is also reasonable to ask questions about the dynamics of policymaking in post-devolution Scotland: to what extent is the system distinctive in respect of processes, actors, and policy communities? Devolution brought with it a new set of venues which are manifestly closer geographically to many of the groups representing Scottish interests. That these pressure points are located in the central belt of Scotland (where the majority of the population and, presumably, interest groups are based) further enhances the system’s accessibility relative to Westminster; and the opportunity costs of meeting with officials, Ministers or MSPs are reduced accordingly. In addition to this geographical accessibility, many groups have also described an increased openness on the part of policymakers to the involvement of interest groups in the making and implementing of public policy in Scotland (Cairney ), both in the number of groups involved and the breadth of interests considered. Several reasons are typically offered for this. First, the legacy of the Scottish Office upon the new institutions. Although the Scottish Office had discretion in a number of policy areas, its main role was the implementation of Westminster policy in Scotland; as a result, it enjoyed limited policymaking capacity itself (Keating et al. ). This is argued to have carried over into the new Scottish institutions. In the early years of devolution, there was much positivity around the apparent emergence of a ‘Scottish policy style’, which placed more of a premium on partnership working, wide-ranging consultation, stakeholder empowerment, less top-down working, and was less reliant upon professional groups and policy networks (which we might think of as representing ‘the usual suspects’) (Keating et al. ; Keating ; McEwen ; Cairney , , , ; Holden and Hawkins ; Chapter in this Handbook). These perceptions emanated from interest groups themselves, as
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well as from politicians keen to sell the value of the new institutions to a sometimes sceptical public. The perception of a new policy style chimed harmoniously with the pre-devolution rhetoric of ‘new politics’: more collaborative and consensual, more participative and more clearly based on engagement with stakeholders beyond ‘the usual suspects’. The work by Keating et al. (), based on hundreds of interviews with interest groups since devolution, certainly attests to the positive perception amongst many groups around the concentration of decision makers and numerous other interest groups in the ‘small world’ of policymaking in Scotland (Cairney : ). However, to what extent does the claim of a distinctively Scottish policy style stand up to scrutiny? A closer look at the evidence suggests that any such claim should be treated with caution. First, it is worth bearing in mind that many of the Scottish groups who talk of the new policy style have very little—or no—prior experience of working with Westminster (Chapter in this Handbook; Jordan and Stevenson ; Cairney ). Another issue is that the openness and accessibility identified above may be attributable to the fact that Scotland is a small country whose governance institutions lack policy capacity and therefore depend upon extra-parliamentary support for policymaking and implementation. There are also claims around a more inclusive style of post-devolution Scottish policymaking. In other words, are groups which would traditionally be thought of as ‘usual suspects’ being squeezed out by civic groups? Again, such questions are particularly salient given the emphasis upon ‘new politics’ in the rhetoric surrounding the establishment of the devolved Scottish institutions. So, to what extent has ‘new politics’ really taken hold in the articulation of interests, and what—if anything—can be said about the influence of pressure participants in this brave new world? Bonney () investigated the degree to which the work of committees tallied with the concept of ‘new politics’ and participatory democracy, to which frequent reference was made by the CSG in its aspirations for the new Parliament. Bonney concluded that rather than involving a significantly broader spectrum of stakeholders (particularly service users), a usual suspects culture had developed, whereby specific committees had become dependent upon particular interest groups (for example, the Justice Committees and the Law Society Scotland). In addition, Bonney found an over-representation of the groups which had previously been involved in the work of the CSG (for example, SCVO), concluding that ‘if this was participative democracy at work, it was again the participative democracy of organised interests’ (: ). Does this hold true when scrutinizing the policy communities around specific committees? Specifically, which interests are represented in the work of committees, and how frequently are they represented? Do we see the existence of ‘usual suspects’ active across multiple issues within a policy domain, complemented by niche actors dipping in and out when an issue affects them, or do we see a more varied system which appears not to conform to the ‘usual suspects’ label? Subsequent studies give limited support to the usual suspects thesis. Halpin et al. (a, b) consider evidence given to parliamentary committees and identify a
Rural
Justice Count
%
Individual
313
13.5
Scottish Government / Executive
170
7.3
Scottish Natural Heritage
46
Scottish Environment Protection Agency
Health Count
%
Individual
964
25.2
Scottish Government / Executive
211
5.5
2.0
Law Society of Scotland
106
2.8
36
1.6
Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland
62
National Farmers Union of Scotland
35
1.5
Faculty of Advocates
Scottish Environment LINK
31
1.3
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland
29
Highland Council
Education Count
%
Count
%
Individual
474
12.3
Scottish Government / Executive
181
4.7
Individual
693
21.9
Scottish Government / Executive
162
5.1
Convention of Scottish Local Authorities
40
1.0
Convention of Scottish Local Authorities
52
1.6
1.6
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
37
1.0
Educational Institute of Scotland
36
1.1
57
1.5
NHS Lothian
33
.9
Children in Scotland
29
.9
Victim Support Scotland
44
1.2
Royal College of Nursing Scotland
29
.8
Association of Directors of Education in Scotland
26
.8
1.2
Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service
40
1.0
NHS Ayrshire and Arran
28
.7
Glasgow City Council
25
.8
27
1.2
Association of Scottish Police Superintendents
34
.9
Royal College of Nursing
28
.7
Association of Directors of Social Work
24
.8
Scottish Rural Property and Business Association
27
1.2
Convention of Scottish Local Authorities
31
.8
British Medical Association
27
.7
Scottish Parent Teacher Council
23
.7
Highlands and Islands Enterprise
25
1.1
Scottish Police Federation
30
.8
NHS Tayside
27
.7
Barnardo’s Scotland
21
.7
Convention of Scottish Local Authorities
21
.9
Scottish Women’s Aid
30
.8
UNISON
27
.7
Highland Council
20
.6
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Table 23.2 Usual Suspects? Most Active Participants, Selected Scottish Parliament Committee Areas, 1999–20147
21
.9
Scottish Legal Aid Board
26
.7
Association of Directors of Social Work
25
.6
City of Edinburgh Council
18
.6
Scottish Crofting Foundation
18
.8
Sheriffs’ Association
25
.7
British Medical Association Scotland
24
.6
Children 1st
17
.5
Argyll and Bute Council
14
.6
Scottish Human Rights Centre
22
.6
Scottish Association for Mental Health
23
.6
Headteachers Association of Scotland
16
.5
Law Society of Scotland
14
.6
Scottish Prison Service
22
.6
NHS Highland
22
.6
Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration
16
.5
National Trust for Scotland
14
.6
Safeguarding Communities, Reducing Offending
21
.5
City of Edinburgh Council
21
.5
Scottish Secondary Teachers Association
16
.5
Scottish Fishermen’s Federation
14
.6
Scottish Consumer Council
19
.5
NHS Grampian
21
.5
South Lanarkshire Council
16
.5
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar
13
.6
Association of Directors of Social Work
17
.4
NHS Health Scotland
21
.5
UNISON
16
.5
Crofters Commission
12
.5
Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration
17
.4
Royal College of General Practitioners
21
.5
Aberdeenshire Council
15
.5
Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland
11
.5
Children 1st
16
.4
NHS Forth Valley
20
.5
Renfrewshire Council
15
.5
Source: Authors’ own compilation. 7 The figures provided represent the total number of occasions on which these actors submitted written or oral evidence to the respective committee in each policy area. It should be borne in mind that the specific remits of committees have changed over time. Here, we aggregate all instances of committees whose brief covers these particular policy fields.
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Scottish Water
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small number of very broadly engaged policy participants alongside a much larger range of ‘specialist’ actors operating in particular policy niches. Extending this methodology to cover the period up to , the results can be seen clearly in Table ., which shows the most frequently active participants across collected committees focusing on education, health, justice, and rural issues. In each case, the most active participants are individual contributors to the work of committees: typically members of the public, university lecturers, etc. When aggregated as a whole, they are the most frequent type of contributor across all policy domains. However, most unique individuals provide either written or oral evidence on only one occasion. The next largest type of organized interest by aggregate level of activity is the Scottish Government. Given that executive oversight/scrutiny is one of the key roles of parliamentary committees, it seems reasonable to expect that departments and ministers would routinely be asked to give evidence to committees—and actively seek to furnish committees with evidence. Beyond that, there is further evidence of repeat engagement across committees which appears to bear out the usual suspects argument. Local authorities are very well represented, with their collective body (COSLA) being the organization with the single highest level of participation. This perhaps reflects the role of local authorities in policy implementation at the local level, and the role of COSLA in representing the views of local authorities over funding matters. Additionally, each policy field also exhibits a strong presence from other public institutions of the sort described by Salisbury () such as local authorities and NHS Boards. Beyond these prominent broadly based actors, the data here clearly demonstrate recurrent engagement by a number of groups with a particular interest in that particular policy field; in other words, we see policy communities specific to particular devolved areas. Thus, we see strong representation of certain groups around a ‘rural affairs’ policy area covering farming, fishing, and landowners’ groups (NFU Scotland, SRPBA, Scottish Crofting Foundation, Scottish Fishermen’s Federation); we see regular mobilization from parent groups and children’s charities (SPTC, Barnardo’s Scotland, Children st, Children in Scotland) in relation to an education policy community; whilst nursing and patient groups (SCGP, RCN Scotland, BMA, BMA Scotland, SAMH) act as the most active specialists in relation to a health policy community; and groups concerned with victims, rights and communities (Victim Support Scotland, SHRC, SACRO) constitute a policy community around justice issues. In addition to their general prominence within these communities, their role as ‘usual suspects’ is further supported if this engagement is broken down to consider the provision of written and oral evidence specifically. In almost every case, we find that the top ten or so organizations in terms of overall presence in each policy community are better represented in oral evidence sessions than they are in written evidence, which again lends support to the usual suspects argument, whereby committees offer regular invitations to oral evidence sessions—and therefore privileged access—to certain groups regardless of whether they have actually offered written evidence beforehand. However, any concerns about usual suspects should be kept in perspective. Further analysis of the top ten most frequent contributors of oral evidence to parliamentary
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committees in each session shows limited over-reliance on these usual suspects.⁸ Instead, we find differences between committees in the proportion of evidence provided by these top ten usual suspects, ranging from . per cent in the Health Committees to . per cent in the Justice Committees. In the Health and Education Committees, there has been little variation in their figures in each of the parliamentary sessions so far, but more evidence of a trend towards greater reliance on usual suspects can be found in the Rural and Justice Committees: both have seen pronounced increases from session to session in the volume of evidence provided to them by these top ten participants as a proportion of all oral evidence taken.⁹ In the Justice Committees, this is driven by very heavy representation from the Law Society of Scotland, the Faculty of Advocates, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, and the Crown Office/Procurator Fiscal Service. In the case of the Rural Committees there are fewer ‘dominant’ actors but there is nevertheless a heavy presence from the NFU Scotland, SEPA, Scottish Natural Heritage, and the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation. Overall though, concerns that Scotland’s political institutions are over consulting a small and privileged sub-section of the organized interest community seem largely unfounded.
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.................................................................................................................................. Prior to devolution, some organized interests dealt primarily—if not exclusively—with the Scottish Office and local authorities in Scotland. However, many others were much more embedded in wider UK relationships, associations, and alliances despite the relative autonomy of the Scottish Office (Jordan and Richardson ; Kellas ). This has continued to be the case since in certain policy arenas, although the correlation between the seat of decision-making power in a particular field and the focus of pressure activity from interests in that field is not always exact. Keating (: ) argues that in the case of business groups specifically, the choice of whether to focus on the Scottish level, the UK level or both was down to institutional factors such as the ownership model of firms, their site(s) of production, the market for their products and the level at which their activities are regulated. As a result, many business organizations in Scotland still see Westminster as the main focus of their attentions, although the legislative competence of the Scottish institutions in business-relevant policy areas such as education, training, and economic development means that they may choose to
⁸ We looked at the list of the top ten most active participants (excluding individuals and Scottish Government contributors) in oral evidence sessions across the committees we traced (in above analysis) and across the entire period of –. ⁹ In the Justice committees, the session figure was . per cent, rising to . per cent in our (albeit incomplete) consideration of session . For the Rural committees, the equivalent figures were . per cent and . per cent.
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‘venue shop’ where appropriate (Baumgartner and Jones ; Keating et al. ). Given that different institutional venues attract different organized interests and have the ability to create unique policy niches (Baumgartner and Jones ), to what extent does the Scottish case provide evidence of venue-shopping between the devolved Scottish institutions? Consideration of the executive arena can clearly be justified in the Scottish case. The ‘consultative’ system involving organized interests and the executive has been identified as important alongside the parliamentary system by a number of authors (e.g. McKenzie ; Rose ). It has been described as contributing to the British (and Scottish) ‘policy style’ (Richardson and Jordan ; Jordan and Richardson ; Cairney ), and to the ‘orthodox’ public policy approach in the UK (Grant ).¹⁰ Others highlight consultations as being important within the core ‘policy work’ of UK civil servants (Page ; Page and Jenkins ). Efforts to map the organized interest system in the executive arena in Scotland (based on responses to Scottish Government consultations from to ) reveal a landscape of over , unique actors, with analysis showing that interest groups—as defined in this chapter—comprise , of these (Halpin et al. a). ‘Government’, ‘Public institutions’ and ‘Businesses’ collectively constitute the majority (. per cent) of unique actors. The ‘Government’ activity mapped in the executive arena is overwhelmingly dominated by local authorities. Within the ‘Public institutions’ category, the dominant actors are schools, hospital boards, and the like. Most consultations receive very few responses, with a handful soaking up the vast majority of responses (a so-called power-law distribution) (Halpin ). More recent network analysis of this same data points towards a growth in the aggregate size of the interest group system involved in consultations over time, although this has not led to ‘balkanization’ of the policymaking system into ever more fragmented sub-systems (Ackland and Halpin ). Due to the executive’s ability to use its whipped majority in the House of Commons in order to ensure the safe passage of Bills, parliamentary committees at Westminster are typically viewed as marginal. Very little empirical work exists in relation to Westminster committees (although see Jordan et al. ; Marsh ; Pedersen et al. ). Yet, as outlined above, there is a clear rationale for considering that committees could be an important arena in Scotland. In principle, committees have significant powers; based on existing comparative measures of committee strength, they are considered to have ‘high’ strength (Cairney : ). Halpin et al. (a, b) show a very clear drop in the presence of public institutions and businesses as providers of both written and oral evidence in the legislative arena as compared with the executive arena. Conversely, there is an increase in the representation of government actors (broadly conceived) and interest groups as contributors. In the case of government bodies, the increase is most pronounced within the oral evidence category. ¹⁰ Although see Richardson (), who argues that this style is under challenge and there is an emerging trend towards imposition.
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This is perhaps best explained by the fact that the Scottish Government initiates the vast majority of legislation in Scotland, despite the fact that committees and individual members also have the power to do so. It is common practice for committees to invite the minister and ministerial team responsible for a bill to provide oral evidence in billrelated hearings. Typically, they also provide written evidence to the same hearings. In addition, as Marsh () noted in his examination of select committees at Westminster, the most important ‘interest group’ is the ‘departments’. Whilst businesses and public institutions are less active in giving evidence to legislative consultations than is the case for executive consultations, the opposite seems true for the involvement of citizens. This is important given that committees have the task of engaging with civil society. A large number of individual citizens clearly do participate in committees, either individually or as part of a civil society grouping. In each case, they are better represented as providers of written evidence to committees, suggesting a greater likelihood to target the legislative than executive branch, but also a lower likelihood of being invited to provide oral evidence than government bodies. An obvious follow-up question relates to areas of overlap between these arenaspecific populations: to what extent do groups engage in venue-shopping around the new Scottish institutions? Work on US non-profit data comparing state incorporation, IRS and telephone listings showed that around three-quarters of all entries appeared in just one database (Grønbjerg ). Mapping work on the Brussels lobbying community also revealed low overlap levels (Berkhout and Lowery ). This also generally holds true for the Scottish context (Halpin et al. a: ). Comparison of the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament populations shows that in the combined landscape of organized interests, per cent were active only in the executive arena and nine per cent only in the legislative arena. Given that the population engaged in executive consultations is considerably larger, this difference in magnitude is to be expected. Perhaps more interesting is the finding that only . per cent of organized interests engaged in both arenas at least once during the same period. On that basis, any discussion of a single general organized interest population appears to be unfounded. The different political arenas appear to attract different populations, albeit with some minor overlap. In addition to seeing differences in the distribution of types of organized interest, the specific interests themselves are often different. This also raises important questions about the role of the Parliament in interest articulation. Given that the rhetoric of the new politics focused strongly on the Parliament and its committees as being the focal point for interest representation, the fact that over three-quarters of active groups did not engage to any extent with the Parliament’s committees at the height of the rhetoric around ‘new politics’ again points to a continuation of the pre-devolution trend of targeting the executive branch. Whilst this was perhaps to be expected following the formation of a stable Labour–Liberal Democrat majority coalition in sessions (–) and (–), it was more surprising to see this in session (–) when the executive branch was run as a minority Scottish National Party administration (a zero-sum analysis of power would predict a more strident and assertive legislative branch under such circumstances).
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C
.................................................................................................................................. Many of the characteristic features of Scottish politics described in this Handbook emerged following the devolution of greater policymaking power to Scotland in . Similarly, it is often claimed that represented a significant shake-up for the representation and articulation of interests in Scotland. Civic groups were seen as being a key part of the ‘new politics’. There has been talk of a distinctively ‘Scottish policy style’, the notion of which has clearly found favour amongst some interest groups. However, the early emphasis on change and discontinuity post- has given way to more critical discussion of continuity and the persistence of familiar institutional templates. Devolution has undoubtedly changed the landscape through the provision of new, more proximate points of access for organized interests in Scotland, and a policymaking style which departs in certain respects from Westminster practice. However, the landscape is still dominated by well-organized professional interests. Institutions—defined as per Salisbury ()—are still the most active actors. Whilst there is certainly evidence of certain committees engaging with civic groups, there is something of a countervailing tendency to deliver privileged access to certain groups, typically a combination of large generalist organizations such as COSLA alongside the ‘big players’ within that specific policy niche. The fact that groups appear adept at ‘venue-shopping’ between the executive and legislative branch also makes it difficult to talk about a single organized interest landscape in contemporary Scotland. Similarly, whilst we see clear evidence that there is a distinctively Scottish tinge to the interest landscape, a sizeable minority of the groups active in these venues is nevertheless composed of UK groups and Scottish branches of a UK group. Despite the devolution of power, the interest landscape in Scotland still tends to exhibit elements of the traditional UK centre-periphery model.
R Ackland, R. and Halpin, D. . ‘Change or Stability in the Structure of Interest Group Networks? Evidence from Scottish Public Policy Consultations’, Journal of Public Policy, /: –. Baumgartner, F. and Jones, B. . Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Béland, D. and Lecours, A. . Nationalism and Social Policy: The Politics of Territorial Solidarity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berkhout, J. and Lowery, D. . ‘Counting Organized Interest in the European Union’, Journal of European Public Policy, /: –. Boatright, J. . ‘The Place of Québec in Canadian Interest Group Federalism’, American Review of Canadian Studies, /: –. Bonney, N. . ‘The Scottish Parliament and Participatory Democracy: Vision and Reality’, Political Quarterly, /: –.
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Brenner, N. . ‘Open Questions on State Rescaling’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, /: –. Cairney, P. . ‘The Analysis of Scottish Parliament Committee Influence: Beyond Capacity and Structure in Comparing West European Legislatures’, European Journal of Political Research, /: –. Cairney, P. . ‘Using Devolution to Set the Agenda? Venue Shift and the Smoking Ban in Scotland’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. Cairney, P. . ‘Has Devolution Changed the “British Policy Style”?’, British Politics, /: –. Cairney, P. . ‘The New British Policy Style: From a British to a Scottish Political Tradition?’, Political Studies Review, /: –. Cairney, P. . ‘Territorial Policy Communities and the Scottish Policy Style: The Case of Compulsory Education’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Cairney, P. . ‘The Territorialisation of Interest Representation in Scotland: Did Devolution Produce a New Form of Group-Government Relations?’ Territory, Politics, Governance, /: –. Coleman, W. and Grant, W. . ‘Business Associations and Public Policy: A Comparison of Organisational Development in Britain and Canada’, Journal of Public Policy, /: –. Grant, W. . Pressure Groups and British Politics. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Grant, W. . ‘Pressure Politics: From ‘Insider’ Politics to Direct Action?’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Grønbjerg, K.A. . ‘Evaluating Nonprofit Databases’, American Behavioral Scientist, / : –. Halpin, D. . ‘Explaining Policy Bandwagons: Organized Interest Mobilization and Cascades of Attention’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, /: –. Halpin, D., Baxter, G., and MacLeod, I. a. ‘Multiple Arenas, Multiple Populations: Counting Organized Interests in Scottish Public Policy’, in D. Halpin and G. Jordan (eds), The Scale of Interest Organization in Democratic Politics: Data and Research Methods. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, –. Halpin, D., MacLeod, I., and McLaverty, P. b. ‘Committee Hearings of the Scottish Parliament: Evidence Giving and Policy Learning’, Journal of Legislative Studies, /: –. Halpin, D., MacLeod, I., and Pageau, S. . ‘Organized Interests in “Regional” Legislatures: Comparing Patterns of Engagement between Quebec and Scotland’, Paper presented to the International Political Studies Association (IPSA) Congress, – July , Montreal, Canada. Holden, C. and Hawkins, B. . ‘ “Whisky Gloss”: The Alcohol Industry, Devolution and Policy Communities in Scotland’, Public Policy and Administration, /: –. Hooghe, L., Marks, G., and Schakel, A.H. . The Rise of Regional Authority: A Comparative Study of Democracies. Abingdon: Routledge. Jordan, A.G. and Richardson, J. . Government and Pressure Groups in Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jordan, A.G., Halpin, D., and Maloney, W.A. . ‘Defining Interests: Disambiguation and the Need for New Distinctions?’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. Jordan, A.G., Richardson, J., and Dudley, G. . ‘Evidence to Parliamentary Committees as Access to the Policy Process’, in D. Hill (ed.), Parliamentary Select Committees in Action:
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A Symposium (Strathclyde Papers in Government and Politics No. ). Glasgow: University of Strathclyde. Jordan, G. and Stevenson, L. . ‘Redemocratizing Scotland: Towards the Politics of Disappointment?’, in A. Wright (ed.), Scotland: The Challenge of Devolution. Aldershot: Ashgate, –. Keating, M. . ‘Social Inclusion, Devolution and Policy Divergence’, Political Quarterly, /: –. Keating, M. . The Government of Scotland: Public Policy Making After Devolution. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Keating, M. . The Government of Scotland: Public Policy Making After Devolution, nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Keating, M. . Rescaling the European State: The Making of Territory and the Rise of the Meso. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keating, M. and Wilson, A. . ‘Regions with Regionalism? The Rescaling of Interest Groups in Six European States’, European Journal of Political Research, /: –. Keating, M., Cairney, P., and Hepburn, E. . ‘Territorial Policy, Communities and Devolution in the UK’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, /: –. Keating, M., Stevenson, L., Cairney, P., and Taylor, K. . ‘Does Devolution Make a Difference? Legislative Output and Policy Divergence in Scotland’, Journal of Legislative Studies, /: –. Keck, M.E. and Sikkink, K. . Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kellas, J. . The Scottish Political System, th edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lopez, F.A. and Tatham, M. . ‘Regionalization with Europeanization? The Rescaling of Interest Groups in Multi-level Systems’, Journal of European Public Policy, /: –. Lynch, P. . Scottish Government and Politics: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Marsh, I. . Policy Making in a Three Party System: Committees, Coalitions, and Parliament. London: Methuen. McEwen, N. . Nationalism and the State: Welfare and Identity in Scotland and Quebec. Brussels: European Inter-University Press. McKenzie, R.T. . ‘Parties, Pressure Groups and the British Political Process’, Political Quarterly, /: –. Midwinter, A., Keating, M., and Mitchell, J. . Politics and Public Policy in Scotland. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Mooney, G. and Poole, L. . ‘A Land of Milk and Honey? Social Policy in Scotland after Devolution’, Critical Social Policy, /: –. Page, E. and Jenkins, B. . Policy Bureaucracy: Government with a Cast of Thousands. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Page, E.C. . ‘The Civil Servant as Legislator: Law Making in British Administration’, Public Administration, /: –. Pastori, G. . ‘Le Regioni Senza Regionalismo’, Il Mulino, /: –. Paterson, L. . ‘Scottish Democracy and Scottish Utopias: The First Year of the Scottish Parliament’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Paterson, L., Brown, A., Curtice, J., Hinds, K., McCrone, D., Park, A., Sporston, K., and Surridge, P. . New Scotland, New Politics? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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Pedersen, H.H., Halpin, D., and Rasmusseb, A. . ‘Who Gives Evidence to Parliamentary Committees? A Comparative Investigation of Parliamentary Committees and their Constituencies’, Journal of Legislative Studies, /: –. Richardson, J. . ‘The Changing British Policy Style: From Governance to Government?’, British Politics, /: –. Richardson, J. and Jordan, A.G. . Governing Under Pressure. Oxford: Martin Robertson. Rose, R. . Do Parties Make a Difference?, nd edition. London: Macmillan and Chatham. Salisbury, R.H. . ‘Interest Representation: The Dominance of Interest Groups’, American Political Science Review, /: –. Self, P. . ‘Are We Worse Governed?’, New Society, May. Streeck, W. . ‘Between Pluralism and Corporatism: German Business Associations and the State’, Journal of Public Policy, /: –. Truman, D.B. . The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Warhurst, J. . ‘The Australian Conservation Foundation: The Development of a Modern Environmental Interest Group’, Environmental Politics, /: –. Wright, A. (ed.) . Scotland: The Challenge of Devolution. Aldershot: Ashgate.
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, ,
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R R P
.................................................................................................................................. B accident rather than design, Scotland’s Protestant Reformation helped produce a pluralistic religious landscape, and a state that was, through necessity, broadly neutral within it. In sharp contrast to elsewhere, Lowland Scotland’s Reformation was a popular movement from below as well as a mercantile/aristocratic endeavour. Reformation fed into, and was fed by, a historic shift in the centre of Scottish patriotism and built bridges between Scotland and England. In , the Scottish Church established itself in loosely Presbyterian form, a structure further ratified and entrenched by its Second Book of Discipline in . The Presbyterian governance of Scotland’s Kirk remained unstable and contested, however, and into the eighteenth century ‘The Church of Scotland remained . . . contestable territory for all religious groups except the Catholics, with dissension being contained within it’ (Brown : ). Whilst ‘a fierce loyalty to the Presbyterian system’ had developed across much of the Lowlands by , Episcopalian and Roman Catholic minorities flourished where they had aristocratic sponsorship in the Highlands and North East. Indeed ‘the religious complexion of the north [was] unusually confused, with religious traditions and practices intermingling’ (Brown : ). Vexation over church governance continued, with sporadic violence and insurrection. The seventeenth century saw open civil war between the ascendant Episcopalians and persecuted Presbyterians. Only in , after the ousting of the Stuart dynasty in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ was Presbyterianism finally established as the Church of Scotland’s governing model. Union in protected the Kirk’s position as a key social (and national) institution, and entrenched that church as Presbyterian. This aspect of the Union contributed, from the mideighteenth century, to a widespread and popular Lowland Scottish ‘buy in’ to Britishness. This was particularly true after the final suppression of Stuart dynastic claims in
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, ,
and once the economic and developmental benefits of Union and Empire became evident. The continued fusion of Scottish patriotism and popular Protestantism became an important contributor to a distinctly Scottish version of Britishness which dominated Scotland between ca. and ca. and has been aptly described as ‘Unionist Nationalism’ (Paterson ; Morton ; Torrance ). The Church–State relationship, however, remained problematic and the Kirk was unable to contain internal dissent, particularly concerning the authority of civil courts over church issues. Disputes over patronage—who had the right to appoint parish ministers—saw several secessions from and continued to provide the most potent threat to Presbyterian unity. The issue peaked with the Disruption of when the Church of Scotland split, acrimoniously, in two. For several decades two great national churches wrangled over property, endowments, and prestige. The resultant fierce enmity of these two Kirks, both of whom claimed the mantle of the de facto (if not, in the case of the secessionists, de jure) ‘Established’ Church, deeply divided Scotland. These churches were near exacts in Reformed doctrine/liturgy, but increasingly opposites in political colouring, and their legal wrangling effectively compelled the Scottish/British state—anxious to avoid becoming embroiled in these intractable legal disputes—to be neutral in its dealings towards them. The Established Kirk retained the formal constitutional status and most of the buildings; the ‘Free Kirk’ had the popularity, an urban base, and close political connections with the dominant Liberals. As the Victorian doggerel had it: The Free Kirk, the Wee Kirk, The Kirk without the Steeple; The Auld Kirk, the Cauld Kirk, The Kirk without the People. By the late nineteenth century Presbyterian fission was edging towards fusion. As early as earlier secessionists had combined to form the United Presbyterian Church, which operated as the third major Presbyterian denomination until its merger with the Free Church in . In turn, the resultant United Free Church merged with the Church of Scotland in after most of the latter’s remaining state links had been severed. The Church of Scotland Act () guaranteed the independence of the Kirk in all spiritual matters, severing it from the state and transforming an Established Church to a ‘National’ one. The Act, in essence, codified the state neutrality that had, from expediency, followed the Disruption eighty years before. From , the vast majority of Scotland’s Presbyterians were back in the fold of a single Church. But the religious landscape had changed immeasurably (Bruce ).
P S D
.................................................................................................................................. The schismatic nature of Scotland’s Presbyterianism, and the blocs into which it was divided for much of the nineteenth century, contributed enormously to a religiously differentiated society. The advantages to the state in remaining neutral (rather than be seen to favour any one of the competing Presbyterian factions) underpinned, and accommodated, a broadening pluralism. Further religious differentiation followed on
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from internal and inward migration. As Scotland began to urbanize and industrialize there were very significant shifts of population from the rural North and South into the rapidly expanding central belt with its mills, factories, ironworks, and mines. There were new arrivals too, most notably from Ireland. What had long been two-way traffic had, by , become a regular seasonal migration of Irish workers to work on Scotland’s harvests. By the s Irish migrants were settling permanently, particularly in the South West, and in and around Glasgow. Much of the historiography of this migration has assumed that the ‘vast majority’ (Handley : ) were Catholic, and that the minority who were Protestant ‘had little difficulty in settling down in Scotland and indeed re-integrating with their kith and kin’ (Bradley : ; see also Devine ). This, however, sorely understates the religious pluralism of Irish migration—a substantial minority (and in certain places at certain times a majority) were Protestant. Further, many Protestant Irish were Episcopalian and faced considerable difficulty in reconciling their religious habits to a Scottish context (Meredith ). Across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries religious minorities were growing in numbers, ‘respectability’, and influence. The Episcopalian presence in Scotland rose from (an estimated) , in to , in ; whilst the Catholic population rose more dramatically over the same period from , to ,. Whilst the Episcopal Church shrank over the latter twentieth century, Catholicism continued to grow, reaching , in the census of , some per cent of the population. Denominational and ethnic divisions did not, however, map straightforwardly on to partisan political allegiances. Scottish politics across the nineteenth century was a twoparty affair marked by class and geography: the landed gentry and many rural districts were strongly Conservative in hue, whilst urban districts and the Highlands were strongly Liberal. Free Kirkers gravitated towards the Liberals as part of their general class and social values (not least religious liberty). Irish Catholics shared these reasons but also valued the Liberal position on Ireland. Thus (Free) Presbyterian—including Highland Calvinists—and (Irish) Catholic fell behind the same dominant political party (though not necessarily for the same reasons), whilst the social and class values of (Established) Presbyterian and Episcopalian gravitated both towards the (less successful) Conservatives. It was thus difficult to sustain a common Presbyterian front; likewise Protestant alliances between Presbyterian and Episcopalian were largely limited because of the association of the latter with the Conservatives. Political cleavages, then, did not easily coincide with religious ones: indeed they may have served to limit the space for serious and sustained religious conflict. These cleavages further necessitated the de facto impulse towards state neutrality and provided tone and context for the expansion of that state from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. There is some irony that the ultimately secularizing expansion of these functions was often driven by desire amongst Presbyterian ‘dissenters’, in particular after , to break the Established Kirk’s remaining privileges. Clerical influence on local boards and committees continued well into the twentieth century but that influence was—in effect if not in intent—pluralistic. Three great Presbyterian churches sought to involve themselves on parochial and county boards and committees, as did,
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, ,
in particular places and contexts, the Episcopal, Catholic, and smaller churches. In turn, the varied nature of representation opened up opportunities for more secular platforms—not least ratepayer and labour interests. Throughout this expansion, the reputation of the state—local and national—as the best placed (and trusted) institution to provide and manage services grew, gradually undermining the role and relevance of the churches. By , and the introduction of a comprehensive UK welfare system, it was the state—whether Westminster/Whitehall or local councils—which was widely viewed as the ‘natural’ provider and arbiter of welfare issues, leaving the churches as voluntary, indeed ‘private’, organizations. The point here is that the fractured and varied nature of Scotland’s religious landscape, set alongside an expanding state, resulted (if rarely intentionally) in religious pluralism and a largely neutral policy arena. Additionally, it is also clear that the main religious constituencies in Scotland are in themselves plural—assumptions of a Presbyterian view or a Catholic position on aspects of politics and policy sit uneasily with the very varied experiences of ethnic, theological, geographic, and political diversity within each of these traditions. These have been accentuated by diverse experiences of secular decline.
S
.................................................................................................................................. There is considerable debate about just when the process of secularization began in Scotland and in Britain more widely. The s were key in Scotland: ‘Secularisation as a widespread breach of popular church connection . . . occurred only from about –. From then until the present, the slide in all indices has been very severe for most Protestant churches’ (Brown : ; see also Brown ). Most markedly, membership of the Church of Scotland, which had numbered . million in , entered steep decline from . By it had fallen under million, and by under . million. In membership was ,. This ‘loss’ of one million members has been driven not by active abandonment, but by the consistent and deepening failure to recruit young people. There is evidence that the s crisis lies, in part, with the prior experiences of parents in the s: the dislocations of the Second World War and the economic boom following it may have as much to do with Scotland (and Britain’s) secularizing moment as the more immediate cultural context (Bruce ; Bruce and Glendinning ). Crockett and Voas () pinpoint the earliest decades of the twentieth century as crucial. Whatever the beginnings of the decline, secularization was pronounced by the late twentieth century. Scottish Social Attitudes evidence from suggested that whilst most respondents born before had regularly attended religious services at some point in their lives (even though a large majority no longer did so), around per cent of all respondents born after had never been regular attenders (Rosie : ). Of more immediate relevance here, however, is that different denominations have experienced secularization in different ways and across different timescales. Whilst the
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Church of Scotland began a sharp decline in the s, evidence of disengagement within the Scottish Roman Catholic community came three or four decades later. This leaves quite distinctive demographic differences between these denominations: on average, self-defined Catholics are younger than self-defined Presbyterians, with the self-defined ‘no religions’ younger still. To address this we will consider the annual Scottish Social Attitudes surveys which have run, almost continuously, since . We will consider, in particular, three surveys—, , and —and, where possible, merging the datasets to increase the sample size of the smaller groups and allow for more advanced analysis. Table . demonstrates the age breakdown and average age of each of the larger responses to the question Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion? As is immediately apparent, the age profile of Church of Scotland and Episcopalian identifiers is markedly older than that of the other groups, in particular Muslims and other non-Christian religions. Note too, here, the relative youth of by far the largest group—those of no religion. Table . presents the same data in a slightly different way to illustrate the effect that these age structures have on the religious landscape more generally. Three results are striking here. First, whilst the Church of Scotland claims the affiliation of nearly half the oldest group it can claim only a tiny proportion of the two youngest groups. Second, a large majority of the two youngest groups claim to be of no religion, as does half of the middle-aged group. In the second-to-oldest group—those around retirement age—these ‘nones’ are in a minority, but are the largest single grouping. The third point is that the Catholic proportion of the groups is relatively stable across the age groups, suggesting that Catholics are more likely to maintain a religious affiliation/identity despite (as we shall see) other signs of religious disengagement. There is also a clear gender effect amongst older groups: almost half of the men aged – ( per cent) are of no religion, compared to just per cent of women in that group; the proportions of irreligion in the oldest groups is per cent for men and per cent for women. Nor is claimed religious affiliation a clear guide to religious activity. As Table . illustrates most respondents in most of the categories are neither regular (defined here as once a month or more often), nor even occasional attenders at religious services.
Table 24.1 Mean Age of Religious Affiliation, 2014–2016 Church of Episcopal Christian/No Roman Other Muslim Other No Scotland Denomination Catholic Christians Religions Religion Mean age Base
61.1 944
62.5 89
47.3 360
Note: Results are weighted, bases are unweighted. Source: SSA 2014, 2015, 2016 Combined Dataset.
48.1 457
54.1 122
37.5 42
40.7 44
43.0 1,953
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, ,
Table 24.2 Religious Affiliation within Age Groups, 2014–2016 % by column Church of Scotland Roman Catholic Other Christians Other religions No religion Base
16–24
25–39
40–59
60–74
75+
5 14 8 4 70 271
6 11 12 7 63 796
18 15 13 2 52 1,424
35 11 14 1 38 1,026
48 14 14 1 22 494
Notes: P < 0.000; Percentages are weighted and base numbers unweighted. Source: SSA 2014, 2015, 2016 Combined Dataset.
Table 24.3 Claimed Religious Attendance by Religious Groups, 2014–2016 % by column Church of Episcopal Christian/no Roman Other Muslim Other No Scotland denomination Catholic Christians Religions Religion Regular Occasional Rare/Never Base
25 18 57 943
36 14 50 89
27 14 60 361
42 20 39 458
60 14 26 121
63 5 32 42
34 13 53 44
1 5 95 1,951
Notes: P < 0.000; Percentages are weighted and base numbers unweighted. Source: SSA 2014, 2015, 2016 Combined Dataset.
Age plays an important role here and suggests that secularization is driven by a failure in ‘cohort replacement’ (Voas and Chaves ). Amongst the oldest age group (+), per cent of Church of Scotland identifiers and per cent of Catholics claim to be ‘regular’ attenders. Amongst the youngest (–) this is per cent and per cent respectively. The relationship with age is not straightforwardly linear and suggests different denominational experiences of disengagement. There is little evidence to suggest that any foreseeable ‘return’ to religious identification (let alone religious activity) trends have been, over at least six decades, resolutely towards disaffiliation (Rosie ). These underlying differences have important consequences when analysing the patterns in the attitudes of religious groups. When, for example, we find a difference between Church of Scotland, Catholic, and ‘no religion’ identifiers, how far can that be said to be a ‘religious’ difference, and how far one due to underlying differences of, for example, age and gender? This will be explored further later in this chapter, but here it is useful to consider how the main religious groups engage with the policy agenda in Scotland.
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.................................................................................................................................. Certain key organizations seek to ensure faith—and multi-faith—voices in the contemporary policy process. The Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office (SCPO) is a ‘multi-denominational organisation’ which works across a dozen Christian churches including the larger mainstream denominations—the Church of Scotland, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Scottish Episcopal Church—as well as smaller churches ranging from the theologically conservative (such as the Free Church) through to the pluralistic (including Quakers and Unitarians) (SCPO ). In practice, the SCPO most commonly provides a focus for the Church of Scotland and other Protestant denominations to work in partnership on key legislative areas, not least since the Roman Catholic Church maintains its own Parliamentary office. Notably, of the twenty-eight briefings published by the SCPO between and , nearly half () were directly related to Acts, Bills, or White Papers at Holyrood or Westminster. The rest were concerned with constitutional developments and governance (), Westminster’s welfare reforms (), the refugee crisis (), organizing local hustings (), and with ongoing legislative discussions on land reform. The SCPO, therefore, is rarely an initiator of policy—rather it reacts to some of the legislative trends at both the Scottish and UK level. There is a strong emphasis in its work on issues relating to welfare, to refugees, and to social care. This is not to say that the churches do not seek to shape future policy: all are certainly active in responding—and in encouraging responses—to formal government consultations. Four Protestant churches—the Baptist Union, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church, and the United Reform Church—operate a Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) under the rubric of Churches Working Together for Peace and Justice. The JPIT has pursued seven key ‘Issues’ in recent years: Gambling and Alcohol (with strong support for Minimum Unit Pricing); Politics and Elections; Religious Persecution (particularly in the Middle East and North Africa); Asylum and Migration; Environment; Peacemaking; and Poverty and Inequality. The overall approach to these issues tends towards the progressive—the JPIT, for instance, takes a strong stance against the current Westminster Government’s position on immigration, noting that: As Church leaders, the injustices of the hostile environment alarm us. [It] spins a web of distrust and encourages suspicion. As Christians we believe that God calls us to offer welcome to the stranger and care for the vulnerable, whoever they are [ . . . ] Our Christian faith calls us to pray and work for a society founded on trust, respect and love for one another. Let’s work together for a truly hospitable environment. (JPIT a: )
The organization is also highly critical of the UK government’s policies on welfare, arguing, for example, that the ‘rationalizing’ of various benefit payments into Universal Credit was ‘increasing hunger by design’ (JPIT b). The JPIT has also taken a strong stand against nuclear weapons with three of the member churches (though not,
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notably, its largest member—the Church of Scotland) calling for the UK to scrap the replacement of the Trident nuclear missile programme (JPIT c, d). If the mainstream Protestant churches have focused upon socio-economic issues such as migration and welfare, the (Scottish) Catholic Parliamentary Office (CPO) places its mission firmly within the broader ideas of Roman Catholic Social Teaching: We promote Catholic Social Teaching in the public square, engaging with the work of Parliament and Government to ensure that the Church’s voice is heard on relevant issues. We hope to encourage a greater understanding of Catholic Social Teaching and to see the Catholic community of our country engaging in political issues so that we are working together for the dignity of all human life and the common good of society. (CPO n.d.)
Catholic Social Teaching evolved after the consolidation of the church’s social thought in the encyclical Rerum novarum. The SCPO summarizes its key tenets as including: The Dignity of the Human Person; The Family; Economic Justice and Welfare; The Political Environment; and the Mission of Peace. There is significant overlap between the concerns of the CPO, the SCPO, and the JPIT, not least concerning welfare issues. A CPO news item on Universal Credit strongly echoed the concerns of the Protestant churches, noting that ‘the [UK] government is continuing to fail people, plunging them deeper into poverty’ (CPO ). The News pages of the CPO website, however, were dominated by other concerns. Of the twenty news reports carried in December (and dating back to October) three were concerned with a celebration of the role of Catholicism in Scottish political life whilst three celebrated Catholic schools. Three articles were concerned with issues around transgender/gender identity, and three others with issues of ‘Dignity of the Person’: assisted suicide, abortion, and organ donation. It is in these areas, perhaps, where the Catholic policy voice is at its loudest and most distinctive: faith schools, concerns over sexuality and gender roles, and ‘pro-life’ issues. Amongst non-Christian faith groups the Muslim Council of Scotland (MCS) and the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (ScoJeC) are prominent. Both these groups work with, and through, Interfaith Scotland, an umbrella organization of thirty-two members and fifteen associate members from the Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, and Sikh communities. Interfaith Scotland works with the Scottish Government on religion/belief aspects of equalities policy. Overall, however, Interfaith Scotland operates as a space for dialogue between faiths and rarely engages with broader issues of policy and politics.
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.................................................................................................................................. To what extent do these organizations’ policy interests map onto the attitudes of the communities they represent? Here there will be a necessary focus on mainstream
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Christians, not least since data sources for smaller communities are relatively rare. A subsidiary question is also the extent to which (if at all) the attitudes of these larger faith communities differ from those of the very sizeable proportion of contemporary Scots who define themselves as being of no religion. In other words, in public attitudes to actual or potential policy, how much does religion matter? It was noted above that mainstream Christian organizations seem united in a strongly ‘welfarist’ conception of the state’s responsibilities to the weak and vulnerable in society. This does seem to chime with a widespread concern about wealth inequalities in Scotland. A question routinely asked in the surveys asks respondents to indicate the extent to which they (dis)agree with the statement that: Ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation’s wealth. Whilst respondents can answer on a five-point scale, Table . simplifies this into a breakdown between those who agree, those who are neutral, and those who disagree. This amply demonstrates that religious differences are of degree rather than direction—across all groups a strong majority believes that wealth is not shared fairly. Before proceeding, two points should be made. First, given that the sample for these surveys is broadly representative of Scotland’s adult population, the base numbers for some sub-groups are relatively small. For these groups we should be cautious about drawing over-firm conclusions. Second, and as noted above, relatively small differences between religious groups may well reflect underlying differences between them—such as age profile—rather than ‘religious’ differences. If Scots across religion seem to agree that the nation’s wealth and justice is unfairly distributed, they may not necessarily take as strong a welfarist view as the mainstream churches. The surveys routinely ask respondents whether Government should redistribute income from the better-off to those who are less well off. As Table . demonstrates, whilst most religious groups recognize the broad socio-economic injustice of contemporary Scotland, they are rather more reticent in according to the state a key interventionist function. Again, difference between the groups seems to be an issue of degree rather than direction. We can also query the extent to which a widespread belief in current injustice translates into support for more specific welfare policies. For example, the SSA considered unemployment benefits: Opinions differ about the level of benefits for unemployed people. Which of these two statements comes closest to your own view? • Benefits for unemployed people are too low and cause hardship. • Benefits for unemployed people are too high and discourage them from finding jobs. • Neither/About right/in between. Table . does not report results for faith groups whose base numbers are less than fifty. However, amongst the larger groups we can see some indication of underlying difference. Around half of the Church of Scotland and Christian/no-denomination
Table 24.4 ‘Ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation’s wealth’
Agree strongly/Agree Neither Agree nor Disagree Disagree strongly/Disagree (Base n =)
Church of Scotland
Episcopal Church
Christian/No Denomination
Roman Catholic
Other Christians
Muslim
Other Religions
No Religion
65 20 15 878
61 23 16 83
64 22 14 342
71 22 8 431
60 30 10 116
68 32 – 36
78 14 7 42
68 22 10 1,898
Notes: P < 0.000; Less than 20 respondents answered ‘don’t know’ and have been excluded from the analysis. Percentages are weighted and base numbers unweighted. Source: SSA 2014, 2015, 2016 Combined Dataset.
Agree Strongly/Agree Neither Agree nor Disagree Disagree strongly/Disagree (Base n =)
Church of Scotland
Episcopal Church
Christian/No Denomination
Roman Catholic
Other Christians
Muslim
Other Religions
No Religion
46 21 33 881
43 25 33 84
39 28 33 342
52 26 22 430
48 26 26 115
38 34 28 35
59 27 14 41
51 24 25 1,894
Notes: P < 0.000; Less than 20 respondents answered ‘don’t know’ and have been excluded from the analysis. Percentages are weighted and base numbers unweighted. Source: SSA 2014, 2015, 2016 Combined Dataset.
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Table 24.5 ‘Government should redistribute income . . . ’
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Table 24.6 Level of Benefits for Unemployed People
Too low, cause hardship Too high, discourage work Neither Other answers Don’t know (Base n =)
Church of Scotland
Christian/No Denomination
Roman Catholic
No Religion
29 48 16 4 2 375
26 48 16 9 1 174
40 33 18 7 2 185
33 42 17 6 2 638
Notes: P < 0.000; Less than 20 respondents answered ‘don’t know’ and have been excluded from the analysis. Percentages are weighted and base numbers unweighted. Source: SSA 2014.
groups take a somewhat anti-welfarist view: that unemployment benefit is too generous and discourages working. The no-religion group takes a similar, but less marked view. Catholics, on the other hand, are more likely to view unemployment benefit as being too low and causing hardship. We noted above the possibility that what may appear, at first blush, to be religious differences, may in fact relate to the differing demographics of the religious groups, not least with regards to age. Here, therefore, a logistic regression was conducted, so as to predict the likelihood of a respondent believing that unemployment benefit was too high. The model was a simple one, incorporating only three dependent variables: respondent’s sex, age (in years), and religion. It is not necessary to follow the inner mechanics of such statistical modelling in detail. For those unfamiliar with these techniques the key figures are those which report statistical significance (denoted as ‘Sig.’) and the ‘odds ratio’. The models adhere to the general principle that results with a statistical significance of greater than. should be discounted, and those greater than. treated with caution. The model extracts reported here include only statistically significant results—so absence from the extract is in itself meaningful. In such models an odds ratio of . indicates no difference in likelihood of believing that unemployment benefit is too high; an odds ratio greater than . indicates how much more likely a person in that category is to believe so; an odds ratio of less than . indicates how much less likely. The model extract shown in Table ., therefore, suggests that there are religious differences at play here. That is, we find that—taking the other variables into account— knowing whether a respondent is Catholic, Muslim, or no religion makes a difference from knowing that a respondent is Church of Scotland. Further, knowing this would allow us to predict that such respondents are less likely than those from the Church of Scotland to think that unemployment benefits are too high. Indeed we can predict that each of these three groups are, roughly speaking, about half as likely as the Church of Scotland group to think so. Absence from the table extract is also notable—there are no
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Table 24.7 Logistic Regression Model (extract) on Views on Unemployment Benefit Beta
Std Error
Wald Statistic
Degrees of Freedom
Significance
Expon. (Beta)
1 1 1 1
0.000 0.042 0.001 0.001
0.462 0.511 0.612 0.989
Religion (Church of Scotland) Roman Catholic Muslim No religion Age (in years)
–0.771 –0.670 –0.492 –0.011
0.188 0.330 0.151 0.003
16.856 4.118 10.594 0.125
Note: Statistically significant effects in viewing Unemployment Benefit as ‘Too High’. Percentages are weighted and base numbers unweighted. Dependent variables: Religion, Gender, Age. Source: SSA 2014.
significant effects for any other religious group. Thus we can conclude that there is a key division within the survey into two broad blocs—Catholics, Muslims, and the noreligion group are significantly less likely than all the other religious groups to think unemployment benefits are too high. Finally, gender has no significant effect here whilst age does—for each additional year in a respondent’s age, other factors taken into account, there is a modest tendency towards not thinking the benefit is too high. What, then, does the SSA data tell us about the churches’ campaigns with regard to social justice and to welfare reform? First, although mainstream Christian churches are allied in their pursuit of social justice and in their critique of punitive welfare policies, this is not entirely echoed within their broader religious communities. Most people in Scotland, regardless of religion, are generally concerned with issues of wealth division, but are less likely than the churches to wish to see redistributive policies. On the issue of unemployment benefit we also find that the strongly welfarist line of the churches has only limited traction—only one Christian group (Roman Catholics) is particularly disposed to increased benefits, as are (to about the same degree) Muslims and those of no religion. Most Christians, therefore, seem out of step with their churches’ policy views—or, indeed, most churches are out of line with the views of the communities they seek to serve.
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.................................................................................................................................. To what extent do the churches’ policy voices chime with their broader communities’ viewpoints on more ‘personal’ matters, not least two of the issues where the Catholic policy voice is most notable: sexuality and the family? This has been an area of considerable and rapid change and of political controversy. The Scottish Social Attitudes of found that around half of respondents ( per cent) believed that same-sex relationships were ‘always’ or ‘mostly’ wrong, with just over one-third
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( per cent) thinking them ‘rarely wrong’ or ‘not wrong at all’. The survey came against the background of an early challenge to the legitimacy of the Scottish Parliament: the campaign against repealing ‘Clause a’, a piece of Thatcherite legislation prohibiting the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in UK schools. Whilst there was a broad cross-party consensus for repeal in the new Parliament, a ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign proved a formidable opponent. Funded by multi-millionaire businessman (and evangelical Protestant) Brian Souter, the campaign operated through slick PR and friendly tabloid newspapers, and had the public backing of Cardinal Winning, Scotland’s most senior Roman Catholic. Though the campaign may have brought different strands of conservative Christians together, it also highlighted tensions within Christian traditions, not least after Winning decried gay and lesbian relationships as ‘perversion’. Leading figures within the liberal Protestant churches backed repeal. Souter bankrolled a postal ‘referendum’ across Scotland directly challenging the parliamentary consensus on Clause a. Though highly disputed—the Electoral Reform Society declined to be involved—over one million Scots voted against repeal, revealing widespread disquiet over the proposal. The Scottish Executive, however, held its nerve and the Clause was repealed in June , three years ahead of repeal in England and Wales. If the mobilization of one million Scots to vote in a private ballot may be seen as a marked success of ‘Keep the Clause’, it was the only success. History was to prove the Scottish Parliament correct—recent years have seen marked shifts in Scottish attitudes towards gay and lesbian relationships. Compare the result from the Scottish Social Attitudes of and . As noted above in almost half of Scots felt that gay and lesbian relationships were ‘wrong’. By the survey (and in line with trends across the Western world) that situation had shifted profoundly: less that one-fifth of respondents ( per cent) believed that same-sex relationships were ‘always’ or ‘mostly’ wrong, with over two-thirds ( per cent) thinking them ‘rarely wrong’ or ‘not wrong at all’. It is important, therefore, to consider the role of religion in shaping attitudes on the family, sex, and sexuality. Examining a bespoke Family module in the Scottish Social Attitudes of , Rosie and Wasoff () found that gender, age, and religiosity were associated with more traditional views. They looked first at five issues relating to marriage and ‘family values’: on each they found clear differences between those with any kind of religious identity and those with none; but also a clear difference within religious groups between those who claimed to attend church services at least occasionally (‘active’) and those who did not (‘nominal’): Whilst there are some nuances and differences within religion, it is clear from our analysis that two cleavages are crucial: first the secular/religious divide is a key predictor in ‘more traditional’ attitudes towards marriage; secondly knowing whether a religious respondent is ‘active’ or ‘nominal’ helps to predict the extent of that ‘more traditional’ view. (Rosie and Wasoff : )
Notably, the study did not find robust differences across denominational lines: ‘Once we control for age, gender and religious attendance we find the differences between
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[Church of Scotland; Roman Catholic; and Other Christians] are very modest indeed’ (Rosie and Wasoff : –). Rosie and Wasoff () also examined four questions relating to sexual moralities. On two of these—under-age sex and adultery—attitudes were not divided. Most respondents, regardless of religious affiliation, believed that adultery and underage sex were wrong. With regards to pre-marital sex the clear difference was between the actively religious and the rest, rather than across religion per se. Thus, very few respondents of no religion felt that pre-marital sex was always or mostly wrong ( per cent). Whilst per cent of those with a religious affiliation but who rarely attended services felt it was wrong, this view was taken by per cent of religious attenders. In relation to premarital sex, then, the actively religious were clearly less permissive than the other two groups. In terms of same-sex relationships, the key dividing line was between those with religion and those without: levels of religious attendance ‘had no appreciable impact’, and differences between denominations were modest. Those who regarded themselves as religious, then, tended to disapprove of gay and lesbian relationships (Rosie and Wasoff :–). Overall, the study concluded that the ‘scale of difference’ between the religious and secular, or within religion as related to ‘active’ or ‘nominal’, differed depending on the specific question: However, the ranking amongst these groups is constant. Those who are regular church attenders have the most ‘traditional’ family attitudes, and those who state they have no religion have the least [ . . . ] with those who state a religious affiliation but who are not regular church attenders always in the middle. This pattern is evident even when controlling for key socioeconomic variables such as age and gender, both of which modify the scale of religious difference but do not explain it away. (Rosie and Wasoff : –)
Such analysis is useful, though it should be noted that it was based in data now almost fifteen years old. As we have seen attitudes on sexuality have changed profoundly in the intervening period, so do similar patterns hold true today? Tables . and . summarize more contemporary views on two key issues concerned with sexuality and relationships and which can be directly compared with the conclusions of Rosie and Wasoff. These issues are whether sexual relations between adults of the same-sex are ever ‘wrong’ and whether gay and lesbian couples should have the right to marry. Since each of these were only asked in a single survey year the smaller-sized religious groups have been excluded. It is immediately clear that there is substantial difference across religion on same-sex relations with a very substantial majority of the no-religion group believing these are ‘not wrong at all’, compared to small majorities amongst the Christian/nodenomination and Catholic groups and a minority amongst Church of Scotland. As many in this last group think that such relations are at least sometimes wrong ( per cent). Within the two largest faith groups we find little evidence of internal difference
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Table 24.8 ‘Sexual relations between two adults of the same sex’
Always wrong Mostly wrong Sometimes wrong Rarely wrong Not wrong at all Depends/Don’t know (Base n =)
Church of Scotland
Christian/No Denomination
Roman Catholic
No Religion
16 12 11 13 42 6 306
23 6 7 8 53 2 103
6 15 8 8 59 4 150
5 6 7 9 70 4 631
Note: P < 0.000; Percentages are weighted and base numbers unweighted. Source: SSA 2015.
Table 24.9 ‘Gay or lesbian couple should have the right to marry one another if they want to’
Agree strongly Agree Neither Disagree Disagree strongly Can’t choose/Don’t know (Base n =)
Church of Scotland
Christian/No Denomination
Roman Catholic
No Religion
18 41 18 12 9 2 343
33 33 11 10 9 4 164
24 37 15 15 9 2 174
52 30 11 4 1 2 617
Note: P < 0.000; Percentages are weighted and base numbers unweighted. Source: SSA 2014.
relating to whether respondents are nominal or active in terms of church attendance. On this question, therefore, there are some denominational differences but the key division seems to be between the religious groups on one hand and those of nonreligion on the other. On same-sex marriages (legalized in Scotland in December ) there is also a clear division between those with a religion and those without— per cent of the noreligion group agree that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry as against just per cent who disagree. Whilst around two-thirds in each of the three largest faith groups are also supportive, there are also notable minorities of around one-fifth to onequarter who oppose such rights. There are, additionally, internal differences: support for same-sex marriages is rather stronger amongst nominal Christians (Church of Scotland, per cent; Roman Catholic, per cent) than amongst active ones
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(Church of Scotland, per cent; Roman Catholic, per cent). So on this question there are clear divisions between active and nominal religious respondents, and another division between those of faith and those without it. On these questions, therefore, religion matters—although how it matters differs. There is some disconnect between the policy agendas of the mainstream churches and sections of their own communities. The Catholic Church’s emphasis on ‘traditional’ values on the family and on sexuality receives very limited support, even within those who are routine attenders at church. Most Catholics, it would seem, are fairly relaxed on such issues. By stark contrast, such views tend to be soft peddled by the mainline Protestant churches despite some evidence that the more religiously active within their communities might support an emphasis on such policies.
C
.................................................................................................................................. Religion has, then, played a key role in the development of modern Scotland—though often in unintended ways. The long contestation over the preferred form of Protestant governance in Scotland, followed by a century of Presbyterian fission, produced a tradition of religious pluralism as well as a state that sought to be more or less neutral within it. Religion retains a distinctive voice in the Scottish policy process, not least on issues of welfare and human justice. Strikingly, however, there seems to be some disconnect between the policy views of the mainstream churches and the views of the communities they purport to represent. For example, the churches are clearly more welfarist than those who identify with them, particularly in terms of how social injustice might be addressed. Likewise, although the Roman Catholic Church forefronts what might be termed a traditionalist view on the family and on issues around sex and sexuality, such values tend to chime more with Christians outwith their tradition. Scotland’s Catholics, it seems, remain distinctively left and liberal despite the views of their church (McCrone and Rosie ). It should also be noted that in this, Catholics have very much in common with the largest (and still growing) faith/ belief group in contemporary Scotland: those of no religion. Scotland’s religious— indeed increasingly irreligious—landscape remains one of complex and plural voices.
R Bradley, J.M. . Ethnic and Religious Identity in Modern Scotland: Culture, Politics and Football. Aldershot: Avebury. Brown, C.G. . ‘Religion and Social Change’, in T. Devine and R. Mitchison (eds), People and Society in Scotland, Volume I, –. Edinburgh: John Donald. Brown, C.G. . ‘Religion and Secularisation’, in A. Dickson and J.H. Treble (eds), People and Society in Scotland, Volume III, –. Edinburgh: John Donald.
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Brown, C.G. . The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation –. London: Routledge. Bruce, S. . God is Dead: Secularization in the West. Oxford: Blackwells. Bruce, S. . Scottish Gods: Religion in Modern Scotland, –. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bruce, S. and Glendinning, T. . ‘When was Secularization? Dating the Decline of the British Churches and Locating its Cause’, British Journal of Sociology, /: –. Catholic Parliamentary Office (CPO). n.d. ‘About the Catholic Parliamentary Office’. Available at: https://rcpolitics.org/about/. Catholic Parliamentary Office (CPO). . ‘Universal Credit: Food bank demand at record high as starving families raid waste skips to feed themselves’, October. Crockett, A. and Voas, D. . ‘Generations of Decline: Religious Change in Century Britain’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, /: –. Devine, T.M. (ed.). . Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth and Centuries: Proceedings of the Scottish Historical Studies Seminar, University of Strathclyde, –. Edinburgh: John Donald. Handley, J.E. . The Irish in Scotland, –. Cork: Cork University Press. JPIT (Joint Public Issues Team). a. Destitution, Discrimination, Distrust: The Web of the Hostile Environment. Edinburgh: JPIT. JPIT. b. Universal Credit: Increasing Hunger by Design. Edinburgh: JPIT. JPIT. c. The Nuclear Ban Treaty. Edinburgh: JPIT. JPIT. d. Better Off Without Trident. Edinburgh: JPIT. McCrone, D. and Rosie, M. . ‘Left and Liberal: Catholics in Modern Scotland’, in R. Boyle and P. Lynch (eds), Out of the Ghetto? The Catholic Community in Modern Scotland. Edinburgh: John Donald. Meredith, I. . Lost and Forgotten: Irish Episcopalians in the West of Scotland, –. Scott’s Valley, CA: Amazon CreateSpace. Morton, G. . Unionist Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, –. East Linton: Tuckwell Press. Paterson, L. . The Autonomy of Modern Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rosie, M. . ‘Death by Committee’, Theology in Scotland, IX/: –. Rosie, M. and Wasoff, F. . ‘Religion, Family Values and Family Law’, in J. Mair and E. Örücü (eds), The Place of Religion in Family Law: A Comparative Search. Cambridge: Intersentia. Scottish Churches’ Parliamentary Office (SCPO). . SCPO Churches Guide. Edinburgh: SCPO. Torrance, D. . ‘ “Standing up for Scotland”: The Scottish Unionist Party and “nationalist unionism”, –’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Voas, D. and Chaves, M. . ‘Is the United States a Counterexample to the Secularization Thesis?’, American Journal of Sociology, /: –.
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.................................................................................................................................. T early years of Scottish devolution coincided with major international developments in public administration, in which many governments began to change fundamentally the way that they described their approach to policymaking. Osborne (: ) describes three broad historical phases: public administration, emphasizing ‘hierarchy’ and a ‘public sector ethos’, new public management (NPM) emphasizing private sector and market efficiency, and new public governance (NPG), emphasizing networks and trust-based relationships. From the late s, many governments had moved towards public sector reforms inspired by private sector practices associated with NPM (Hood ). UK governments were particularly committed to a major programme of privatizing their nationalized industries, introducing quasi-markets within sectors such as healthcare and education, and reforming government departments to separate strategic and delivery functions (Gray ). More recently, many governments— including the UK—began to experiment with NPG-style policymaking, combining traditional hierarchies, networks of relationships between governments and service delivery bodies, and the ‘co-production’ of policy between service users and providers (Richards and Smith ; Durose and Richardson ). The overall result of these developments is a complex mix of policymaking styles, in which many governments make often inconsistent references to a public sector ethos, markets, and co-production. Further, in the UK and Scotland there is a strong sense of
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Westminster-style accountability in which governments try to balance a desire to delegate policymaking and the need to intervene to demonstrate governing competence (Gains and Stoker ; Matthews ). As Connolly and Pyper (Chapter in this Handbook) and Parry (Chapter in this Handbook) describe, we should situate Scottish policymaking from within this wider historical and international context, rather than simply accept the rhetoric that Scottish politics is new compared to ‘old Westminster’ practices. This wider lens helps us to interpret the claims by two former Scottish Government Permanent Secretaries that a Scottish ‘model’ or ‘approach’ to policymaking is a distinctive alternative to the UK model (Elvidge ; Housden ). There are differences in UK and Scottish government styles, and a tendency for senior Scottish policymakers to criticize hierarchical and command-and-control policymaking (Greer and Jarman ; Housden : –), but both governments are responding to similar dilemmas and international and historical trends which limit the scope of their differences. In this chapter, I relate this argument specifically to the use of evidence in policymaking. One aspect of the Scottish model is the allegedly new way in which it makes choices on evidence use and governance (Paun et al. ; Cairney ). Yet, I identify three different models of evidence-informed governance supported by different parts of the Scottish Government. Each model supports a very different combination of evidence and governance principles, including: a focus on policy transfer built on a hierarchy of scientific evidence and uniform national policy delivery; a storytelling approach which rejects evidential hierarchies and gives far higher autonomy to local actors; and, the improvement method in which there is a pluralistic approach to evidence combined with the ability of trained practitioners to experiment on the ground. These models are ideal-types and, although there are key projects which live up to their aims, they are generally aspirational. Further, it is difficult to depart from centralism because the Scottish Government must also follow principles associated with Westminster-style democratic accountability rather than simply delegate responsibility for policymaking and delivery to local actors. The overall result is a complicated mixture of often-contradictory approaches to policymaking, and uncertainty about the extent to which the Scottish Government can produce an internationally distinctive approach or truly depart from an allegedly top-down, centralist British style. To demonstrate these arguments, I first describe the origins and key elements of the ‘Scottish Approach’ to policymaking (SATP). Second, I describe the three different models of evidence-based policymaking that it supports (see also Cairney ). Third, I situate these developments within the context of Westminster-style democratic accountability which limits the roll-out of two of these models. Fourth, I examine in each case the implications for two key Scottish Government agendas: to produce new forms of leadership in public service delivery; and, to foster public service reform, encouraging a ‘decisive shift to prevention’ to reduce socio-economic inequalities and the costs of reactive public services (Scottish Government ). I conclude by considering the extent to which the SATP represents a major departure from international or British norms.
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T SATP N M G P S D
.................................................................................................................................. Academics, practitioners, and civil servants in the Scottish Government have long described—in very general terms—a Scottish ‘approach’ or ‘policy style’, to compare it with British policymaking. Over the years, our interviewees (see Keating et al. ; Cairney ) have identified two stark contrasts in their experiences of Scottish and UK governments: . Consultation. The Scottish Government’s reputation for pursuing a relatively consultative and co-operative style with ‘pressure participants’ (Jordan et al. ) such as interest groups, public bodies, local government organizations, voluntary sector and professional bodies, and unions (Keating /; Cairney a, b, ; Cairney and McGarvey ). . Implementation. Its pursuit of a distinctive ‘governance’ style: a relative ability or willingness to devolve the delivery of policy to public bodies, including local authorities, in a meaningful way (Greer and Jarman ; Cairney b, a: ; ; Cairney and McGarvey : ). However, the Scottish Government has only recently described a specific model of policymaking with key elements to be operationalized and evaluated (Scottish Government and ESRC ).
T D ‘S M G’
.................................................................................................................................. The early signs of a ‘Scottish model of government’ were apparent towards the end of the first era of Scottish Government, overseen by a Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition from to . The then Permanent Secretary Sir John Elvidge (: –) related it to the Scottish Government’s potential to exploit its relatively small size, and central position in a dense network of public sector and third sector bodies; to pursue joined-up government and regular meetings with leaders of public sector bodies (which became the ‘Scottish Public Sector Leadership Forum’); to reject top-down or centrist policymaking; and to seek better ways to solve ‘wicked’ (Rittell and Webber ) problems. Elvidge (: ) describes the ‘the concept of a government as a single organisation’ and ‘the idea of “joined up government” taken to its logical conclusions’. He links this agenda to his belief that ‘traditional policy and operational solutions’ based on ‘the
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target driven approach which characterised the conduct of the UK Government’ would not produce the major changes in policy and policymaking required to address, ‘problems with major social and economic impacts: educational outcomes for the least successful per cent of young people; health inequalities related to socioeconomic background; geographical concentrations of economically unsuccessful households; and Scotland’s rate of GDP growth relative to the UK average and to that of comparable countries’. Such problems require ‘more integrated approaches, such as the approach to the early years of children’s lives . . . which looked across the full range of government functions [and] offered the scope for some significant and unexpected fresh policy perspectives’ (Elvidge : ). These general ideas about holistic forms of government, including joined-up central government and local forms of community planning, have circulated internationally for decades (Keating /). However, Elvidge (: ) suggests that a specific model took off under the SNP-led Scottish Government, elected in May , partly because his emphasis on joined-up government complemented the SNP’s focus on streamlined government and ‘an outcome based approach to the framing of the objectives of government and to enabling the electorate to hold the Government to account for performance’. By , the model combined Elvidge’s ideas with the SNP’s ‘single statement of purpose, elaborated into a supporting structure of a small number of broad objectives and a larger, but still limited, number of measurable national outcomes’ (: ). The Scottish Government introduced the National Performance Framework (NPF), based on a single ‘ten year vision’ and a shift towards measuring success with long-term outcomes (Scottish Government /a). The NPF has a stated ‘core purpose—to create a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth’. It seeks to turn this broad purpose into specific policies and measures of success. It articulates in more depth its national approach via a ‘purpose framework’—linked to targets gauging its economic growth, productivity, labour market participation, population, income inequality, regional inequality and (emissions-based) sustainability—and five ‘strategic objectives’ (under the headings Wealthier and Fairer, Healthier, Safer and Stronger, Smarter, Greener) mapped onto sixteen ‘National Outcomes’ and fifty ‘National Indicators’. It then signalled the need for partnership with the public sector to align organizational objectives with the NPF, in two main ways. First, it obliged Scottish Governmentsponsored public bodies to align their objectives with the NPF (Elvidge : ). Second, it required local authorities to produce ‘Single Outcomes Agreements’ (SOAs), in line with the NPF’s overall vision and strategic objectives, but with local government discretion to determine the balance between many priorities, to reflect some autonomy agreed in the concordat with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Keating /: –; Scottish Government and COSLA ; Cairney a; Cairney and McGarvey : ; Matthews ; McAteer ; O’Neill ). Further, the Scottish Government encourages local authorities to co-operate with a range of other bodies in the public sector, including health, enterprise, police, fire, and transport, via ‘community planning partnerships’ (CPPs). They exist in part to pursue
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meaningful long-term outcomes via ‘community engagement’ and engagement with the third and private sectors, to produce a ‘shared strategic vision for an area and a statement of common purpose’ (Cairney and McGarvey : –; Housden : ). These CPPs had been established for some time, via the Local Government in Scotland Act , but their purpose was unclear before (a) this new emphasis on locally negotiated SOAs was reinforced by the joint ‘Statement of Ambition’ between the Scottish Government and COSLA in (Audit Scotland : ), and (b) the CPPs were given greater statutory direction in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act .
T ‘S A’ S : I, A, C-P, ‘D S P’
.................................................................................................................................. Since , the Scottish Government has sought to reinforce and articulate the meaning of the ‘Scottish approach’, in part to further encourage its use and gauge its impact. It now gives ‘additional priority to: • Service performance and improvement underpinned by data, evidence and the application of improvement methodologies; • Building on the strengths and assets of individuals and communities, rather than only focusing on perceived deficits; • Services which are shaped and co-produced by both service providers and the citizens and communities who receive and engage with those services’ (Scottish Government and ESRC : ). Elvidge’s successor as Scottish Government Permanent Secretary from to , Sir Peter Housden (: –), provides a broad description of these elements, suggesting that: co-production ‘requires professionals to sustain a deep and on-going dialogue with service users and to commission with and through those users the range of services and providers best suited to their needs’; an ‘assets based approach’ requires governments ‘to build on and strengthen the assets and resilience of individuals, families and communities’; and, a focus on ‘service performance and improvement’ goes beyond the bland assertion that the Scottish Government supports well integrated public services which are of demonstrable high quality. A key Scottish Government aim is to use the SATP and public service reform to deliver initiatives such as a ‘decisive shift to prevention’ (Scottish Government ). Prevention policy refers in part to, ‘actions which prevent problems and ease future demand on services by intervening early, thereby delivering better outcomes and value
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for money’ (Audit Scotland : ). The Scottish Government commissioned the ‘Christie Commission’ (Commission of the Future Delivery of Public Services ) to examine how to reduce socio-economic inequalities, improve ‘social and economic wellbeing’, and spend less money on public services. To do so requires the Scottish Government to address its unintended contribution to a ‘cycle of deprivation and low aspiration’ by: redirecting spending towards preventative policies in a major way; changing its relationship with delivery bodies; addressing a lack of joint working in the public sector, caused partly by separate budgets and modes of accountability; and, engaging ‘communities’ in the design and delivery of public services, rather than treating them as ‘passive recipients of services’ (: ). In other words, its recommendations are consistent with the SATP. The Scottish Government’s (: ) response was positive, showing a broad commitment to a broad prevention-style philosophy, ‘mainstreamed’ throughout government, and accompanied by a short list of projects receiving new dedicated funding, including early years, older people’s services, and ‘reducing reoffending’ projects based on partnership with third sector organizations. It also required local authorities to incorporate Christie’s recommendations into SOAs. Indeed, the first relevant SOAs in (Scottish Government b) are similar to each other, sticking closely to the guidance issued by the Scottish Government and COSLA (COSLA and the Scottish Government ). Overall, the Scottish Government is seeking ways to encourage national improvements in public service delivery without ‘micromanaging’ local services or relying on short-term targets and top-down performance management. Instead, public service innovation, ‘is driven organically by organisations and networks with the requisite ambition, curiosity and skills. It thrives on variety and experimentation. It cannot generally be delivered in penny packets from the centre’ (Housden : ).Yet, these aims are difficult to define and operationalize, and so the SATP is something for the Scottish Government to explore with further research and perhaps refine following feedback from practice. In many ways, it is likely to be in continuous development as one new aspect of its approach produces new issues to address, such as the effect of ‘co-production’ on the idea of leadership, workforce development, and the rising value of skills to encourage joint working (Housden : –).
T SATP T M P D
.................................................................................................................................. In practice, the Scottish Government is experimenting with three ways to encourage service improvement by gathering evidence of success and encouraging its spread across local areas (Cairney ). These three models—summarized in Table .— have major, and very different, implications for the nature of public service delivery,
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Table 25.1 Three Approaches to Evidence-based Service Improvement Approach 1 Implementation science
Approach 2 Storytelling
Approach 3 Improvement method
How should you gather evidence of effectiveness and best practice?
With reference to a hierarchy of evidence and evidence gathering, generally with systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) at the top.
With reference to principles of good practice, and practitioner and service-user testimony.
Identify promising interventions, based on a mix of evidence. Encourage trained practitioners to adapt interventions to their area, and gather data on their experience.
From where should you seek evidence of success?
From any comparable area in which there is good evidence of success gathered in the correct way.
From comparable experiences gathered in face-to-face discussion or recorded stories.
(1) Gather empirical evidence of promising interventions from international experience; (2) Generate lessons from peers in a single country.
How should you ‘scale up’ from evidence of best practice?
Introduce the same specific model in each area. Require fidelity, to administer the correct dosage, and allow you to measure its effectiveness with RCTs.
Tell stories based on your experience, and invite other people to learn from them.
Convey a simple message to practitioners: if your practice is working, keep doing it; if it is working better elsewhere, consider learning from their experience.
What aim should you prioritize?
To ensure the correct administration of the active ingredient.
To foster key principles, such as respect for serviceuser experiences.
Train then allow local practitioners to experiment and decide how best to turn evidence into practice.
Source: Adapted from Cairney (2017).
relating primarily to the extent to which they encourage certain forms of evidence and how this choice relates to local autonomy. Approach is associated with the idea of policy transfer and implementation science. Initially, policies become highly regarded because there is empirical evidence that they have been successful elsewhere. In health departments, in particular, this evidence tends to be gathered using a small number of highly regarded research methods, based on the argument that there is a hierarchy of good evidence in which randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and their systematic review are at the ‘top’, whilst user feedback and professional experience are closer to the bottom. Evidence of success comes from RCTs conducted multiple times under similar conditions in multiple places.
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If accepted as the basis for public service delivery, this approach has major implications for local autonomy. The RCT demonstrates the success of a very specific intervention with a set ‘dosage’ (of a service rather than a medicine). Further, the interventions require ‘fidelity’, to ensure that the ‘active ingredient’ is given in the correct dosage, and to measure the model’s effectiveness, using RCTs, in different places. In such cases, the projects are relatively likely to be funded and controlled by central governments, and linked to an ‘implementation science’ agenda in which we consider how best to roll out—often uniformly—the most successful evidence-based interventions in as many areas as possible (Nilsen et al. ). The Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) is a key example. It was imported from the US following its success in multiple RCTs (not exclusively in the US), and rolled out in England to mothers, with reference to its high cost effectiveness and ‘strong evidence base’, which would be enhanced by an RCT to evaluate its effect in a new country (Family Nurse Partnership National Unit ; Robling et al. ). The FNP requires fidelity to the US programme—you can only use it if you agree to the licensing conditions—based on evaluation results which showed that the programme was most effective when provided by nurses/midwives and using a licence ‘setting out core model elements’ (Department of Health, : ). In Scotland, it was initially funded centrally by the Scottish Government, which holds the licence (on the understanding that the ‘UK’ RCT will be conducted in England), then adopted in local areas with minimal scope to modify the original service design. Approach is based on a storytelling approach with no evidential hierarchy or need to ‘scale up’ projects uniformly. Instead, advocates make reference to principles of governance and good practice, including the value of practitioner and service-user testimony. With this approach, evidence sharing—of good and bad experiences— comes from service users and practitioners. People use stories, conversations and practice-based experience or user feedback to help decide if a project is worth adopting. Policymakers create a supportive environment in which practitioners and users can tell stories of their experience, and invite other people to learn from them. External evidence can also be used, but to begin a conversation; to initiate further experiencebased evidence gathering. Advocates often refer to the importance of complex systems (see Cairney ; Geyer and Cairney ), an inability to ‘control’ delivery and policy outcomes (to challenge the idea of controlled experiments in RCTs), and the need to create new and bespoke evidence through practice or experiential learning. My Home Life (Scotland) is a key example (Sharp et al. ). It began as a UK initiative ‘to promote quality of life for those living, dying, visiting and working in care homes for older people through relationship-centred and evidence based practice’.¹ In Scotland, it is co-ordinated by the University of the West of Scotland, Age Scotland and Scottish Care. The pursuit of a ‘homely setting’ involves the inclusion of residents in care home decisions, and processes of reflection, regarding a manager’s relationship
¹ See http://myhomelife.uws.ac.uk/scotland/ for more information.
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with staff and staff attitudes to residents—via ‘caring conversations’ over an extended period. Much derives from individual feedback, with a focus on the richness of experience. The result may be a set of principles to inform future practice, not a specific intervention with a correct dosage. The principles are deliberately broad, to allow practitioners and service users to make sense of them in specific settings (Dewar et al. : ). This approach contrasts markedly with the FNP’s requirement to follow a model closely and gather quantitative data to measure fidelity. With ‘my home life’, there is no model, and practitioners and service users use their experiences to guide future practice and develop favourable institutional cultures. Approach is the improvement method described frequently by the Scottish Government. Advocates make reference to a process in which they use evidence pragmatically to identify promising interventions, and encourage trained practitioners to adapt and experiment with the interventions in their area and gather data on their experience (Cairney ). A core team describes the best available evidence to practitioners, teaches them improvement methods, and asks them to experiment with their own projects in their local areas. The subsequent discussion about how to ‘scale up’ involves a mix of personal reflection on one’s own project and a co-ordinated process of data gathering: people are asked for ‘contextual’ evidence for the success of their own programmes, but in a way that can be compared with others. If theirs is successful they should consider expansion. If there is evidence of relative success in other areas, they should consider learning from other projects. The Early Years Collaborative (EYC) is a key example, and it is often highlighted as one of the Scottish Government’s most promising areas of policy and policymaking, following the success of its patient safety programme, which used the same improvement method (Housden : ). It uses the ‘Breakthrough Series Collaborative Model’ from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Boston. ‘Collaborative’ refers to a group of similar organizations engaging on a problem in a specified amount of time (such as to years), drawing on the ‘sound science’ on how to reduce costs or improve outcomes, which exists but ‘lies fallow and unused in daily work. There is a gap between what we know and what we do’ (Institute for Healthcare Improvement : ). Participants identify a specific aim, measures of success, and the changes to test, then gather quantitative data on their effects, using a form of continuous learning summed up by a ‘Plan-Do-Study-Act’ cycle (: ). The EYC is an attempt, from , to use the IHI’s method to co-ordinate a multiagency project, working with local and health authorities through the CPPs. The first ‘learning session’, in January , involved an audience of practitioners learning the method and discussing how to apply it to early years policy (Scottish Government b: ). The second event focused on specific projects, but on the assumption that, unlike in patient safety, there is no complete set of known, effective interventions, that the Scottish Government represents a policy innovator, and that participants are learning as they go. The new process is often described as messy—with local practitioners identifying problems in their own areas, choosing their own pace of change and learning as they deliver—and largely as a way to translate evidence into
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cultural or organizational change (Cairney ). There is less focus on the efficacy of an ‘active ingredient’ and more on the bespoke mode of delivery, underpinned by governance principles about how the public sector engages with people, organizations, and communities (Scottish Government b: –).
T M C D A?
.................................................................................................................................. The guiding assumption underpinning at least two of these models is that the Scottish Government can pursue forms of accountability that relate only indirectly to traditional Westminster forms. Indeed, perhaps as much as five distinct stories of accountability operate simultaneously, to: . Maintain Westminster-style democratic accountability, through periodic elections and more regular reports by ministers to the Scottish Parliament. This requires a strong sense of central government and ministerial control—if you know who is in charge, you know who to hold to account or reward or punish in the next election. . Promote institutional accountability, through performance management measures applied to the chief executives of public bodies, such as elected local authorities and unelected agencies and quangos. Ministers may be ultimately responsible, but democracy is not served well by the historic idea of ‘sacrificial’ accountability, in which ministers resign if anything goes wrong in their department. Instead, ministers decide whether to redirect queries to other bodies, keep Parliament informed routinely, explain problems, or promise to intervene (Judge et al. : ). . Advance the idea of shared ‘ownership’ of policy choices, such as when policymakers work with certain stakeholders to produce a policy that both support. . Develop a sense of collective responsibility between ‘community planning partnerships’, often led by local authorities, with new statutory obligations for public bodies to participate, and for stakeholders to be consulted. . Develop user-based notions of accountability, when a public body considers its added value to (and responds to the wishes of) service users, or public bodies and users ‘co-produce’ and share responsibility for the outcomes. On the one hand, the SATP helps make sense of these many forms of accountability by providing a grand theme and bringing together each element into a single narrative. An open and accessible consultation style maximizes the gathering of information and advice and fosters group ownership. A national framework, with cross-cutting aims, reduces departmental silos and balances an image of democratic accountability with
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the pursuit of administrative devolution, through partnership agreements with local authorities, the formation of community planning partnerships, and the encouragement of community and user-driven design of public services. The formation of relationships with public bodies and other organizations delivering services, based on trust, fosters the production of common aims across the public sector, and reduces the need for top-down policymaking. An ‘outcomes-focused approach presents serious challenges to traditional “command-and-control” approaches to government’ in favour of ‘an evidence-based, learning approach’ (Sanderson : ). On the other hand, this is a difficult balancing act, to take pragmatic steps to recognize the realities of ‘complex government’ over which ministers have limited control whilst projecting a sense of control and governing competence (Cairney ). It produces the potential for practices that are well out of step with the Scottish grand theme. The pursuit of institutional accountability could produce a fragmented public landscape in which no one—including ministers or delivery bodies—seems to take responsibility. A move away from hierarchy and central targets, to focus more on the value of public services to users or the ‘co-production’ of services with users (Gains and Stoker ; Osborne and Strokosch ) could promote user-based accountability and/or diminish a sense of democratic accountability. Scaling back a top-down performance management system removes an important and regular source of information on public sector performance for the government (for example, when trying to reduce inequalities in education attainment) and the Scottish Parliament, which lacks the ability to gather information independently. Further, one consequence of devolving more power locally is that interest groups, previously organized to lobby a new and relatively open Scottish Government, must reorganize to lobby thirty-two local governments. It produces new winners and losers. The well-resourced professional groups can adapt their multi-level lobbying strategies, whilst the groups working on a small budget, with one or two members of paid staff, only able to lobby the Scottish Government, struggle. Overall, the myth may not match the reality. Although the Scottish Government’s reputation suggests that it has a better relationship with local authorities than its UK counterpart, this may not be saying much. Analysis within Scotland over time suggests that local actors may see this relationship differently. For example, compare statements by different COSLA Presidents. In , Pat Watters talked about local government now having greater responsibility and ‘the freedom and flexibility to respond effectively to local priorities’ (Cairney a: ). In , David O’Neill () argued that, ‘Over the decades, we’ve seen a culture in which more and more services and decisions have been taken away from local communities and put into the hands of distant bureaucracies’. The Scottish Government has secured political control and accountability by maintaining a local government system that is highly centralized by European standards, with a small number of local authorities (thirty-two, with an average of , people per authority) which depend on the Scottish Government for (effectively) over per cent of their funding (McAteer ). It therefore shares with the UK a reluctance to devolve powers completely to local authorities with a relatively weak
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mandate (based on low electoral turnout) and a recognition that such a mandate may not arise unless local authorities have more powers. This problem has not been solved by the promotion of CPPs, since local authorities are expected to work in equal partnership with unelected bodies—not to direct them or hold them to account. Ultimate responsibility still rests with Scottish ministers even though it has delegated decision-making to community partners.
T I E M L P S R
.................................................................................................................................. These uncertainties and tensions are reflected in competing models of evidence-based best practice (Table .). Further, a comparison of these three approaches highlights their very different implications for public service leadership and change, particularly if we add a fourth column to take into account the importance of Westminster-style accountability (Table .). Approach seems closest to traditional forms of leadership and management built on ‘the pursuit of relative certainty through a centrally funded and directed programme’, whilst Approaches and offer far greater scope for ‘the pursuit of flexibility and localism, with an emphasis on new forms of leadership and “letting go” or developing staff capacity and the confidence to challenge top-down leadership’ (Cairney : ). The latter approaches often seem to be more consistent with the ‘vision’ of the Scottish Government () for its public service reforms: Our vision is of a public service delivery landscape which is affordable, rises to the challenge of tackling inequalities and supports economic growth across Scotland: where communities are empowered and supported to take responsibility for their own actions; and public services are confident and agile enough to allow that to happen. Public bodies will play a full part in delivering improved outcomes: leaders and their teams work collaboratively across organisational boundaries to ensure that services are shaped around the needs and demands of individuals and communities; and there will be a clear focus on prevention and early intervention, with the aim of breaking cycles of inequality and poverty.
In this self-description you can see a clear attempt by the Scottish Government to provide national direction but also delegate responsibility to public bodies and partnerships. This signal of intent is consistent with Approaches and , in which public service reform is organic or through experimentation. It also requires new forms of leadership development, in which actors in formal positions of responsibility enter rooms with no agenda and/or encourage other people to take risks and experiment rather than follow a blueprint (Table .). With Approach , the Scottish Government initially measured its success in buy-in and commitment to governance principles, rather than with reference to meeting
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Table 25.2 From Three to Four Approaches to Leadership and Change Approach 1 Policy emulation
Approach 2 Storytelling
Approach 3 Improvement science
Approach 4 Democratic accountability
Required leadership qualities
The ability to manage change initially from the top down, and to ensure that measures are in place to monitor delivery to ensure adherence to the model.
The ability to let go, and encourage reflective discussion without predetermined agendas.
The ability to train practitioners in a specific improvement method and/or encourage people to take risks whilst experimenting with delivery.
To set an overall vision for government, encourage/ensure that key actors sign up to it, and ‘let go’ to encourage innovation in delivery/intervene to maintain improvements in performance.
Implications for change in public services
Driven initially from the centre, until key public bodies agree to incorporate the same basic service into their standard operating procedures.
Organic and not driven by central government instructions or short-term performance measures.
Steered by central government, but with a clear role for experimentation and local variation.
A series of potential contradictions: driven by the centre but in partnership with local bodies; encourage others to experiment and take risks, but intervene to manage risk.
Source: Author’s own compilation.
performance targets related to specific policies. For example, at least half of the factors underpinning EYC theories of change relate to public service leadership, management, communication, joint working, and ‘family centred’ responses (Scottish Government b: –). The first evaluation also listed the high level of ‘stakeholder buy-in’ as one of its short-term achievements (: –). Rather than attempting to direct local activities, a small Scottish Government team helps practitioners develop and use a ‘toolkit’ for improvement. With Approach , the Skilled Workers, Skilled Citizens (Workforce Scotland ) initiative develops a public service workforce in collaboration with service users and the wider public. Leadership development focuses on the benefits of ‘letting go’, to allow people in positions of formal leadership to include staff and service users in the decision-making process (Cairney : ). The storytelling approach also provides an alternative to a focus on short-term or numerical performance management as indicators of improvement, in favour of ‘success stories’ or quality management systems based on service-user and staff feedback (Davies and Heath : –).
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Yet, Approaches and represent a small part of Scottish Government business. They are sandwiched (in Table .) between Approach , in which leadership efforts are directed towards identifying the best evidence-based interventions and monitoring progress to ensure that they are carried out with ‘fidelity’ to those interventions, and Approach , in which leaders have to juggle contradictory aims, to centralize and localize. Similarly, the Scottish Government’s commitment to ‘prevention’ and long-term measures of success seem to be aspirational and relate to small pockets of progress. Prevention policy represents a key example of the limits to the developments of new policymaking approaches. Policymakers make a commitment to long-term outcomes but work to a short-term timetable, and soon find that they cannot achieve their aims within a single electoral cycle. This would not be an obstacle in itself, if not for the fact that Scottish ministers are held responsible for policy performance in elections, however well they manage different forms of accountability in between elections. So, they have an electoral incentive to address more pressing issues on which they will be judged. Consequently, prevention—as a broad, long-term, low-key aspiration—suffers in competition with highly salient short-term problems that politicians feel they have to solve first. Prevention projects are long-term investments with only the vague promise of spending reductions in the future. During periods of high and growing public expenditure, prevention can be sold as akin to long-term capital investment. During periods of austerity, it is difficult to use a vague promise of long-term savings to prompt immediate action. It is difficult for politicians to advocate reductions in funding for reactive, acute, ‘firefighting’, ‘frontline’ services to pay for new prevention initiatives that may only produce results after a generation. Governments still maintain performance management systems geared towards short-term targets and outputs. Performance management systems for public sector managers encourage them to focus on short-term and measurable targets within their own service more than their shared aims with public service partners or the well-being of their local populations. Performance management is about setting priorities when governments have too many aims to fulfil. Central governments encourage local bodies to form long-term partnerships to address inequalities and meet short-term public service targets, and the latter come first (Cairney and St Denny ). Similarly, the new prevention-inspired SOAs symbolize the classic dilemma when governments seek to balance a necessary sense of central control with the pursuit of meaningful local autonomy (Cairney and St Denny ; Cairney et al. : ). They are written by local authorities, but with strong adherence to central guidance. They provide a way to promote a CPP agenda but also betray a lack of CPP development as meaningful corporate bodies with binding decision-making powers (Audit Scotland : ). Overall, there remains uncertainty, ‘both nationally and locally about the extent to which the focus of community planning should be on local needs or about delivering national priorities’, particularly since the Scottish Government’s NPF operates alongside other performance management systems which emphasize the need to adhere to relatively short-term national input/output measures rather than
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long-term measure of local outcomes (see also Chapter in this Handbook). There is a broad Scottish Government commitment to prevention and localism, but it is not easy to operationalize and, as yet, no clear pattern has emerged on the operation of CPPs or the development of SOAs.
C: T S A S A
.................................................................................................................................. To a large extent the SATP is a statement of aspiration; an attempt to put distance between the Scottish Government and its image of UK government policymaking. It reflects the sense articulated by policy participants, over many years, that the size and scale of Scottish policymaking, coupled with a vague sense of a different ‘culture’, can be conducive to distinctive forms of policymaking. They are reflected in at least two approaches to evidence-based best practice, which involve the Scottish Government setting national outcomes and giving local actors the space to decide how to meet them over the long term. At the same time, Scottish ministers operate in the short term. They are subject to election every five years, and election debates tend to emphasize traditional Westminster ideas about accountability. Scottish ministers know that, however successful they are in establishing pragmatic forms of institutional, community, local, stakeholder, and user-driven forms of accountability during their day-to-day business, they will be subject to democratic accountability every five years. Their accountability to the public via parliament is also driven by the sense that central government is in control and therefore responsible for outcomes. A new approach requires a subtle difference in tone, to differentiate between ministerial responsibility for a national framework containing key objectives and outcome-based measures of success, and ministerial responsibility for subsequent public sector behaviour and actual outcomes. Yet, an acknowledgement of this difference is difficult to detect in parliamentary or public debate. Instead, ministers will know that to try to share responsibility, for service delivery and outcomes, is to look like they are shuffling off responsibility. The result is an unclear agenda on public service leadership and public sector reform. The Scottish Government has to encourage the development of skills geared towards contradictory aims. It must centralize to monitor performance towards national targets, and let go to encourage local autonomy and experimentation. It must encourage the inclusion of service users in public service design, and ensure that the leaders of public bodies take responsibility for meeting statutory and financial targets. It must encourage local authorities to engage fully in community planning partnerships, and maintain local accountability and an electoral mandate on the basis that they are responsible for their own actions. It seems like an ambitious task to train leaders to fulfil many contradictory aims simultaneously.
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R Audit Scotland. . Community Planning: Turning Ambition into Action. Edinburgh: Audit Scotland. Available at. https://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/docs/central//nr__ community_planning.pdf Cairney, P. a. ‘The British Policy Style and Mental Health’, Journal of Social Policy, /: –. Cairney, P. b. ‘Implementation and the Governance Problem’, Public Policy and Administration, /: –. Cairney, P. a. The Scottish Political System Since Devolution. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Cairney, P. b. ‘The New British Policy Style: From a British to a Scottish Political Tradition’, Political Studies Review, /: –. Cairney, P. . ‘Complexity Theory in Political Science and Public Policy’, Political Studies Review, : –. Cairney, P. . ‘Territorial Policy Communities and the Scottish Policy Style: The Case of Compulsory Education’, Scottish Affairs, /Winter: –. Cairney, P. . ‘What is Complex Government and What Can We Do About It?’ Public Money and Management, /: –. Cairney, P. . The Politics of Evidence-Based Policy Making. London: Palgrave Pivot. Cairney, P. . ‘Evidence-based Best Practice is More Political than it Looks: A Case Study of the “Scottish Approach” ’, Evidence and Policy, /: –. Cairney, P. and McGarvey, N. . Scottish Politics, nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Cairney, P. and St Denny, E. . ‘A Framework to Decide What Works in Prevention Policy’, Paper to Scottish Government, February. Available at: https://www.researchgate. net/publication/_The_‘Scottish_approach’_to_policy_and_policymaking_what_ issues_are_territorial_and_what_are_universal Cairney, P. and St Denny, E. . ‘Prevention is Better Than Cure, So Why Isn’t Government Policy More Preventive?’, Political Insight, December: –. Cairney, P., Russell, S., and St Denny, E. . ‘The “Scottish Approach” to Policy and Policymaking: What Issues are Territorial and What are Universal?’, Policy and Politics, /: –. Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services () Report (Edinburgh: Scottish Government). Available at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc//.pdf. COSLA and the Scottish Government. . ‘Community Planning Review: Statement of Ambition’. Available at: www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/local-government/CP/soa. Davies, S. and Heath, H. . ‘Quality of Care in National Care Homes Research and Development Forum’, in Quality of Life in Care Homes: A Review of the Literature. London: Help the Aged. Available at: https://www.scie.org.uk/almost-there. Department of Health. . The Family Nurse Partnership Programme. London: Department of Health. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/sys tem/uploads/attachment_data/file//The-Family-Nurse-Partnership-ProgrammeInformation-leaflet.pdf. Dewar, B., Cook, F., and Barrie, K. . Final Report: Exploring the Experiences of Staff, Residents and Families in Care Homes to Support the Design of New Care Homes in West Dunbarton. Paisley: University of the West of Scotland. Available at: https://research-portal.uws.ac.uk/en/publications/exploring-the-experiences-of-staff-residentsand-families-in-care.
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Durose, C. and Richardson, L. (eds) . Designing Public Policy for Co-production. Bristol: The Policy Press. Elvidge, J. . Northern Exposure: Lessons from the First Twelve Years of Devolved Government in Scotland. London: Institute for Government. Available at: https://www. instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Northern%Exposure.pdf. Family Nurse Partnership National Unit. . The Evidence Base for Family Nurse Partnership. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file//The-Family-Nurse-Partnership-ProgrammeInformation-leaflet.pdf Gains, F. and Stoker, G. . ‘Delivering “Public Value”: Implications for Accountability and Legitimacy’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Geyer, R. and Cairney, P. (eds) . Handbook on Complexity and Public Policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Gray, C. . ‘A “Hollow State”?’, in R. Pyper and L. Robins (eds), United Kingdom Governance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Greer, S. and Jarman, H. . ‘Devolution and Policy Styles’, in A. Trench (ed.), The State of the Nations . Exeter: Imprint Academic. Hood, C. . ‘The “New Public Management” in the s: Variations on a Theme’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, /–: –. Housden, P. . ‘This is US: A Perspective on Public Services in Scotland’, Frank Stacey Memorial Lecture, Public Administration Committee Annual Conference, September. Housden, P. . ‘This is Us’, Civil Service Quarterly, April. Available at: h https:// quarterly.blog.gov.uk////this-is-us/ Institute for Healthcare Improvement. . The Breakthrough Series: IHI’s Collaborative Model for Achieving Breakthrough Improvement. Boston, MA: Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Available at: http://www.ihiorg/resources/Pages/IHIWhitePapers/ TheBreakthroughSeriesIHIsCollaborativeModelforAchievingBreakthroughImprovement. aspx. Jordan, G., Halpin, D., and Maloney, W. . ‘Defining Interests: Disambiguation and the Need for New Distinctions?’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. Judge, D., Hogwood, B., and McVicar, M. . ‘The “Pondlife” of Executive Agencies: Parliament and “Informatory” Accountability’, Public Policy and Administration, /: –. Keating, M. /. The Government of Scotland, st and nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Keating, M., Cairney, P., and Hepburn, E. . ‘Territorial Policy Communities and Devolution in the United Kingdom’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, /: –. Matthews, F.M. . ‘Letting Go and Holding On: The Politics of Performance Management in the United Kingdom’. Public Policy and Administration, /: –. Matthews, P. . ‘Being Strategic in Partnership’, Local Government Studies, /: –. McAteer, M. . ‘What Future for Local Government in a Post Referendum Scotland?’, Paper to Political Quarterly workshop, Edinburgh, October. Nilsen, P., Stahl, C., Roback, K., and Cairney, P. . ‘Never The Twain Shall Meet? A Comparison of Implementation Science and Policy Implementation Research’, Implementation Science /: –.
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O’Neill, D. . ‘Time to Reverse Years of Centralization’. Edinburgh: Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy. Available at: www.localdemocracy.info/// /timeto-reverse--years-of-centralisation/. Osborne, S. . ‘The New Public Governance?’ Public Management Review, /: –. Osborne, S. and Strokosch, K. . ‘It Takes Two to Tango? Understanding the Coproduction of Public Services by Integrating the Services Management and Public Administration Perspectives’, British Journal of Management, /S: S–. Paun, A., Rutter, J., and Nicholl, A. . Devolution as a Policy Laboratory. London: Alliance for Useful Evidence. Available at: http://www.allianceusefulevidence.org/assets/AlliancePolicy-Laboratory-paper-final.pdf. Richards, D. and Smith, M. . ‘The Hybrid State’, in S. Ludlam and M. Smith (eds), Governing as New Labour. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rittell, H. and Webber, M. . ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences, /: –. Robling, M., Bekkers, M.J., Bell, K., Butler, C.C., Cannings-John, R., Channon, S., Martin, B. C., Gregory, J.W., Hood, K., Kemp, A., and Kenkre, J. . ‘Effectiveness of a Nurse-led Intensive Home-visitation Programme for First-time Teenage Mothers (Building Blocks): A Pragmatic Randomised Controlled Trial’, The Lancet, /: –. Sanderson, I. . ‘Evidence-based Policy or Policy-based Evidence?’ Evidence and Policy, /: –. Scottish Government. /a. Performance. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/About/Performance. Scottish Government. . Renewing Scotland’s Public Services. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/renewing-scotlands-publicservices-priorities-reform-response-christie-commission/. Scottish Government. b. The Early Years Collaborative, EYC, Stock Take Review of Years and . Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Available at: www.govscot/Resource// .pdf. Scottish Government. . Public Service Reform. Available at: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/ Government/PublicServiceReform, accessed May . Scottish Government and COSLA. . ‘Concordat between the Scottish Government and COSLA’. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government and ESRC. . What Works Scotland (WWS). Available at: www.esrc. ac.uk/_images/WWS%Call%spec%FINAL%%Jan%_tcm-.Pdf. Sharp, C., Dewar, B., Barrie, K., and Meyer, J. . ‘How Being Appreciative Creates ChangeTheory in Practice from Health and Social Care in Scotland’, Action Research, /: –. Workforce Scotland. . Skilled Workers, Skilled Citizens. Available at: https:// workforcescotland.com/swsc/, accessed May .
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.................................................................................................................................. A of Scottish devolution believed that it would usher in a new era of governance, one which would contrast starkly with the putatively antiquated centralism and adversarial politics associated with ‘Old’ Westminster practices. Electing representatives with the power to design ‘Scotland-specific’ policies was also intended to reinvigorate political participation and renew the public’s faith in institutions, helping to redress a perceived ‘democratic deficit’. The new Parliament was placed at the heart of this vision of a ‘new Scottish politics’. Since , the Scottish Parliament has met some, but not all, of the public and policymakers’ original expectations. This chapter presents a critical introduction to the Scottish Parliament as a now-mature legislature, by retracing and assessing its historical and operational development until .
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.................................................................................................................................. The re-establishment of a Scottish Parliament has been central to debates over home rule since the late nineteenth century (Chapter in this Handbook). Deliberation over what home rule might look like, politically and institutionally, intensified in the late twentieth century and was structured by increasingly formalized groups, including political parties and civic forums that supported devolution or, in some cases, full independence for Scotland (Bonney : ). The most influential of these was the Scottish Constitutional Convention (SCC), set up in to reinvigorate the ‘Campaign for a Scottish Assembly’ and develop a clear blueprint for Scottish home rule (Keating ). The specifics of this institution were set out in the SCC’s report entitled Scotland’s Parliament, Scotland’s Right (SCC ), which wove a narrative of ‘new
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politics’, in which devolution was associated with democratic renewal and better outcomes for the country. There were three dimensions: politics, institutions, and policies (Brown ; Hassan and Warhurst ; Mitchell ; Arter a: ; McGarvey and Cairney ; Keating ; Cairney ; Lundberg ). The SCC () further contended that the majoritarian First-Past-The-Post electoral system used in the UK Parliament should be ruled out in favour of a more proportional Mixed Member System. The intention was to secure a more equal social and political representation of the diverse Scottish population (Mitchell : ). Politically, an alternative member system (AMS) would ensure that seats won broadly reflected the ballots cast, thereby affording smaller parties the opportunity to be represented. This proposal had the added benefit of appealing to some of the main parties in Scotland by assuaging fears of: underpresentation (in the case of the Liberal Democrats) (Brown , ); party dominance (in the case of Labour); concerns over the Scottish National Party winning a majority of seats (Brown , ; Marsh and Hall ; Marsh ); and of some regional party factions’ perceived disproportionate influence on politics, in the case of the more traditionalist Labour factions in the West of Scotland (Hassan ). Socially, the hope was that a more proportional system would encourage broader electoral and deliberative participation across Scottish society, going some way to reinvigorating Scottish democracy and ending the underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities in politics. The overall vision was one of a modern participatory (rather than merely representative) democracy in Scotland (Bonney ). The emphasis was clearly placed on the participatory and empowering potential of a legislative assembly that prioritized consultation over top-down imposition of policy; political consensus-building over partisan antagonism; and constructive legislative scrutiny over central executive control. Essentially, this was to be an institution that eschewed everything associated with Westminster’s putatively outdated, opaque, and acrimonious politics. Great importance was placed on committee scrutiny and deliberation, and on formal and informal consultation mechanisms meant to allow the people of Scotland to meaningfully participate in the policy process. The more co-operative and consensus-seeking political process believed to be associated with proportional representation would be the basis for a new political culture (Henderson ; Cairney ). These new institutional and political processes would facilitate the development of new and more appropriate policy responses to issues faced by Scottish communities (Bradbury and Mitchell ; Cairney ). Policies would be constructed and delivered in partnership with those they would affect, thereby reinvigorating civic society and strengthening democracy.
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.................................................................................................................................. A Consultative Steering Group (CSG), chaired by the then Scottish Office Minister for Devolution and Labour MP Henry McLeish, comprised senior figures from all four major political parties (Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, and the
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Scottish National Party) as well as representatives from local government, the private sector, and a range of prominent civic groups. The CSG was to work with civil servants to deliver on its threefold remit: to identify the new Parliament’s operational needs and working practices; to propose rules of procedure and Standing Orders that would underpin its day-to-day working; and to report back to the Secretary of State with a set of proposals by the end of (CSG : ). Henry McLeish () foresaw an ‘open, modern and dignified’ institution and, in the spirit of the SCC’s vision, the CSG quickly identified four fundamental principles that would guide its reflexion on how the Parliament should operate: • • • •
accountability power-sharing access and participation and equal opportunities.
These principles underpinned the proposal made in the CSG’s final report, Shaping Scotland’s Parliament, published in December . It envisaged a parliament that played a dual role as both a legislature and a civic forum (Smith and Gray ), and formed the procedural blueprint for the new Parliament when it opened its doors on May . The initial period following the inauguration of the Scottish Parliament was dedicated to designing the institutional mechanisms that would allow these principles to be enacted. Thus, the bulk of business from to concerned the details of how parliament would function, including: the treatment of devolved legislation at Westminster (June ); membership of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (June ); the regulation of cross-party groups (December ); and scrutiny of Members of the Scottish Parliaments’ (MSPs’) conduct and allowances (February– March ) (Winetrobe ). The influence of the CSG’s original proposals was evident in the resulting rules of procedure, Standing Orders, and codes of conduct, with each of the four fundamental principles being taken up and developed in relation to the Parliament’s operation. First, to ‘embody and reflect’ the principle of power-sharing (CSG : ), the responsibility to develop and design the laws and policies that would govern Scotland would be shared between citizens, the Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish Executive. Several mechanisms were adopted to achieve this, including the appointment of a politically impartial Presiding Officer; the establishment of an all-party Business Committee responsible for planning the Parliament’s work programme; and the creation of versatile and proportionately representative committees capable not only of investigating and scrutinizing legislation, but also of conducting inquiries and initiating legislation. More generally, the principle of ‘power-sharing’ was extended to political representation. In contrast to Westminster’s partisan adversarialism, which was partly blamed for the British public’s growing disenchantment with politics, the more proportional Scottish Parliament was intended to inspire a new more deliberative
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and consensual political behaviour. This, in turn, would foster greater public trust in, and engagement with, the democratic process, and help mitigate the ‘democratic deficit’ in Scotland. Overall, the goal was to force parties to adopt deliberative and consensus-building practices to secure support for policy either as part of a coalition or on an issue-by-issue basis. This, in addition to the more proportional make-up of parliamentary committees, means that politicians from a greater range of parties participate and can hope to influence the policy agenda and process than tends to be possible at the UK level. There are plural opportunities for actors other than ministers, from opposition MSPs to backbenchers, to try to influence the policy agenda. Because MSPs and committees can initiate bills relatively easily, more non-executive legislation tends to progress through the Scottish Parliament than Westminster (Shephard –; Shephard and Cairney ). As a result, the policy agenda, though still largely set by the Executive, is influenced or shaped by other actors. The Standing Orders also include the possibility for MSPs to propose issues of currency or interest to be debated in the chamber in the hopes of building cross-party support. This innovation was intended to afford backbenchers an opportunity to raise attention to issues that might otherwise not make it onto an already crowded agenda. Power-sharing, then, was embedded at several institutional levels, from the overarching division of power between the branches of government, to the electorally generated balance of power between parties and the procedural opportunities for individual actors to influence policy. Second, to guarantee accessibility and responsiveness, not only would Parliament need to act openly and transparently, but individuals and organizations would need to be actively encouraged and supported to take part in the decision-making process. Committee and plenary meetings would be public and translation facilities into Gaelic provided. Committees would have the power to hear evidence from experts and stakeholders, and a public petition committee would be established. Democratic participation would be broadened, with the Parliament proactively seeking to involve groups hitherto under-represented or excluded from the political process. More geographically remote communities would have the opportunity to access ‘roaming’ parliamentary committees that would regularly meet outside of Edinburgh. ‘Social partnership ventures’, such as a Civic Forum and Young People’s Forum, would be encouraged to foster, channel, and facilitate public participation in democracy. Openness and accessibility would also be woven through parliamentary culture, by encouraging and educating MSPs to embrace an ethos of consultative and participatory democracy. Thirdly, the principle of equal opportunities was primarily interpreted through the lens of formal participation in politics. Whilst equal opportunities legislation was reserved to the UK, the institutional architects believed that the Scottish Parliament’s make-up and operating procedures should aim to embed the norm of equal opportunities (Chapter in this Handbook; Mackay ). Beyond adopting an electoral system that would enable a greater breadth of parties to hold seats in Parliament, the hope was also that these parties could attract new types of politicians: more diverse and
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representative cohorts of parliamentarians who would craft a less machist and aggressive working culture (Shephard et al. ; Henderson ). The aspiration was for a Parliament that was more ‘descriptively’ representative of the communities it represents by recruiting more women or individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds, as well as to improve the electorate’s ‘substantive’ representation, that is the extent to which policies and laws represented voters’ values, needs and beliefs (Pitkin ; Phillips ; Lovenduski ). In addition to exemplifying traditional democratic principles of openness and accountability, the new Parliament would harness the opportunities offered by new technology and implement the very best in parliamentary practice. Its up-to-date features would include conducting parliamentary business during normal ‘familyfriendly’ working hours and the expectation that equal opportunities be mainstreamed throughout all functions and processes to attract and support a more demographically diverse staff (CSG ). The horseshoe-shaped design of the chamber, in contrast to Westminster’s opposing benches, symbolized a commitment to collegiality and consensus-building (Mackay ). Finally, the Parliament would also take full advantage of the opportunities provided by new information and communications technologies, especially the Internet, to ensure it could realize its aspirations as a dynamic, transparent, and responsive legislature, in touch with modern Scottish society (Smith and Gray ; Bonney ). One specific development has arguably garnered more attention than others: the organization of the legislative process and the central role played by parliamentary committees.
T L P
.................................................................................................................................. In the absence of a second chamber in the Scottish Parliament, a committee system was developed whose functions go beyond legislative scrutiny to include the possibility of contributing to policymaking and initiating legislation (Arter a; Keating and Cairney ). Committees are made up of between five and fifteen MSPs in proportion to the Parliament’s political make-up. They combine the roles of standing and select committees in the UK Parliament so that they not only consider the details of legislative proposals but also carry out more general scrutiny of government and public agencies by gathering information and carrying out investigations into issues within their operational remit. Following an inquiry, a committee can publish a report setting out recommendations, which can then be debated in plenary. Committees can also initiate legislation by means of Committee Bills. Consequently, Scottish Parliament committees do not just respond to proposed bills but can draw attention to issues that might otherwise not appear on the political agenda. In this way, they were envisaged as legislative actors in their own right. Mandatory committees are those stipulated in the Parliament’s Standing Orders, which details their remits and procedures. Subject committees are established at the
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start of every parliamentary session and broadly correspond to the portfolios held by government ministers. Additionally, Private Bill committees can be created to scrutinize bills submitted by individuals and organizations from outside of the Parliament. For example, a Welfare Reform Committee was set up to monitor the passage and implementation of welfare and social security reforms introduced by the UK Welfare Reform Act . The committee system is envisaged as an effective way of processing policy-relevant evidence and information and produce better policy. In addition to allowing members to gather information via inquiries and consultation, committees are intended to allow MSPs to spend considerable time developing their own knowledge and expertise on a specific subject. Nevertheless, the committees have tended to focus on legislative scrutiny; that is, the process by which a Bill is considered, amended, and ultimately adopted or rejected. There are three stages. Stage one sees the general principles of the proposal considered by the relevant committee(s). This may include gathering written and oral evidence from stakeholders. At this stage, the committee will also consider whether these stakeholders have been sufficiently consulted in the preparation of the Bill. The result is a report setting out the committee’s views and recommendations, including whether the Bill’s general principles should be agreed and the proposal allowed to proceed to the first plenary debate. Parliament then votes on the principle of the Bill. During stage two, the relevant committee(s) consider the Bill in detail. Any MSP can submit an amendment, and any citizen can suggest one to their MSP. An ‘expert legislation team’, is available to support the drafting of an amendment. The Government can also propose amendments in response to stage one committee recommendations. Committee consideration of these amendments is undertaken primarily by means of short and themed debates. A vote takes place if unanimity cannot be reached on an amendment. A final draft of the Bill is produced taking into consideration all agreed amendments. The final, and third, stage represents the last opportunity to propose amendments and debate issues related to the Bill. If a proposed amendment is too similar to one previously debated during the second stage, the Presiding Officer may exclude it from the final plenary debate on the Bill. This plenary debate takes place after all new amendments have been addressed. A vote on whether or not the Bill should pass concludes the primary legislative process.
T S P B P
.................................................................................................................................. In addition to passing laws, the Scottish Parliament is responsible for authorizing and allocating funds for devolved policy and services as well as auditing the Scottish Government’s spending (Midwinter ; Lapsley et al. ). Just as the Scottish
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Parliament was designed to operate differently from Westminster, so the Scottish Budget Process was supposed to allow more meaningful scrutiny of public spending by affording parliamentarians more time and resources to consider and discuss executive proposals (CSG : ). The aim was again to break away from the Westminster tendency to reduce budgetary scrutiny to a hasty and toothless process with little scope for Parliament or the public to meaningfully contribute to budgetary discussions (Midwinter and McGarvey ; Midwinter ). Instead, MSPs would be empowered and supported to develop the requisite expertise with which to purposefully probe the Scottish Government’s spending proposals and suggest productive amendments (Finance Committee of the Scottish Parliament ). Spending plans, chief of which the annual Draft Budget, were therefore intended not only to represent statements of the Government’s policy intentions, but also form the record against which the Scottish Parliament can monitor and measure the Executive’s performance (Midwinter : ). This was to ensure that the Budget Process respected the CSG’s vision of power-sharing between the Legislature and Executive (CSG ). Initially based on the recommendations of the Financial Issues Advisory Group, set up in to advise the CSG on how to develop a budget process commensurate with its vision for the ‘new’ Scottish Parliament, this process has changed over time to reflect the Scottish Parliament’s increasing tax-raising powers and gradually expanding legislative remit. Consequently, the Scottish Parliament Budget Process, which had primarily paid attention to how money was spent in Scotland, is evolving to include greater scrutiny of the manner in which money is raised and to consider issues of fiscal risk and uncertainty (Chapter in this Handbook). Originally, the Budget Process began with the publication of the Draft Budget and was followed by a period of scrutiny and deliberation that closely matches the Scottish Parliament’s three-stage legislative process. Broad strategic priorities were first considered at stage one (later referred to as the ‘Budget Strategy Phase’). This was followed by an in-depth review of the Draft Budget and preparation of recommendations by the Finance Committee during the ‘Budget Scrutiny phase’. However, in light of how small the yearly changes to the budget tend to be, annually completing the broad strategic assessment associated with stage one was considered unnecessarily onerous and in many ways a duplication of stage two. As a result, stage one fell largely into disuse after and was replaced with a ‘Budget Strategy Phase’ to take place only during years when there is a UK Spending Review or Scottish Parliament election (Scottish Parliament ). The new ‘Budget Strategy Phase’ is now intended to supplement Scottish Government self-evaluations of performance at such politically critical junctures (Bell ). The Scottish Budget Process ends with the tabling of the Government’s amended Draft Budget Bill and a stage-three ‘Budget Bill’ phase in Parliament, concluding with a plenary vote to accept or reject—but not amend—the Bill. The first stage of the Scottish Parliament’s Budget Process may therefore take place as infrequently as every three years, whilst stages two and three are annual. To remain responsive to changing policy priorities and spending patterns, the Budget Act can also be amended throughout the year. Typically, two such amendments, termed
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‘Budget Revisions’, are put forward each year, around February and September, and are then scrutinized by the Finance Committee. In , a Budget Process Review Group (BPRG) was set up to evaluate the Budget Process and advise on how it could be modernized to account for the new tax powers gained as part of the and Scotland Acts. It published its report in , recommending procedural and ‘cultural’ change in the way public spending plans and expenditure were produced, scrutinized, and monitored (BPRG ). It advocated a shift to continuous and longer-term thinking, to allow for a better understanding of, and response to, budgetary trends over time. This included the proposal for an ‘all year round’ process with the publication of interim ‘medium term financial strategies’ in the spring, ‘fiscal framework outturn reports’ detailing Scottish tax revenue data in the autumn, and the need for the Scottish Government to carry out multi-year spending reviews more frequently (BPRG : ). The Review Group recommendations were accepted in full and approved by the Scottish Parliament in May , thereby inaugurating the ‘new’ Scottish Budget Process. As with the legislative process more generally, committees are supposed to play an important role in both scrutinizing and proposing improvements to budget proposals. Subject committees are responsible for monitoring, scrutinizing, and proposing amendments to spending in departments that fall within their area. The Finance Committee compiles these recommendations and provides its own overall assessment of spending proposals in its annual budget report. These budget reports are debated in plenary sessions and require Government response. In cases where the Finance Committee considers the Government has not satisfied its recommendations, it also has the power to propose an alternative budget. Over time, the Parliament’s expanding legislative competence has put a strain on committees’ ability to scrutinize legislation, and the extension of its spending and tax powers has challenged their ability to scrutinize budget proposals in detail (Bell ). Thus, in practice, the neatly designed legislative and Budget processes, and in particular the carrying out of scrutiny functions by committees, have not always unfolded as originally intended, hampering the emergence of truly ‘new’ and distinctive politics in Scotland.
A R ‘N P’
.................................................................................................................................. Between and , a first wave of research on the Scottish Parliament, covering the first three parliamentary sessions, sought to examine the nature and degree of political and policy difference devolution had delivered for Scotland. The common thread was a strong focus on assessing the extent to which the principles of ‘new’ politics were realized (Fawcett ; Arter a; Cairney b; Jeffery and Mitchell
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; Mitchell ). A debate arose over whether, or to what extent, it has been possible to achieve the SCC and CSG’s lofty goals for democratic renewal merely by designing a parliament based on broad principles such as transparency, openness, and proportionality. The question essentially concerned whether devolution in Scotland has been able to deliver inherently social and political objectives using primarily institutional means. Hopes of ‘new Scottish politics’ were predicated on the representation of the Scottish Parliament as a new institution, and therefore one which could draw up its procedures and culture on a clean slate. In light of the difficulties the devolved Parliament has had in living up to these aspirations, some authors have noted that Holyrood did not in fact emerge in a politically neutral vacuum but rather fitted into a political system structured by strong historical and institutional legacies (Brown : ; Mitchell : ; : –; Himsworth : ). The design and operating procedures of the new Scottish Parliament were explicitly intended to set it apart from Westminster across three primary dimensions: openness; balance of power between legislature and executive; and capacity to meaningfully scrutinize proposals with reference to both outside expertise and stakeholder input. It has been suggested that the Scottish Parliament might come to resemble the ‘Nordic Model’, based on consensus, recognizing this as an ‘ideal type’, to which no nation, including Scotland, fully corresponds (Arter a, b; Newby : ; Cairney and Widfeldt : ). In practice, it retains many elements associated with the ‘Westminster model’, marked by executive dominance and strong party allegiances (Johnson ; Keating ; Cairney and Widfeldt ; Cairney ). The committee system, envisaged as an innovative way of creating new arenas for discussing, refining, and garnering support for policy decisions, has failed to meet the high hopes of devolution architects. From early on, the high burden of business being processed by the committees, coupled with MSPs’ limited time to split between multiple committee roles, hampered their ability to do more than rapidly scrutinize executive bills (Mitchell ; Cairney b; Carman and Shephard ; Johnson ). Too little time and too few resources were available for committees to carry out their other functions, such as holding inquiries, or conducting pre- or post-legislative scrutiny. Party politics has extended to the committees, reducing the scope for crossparty consensus (Shephard and Cairney ). Similar pressures extend to the Budget Process, which is also heavily structured by the uneven manner in which the balance of power between the Parliament and Government tends to play out (Winetrobe ). Budget scrutiny has sometimes been complicated by the tendency for successive Governments, especially since , to divide large budgets across into increasingly broadly framed and cross-cutting policy ‘priorities’ (Midwinter ). This follows the shift in Scottish Government’s attention towards ‘outcome-based’ policymaking and away from policy ‘inputs’ (such as narrowly framed budget proposals or prescriptive service delivery guidelines) (Chapter in this Handbook). This has, at times, made it difficult for individual committees to discern which spending proposals fall squarely within their remit (Midwinter , ). It also makes it possible to justify almost all resourcing
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decisions as compatible, in one way or another, with the Government’s overall policy ‘strategy’ (Lapsley et al. ). Different Governments’ ability to bind Parliament to its policy strategy or use the budget to set the agenda has varied depending on whether they governed as a minority, majority, or as part of a stable coalition (Elvidge ; Lapsley et al. ). Majority government and coalitions based on strong agreements between participating parties are associated with less push-back from committees and MSPs during scrutiny and deliberation. Instead, hearings and debates were primarily used to ask the Government for clarification and more detail about policy and spending proposals, and substantial amendments were rarely proposed (Lapsley et al. ). A great deal of negotiation over policy content, including the budget, is managed outside of the committee system, through political channels, directly with those parties or MSPs whose support is needed to pass the final Bill (Elvidge ). The limits of ‘new’ politics in post-devolution Scotland also extend to the difficulties involved in crafting a political culture of consensus (Brown ; Mitchell ; Henderson ; McMillan ). Whilst the adoption of a more proportional electoral system in Scotland has often required the largest party to garner support from others to pass legislation, this has not led to a tradition of systematic political bargaining and consensus-building such as we might find in the Nordic ‘consensus democracies’. Rather, co-operation has tended to result from mutual advantage and, more rarely, the pursuit of a truly common policy goal (Mitchell ; Cairney and Widfeldt ). Even the proportional membership of committees has not stopped deliberation and decisions from splitting across party lines (Commission on Scottish Devolution ; Keating ). The over-estimation of the Scottish Parliament’s capacity to transform Scotland into a Nordic-style consensus democracy is predicated on excessive faith in institutional processes being able to curb political dynamics. Electoral competition under Scottish devolution makes it difficult for consensus-building norms to emerge. The various leftof-centre parties in Scotland are often in direct competition with each other for voters and the similarities in some of their policy positions has spurred them to exaggerate their differences and partake in the type of political one-upmanship typically associated with Westminster politics (Mitchell ). This has particularly been the case between Labour and the SNP which, aside from having fundamentally different positions on Scottish independence, have tended to stand on relatively similar policy platforms and compete for voters of similar social backgrounds and political persuasion (Mitchell ; Lynch ). The unresolved question of Scotland’s independence has, at times, magnified conflict between the two parties and has served as the primary prism through which most, if not all, political debates have been filtered since the SNP increased its share of parliamentary seats in . In this way, devolution has introduced a new level of electoral competition which, predicated on adversarial politics, limits the Scottish Parliament’s institutional ability to foster political consensus (Lundberg ). The Scottish Parliament has yet to reach satisfactory descriptive representation of the electorate. Instead, membership of the Scottish Parliament continues to closely
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mirror that of the UK House of Commons, with only subtle evidence of difference (Chapter in this Handbook). The majority of MSPs continue to be white educated males with prior experience of local or national political office (Henderson ; Cairney et al. b). Whilst Scotland has consistently surpassed the UK House of Commons in terms of female elected members, it has only averaged per cent of female MSPs (Chapter in this Handbook). Thus, whilst any increase in women’s formal participation in politics should be celebrated, Scotland’s out-performance of the UK speaks more to Westminster’s historically poor track record on female participation than to any putative Scottish exceptionalism (Henderson ; Cairney et al. b). By way of contrast, women have made up an average of per cent of the members elected to the National Assembly for Wales since , and represented per cent in the elections. A similar pattern of entrenched inequalities of access and representation hinders civic participation and the establishment of a deliberative democratic tradition. Overall, interest-group relations with and access to the Parliament have tended to be better than before devolution (Cairney , , ; Fyfe and Johnston ). Nevertheless, civic and interest-group input into policy debates continues to be dominated by a small number of recurrent actors (Chapter in this Handbook; Brown ; Cairney et al. ; Halpin et al. ). This is primarily caused by a high degree of variability in organizations’ capacity to capitalize on the allegedly more accessible and participatory legislative process in Scotland, which in reality still requires resources and know-how to effectively navigate (Chapter in this Handbook; Lyall ). As in any other political system, agenda dynamics strongly structure policymakers’ attention and ability to act, limiting their focus to a small set of salient and usually recurrent policy issues, and limiting the extent to which outside input is ever meaningfully considered (Carman and Shephard ; Cairney et al. a). Rather than fostering radical participatory democracy, the principle of parliamentary consultation has therefore primarily been operationalized in the form of ‘social partnerships’ between the Parliament, Government, and a range of different actors including voluntary organizations, trade unions, academics, and representatives from business, some of whom are called on more frequently than others to feed into policy debates (Bonney ; Halpin et al. ; Cairney ). Efforts to broaden consultative practices beyond this core group of ‘usual suspects’ and, in particular, attempts to involve regular service-users in the policymaking process have been noted (Bonney ). A permanent Public Petitions Committee was established and the threshold for participation via this channel was set much lower than that of Westminster: a single signature is required for a petition to be eligible for committee consideration, compared with the , signatures required to get a response from the UK Parliament. Whilst there have been questions raised about the lack of diversity amongst those who use the Scottish Parliament’s petition system (Bochel ), the system as a whole has regularly been evaluated positively (Carman , , ). Parliamentarians have commended the process for facilitating the inclusion of a broader set of voices into the policymaking process, whilst the public have found it a
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useful way to try and influence the agenda and participate in policy debates (Carman , ). This has consolidated the Scottish Parliament’s reputation as a relatively accessible lobbying venue, and a potentially fruitful alternative to the Scottish Government, for interest groups seeking to engage with the policy process (Halpin et al. ). The Scottish Parliament represents an additional or alternative territorial level at which to campaign for policy change in Scotland (Cairney , ). For some, the Scottish Parliament offers the possibility of circumventing an unfavourable policy agenda at the UK level. This was the case in the early s when advocates of a ban against smoking in public places successfully reframed the issue as a public health one, and therefore devolved, where it had previously been presented as a matter of workplace health and safety, which is reserved to Westminster (Cairney a). Overall, though, the causal link between access to the legislative agenda and policy impact is far more tenuous than architects of devolution might have hoped. This has highlighted a key tension at the heart of contemporary Scottish democracy. Since consultation does not automatically translate into empowerment, it is possible that ease of access to policymakers in Scotland does not translate to better or more representative legislation. Finally, the ability to innovate—especially in social policy—better to suit the specific needs of Scottish communities had been one of the key demands of the campaign for the Scottish Parliament (Bradbury and Mitchell ; Arter a; Cairney ). Initially, the ability of the new Parliament to deliver distinctive policy and chart a divergent course from the rest of the UK was, across many policy areas, quite tightly circumscribed by its relatively limited legislative competence. Whilst areas such as education and agriculture were fully devolved, the Scottish Parliament did not have autonomy over certain key areas of social security or labour and employability policy. This limited legislative autonomy, combined with the relative similarity of political agendas north and south of the border, and the impact of the block grant funding mechanism, which ties public spending in Scotland to that of England, create conditions that limit the possibility of policy divergence in Scotland (Cairney a, ; Cairney et al. a). As a result, expectations of truly radical policy on complex and boundary-spanning issues such as poverty and social exclusion have, over time, often had to be revised downward (Fawcett ; Cairney a: ). This is not to suggest that the Scottish Parliament has entirely failed to live up to the political and policy hopes associated with devolution. There have been notable instances of ‘new’ Scottish politics in action, though most have unfolded quietly, out of the public eye (Cairney ; Cairney ). Whilst original intentions to regularly host ‘roaming’ parliamentary meetings outside of Edinburgh have never been achieved, committees have remained dedicated to facilitating public deliberation (Arter a; Johnson ; Thomson ; Davidson and Stark ; McLaverty and MacLeod ). Although the majority of legislation emanates from the Executive, the few nonexecutive bills that have been successful have exemplified the ‘new politics’ principles of openness and deliberation. The Executive’s apparent dominance over the legislative agenda often belies committees’ and MSPs’ capacity to set priorities (Arter a; Shephard and Cairney ; Cairney b). Non-Government proposals have often
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been taken on, amended, and introduced as Government proposals, usually because of the issue’s salience or of the need to demonstrate cross-party support during a period of coalition or minority government.
A M I
.................................................................................................................................. With hindsight, the notion of ‘New Scottish Politics’, appears primarily to have functioned as a ‘powerful and effective mechanism for mobilizing popular and elite action’ in favour of devolution (Bonney : ) and, subsequently, for inspiring the Parliament’s initial institutional blueprint. The extent to which this vision has been fully realized is more contested. The disconnect between the expectations of ‘New Politics’ and the institutional capacities and political willingness to achieve them has been described as a ‘capability–expectation gap’ (Fawcett ). Over time, however, the Scottish Parliament’s capabilities have changed, its responsibilities have expanded, and its procedures have bedded in. Today, we are no longer faced with a juvenile institution whose every procedure needs to be invented, trialled, and learned. Rather, a series of incremental and cumulative changes linked to constitutional reform and institutionalization have created new opportunities and challenges for, and new expectations of, the Scottish Parliament. The extent and manner in which the Scottish Parliament has changed over the years has not yet been the subject of much political or scholarly debate. Questions concerning the institution’s structure and good operation were prominent in the years leading up to devolution in the s. Since then, however, there has been no equivalent attention to the question of how to keep the institution abreast of its changing responsibilities. Quiet rumblings from individual reformers have been present almost since the Parliament’s re-establishment (Mitchell ), but these have rarely translated into high-salience political debates. Most notably, over the last decade, three major debates have unfolded which consider the possible expansion of the Scottish Parliament’s legislative remit but without much in the way of corollary discussions concerning parliamentary reform. The election of a pro-independence minority SNP Government in impelled the UK government to commission a review into whether and how further devolution might be delivered to Scotland (Commission on Scottish Devolution ). In addition to making ambitious recommendations concerning the further devolution of legislative and tax-raising powers, the Commission made suggestions to improve the Scottish Parliament’s scrutiny role (Commission on Scottish Devolution ). Specifically, it recommended adjustments to reduce committee overload and allow more time for examination of proposals. Some of these recommendations were precise and practical, including granting the Presiding Officer the power to refer substantive amendments back to relevant committees at stage three before the plenary vote, and allowing committees to decide when to create sub-committees through which to channel
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additional work. Others were vaguer and invoked political will rather than concrete parliamentary reform, including the suggestion that membership turnover of committees be minimized. The Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament Standards, Procedures, and Public Appointments Committee both were sympathetic to the recommendations (Scottish Government ; Scottish Parliament SPPA Committee ), although no concrete changes to parliamentary procedure were made as a result. The election of a majority SNP Government in opened a window of opportunity for holding a referendum on Scottish independence. In the run up to this vote, every eventuality concerning independence or further devolution was discussed at great length, yet no such thorough debate was conducted on the topic of how the Scottish Parliament might need to be reformed to manage an increase in its autonomy or responsibility. Whilst the Parliament is mentioned over times in the Scottish Government’s White Paper, Scotland’s Future (Scottish Government ), setting out its vision for independence, the issue of parliamentary reform does not appear once. After independence was rejected, the topic remained similarly absent in the context of the cross-party commission, chaired by Lord Smith of Kelvin, tasked with drawing up plans for further devolution. Whilst the Smith Commission recommended the devolution of substantial new policy and tax-raising powers to Scotland, the question of how the Scottish Parliament might cope with these new responsibilities was wholesale referred back to the Presiding Officer (Smith Commission ). A similar imbalance of attention can be observed in debates about how the UK’s departure from the European Union might affect Scotland. This event is likely to see the powers repatriated and divided between the UK and devolved legislatures in a manner that profoundly alters changes in the way policy is made and delivered across the country (McHarg and Mitchell ). Yet, the focus remains on its impact on the Scottish Parliament’s competence, that is to say, on what areas of policy it might gain from, and which it ought to retain, after ‘Brexit’, rather than on its capacity. Nevertheless, growing recognition of the need to carefully consider issues of capacity in light of twenty years of changes to the Scottish Parliament’s powers has prompted the first full-scale inquiry into the Scottish Parliament’s functioning and how it might be improved. This was initiated in October with the establishment of a Commission on Parliamentary Reform (CPR). The CPR was mandated with reviewing the Scottish Parliament’s performance and assessing its capacity to handle current and future challenges, including the need to legislate on and scrutinize an increasing number of policy areas. The Commission consulted widely and took evidence from a range of experts, including former ministers and representatives of the New Zealand Parliament. The resulting report set out a vision for what it considered a mature Parliament capable of better engaging with the needs and interests of those it represents (Commission on Parliamentary Reform ). It identified several challenges and difficulties faced by the Scottish Parliament, notably committees’ variable success in scrutinizing legislation and initiating debates on issues of importance. It echoed many of the existing criticism of the system, pointing to issues of party discipline and partisan
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divisions as an obstacle to achieving cross-party consensus, and blaming resource and time pressures for committees’ limited ability to develop their own agendas, develop expertise, and undertake meaningful pre- and post-legislative scrutiny. The Commission put forward seventy-five recommendations for improving the Parliament’s effectiveness. The emphasis was placed on two dimensions: flexibility, and resourcing. Creating opportunities for more spontaneous contributions to debates, supporting committees to follow avenues of inquiry they deemed important, and experimenting with new ways of engaging with the public and stakeholders were presented as ways for the Parliament to improve its responsiveness. Limiting the size of committees, introducing elected committee conveners, and strengthening the role of the Presiding Officer in directing parliamentary business were all presented as ways of making better use of MSPs’ limited time and resources. The CPR’s report was broadly well received, with the Scottish Parliament’s Presiding Officer, Ken Macintosh stating he believed any resulting reforms would serve to enhance the public’s trust in the Parliament (The Herald June ). Overall, though, the committee’s tight institutional focus left little room to discuss the challenges facing the Scottish Parliament within the broader political context. Holyrood’s difficulties scrutinizing government, its often peripheral role in the policymaking process, and its lack of engagement with pre- and post-legislative scrutiny were primarily treated as the mechanistic outcomes of resource and organizational pressures. An alternative account, however, would see many of these problems as manifestations of the wider political system in which the Parliament operates, and in which the behaviour of political actors, including different forms of government (minority, coalition, or majority), present both opportunities and obstacles to the institution’s ideal functioning. Technical institutional reform without a shift in political culture would therefore be insufficient to resolve the Parliament’s shortcomings.
C
.................................................................................................................................. The Parliament’s first two decades have primarily been assessed against the grand ambitions of New Scottish Politics. Whilst the institution’s track record on delivering ‘new’ politics remains contested, there is broad consensus that a significant ‘capacity– expectation’ gap emerged early on. The original hopes of ‘new politics’, which were essentially political and social in nature, could never be fully realized by purely institutional means. A parliament that embodies and functions according to principles of consensus and participatory democracy may be necessary for achieving radically new politics and policies in Scotland, but it remains in itself insufficient to do so. The iterative and gradual expansion of the Scottish Parliament’s powers and responsibilities over the years has increased pressure on the procedures and mechanisms originally intended to deliver greater accountability, more meaningful policy scrutiny, and enhanced engagement with citizens. Whilst questions about further devolution to
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Scotland have regularly resurfaced over the last twenty years, discussions of how the Scottish Parliament might be reformed to keep abreast of its ever-growing responsibilities have only recently started to emerge. The current socio-political context, characterized by acrimonious if eminently important debates about the role and place of Scotland in the UK, the EU, and the world, therefore represents a potential window of opportunity for reassessing what ‘New Scottish Politics’ might look like in the context of a mature and changing institution.
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Cairney, P. and Widfeldt, A. . ‘Is Scotland a Westminster-style Majoritarian Democracy or a Scandinavian-style Consensus Democracy? A Comparison of Scotland, the UK and Sweden’, Regional & Federal Studies, /: –. Cairney, P., Halpin, D., and Jordan, G. . ‘New Scottish Parliament, Same Old Interest Group Politics?’, in C. Jeffery and J. Mitchell (eds), The Scottish Parliament –: The First Decade. Edinburgh: Luath Press, –. Cairney, P., Keating, M., and Wilson, A. a. ‘Solving the Problem of Social Background in the UK “Political Class”: Do Parties do things Differently in Westminster, Devolved and European Elections?’, British Politics, /: –. Cairney, P., Russell, S., and St Denny, E. b. ‘The “Scottish Approach” to Policy and Policymaking: What Issues are Territorial and what are Universal?’, Policy & Politics, /: –. Carman, C. . Assessment of the Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions System, –. Edinburgh: The Scottish Parliament. Carman, C. . Engaging the Public in the Scottish Parliament’s Petition Process. Edinburgh: Ipsos MORI. Carman, C. . ‘Barriers are Barriers: Asymmetric Participation in the Scottish Public Petitions System’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Carman, C. and Shephard, M. . ‘Committees in the Scottish Parliament’, in C. Jeffery and J. Mitchell (eds), The Scottish Parliament –: The First Decade. Edinburgh: Luath Press, –. Commission on Parliamentary Reform (CPR). . Report on the Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: Commission on Parliamentary Reform. Commission on Scottish Devolution. . Serving Scotland Better: Scotland and the United Kingdom in the st Century: Final Report. Edinburgh: Commission on Scottish Devolution. Consultative Steering Group on the Scottish Parliament (CSG). . ‘Shaping Scotland’s Parliament’: Report of the Consultative Steering Group on the Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: The Scottish Office. Davidson, S. and Stark, A. . ‘Institutionalising Public Deliberation: Insights from the Scottish Parliament’, British Politics, /: –. Elvidge, J. . Northern Exposure: Lessons from the First Twelve Years of Devolved Government in Scotland. London: Institute for Government. Available at: https://www. instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Northern%Exposure.pdf, accessed December . Fawcett, H. . ‘Social Inclusion Policy-making in Scotland: Assessing the “Capability– Expectation’ Gap” ’, The Political Quarterly, /: –. Finance Committee of the Scottish Parliament. . Review of the Budget Process— Consultation Paper. Edinburgh: The Scottish Parliament. Fyfe, G. and Johnston, K. . ‘Gender and Equality in Scotland: Mind the Gap’, in D. McTavish (ed.), Politics in Scotland. London and New York: Routledge, –. Halpin, D., MacLeod, I., and McLaverty, P. . ‘Committee Hearings of the Scottish Parliament: Evidence Giving and Policy Learning’, The Journal of Legislative Studies, /: –. Hassan, G. . ‘A Case Study of Scottish Labour: Devolution and the Politics of Multi-Level Governance’, The Political Quarterly, /: –. Hassan, G. and Warhurst, C. (eds). . The New Scottish Politics: The First Year of the Scottish Parliament and Beyond. Edinburgh: The Stationery Office.
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Henderson, A. . ‘Forging a New Political Culture: Plenary Behaviour in the Scottish Parliament’, Journal of Legislative Studies, /: –. Himsworth, C. . ‘Parliamentary Accountability: Aspiration or Reality?’, in C. Jeffery and J. Mitchell (eds), The Scottish Parliament –: The First Decade. Edinburgh: Luath Press, –. Jeffery, C. and Mitchell, J. (eds). . The Scottish Parliament –: The First Decade. Edinburgh: Luath Press. Johnson, J. . ‘The Legislative Process: The Parliament in Practice’, in C. Jeffery and J. Mitchell (eds), The Scottish Parliament –: The First Decade. Edinburgh: Luath Press, –. Keating, M. . ‘Reforging the Union: Devolution and Constitutional Change in the United Kingdom’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, /: –. Keating, M. . The Government of Scotland: Public Policy Making after Devolution, nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Keating, M. and Cairney, P. . ‘The New Scottish Statute Book: The Scottish Parliament’s Legislative Record since ’, in C. Jeffery and J. Mitchell (eds), The Scottish Parliament –: The First Decade. Edinburgh: Luath Press, –. Lapsley, I., Midwinter, T., Nambiar, T., and Steccolini, I. . ‘Government Budgeting, Power and Negotiated Order’, Management Accounting Research, /: –. Lovenduski, J. . ‘Introduction: State Feminism and the Political Representation of Women’, in J. Lovenduski (ed.), State Feminism and Political Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lundberg, T. . ‘Quality of Scottish Democracy’, in D. McTavish (ed.), Politics in Scotland. London and New York: Routledge, –. Lyall, C. . ‘Changing Boundaries: The Role of Policy Networks in the Multi-level Governance of Science and Innovation in Scotland’, Science and Public Policy, /: –. Lynch, P. . ‘From Social Democracy Back to No Ideology? The Scottish National Party and Ideological Change in a Multi-level Electoral Setting’, Regional and Federal Studies, /–: –. Mackay, F. . ‘Travelling the Distance? Equal Opportunities and the Scottish Parliament’, in C. Jeffery and J. Mitchell (eds), The Scottish Parliament –: The First Decade. Edinburgh: Luath Press, –. Mackay, F. . ‘Nested Newness, Institutional Innovation, and the Gendered Limits of Change’, Politics & Gender, /: –. Marsh, D. . ‘Understanding British Government: Analysing Competing Models’, British Journal of Politics & International Relations, /: –. Marsh, D. and Hall, M. . ‘The British Political Tradition: Explaining the Fate of New Labour’s Constitutional Reform Agenda’, British Politics, /: –. McGarvey, N. and Cairney, P. . Scottish Politics: An Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. McHarg, A. and Mitchell, J. . ‘Brexit and Scotland’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. McLaverty, P. and MacLeod, I. . ‘Civic Participation in the Scottish Parliament Committees’. International Journal of Public Administration, /: –. McLeish, H. . ‘Consultative Steering Group on the Scottish Parliament Debate’, Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament, June. McMillan, J. . ‘The Principle of Power Sharing, Years On’, in C. Jeffery and J. Mitchell (eds), The Scottish Parliament –: The First Decade. Edinburgh: Luath Press, –.
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Midwinter, A. . ‘Financing Devolution in Practice: The Barnett Formula and the Scottish Budget, –’, Public Money and Management, /: –. Midwinter, A. . ‘Budgetary Scrutiny in the Scottish Parliament: An Adviser’s View’, Financial Accountability & Management, /: –. Midwinter, A. and McGarvey, N. . ‘The New Accountability? Devolution and Expenditure Politics in Scotland’, Public Money and Management, /: –. Mitchell, J. . ‘New Parliament, New Politics in Scotland’, Parliamentary Affairs, : –. Mitchell, J. . ‘The Narcissism of Small Differences: Scotland and Westminster’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Newby, A.G. . ‘In Building a Nation Few Better Examples Can Be Found’: Norden and the Scottish Parliament’, Scandinavian Journal of History, /: –. Phillips, A. . The Politics of Presence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pitkin, H. . The Concept of Representation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Scottish Constitutional Convention (SCC). . Scotland’s Parliament, Scotland’s Right. Edinburgh: Scottish Constitutional Convention. Scottish Government. . The Scottish Government Response to the Recommendations of the Commission on Scottish Devolution. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Parliament. . The Budgeting Process Agreement between the Scottish Executive and the Finance Committee. Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament. Available from: http://archive. scottish.parliament.uk/business/committees/finance/Written%Agreement%between %FC%and%Exec%at%...pdf, accessed December . Scottish Parliament Standards, Procedures, and Public Appointments Committee (SPPA). . th Report : The Recommendations of the Commission on Scottish Devolution Regarding Scottish Parliament Procedures. Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament. Shephard, M. –. ‘The Scottish Parliament’, Quarterly reports in The Constitution Unit, Nations and Regions: The Dynamics of Devolution—Scotland. London: The Constitution Unit, –. Shephard, M. and Cairney, P. . ‘The Impact of the Scottish Parliament in Amending Executive Legislation’, Political Studies, : –. Shephard, M., McGarvey, N., and Cavanagh, M. . ‘New Scottish Parliament, New Scottish Parliamentarians?’, Journal of Legislative Studies, /: –. Smith, C.F. and Gray, P. . ‘The Scottish Parliament: [Re-]shaping Parliamentary Democracy in the Information Age’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. The HeraldThe Herald. . ‘Holyrood reforms can increase trust in parliament, say Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh’, The Herald, June. Available at: https://www.heraldscotland. com/news/.holyrood-reforms-can-increase-trust-in-parliament-says-presidingofficer-ken-macintosh/, accessed July . The Smith Commission. . Report of the Smith Commission on Further Devolution of Powers to the Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: Smith Commission. Thomson, B. . ‘Access and Participation: Aiming High’, in C. Jeffery and J. Mitchell (eds), The Scottish Parliament –: The First Decade. Edinburgh: Luath Press, –. Winetrobe, B.K. . Realising the Vision: A Parliament with a Purpose. An Audit of the First Year of the Scottish Parliament. London: UCL, The Constitution Unit.
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.................................................................................................................................. P of the argument about the ‘new politics’ of devolution after concerned the need to renew the political class. Like many aspects of the new politics, this covered several distinct issues. One clear issue concerned gender and the need to recruit more women into politics (Chapter in this Handbook). Scotland’s historic record in this area had not been a good one. There were widespread concerns that Members of Parliament no longer shared the social backgrounds of their constituents but were disproportionately middle class and university educated. There was a feeling that politicians did not have enough experience in the world of work and especially in business. Instead, they seemed to be recruited increasingly from the professions. In recent years, an added concern is that politicians seem to be drawn largely from the ranks of politics itself, starting work as parliamentary assistants or party workers or in think tanks and other fields directly connected to politics. Consequently, a distinct political class has emerged, which is self-reproducing. The post-war years had already seen changes in the composition of the political ranks. Social change eroded the old blue-collar working-class occupations, which had a substantial share of Labour MPs. Consequently, the Parliamentary Labour Party was steadily becoming more middle class (Mellors ). On the Conservative side, there was a corresponding trend, away from the old aristocracy towards the professional middle class. Scotland, however, was rather resistant to these trends (Keating ). In the period –, Scottish Labour MPs were more likely to be working class than their counterparts from England, whilst the Scottish Conservatives were more likely than English Conservatives to be from upper-class, landed and military backgrounds. In the case of the Conservatives, these differences even increased during the post-war
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period as the Scottish Conservatives lost their urban support base and retreated to the country. Amongst Labour MPs, there was a steady reduction in the working-class component but the Scotland–England difference survived. There was also a substantial body of former Labour councillors, not so much council leaders as local stalwarts moving to Westminster after a long period of municipal service. Devolution provided the opportunity for a step change. A whole new cohort of politicians had to be recruited. The Conservatives had lost all their Scotland MPs in and few had any interest in returning via the Scottish Parliament. After their successes in the s, the SNP had been reduced to a handful of MPs although all of them opted to move to the Scottish Parliament. Sixteen Labour MPs moved to the Scottish Parliament, including some of the new ministerial team, but Labour did not encourage a mass movement and, indeed, barred some prominent MPs from standing. They were also not keen on local councillors moving to the Parliament, not wanting it to reproduce the old municipal politics. The initial result did break with the pattern of Scottish representation at Westminster but, rather than setting a new direction, there was more of a convergence, and even an overtaking, of the pattern of Westminster as a whole. From lagging behind England in becoming more middle class and professional, Scotland’s representative leapt ahead (Keating and Cairney ). Nor were MSPs any younger on average than Westminster MPs. This suggested that, rather than becoming more representative, the Scottish Parliament could be imitating some of the most criticized aspects of Westminster. Nor has there been a notable number of ethnic minority MSPs. There has been a consistent under-representation of ethnic minority representatives. Of MSPs elected between and , only four are from a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) background (McMahon ; Yaqoob ). On the other hand, there is a notable proportion of non-Scots. Whilst the number of MPs for Scottish seats who could not be classified as Scottish on any of the available criteria fell during the twentieth century (Larner ) in the new Scottish Parliament of no less than per cent were born outwith Scotland (Keating and Cairney ). Indeed, the highest percentage was in the ranks of the SNP. One area in which there was a notable difference was the sharp increase in the number of women elected but progress on that front subsequently stalled.
G B
.................................................................................................................................. Gender balance was a central concern of the devolution movement and featured prominently in the discussions of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the s. Whilst no agreement on statutory provision for balance was reached, the parties agreed to use their best endeavours to achieve it. Labour introduced balance on the regional lists and, crucially, a system of matching male and female candidates in the constituencies, where they were to gain most of their seats in the first two Scottish
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Table 27.1 Women MSPs by Party, 1999–2016
SNP Conservative Labour Greens Lib Dems Total
1999
2003
2007
2011
2016
15 (42.9%) 3 (16.7%) 28 (50.0%) 0 (0%) 2 (11.8%) 48 (37.2%)
9 (33.3%) 4 (22.2%) 28 (56.0%) 2 (25.0%) 2 (11.8%) 45 (39.5%)
12 (25.5%) 5 (31.2%) 23 (50.0%) 0 (0%) 2 (12.5%) 43 (33.3%)
19 (27.5%) 6 (40.0%) 17 (45.9%) 1 (50%) 1 (20.0%) 44 (34.9%)
27 (42.9%) 6 (19.4%) 11 (45.8%) 1 (16.7%) 0 (0%) 45 (34.9%)
Source: Authors’ own compilation. Note: from 1999–2011 the total includes independent and small party MSPs (e.g. Scottish Socialist Party) not listed.
Table 27.2 Women MPs as Percentage of Total in Each Legislature (by Year) Legislature
Election 1
Election 2
Election 3
Election 4
Election 5
Election 6
House of Commons Scottish Parliament Welsh Assembly MEPs
18.2 (1997) 37.2 (1999) 40.0 (1999) 26.2 (1999)
17.9 (2001) 39.5 (2003) 50.0 (2003) 25.6 (2004)
19.8 (2005) 33.3 (2007) 46.7 (2007) 33.3 (2009)
22.0 (2010) 34.9 (2011) 40.0 (2011) N/A
29.5 (2015) 34.9 (2016) 41.7 (2016) 41.0 (2014)
32.3 (2017) N/A N/A 42.5
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
elections. The result was a sharp increase in women representatives; the proportion in the first Scottish Parliament in was per cent, twice that of the Westminster Parliament elected two years earlier (Table .). Women accounted for half of all Labour MSPs in and and reached per cent in . Over per cent of SNP MSPs elected in were women but the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats lagged behind. Since the first two elections, however, there has been no overall progress in female representation. In , per cent of successful candidates were women, slightly less than in . The percentages of Labour members remained the same, but the revival of the Conservatives in did not translate into a larger female presence. On the contrary, the percentage of women Conservative MSPs halved. The SNP were back where they were in , having experienced a dip in between. They did have an informal rule to balance men and women on the regional lists (Mackay and Kenny ). The problem was that the party was picking up more constituency seats, where it is harder to ensure in advance that there is a gender balance and had not adopted ‘twinning’ or choosing equal numbers of male and female candidates across the constituencies. The Greens, despite being strongly committed to gender equality and alternating male and female candidates on their regional lists, ended up in with only one female MSP out of six, since in most regions they only picked up one seat and had neglected to balance the top positions across the regional lists (Table .).
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Having over a third of women members gave the Scottish Parliament a creditable record in but the National Assembly for Wales has gone further, at over per cent. The same applied to Members of the European Parliament elected in (Table .). By , even Westminster had caught up, with around a third of MPs being women, including per cent of Scottish MPs and a third of SNP MPs. The overall proportion of women as a proportion of Labour MPs at Westminster more or less doubled between and .
C O
.................................................................................................................................. It has long been noted that the number of politicians coming from traditional workingclass backgrounds has been in decline. In fact, the terms ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’, whilst widely recognized, can be difficult to define. The usual criterion is occupation but in the case of parliamentarians this is not always easy to identify, as many of them will have changed occupation, sometimes via higher education, before entering elected politics. We therefore use the category ‘formative occupation’ (Mellors ). Normally this is a politician’s first occupation but sometimes that was a fleeting job, followed by a longer period learning and practising a particular trade. There is a further problem in comparing occupations over time as the old ‘blue-collar’ manual occupations themselves have diminished in number. Whole industries have almost disappeared, such as coalmining, which provided a regular input into the Labour Party. That said, in the post-war era (–) per cent of Scottish Labour MPs were former manual workers or trade union officials, who would mostly have started out in working-class occupations (Keating ). Labour Governments from the s to the s always had a Scottish former miner as a minister. Scottish MPs were also notable for the relative shortage of people with backgrounds in business compared with Parliament as a whole. This applied equally to the Conservative Party, whose Scottish ranks included many farmers and army officers. Given the changing occupational structure, we cannot use exactly the same categories as were used in this earlier work to assess political backgrounds. Instead, we have chosen a functionally equivalent category for the ‘working class’, including both manual and routine clerical occupations. As Table . shows, even with this expansive definition, the working-class presence amongst politicians has declined sharply. At the first election to the Scottish Parliament in the proportion of such working-class representatives fell markedly compared to Scottish MPs elected in and it has increased only slightly since then. It is still, however, slightly higher than at Westminster, particularly in the Labour Party. Another notable finding is the small number of MSPs with backgrounds in business, which is only half the percentage found at Westminster (Table .). That might be attributed to the weakness of the Conservative Party in Scotland, except that the revival of the Conservatives has not increased business representation overall (Table .).
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Table 27.3 Formative Occupations amongst MPs, MEPs, and MSPs Occupation Professional Business Blue or White Collar Politics-facilitating Miscellaneous
MPs (2017) %
MEPs (2014) %
MSPs (2016) %
28.8 31.7 3.8 30.2 5.5
28.8 30.1 5.5 26.0 9.6
25.6 16.3 7.8 43.4 7.0
Note: ‘The instrumental occupations are: Political worker; full-time trade union official; journalist, author, television or media worker; public relations; quango director or senior official; legislator in a different level of government (MP, MEP, MSP, AM); full-time councillor or mayor; interest or professional group or think tank’ (Cairney et al. 2016: 152). Source: Authors’ own compilation.
Table 27.4 Formative Occupations amongst MSPs Occupation
1999 %
2003 %
2007 %
2011 %
2016 %
Professional Business Politics-facilitating Blue or White Collar Miscellaneous
51.2 17.3 18.1 3.9 5.5
49.6 14.0 24.8 3.9 7.8
45.0 15.5 23.3 7.0 8.5
33.1 17.7 28.2 9.7 11.3
25.6 16.3 43.4 7.8 7.0
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
Table 27.5 Formative Occupations of MSPs by Party, 2016 Occupation Professional Business Politics-facilitating Blue or White Collar Miscellaneous
MSPs (129) SNP (63) Labour (24) Conservative (31) Lib Dem (5) Green (6) % % % % % % 25.6 16.3 43.4 7.8 7.0
20.6 17.5 47.6 6.3 7.9
20.8 8.3 54.2 12.5 4.2
38.7 25.8 29.0 6.5 0.0
20.0 0.0 20.0 20.0 40.0
33.3 0.0 50.0 16.7 33.3
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
In , only a quarter of Conservative MSPs have a business background compared with per cent of their Westminster colleagues (Tables . and .). By contrast, the professional occupations accounted for half of the initial intake of the Scottish Parliament in . Many of these are in ‘brokerage’ occupations that facilitate entry
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Table 27.6 Formative Occupations of MPs by Party, 2017 Occupation
MPs %
Labour %
Conservatives %
Lib Dem %
SNP %
Others %
Professional Business Blue or White Collar Politics-facilitating Miscellaneous
28.8 31.7 3.8 30.2 5.5
26.8 19.5 3.1 39.8 10.7
30.1 43.0 5.1 20.3 1.6
35.7 35.7 7.1 21.4 0.0
25.7 22.9 0.0 48.6 2.9
33.3 25.0 0.0 33.3 8.3
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
to politics by providing some of the requisite skills and opportunities, but also generally require formal professional qualifications, such as teachers, lecturers, lawyers, and accountants. On the Labour side, most of these are from the public sector, including teaching. The most significant change, however, has been the rise of the ‘career politician’.
T P C
.................................................................................................................................. It is a commonplace in political discussions to note (and usually lament) the rise of a new class of career politician. The phenomenon of politicians working in and around politics before election is not totally new. In the recent past, the most notable link was to brokerage occupations which were relatively conducive to political life. These are the jobs—including lawyers, teachers, and lecturers—providing general skills, such as articulacy, or advantages, such as a link to the local community, flexible hours or proximity to Westminster. A candidate had a ‘proper job’ but it gave them electoral advantages. Further, a surprising number of Scottish Labour MPs in the past had worked in insurance sales, presumably as an occupation compatible with politics, giving flexible hours and an opportunity to knock on doors. Others had been fulltime party agents. In the Conservative Party, there are political dynasties, including the old aristocracy. Even on the Labour side, there are political families going back two or three generations and there are family traditions in the SNP. The novelty comes from an apparent rise in politicians who do not appear to have done anything else before entering politics soon after leaving university and rising rapidly. The career politician works directly in politics, such as for the party or a related think tank, and gets into Parliament at a young age. There has been a rise in recruitment from such ‘instrumental’ occupations, which have a clearer link to politics
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, ,
and may be used as a stepping stone towards elected office, such as MP and party assistants, members of think tanks or interest groups sympathetic to particular parties, and work in public relations or the media, close to the political centre (Cairney ). These jobs support potential candidates until they are elected, since candidacy is an increasingly time-consuming task. In many cases, the jobs also help them become elected because they give them essential links to party recruitment. An even smaller pool, from jobs related directly to Westminster or government, may come to be described as promotion-facilitating since they appear to help newly elected MPs achieve rapid promotion within their parties (Cowley ; Allen ). Leading politicians including David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg, Ed Balls, Ed and David Miliband and perhaps Tony Blair are often cited as examples. Consequently, it is now commonplace in Britain to bemoan the failings of this new cadre of ‘professional politician’. A wide selection of broadcast, print, and social media commentators argue that elected politicians in the UK are not representative of their constituents. Instead, they are part of a self-referential ‘political class’ which is increasingly distant from the real world and mistrusted by the public (Cairney et al. ; Allen and Cairney ). Variations of this story can be found routinely in tabloid newspaper coverage of politicians, summed up by Leo McKinstry’s (, cited in Allen and Cairney : ) claim that: the political class inhabits its own bubble, utterly divorced from the lives of voters . . . too many professional politicians . . . have no experience of the real world. Precious few have backgrounds in the working class, the private sector or business. A vast number of MPs, particularly on the Labour and Liberal Democrat benches, are nothing more than ambitious careerists who worked in politics, pressure groups, think tanks, local government and the civil service before winning their seats.
To examine this rise, we have used a specific category of ‘politics-facilitating’ jobs and separated it from the ‘professional’ category which includes many of the jobs— particularly in law and education—traditionally described as ‘brokerage’. The politics-facilitating category includes only the jobs described widely as ‘instrumental’ to a candidate’s pursuit of election (see Cairney : ). To be consistent with our previous studies, we include in this category: ‘Political worker; full-time trade union official; journalist, author, television or media worker; public relations; quango director or senior official; legislator in a different level of government (MP, MEP, MSP, AM); full-time councillor or mayor; interest or professional group or think tank’. Channel ’s Fact Check () lists a fifth of MPs elected in as coming from ‘politics, meaning working directly with the parties, with another per cent having held some kind of elected or other political post in the past; these proportions have grown steadily since ’. Our own calculation of politicians with a politicsfacilitating background is similar at just over per cent of MPs, notably on the Labour and SNP benches (Table .).
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Particularly striking, however, is the rise of the politics-facilitating category in the Scottish Parliament. The figure is not necessarily precise, because there is a degree of ambiguity in coding some occupations, but the long-term direction of change is clear. The presence of politicians with these backgrounds in the Scottish Parliament is notable, has increased, and is even higher than at Westminster. Over per cent of MSPs elected in are in this category whilst for the SNP and Labour it is around half (Table .). This proportion has doubled since (Table .). As the SNP has advanced in Westminster elections, its representation there has followed the same trend. Almost half of its MPs elected in come into this category (Table .). This suggests that the successive governing parties have recruited a generation of people looking to the party as a career path and rising through the ranks.
E
.................................................................................................................................. There has been much criticism of the domination of privately educated people in public life in the UK, including the law, the senior civil service, the media, and the arts. This extends to politics, especially, but not exclusively, in the Conservative Party. According to the Sutton Trust () just under a third of all MPs had attended private schools and about one in ten of these had been to Eton. Amongst Conservative MPs almost half were privately educated. These figures have been declining over the years and in for the first time more than half of MPs had attended comprehensive schools. The figures for Scotland have always been lower, partly because the overall proportion of private pupils is lower than in England. Less than one in twenty Scottish Labour MPs in the post-war years had attended private schools, compared with one in five English Labour MPs. Paradoxically, however, the proportion of Scottish Conservative MPs who were privately educated actually went up during the years from to (Larner ; Keating ) reflecting the decline of the old, urban, and business Conservatism and the retreat to the old landed classes. Indeed, in there were no less than nine old Etonians in the ranks of Scottish Conservative MPs (Keating ). In the post-devolution era, the decline of privately educated politicians has continued (Table .). Almost per cent of MSPs attended state schools. The revived Conservative Party is no exception, as only per cent of its MSPs elected in and per cent of its MPs elected in went to private schools. This compares with per cent of Conservative MPs across the UK as a whole. Another trend that has been noted and sometimes criticized is the predominance of university-educated politicians and, at Westminster, the continued domination of graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. The Oxford PPE formation has been subject to particular attack. Almost per cent of all MPs are UK university graduates. Just under a quarter went to Oxford or Cambridge, per cent went to non-Oxbridge Russell Group universities and a third went to other universities in the UK (Sutton Trust ). The Oxbridge proportion has actually been falling over the years, whilst the
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Table 27.7 Education of MPs, MEPs, and MSPs Education
MPs (2017) %
MEPs (2014) %
MSPs (2016) %
66.6 28.2 24.5 57.7 7.5 10.3
71.6 28.4 17.8 52.1 4.1 26.0
81.4 18.6 1.6 69.8 14.0 14.0
State School Private School Oxbridge Other HE Other FE None
Note: In 5.2 per cent of cases, the school background of MPs is not listed in Dod’s Parliamentary Companion. In 0.8 per cent of cases (1 MSP), we do not find reference to higher education. Source: Authors’ own compilation.
Table 27.8 Education of MPs by Party, 2017 Education State School Private School Not listed Oxbridge Other HE Other FE None
MPs (2017) %
Conservatives %
Labour %
Lib Dem %
SNP %
Others %
66.6 28.2 5.2 24.5 57.7 7.5 10.3
54.4 42.4 3.2 32.3 51.6 6.6 9.5
77.4 14.6 8.0 20.3 63.2 8.0 8.4
42.9 57.1 0.0 14.3 71.4 7.1 7.1
91.4 5.7 2.9 0.0 60.0 11.4 28.6
79.2 12.5 8.3 8.3 66.7 8.3 16.7
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
overall proportion of graduates has increased. In the post-war years, the proportion of graduates amongst Scottish MPs was smaller than that in England ( per cent compared with per cent), even though Scotland produced proportionally more graduates. This reflected the stronger working-class presence as well as the Conservative farmers and military officers. Devolution again marked a step change (Tables ., ., .). University graduates make up around three-quarters of MSPs, slightly lower than at Westminster, although per cent (as opposed to per cent across the UK) have further education qualifications. Differences in the Scottish and English systems make precise comparisons difficult, as it was in the post-war period.¹ The proportion of MSPs with no postsecondary education is thus less than one in six; amongst Scottish MPs it is one in four. ¹ For example, a significant number of Labour MPs had graduated from the Royal College of Science and Technology, later to become Strathclyde University.
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Table 27.9 Educational Background of Scottish MPs and MSPs, by Party Education State School Private School Not listed Oxbridge Other HE Other FE None
Scot MPs (2017) %
SNP %
Con %
Lab %
MSPs (2016) %
SNP %
Lab %
Con %
88.1 8.5 3.4 0.0 71.2 8.5 20.3
91.4 5.7 2.9 0.0 60.0 11.4 28.6
84.6 15.4 0.0 0.0 92.3 7.7 0.0
85.7 0.0 14.3 0.0 71.4 0.0 28.6
81.4 18.6 0.0 1.6 69.8 14.0 14.0
93.7 6.3 0.0 1.6 68.3 15.9 14.3
75.0 25.0 0.0 0.0 75.0 12.5 12.5
64.5 35.5 0.0 3.2 71.0 12.9 12.9
Source: Authors’ own compilation.
There is no Scottish equivalent to Oxbridge and almost no Scottish MPs or MSPs are graduates of Oxford or Cambridge; in , however, per cent of Scottish Tory MPs were Oxbridge graduates. On the other hand, there has long been a concentration amongst Scottish politicians of graduates of the University of Glasgow and this seems to have persisted. The Scottish Parliament has thus avoided the degree of elitism, in the form of private and Oxbridge education, that marks Westminster, although this is more to do with the nature of Scottish society than of the institution itself. On the other hand, graduates dominate both parliaments, albeit slightly less at Holyrood. This graduate predominance matches the heavy presence of professional and political occupations.
A S P C?
.................................................................................................................................. Devolution offered an opportunity to renew and broaden the recruitment of politicians in Scotland but the outcome has largely followed the pattern at Westminster and, indeed, other democracies. It is too soon to make a definitive judgement about the qualities of Members of the Scottish Parliament, because changes in party fortunes have altered some of the patterns over time. The most dramatic have been the rise of the SNP, followed by the fall of Labour and then the partial revival of the Scottish Conservatives. Yet, allowing for this, there are some clear trends. Politics is becoming more middle class, with the disappearance both of the manual working class and the old upper classes. University graduates and people from professional backgrounds make up the bulk of MSPs. This is a change that has been maturing for a long time but the establishment of the new Parliament seemed to reinforce this trend, rather than opening out and broadening recruitment. There was an improvement towards gender parity but this has now stalled and Westminster has caught up.
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, ,
There is not only a recognizable political class but it is a distinctly Scottish one. Careers at Westminster and Holyrood follow different tracks. After the first election, in which sixteen Scottish MPs moved to the Scottish Parliament, there have been few transfers. A handful of Labour and Conservative MSPs have moved to Westminster, although none has made much of a mark there. The only move in the other direction has been Alex Salmond, who came back to Holyrood on taking on the SNP leadership for the second time with the (successful) aim of becoming First Minister. This is in marked contrast to other devolved and federal systems of government, where it is common for ambitious politicians to move between levels. There are, certainly, obstacles to doing this. The timing of elections may not make it easy to switch and, with elections becoming more competitive, a migrating politician cannot count on being elected at the other level. Both Westminster and Holyrood still practice the idea of the political apprenticeship, under which politicians must work their way up the ranks. There is no ban on dual mandates, but being a politician at either level is a full-time occupation and holding a seat in both parliaments has only even been a transitional measure whilst waiting for the next election. Although elections have become more competitive, they are still dominated by the main parties, which effectively control access to office. Successful independent candidates have been rare and at least two of them have been politicians rejected by their own parties. Yet the parties have not succeeded in broadening their basis of recruitment. In other countries, such as Canada, parties will seek out new people from civil society and even parachute them into safe seats. The regional proportional list system used in Scotland could have been used to attract people from outside the existing parties and put them into electable positions, but this has hardly happened. The rise of the career politician has not encouraged people to come in and out of politics, as also happens in Canada. Scotland now has its own political class, distinct from that at Westminster, but it is increasingly just that, a political class.
R Allen, P. . ‘Linking Pre-parliamentary Political Experience and the Career Trajectories of the General Election Cohort’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Allen, P. and Cairney, P. . ‘What Do We Mean When We Talk About the “Political Class”?’, Political Studies Review, /: –. Cairney, P. . ‘The Professionalisation of MPs: Refining the “Politics-Facilitating” Explanation’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Cairney, P., Wilson, A., and Keating, M. . ‘Solving the Problem of Social Background in the UK “Political Class”: Do Parties Do Things Differently in Westminster, Devolved, and European Elections?’, British Politics, /: –. Channel Fact Check. . How Posh is Parliament? Available at: https://www.channel. com/news/factcheck/factcheck-qa-how-posh-is-parliament. Cowley, P. . ‘Arise, Novice Leader! The Continuing Rise of the Career Politician in Britain’, Politics, /: –.
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Keating, M. . ‘The Role of the Scottish MP’, PhD thesis, Glasgow College of Technology (Glasgow Caledonian University). Keating, M. and Cairney, P. . ‘A New Elite? Politicians and Civil Servants in Scotland after Devolution’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. Larner, C.J. . ‘The Scottish MP since , his Background and Performance’, unpublished paper, University of Glasgow. Mackay, F. and Kenny, M. . ‘Women’s Representation in the Scottish Parliament: Temporary Setback or Return to the Norm?’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. McMahon, P. . May. Available at: https://twitter.com/petermacmahon/status/ , accessed May . Mellors, C. . The British MP: A Socio-economic Study of the House of Commons. London: Saxon House. Sutton Trust. . Available at: https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/parliamentaryprivilege-the-mps--education-background/. Yaqoob, T. . May. Available at: https://twitter.com/talatyaqoob/status/, accessed May .
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I
.................................................................................................................................. T chapter highlights the roles that politics and fiscal mechanics play in Scotland’s public finances. The wider context of UK devolution includes a mood change about intergovernmental fiscal transfers, aligned to post- challenges to the welfare state. Extensive territorial transfers of fiscal resources are required when governments fund universal services such as health and education and there is a commitment to broadly equivalent quality of services, because the taxable capacities of sub-national jurisdictions vary markedly. Towards that objective, Musgrave () designed generous and internationally influential transfer schemes to decentralized jurisdictions, some of which compensated for all differences in needs, resources and costs. Yet contemporary fiscal writing by economists is more likely to stress the efficiency costs (populations stay in uneconomic locations) and perverse incentives (rent-seeking by jurisdictions) of territorial equalization (Albouy ). The political world has also changed. Post- UK austerity saw the seizing of fiscal crisis as an opportunity for state-size reduction. Scottish politics is dominated by cleavages associated with claims for independence, whilst Brexit was outside the realms of political imagination when the UK devolution settlement was legislated in . The core argument of the chapter is that the messy fiscal arrangements that characterize UK devolution finance are explicable in terms of context and legacy, and attempts to reform that system without recognition of ‘why we are where we are’ will not succeed. The chapter addresses: • How constitutional asymmetry interacts with policy controversies about the size of the state and the extent of acceptable variation in the bundle of services enjoyed, and taxes faced, by citizens across the UK;
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’
• How Scottish political parties positioned themselves on fiscal decentralization, particularly the extent to which the Scottish Parliament should depend on block grants from Westminster or have ‘fiscal autonomy’; • The path of Scottish public expenditure and its financing during the first twenty years of devolution, characterized by one decade of plenty and one of famine; • The reasons why the pre-devolution Barnett formula has defied predictions of its demise, surviving in a more complex form as part of the new Scottish Fiscal Framework; • The extent to which the package of taxation powers now held by the Scottish Parliament brings autonomy, accountability, and legitimacy or has landed it in a ‘fiscal trap’, as claimed by Macwhirter (). Although conflictual constitutional times are unpredictable, twenty years of devolution is a convenient point at which to appraise what has happened so far and to assess future prospects.
T D F D
.................................................................................................................................. Fiscal decentralization within a nation state results in individuals and households being treated differently according to the sub-national political jurisdiction to which they are attached. The effects are more pronounced when taxation as well as expenditure functions are devolved from the centre. These differences may generate discontent, not least because the resulting patterns are often neither transparent nor supported by explicit justification. Symmetrical fiscal decentralization has been heavily theorized (Oates ; King ) and studied in diverse contexts. In contrast, asymmetrical fiscal decentralization, under which parts of a nation state are devolved and other parts are less devolved or not devolved at all, has received much less attention (McGregor and Swales ). Both symmetric and asymmetric cases differ markedly from the fully centralized case in which—at least in theory—there can be uniform treatment of individuals and households across the nation state. There is much greater sensitivity about variations in cash benefits than in the resource costs of public services, though the purchasing power of equal cash benefits varies significantly according to local costs. Unlike in a federal country, UK devolution only applies to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, constituting per cent of the UK population and per cent of land mass. UK individuals are hence treated significantly differently according to their country of residence; interpersonal horizontal equity across the nation state is explicitly breached. Territorial equity requires ensuring that sub-national governments have the resources to deliver to their citizens public services of comparable quality to those in other jurisdictions. The actual pattern of public services will depend on ‘local’ choices,
Devolved parts of the nation state with tax powers
Non-devolved part of the nation state
Spending determined by notional local revenues (derivation principle)
Taxpayer location influences taxes paid Citizen location affects services received
Extensive implicit equalization between centrally controlled delivery units through budget allocations based on population or weighted population, perhaps with area cost adjustment (territorial equalization principle)
No
No
Local spending determined solely by local revenues (derivation principle)
Yes
Local spending determined by taxable capacity supplemented by grants calculated on mixture of resources, needs, and cost (territorial equalization principle)
Yes
Local spending determined by taxable capacity supplemented by grants calculated on a constitutional rule or some political convention
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Case 1
Case 2
Case 3
Case 4
Case 5
Huge inequalities in spending per head, with implications for migration, economic performance, and political consent No territorial equalization
Politically controversial distribution of funds is vulnerable to political capture Likely that either data will not be collected or that these will not be publicly released Full territorial equalization, at least in principle
Huge inequalities in spending per head, with implications for migration, economic performance, and political consent No territorial equalization
Politically controversial grant distribution vulnerable to political capture Explicit transfers are more transparent to the contributors than are implicit transfers, especially between politically separate governments. These could be seen as symbolic of federal or quasi-federal responsibilities. This requires central machinery for needs assessment Disincentive to improve tax base experienced by both recipients and contributors Extent of territorial equalization depends on the details of the system
Politically controversial grant distribution vulnerable to political capture, though embedding as rule or convention might assist durability Explicit transfers are more transparent to the contributors than are implicit transfers, especially between politically separate governments. These could be seen as symbolic of federal or quasi-federal responsibilities Some mechanisms might incentivize growth of the sub-national tax base Territorial equalization does not follow theoretical principles but its extent might reflect the territorial distribution of power
. Asymmetrical Fiscal Decentralization Source: Author.
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Government of the nation state
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so interpersonal horizontal equity applies only within that jurisdiction in a way that reflects federal rather than unitary notions of citizenship. For example, though the National Health Service is often portrayed as core to ‘Britishness’, there are in fact four National Health Services, one for each component nation. This differentiation long preceded devolution in in the cases of Scotland and Northern Ireland, though the mechanisms were not transparent and the constitutional context was different (Kellas ). Historical legacies result in there being two small high-needs/low-resources units (Wales and Northern Ireland), one small high-needs/average-resources unit (Scotland) and one numerically dominant average-needs/high-resources unit (England). Moreover, there are pronounced variations within each country. Such asymmetry creates technical problems of fiscal design, and guarantees that fiscal relationships will be controversial, probably dissatisfying all. For simplicity of exposition, Figure . works on the basis that there is no subnational tier in the non-devolved part of the nation state and similarly that there is no local government tier in the devolved parts. This results in the central government having two distinct roles: directly managing the non-devolved part and topping up the funding of the devolved parts. For the non-devolved part, the national government could provide services to geographical areas either on the derivation principle (Case : public services are what can be afforded on the basis of local revenues) or on the territorial equalization principle (Case : uniform services provided irrespective of locally generated revenue). For the devolved parts (right-hand side of Figure .), there are three possible sets of fiscal mechanics. First, there is no equalization (Case ), either vertical or horizontal, and each sub-national jurisdiction depends on its own taxable capacity (‘stand on your own two feet’). Second, there is a Musgrave-type fiscal equalization scheme (‘fairness achieved through solidarity’) (Case ), with the extent of territorial fiscal equalization depending on the details. Third, there is a politically determined mechanism based on ‘rough justice’ (Case ) which over time acquires the status of non-statutory convention for distributing central funds (‘territorial distribution of power’). One such mechanism, that will be discussed below, is the Barnett formula.¹
P R S S F D
.................................................................................................................................. Making sense of Scottish fiscal developments requires recognition of two different political spectrums: the size of the fiscal state (proxied by the public expenditure/GDP ¹ Devised in , the Barnett formula became operational from financial year – (Heald ; Levitt ) and is a key component of the Scottish Fiscal Framework (HM Government and Scottish Government ). Announced in , the earlier Goschen formula was in operation until at least (Mitchell ).
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ratio) and the degree of fiscal decentralization (proxied by the proportion of decentralized spending that is ‘locally’ financed). Alongside these two spectrums is the binary choice between Scotland either being an independent country or a constituent part of the UK. Whether justified or not, the standard assumption in devolution finance debates in Scotland has been that Scotland favours more generous public provision and higher taxation than would England. Successive Social Attitudes Survey results cast doubt on this, particularly if Scotland had to pay the full costs instead of benefiting from UK net fiscal transfers and (now disappearing) oil tax revenues. Traditionally, Scottish devolution and independence were seen as the route to higher spending, an assumption that seemed to be shared by both sides of the devolution and independence debates. However, the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) post-Independence Referendum Growth Commission report (Wilson ) led its opponents to claim that New Zealand’s neoliberalism has now replaced Nordic high-spending social democracy. The dominant Labour tradition in Scotland and Wales had been to seek control of the commanding heights of the UK economy, via political control at Westminster, for the benefit of Scotland and Wales. This was combined with fierce protection of existing territorial privileges, never being shy of warning of the threat in Scotland from separatism. Nationalist pressures in the s undermined this stance, leading to a revival of the Labour devolutionist strand on decentralist rather than neo-nationalist lines, as had earlier been articulated by John Mackintosh (). In the s, crossparty Scottish political developments escaped the control of the Labour Party at Westminster, later provoking the attempt by the incoming Labour Government to scupper the proposal for a Scottish Variable Rate of Income Tax (the so-called ‘tartan tax’)² by the insertion of a second Devolution Referendum question on tax-raising powers (Heald and Geaughan ). From to , UK Labour was terrified that fiscally irresponsible Scots would lose them middle England: an illustration of perceived political constraints is that the UK basic rate of income tax has not increased since –. Whereas Labour and Liberal Democrats nervously implied that tax-varying powers might lead to higher taxation in Scotland than in England, the SNP relied heavily on oil revenues and on projected post-independence improvements in the Scottish economy, to be achieved in part by lower Corporation Tax on the Irish ‘Celtic Tiger’ model. The most significant shift has been the Conservative Party’s conversion from hostility to all devolved taxation ( Referendum) to its lead role in the Smith Commission’s devolution of (almost all) income tax revenue and partial VAT assignment. The revised aspiration amongst Scottish Conservatives was that tax devolution could bring lower taxation in Scotland than in England, and thereby lead the UK Conservative agenda. Rather than continue to oppose devolution after , most of the Scottish Conservatives who owed their Holyrood seats to proportional representation accepted ² The Scottish Variable Rate of Income Tax allowed the Scottish Parliament to vary the basic rate of income tax paid by Scottish taxpayers, by plus/minus pence.
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devolution as a fact. They sought to become the voice of unionism within Scotland, re-harnessing the centre-right votes that had been lost, and putting SNP Governments under pressure if they proposed tax increases to counter UK-imposed austerity. During the s, Scottish think tanks with strong media links played a role in this shift: the Policy Institute published Jamieson () and Mackay and Bell (), arguing that Scotland’s public spending was already too high, whilst Reform Scotland promoted fiscal autonomy on the basis that lower taxes would increase the growth rate of the Scottish economy. Hallwood and MacDonald () criticized the Barnett-based funding system as lacking in fiscal discipline because of excessive grant dependence. In May , before the Independence Referendum, the Strathclyde Commission (), appointed by the Leader of the Scottish Conservatives, reported in favour of the devolution of income tax bands and rates and raised the possibility of partial VAT devolution. This development follows the ‘public choice’ school in economics in stressing the imperative of controlling the size of the Leviathan state by promoting fiscal discipline through tax competition and fiscally induced migration (McKinnon ). A strand of literature, following in the tradition of James Buchanan, concludes that fiscally decentralized states have lower public expenditure/GDP ratios than do centralized ones (Feld et al. ), and exhibit some substitution of public service charges for taxation. The wider context has also affected the issue of devolved finance. The – Labour Government significantly increased public expenditure, later to be reversed under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition (–) and Conservative (–) Governments. Moreover, the focus on political devolution can divert attention from the tightening by the centre over public finances, particularly in relation to the diminished role of English local authorities. Thus far, Scottish local authorities have been more sympathetically treated by SNP Governments, though tensions are evident as the SNP is centralist within Scotland.
P F S S- P F
.................................................................................................................................. The level of political interest in the public finances of Scotland has resulted in the availability of high-quality data for this component part of the UK.³ A vital distinction is between the public finances of Scotland as a geographical entity (including activities within Scotland controlled by the UK Government and its entities) and the public finances for which the Scottish Government is accountable to the Scottish Parliament (including local authorities). These data have different uses.
³ Nevertheless, the letters columns of Scottish newspapers and the evidence that some give to Scottish Parliament Committees demonstrate, at best, a lack of understanding of economic statistics.
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80 70
£ billion
60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1998–99
2001–02
2004–05
2007–08
2010–11
2013–14
2016–17
Scottish public expenditure—£ billion Scottish public expenditure—£ billion (real terms, 2017–2018 prices) Scottish Government adjusted TDEL excluding depreciation Scottish Government adjusted TDEL excluding depreciation (real terms, 2017–2018 prices)
. Total and Devolved Public Expenditure in Scotland, – to – Note: Adjusted Total Departmental Expenditure figures are necessarily approximations because there is not a consistent data series covering the post-devolution period. Source: Scottish Government () and various issues of Public Expenditure: Statistical Analyses (Treasury ).
The former show the extent to which all expenditure in, or attributed to, Scotland is funded by Scottish revenues, rather than by Scottish borrowing or by explicit or implicit transfers from the UK Government. The latter show the extent to which expenditure on devolved Scottish public services is funded by revenue raised by Scottish public authorities, rather than by Scottish borrowing or by grants from the UK Government. The principal reason why these data series differ is that defence and most social security are not devolved. Figure . considers Scotland as a geographical entity combining the expenditure attributed to Scotland, whether undertaken by the UK or Scottish Governments. The original motivation for Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland (most recent issue: Scottish Government ) was to argue that devolution was unaffordable, later being used to argue that independence is unaffordable. Nevertheless, the systematic efforts of Scottish Government statisticians over the years (Goudie ), reinforced by pressures from academic users of these data, have contributed to a robust analysis and a time series that extends back to just before devolution. The solid black line in Figure . plots total Scottish public expenditure in nominal terms (pounds actually spent in those years) whilst the grey line plots expenditure converted to real terms using the GDP deflator (– prices). Definitionally, these lines intersect at the base year of –. From – to –, real-terms expenditure increased from £. billion to £. billion (a rise of . per cent), but by – it had fallen to £. billion (down from – by . per cent).
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60 50
% GDP
40 30 20 10 0 1998–99
2001–02
2004–05
2007–08
2010–11
2013–14
2016–17
Scottish public expenditure—excluding North Sea Scottish public expenditure—including geographic share of North Sea UK including all North Sea
. Public Expenditure as per cent of GDP, – to – Source: Scottish Government ().
The dashed black line in Figure . plots the Scottish Government’s Total Departmental Expenditure Limit (TDEL), not its total budget, which includes Annual Managed Expenditure (AME). In the absence of consistent time series, this is a suitable proxy for expenditure changes. The dotted grey line plots TDEL in – prices. From – to –, real-terms TDEL increased from £. billion to £. billion (a rise of . per cent), but by – it had fallen to £. billion (a reduction of . per cent). The solid black line in Figure . plots total Scottish public expenditure as a percentage of GDP when the GDP measure excludes North Sea activity. Because UK GDP includes North Sea activity, the UK public expenditure/GDP ratio (dashed black line) is compared with Scotland’s ratio (grey line) when its GDP includes a geographical share of North Sea oil activity. This shows that this Scotland ratio usually exceeds the comparator UK ratio and demonstrates the diminishing importance of the North Sea in GDP terms. Table . shows the percentage compositions of total Scottish public expenditure (left-hand side) and of the Scottish Government’s TDEL (right-hand side). The tabulated years are – (year before devolution), – (first year of the Coalition Government’s austerity programme) and – (latest year for which finalized data are available). Unsurprisingly there is substantial stability in where the public spending goes. However, some changes are noteworthy. Viewing the composition of total Scottish spending, space has been created for other programmes by the reduction in the percentages for Defence (post-Cold War) and debt
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Table 28.1 Composition of Scottish Public Expenditure: 1998–1999, 2010–2011, and 2017–2018 Total
Devolved
1998–99 2010–11 2017–18 1998–99 2010–11 2017–18 General public services Public and common services 2.4% International services 0.8% Public sector debt interest 7.7% Defence 6.5% Public order and safety 4.0% Economic affairs Enterprise and economic development 2.2% Science and technology 0.6% Employment policies 0.6% Agriculture, forestry and fisheries 1.5% Transport 2.6% Environment protection 1.2% Housing and community amenities 2.3% Health 14.4% Recreation, culture and religion 2.6% Education and training 12.5% Social protection 32.5% EU Transactions –1.3% Accounting adjustments 6.8% Total Expenditure (£ billion) 32.852
2.5% 1.0% 5.1% 5.0% 4.3%
2.1% 1.2% 5.0% 4.3% 3.9%
1.1% 0.5% 0.7% 1.4% 4.2% 1.8% 2.6% 16.5% 2.2% 11.6% 31.7% –1.2% 9.1% 66.452
1.8% 0.7% 0.3% 1.3% 5.2% 1.7% 2.6% 17.5% 1.9% 11.4% 32.1% 0.2% 6.9% 73.398
2.6%
2.9%
2.4% 0.0%
0.0% 7.0% 0.0% 3.4% 0.6% 0.0% 2.7% 4.2% 1.9% 3.5% 26.0% 3.2% 22.6% 13.1%
0.0% 6.5% 0.0% 1.9% 0.0%
0.0% 6.1% 0.0% 2.0% 0.0%
2.3% 6.6% 2.5% 4.4% 27.3% 2.6% 19.3% 12.8%
2.1% 6.0% 2.2% 4.4% 29.6% 2.2% 19.5% 12.5%
9.0% 18.104
10.9% 39.549
10.9% 42.848
Source: Scottish Government (2018).
interest (lower interest rates). Health has expanded its share from . per cent to . per cent, with large increases in Transport. Notwithstanding austerity, Social Protection has retained approximately one-third of the total. Viewing the composition of TDEL as a proxy for Scottish devolved spending, Health has expanded its share from . per cent to . per cent whilst Education and Training have contracted from . per cent to . per cent. There is now ample evidence of intense pressures for more spending across the board. Figure . brings together expenditure and revenue, plotting Scotland’s Net Fiscal Balance⁴ from – to – and showing how it compared with the UK’s. The grey line for the UK shows the dramatic effect of the global financial crisis.
⁴ Net Fiscal Balance (expressed as per cent of GDP) is calculated as the difference between a government’s revenues (taxes and proceeds from asset sales) and its expenditure. A negative ratio (i.e. below the horizontal axis in Figure .) indicates revenues being less than expenditure.
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4 2 0 –2
1998–99
2001–02
2004–05
2007–08
2010–11
2013–14
2016–17
% GDP
–4 –6 –8 –10 –12 –14 –16 –18 Scotland—Excluding North Sea Scotland—Including geographical share of North Sea revenue UK
. Net Fiscal Balance: Scotland & UK, – to – Source: Scottish Government ().
Scotland’s black line (excluding North Sea oil revenues) closely follows the UK line, but around – per cent of GDP worse. The dotted line plots Scotland when it includes a geographical share of North Sea oil revenues. This had a big effect in narrowing the gap before – but the decline of oil revenues caused by price falls and decommissioning costs has removed much of the significance of this inclusion. The Net Fiscal Balance in Figure . has relevance to establishing the starting point for analysis of Scotland as an independent state, with no budgetary connections to the ‘rest of the UK’ (rUK). However, nothing definitive about independence can be drawn from it. Those favouring Scottish independence would project forward policies more attuned to Scotland’s needs, thereby producing better economic performance and fiscal outcomes. Opponents would point to deficit-financing difficulties after independence and to potential trade disruption, especially in light of what has been learned about the practicalities of Brexit since the EU Referendum. Two conclusions can be drawn from these data. First, there has been one devolution decade of plenty (s) and one of famine (s). The long period of austerity started after the global financial crisis and continued through the s. The effects on public services of the fiscal squeeze of the latter period have been accentuated by rising population and by the unknown extent to which the GDP deflator (used to calculate real terms) underestimates the increases in public sector input costs.
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The austerity-induced constraints on public expenditure in the s have been more severe because of the Relative Price Effect.⁵ The years of plenty fed into costly policy variation (free personal care, no student fees, abolition of prescription charges, Scotland-wide travel concessions for over-s), widely portrayed as successes of devolution. Famine led not to roll-back of policy variation, but to increased pressure on mainstream services, with the SNP Government now blamed by Labour and Conservatives for austerity transmitted to Scotland by UK Government policy. Second, the public finances of Scotland as a geographical entity are less robust than those of the UK as a geographical entity. Attributing to Scotland its geographical share of North Sea oil revenues leaves Scotland with a higher adverse net fiscal balance in the s than the UK. Large variations in net fiscal balance are to be expected across a nation state whenever such data are available. Of the twelve UK statistical regions, Scotland usually comes third or fourth on indicators of economic performance, but far behind London and the South-East. The economic geography of the UK is damaged by the excessive dominance of its capital and expanding hinterland (Dorling and Thomas ; Beatty and Fothergill ). The UK Commission, which is an independent inquiry into city and regional inequalities, has emphasized the decoupling of London and the South-East from the rest of the UK economy (Kerslake ). Other regions denounce the configuration of macro, financial, and industrial policy as having damaged their interests and, for example, led to de-industrialization and weak economic and fiscal performance.
T W I B F
.................................................................................................................................. First acknowledged in the public domain in (Younger ), but later disowned by Joel Barnett (), who had been Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury when the formula was established, the Barnett formula has for forty years been misunderstood and denounced, seemingly from all possible directions. Its core idea is a simple mechanism. Increases in public expenditure in England generate increases in the Scottish block grant (Barnett consequentials) by multiplying the English change by Scotland’s population ratio and by the programme’s comparability percentage (the extent to which such responsibilities are devolved to Scotland). The same process applies when there are reductions in comparable English expenditure.
⁵ Although this may not happen in the short term, in the medium and long term, the prices of government inputs (e.g. nurses’ salaries and pharmaceuticals) rise faster than the GDP deflator. The implicit price deflator for government consumption is too broad for direct applicability to Scottish devolved expenditure.
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McLean and McMillan (: ) described the Barnett formula as ‘irretrievably broke’, ‘a disaster’ (), and ‘unsustainable’ (), whilst McLean (: ) referred to claims that it is ‘iniquitous’. These criticisms derive from the view that the formula has been too generous to Scotland. In contrast, the political debate in Scotland in the s and s revolved around the so-called ‘Barnett squeeze’, an expression inspired by the mathematical property of the formula that, ceteris paribus, devolved public expenditure in Scotland would increase more slowly than comparable expenditure in England (Heald ; Cuthbert ). The arithmetic of the convergence process is mechanical: the carried-forward expenditure base is more generous to Scotland than the Barnett-determined increments based on population.⁶ Some political protection for the formula came from the fact that such attacks rained in from all sides: if all interested parties denounce it, perhaps the Barnett formula has some merits. However, there are four substantive reasons why the formula has survived, despite probably being only intended as a stop-gap measure when the Treasury had much bigger issues to worry about—the IMF loan being a recent memory.⁷ First, critics usually do not say what should be put in its place under conditions of asymmetric devolution. Often they talk about something different, like an independent Scotland which would have superior economic performance and fiscal health. Whatever the details of the system of asymmetric fiscal decentralization, the political configuration and economic geography of the UK mean that there is going to be Horizontal Fiscal Imbalance (per capita tax capacity varies enormously) and Vertical Fiscal Imbalance (UK legacies of fiscal centralization are deeply embedded in politics and the media).⁸ Total centralization of spending is the only way to avoid grants to subnational governments, and that runs against the direction of travel at the devolved level. Criticisms of the Barnett formula as idiosyncratic usually ignore the constraints that constitutional asymmetry imposes. Second, Barnett is not ‘broke’. Indeed, the complaints since have been fewer in number than one might have expected, the SNP being surprising converts, given that they previously characterized the Barnett squeeze as punishment inflicted by London on Scotland (Torrance ). The longevity of Barnett is not an accident: it economizes time and transaction costs for the UK Treasury; it sets parameters on how much the devolved nations can gain at the expense of the centre; and the block grant provides
⁶ Convergence of the expenditure relatives of the devolved administrations has been less pronounced than modelling would suggest, mainly because of offsets from Scotland’s population decline relative to England and of bypassing of the formula (additional amounts, particularly to Northern Ireland and Wales, that became known as ‘Barnett plus’). ⁷ Joel Barnett’s own account of his experiences as Chief Secretary to the Treasury (–) never mentions the formula (Barnett ), confirming that its later importance had not been contemporaneously recognized. ⁸ Horizontal Fiscal Imbalance refers to differences in taxable capacity in relation to need-to-spend for jurisdictions at the same tier of government. Vertical Fiscal Imbalance refers to the mismatch between expenditure responsibilities and taxable capacity between tiers of government, the usual case being that taxable capacity is concentrated at upper tiers.
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expenditure-switching discretion beyond that held by sub-national governments in Australia, Canada, Germany, and Spain. Of utmost importance, UK money goes through the Scottish Parliament, not direct to Scottish entities within the latter’s control. Some erosion of this feature of the devolution settlement will be examined below. Third, what was conceived as an ad hoc Treasury fix, imitating the Goschen formula (McCrone ), survived because it served political interests by facilitating UK control of spending aggregates and defusing political tensions, whilst continuing Scottish decision-making on expenditure composition. Constitutional asymmetry makes alternatives such as needs assessments on the Treasury () model difficult to construct, expensive to implement and politically risky. Chance factors such as there being a Scottish MP serving as a Treasury Cabinet Minister from to helped to ensure that the official Treasury largely played the Barnett formula straight, despite the lack of transparency about formula operation. Indeed, lack of transparency on formula operation and on the generation of consequentials was favoured by Scottish Executives/Governments as protection against earmarking claims by Scottish spending lobbies (arguments such as ‘all health consequentials should go to health’, whereas John Swinney as Cabinet Secretary for Finance diverted large sums to Scottish local government). Like Goschen before it, the longevity of the Barnett formula is a manifestation of the salience of territorial politics (Bulpitt ; Midwinter et al. ), particularly given the population disparities that work against the rhetoric of ‘being partners in the Union’. Fourth, the mathematical convergence of the spending relative on UK= never happened for Scotland, largely because of significantly lower population growth than in England. Defence of Barnett became a priority of successive devolved Scottish Executives/Governments. Instead of a threatening ‘Barnett squeeze’, the formula came to be viewed in Scotland as a protective mechanism, particularly after , against UK Governments in which Scots were less prominent and which relied less on Scottish political support. In contrast, convergence has been a recurrent theme in the politics of Wales and Northern Ireland, in part offset by greater access to supplementary above-formula payments (colloquially known as ‘Barnett plus’) than Scotland. The substantive political problem with Barnett has been the lack of ownership; Bell and Christie () captured the position well when they invoked the image of ‘nobody’s child’. The – Labour Government wanted to hide it, for fear of alienating England. There was a half-hearted pretence that Barnett was directly about needs, but no attempt to explain the key functions that it performed as a governance mechanism within an asymmetric governmental system of three devolved units and one non-devolved unit. The automatic application of the formula removed threats of targeted grant cuts and protected devolved policy discretion. Moreover, it functioned as a transactions cost-reducing mechanism, since the Treasury could concentrate on English expenditure and just apply a multiplier to reach UK costs.⁹
⁹ Barnett could not work the other way round, as increases in devolved administration spending would generate much larger increases in English spending.
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The – Labour Government failed to take ownership of the formula and defend its role, or be transparent about its purposes and effects. The Barnett formula became associated with claims of unfairness: too much money (English MPs’ views of Scotland) or too little money (seemingly everyone in Wales, and those in Scotland who argued that Scotland’s oil had been seized by the UK). In the absence of a comprehensive needs assessment,¹⁰ Heald and McLeod () proposed a subjectively determined floor on how far convergence could go for Wales (implemented in March ) and Northern Ireland (never implemented but relevant to the context of ‘Barnett plus’). It was not until that transparent data were made available on the composition of consequentials, but this did not include information on what constitutes expenditure in England comparable to the respective blocks. What was originally a simple mechanism embedded in the UK public expenditure system (Heald and McLeod ) has become more complex through time, for example, due to the splitting of DEL into Resource DEL and Capital DEL, and the later creation of Financial Transactions CDEL which sometimes funds low-priority spending that meets rules for a scheme devised mostly for Help-to-Buy in England. The task of block management by the devolved administrations has become more difficult, and the complexities impede public understanding. This is inspired by politically motivated programmes intended to highlight UK Government spending in the devolved countries. ‘City Deals’ are partnerships amongst the UK, devolved, and local governments, together with other public bodies, which breach the principle that UK money to devolved entities always goes through the devolved administrations.¹¹ The new ‘Stronger Towns Fund’ initiative was interpreted as a UK Government plan to secure ‘Leaver’ Labour MP votes for the Brexit ‘Withdrawal Agreement’, bypassing both the Barnett formula and the Scottish Government (Kentish ; Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government ). The ‘pork barrel’ politics of the Conservative Minority Government’s ‘Confidence and Supply’ arrangement¹² with the Democratic Unionist Party (Cabinet Office ; Conservative and Unionist Party and Democratic Unionist Party ) disincentivized politically difficult choices on devolved taxes. The Barnett formula has survived modest elements of ‘bypass’ and ‘plus’ but remains fragile if the convention is not respected.
¹⁰ McLean () and King and Eiser () make proposals as to how a needs assessment might work in the context of asymmetric devolution. This would correspond to Case in Figure . whereas the Barnett formula corresponds to Case . ¹¹ City Deals from the UK government to English cities have been a limited offset to the harsh funding cuts that have characterized UK government policy towards English local authorities in the s. The devolved administrations are party to City Deals in their jurisdictions. ¹² The Northern Ireland package provoked outrage from many Scottish politicians who demanded formula consequentials, claiming a breach of Barnett principles. In fact, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Ireland consequentials have always been driven by changes in comparable expenditure in England, of which there were none in this case. In contrast, spending in England from the ‘Stronger Towns Fund’ should generate formula consequentials.
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The problems of communicating the Barnett formula mechanism to political, media, and citizen audiences have been increased by the devolution of tax powers in the Scotland Act . Misrepresentations and misunderstandings of the Barnett formula, and largely unanswered criticisms of the devolved finance system, damaged its credibility. Yet Barnett remains a central feature of Scotland’s new Fiscal Framework (Audit Scotland ), negotiated in February between the UK and Scottish Governments (HM Government and Scottish Government ). The accountability issue is straightforward: if the UK Government forgoes tax revenues by transferring tax powers to the Scottish Government, then there should be an offsetting Block Grant Adjustment (BGA) to Scotland’s Barnett-driven block grant from the UK Treasury. Yet the technical issue of how that calculation should be done for the year of transfer and in future years is complex, and views will reflect the interests of the parties. The decision was rendered more complex by the two ‘nondetriment principles’ enunciated by the Smith Commission (), namely that a devolved administration would not lose money at the point of further tax devolution (reasonable) and that there would be no future detriment to either party (undeliverable because divergent policies will affect tax revenues to an extent that is contestable). After tetchy negotiations and much media spinning, the outcome on the BGA was more favourable to Scotland than it might have been. Crucially, UK Prime Minister David Cameron wanted this issue settled before the Brexit Referendum he expected to win on June , an approach which resulted in key issues being ‘kicked into the long grass’ (Heald ). What was agreed was an interim settlement that will have to be renegotiated for – onwards. The key point is that higher rUK population growth than in Scotland means that rUK’s tax revenues are likely to grow faster than Scottish tax revenues; how this is treated in the BGA calculation has potentially huge effects on the public finances of the Scottish Government.¹³
D T
.................................................................................................................................. Claims for ‘fiscal autonomy’ became a front-line political issue in Scotland in the s. However, there was much confusion about terminology and what the political objective was. An independent Scotland would have ‘full fiscal autonomy’ in the sense of sole political responsibility for its net fiscal balance, though there would be market
¹³ The size of Scotland’s BGA for each devolved or assigned tax depends on the change in rUK revenues. The higher population growth rate of rUK would lead over time to BGAs greater than Scottish revenues. The current Fiscal Framework operates in terms of per capita revenues and applies a multiplier reflecting the lower revenue productivity of each tax in Scotland (Bell et al. ; HM Government and Scottish Government ). Furthermore, the Scottish Fiscal Commission () warned that BGA reconciliations between budget forecasts and finalized outturns can be significantly negative and will be a charge against future budgets or the resource borrowing facility.
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constraints on debt and borrowing and EU constraints if Scotland were an EU Member State inside or outside the eurozone. In the context of devolution within the UK, what is meant by fiscal autonomy is less clear. The SNP before and SNP Governments since have held a maximalist position on tax devolution, partly for strategic reasons (greater control of tax is thought to take Scotland closer to looking like an independent state) and partly for tactical reasons (this constitutes a benchmark against which all fiscal arrangements within the UK will fail). Greater tax devolution therefore has intrinsic value to those favouring independence; even if not of practical use, such powers might make Scotland seem better prepared to take the final leap. Once acquired, each increment in taxation powers can be denounced as inadequate, only useful when more has been delivered. Fiscal autonomy might mean that a jurisdiction finances all its expenditure from its own revenues (hence no territorial equalization, as in Case of Figure .), or that its taxpayers must finance marginal increases in expenditure (and receive tax reductions if there are cuts in services or efficiency gains). The fiscal federalism literature stresses the importance of a hard budget constraint. It is clear why fiscal designers want at least some devolved taxation, in order to respond to Vertical Fiscal Imbalance (decentralized governments spend central government money whilst being ungrateful), to allow some autonomy in fiscal choices (efficiency benefits from expenditure levels and patterns better reflecting ‘local’ preferences), and to bring some accountability for spending and tax. But, whenever there are pronounced jurisdictional variations in resources and needs, this will never work like the theoretical model. In most federations other than the United States, there are constitutional (Germany) or political mandates (Australia) to address, which insist on extensive measures of territorial equalization. Nevertheless, marked differences between these countries in the proportion of sub-national expenditure financed by genuinely devolved taxes indicate that there are choices to be made about self-financing ratios and about the comprehensiveness of territorial equalization. International comparisons of country own-revenue percentages should be treated with caution because of institutional features. For example, IMF statistics and research papers based on them treat Germany as highly fiscally decentralized, notwithstanding the extremely limited tax discretion of Länder governments in a system characterized by assigned revenues subjected to vertical and horizontal equalization. The key distinctions are: a) Fully devolved taxes: the sub-national government controls (i) the tax rate (and thresholds), and (ii) the tax base (definition of what is taxable); b) Partially devolved taxes: the sub-national government controls (i) the tax rate (and thresholds), but not (ii) the tax base; c) Assigned revenues: the sub-national government has no control over the tax rate or tax base, but receives the resulting revenue, calculated as (i) actual receipts, (ii) estimated receipts, or (iii) formula apportionment.
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It is imperative to understand the context set by the prevailing framework for territorial redistribution, not least because this can offset the projected effects of tax devolution: (i) The principle of derivation indicates that a jurisdiction keeps taxation revenues generated there; (ii) The principle of equalization indicates some form of pooling to offset differences in resources and/or needs and/or costs. Derivation follows the injunction that ‘one keeps what one kills’ whereas equalization implies (some degree of) revenue sharing. In practice, those jurisdictions making explicit or implicit transfers into the central pool of resources usually think that their revenues are derived from merit or performance and are thus deserved. Even when luck is clearly involved, as in the geographical location of natural resources and their taxable economic rents, it becomes ‘Scotland’s Oil’, not to be shared with the UK or EU. The design of a decentralized fiscal system has profound implications for which territorial entities and their citizens carry two types of fiscal risk: • Which level of government carries the macro-fiscal risk? • Which level of government carries the tax policy risk? Sources of macro-fiscal risk include recessions, financial crises, technological change, and events such as Brexit, where policy leverage is likely to be highest at the top tier of political authority. Sub-national governments will experience differential effects, mostly out of their control. In contrast, the designers of fiscal devolution want lower-level governments to carry at least some of the tax policy risks attributable to their own actions. In the globalized economy, national governments face revenue losses from the location decisions of multinational firms and from individuals’ migration decisions, particularly those of high-worth taxpayers. Such behavioural responses will present more severe constraints on the tax policymaking of sub-national governments. Moreover, firms and individuals may respond to expectations of future tax changes and not just to actual changes: firms may choose Northern Ireland in the expectation of lower Corporation Tax and highearning individuals might give up their Scottish tax residence in the expectation of higher and more progressive income taxation. The public finance literature concludes that redistribution is most effectively pursued by higher levels of government where this has less visibility, and redistributive measures are more difficult to circumvent. However, tensions arise if lower tiers of government want more redistribution than does the central government. Having to raise tax revenue before spending it can be seen as an inescapable discipline on potential spendthrifts, more subtle than legislative control from higherlevel governments. Spending lobbies will be countered by locally based taxpayer resistance. Re-expressed in aspirational rather than in control language, reliance on devolved taxes connects spending and taxation decisions, creates fiscal accountability
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and legitimates democratic decisions on the use of public resources. What remains in dispute is how far own-revenue-raising must be taken to gain these benefits. An absence of fiscal autonomy exposes the central fiscal authority to uncontrolled rentseeking behaviour by lower-level governments. Full fiscal autonomy rules out territorial equalization. Into this fraught arena stepped the Muscatelli Expert Group (Muscatelli ), giving technical support to the Calman Commission (Commission on Scottish Devolution ) established by the UK Government in co-operation with the opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament after the SNP had formed a minority government in . The direction of travel was clear, in that Calman was expected to favour more tax devolution to Scotland, but at a cautious pace. In the background was the SNP Government’s demand for ‘fiscal autonomy’ (within the UK state) (Scottish Government ) and its claim for full political independence (outside the UK state). The Muscatelli Expert Group developed its own set of taxation principles for Scottish devolution, paying homage to Adam Smith’s canons of taxation. The Muscatelli principles are as useful guides as one will find; the unavoidable problem is that the principles come into conflict when addressing practical issues of tax design even at the unitary state level. Briefly summarized, these are the six Muscatelli (: ) principles: () Equity—ensure fairness to all regions of the country; () Autonomy—allow the regional government choice on what and how much to spend, and potentially allow the use of fiscal powers as policy instruments; () Accountability—ensure that the effect of decisions made at the regional level on tax bills is clear to taxpayers; () Stability/predictability—enable public spending to be managed properly; () Simplicity/transparency—enable taxation and spending decisions to be readily implemented and the justification made evident; () Efficiency—avoiding creating economic distortions by incentivizing movements of people and factors of production. These Muscatelli principles would command widespread consent from fiscal experts. Examples of conflicts that arise are those between Equity and Efficiency and between Autonomy and Simplicity/Transparency. Ideas from optimal taxation theory were synthesized for a policy audience by the Mirrlees Review (Mirrlees et al. ) of the UK tax system, commissioned by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The budget problem is to extract the resources that a government needs for public services in a way that does the least economic damage to the private economy. Tax bases should be broad and marginal rates should not be too high. Mirrlees concluded that the UK tax system is dysfunctional and that policy reforms emphasizing ‘neutrality’ (taxes should not distort private economic decisions) could increase revenue and decrease efficiency costs. Neutrality has become more important in the context of the globalized economy and liberalized markets.
Tax
Council Tax
Non-Domestic Rates
Income Tax
VAT Assignment
Land and Buildings Transaction Tax
Minor Taxes
Origin
Long-established means of financing local government and fully within the control of the pre-devolution Scottish Office and of the Scottish Government
Long-established means of financing local government and fully within the control of the pre-devolution Scottish Office and of the Scottish Government
1. Scottish Variable Rate (tartan tax) of Scotland Act 1998 never used 2. Scottish Rate of Income Tax proposed by Calman Commission and enacted in Scotland Act 2012 3. Scottish Income Tax proposed by Smith Commission and enacted in Scotland Act 2016
Rejected by the Calman Commission but later proposed by the Smith Commission. Enacted in Scotland Act 2016
Calman Commission proposed devolution of Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) and enacted in Scotland Act 2012. Replaced by Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBBT) in Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Scotland) Act 2013. Administered by Revenue Scotland
The Calman Commission proposed devolution of three other minor taxes, Landfill Tax; Aggregates Levy and Air Passenger Duty. Scottish Landfill Tax enacted in Landfill Tax (Scotland) Act 2014, and administered by Revenue Scotland. Aggregates Levy can be devolved under the Scotland Act 2016. Replacement Air Departure Tax in the Air Departure Tax (Scotland) Act 2017
Implementation Date
Not relevant
Not relevant
Scottish Rate of Income Tax on a neutral basis in 2016-17; Scottish Income Tax on nonneutral basis from 2017–18
2019–20 was planned, but uncertainties about data raise doubts about whether this will ever go live
1 April 2015
Scottish Landfill Tax implemented 1 April 2015
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Table 28.2 Devolved and Assigned Taxes
£2,088 million
£2,803 million
£11,703 million
£5,707 million (but not yet assigned)
£616 million
Scottish Landfill Tax: £109 million Air Passenger Duty: £295 million (not devolved) Aggregates Levy: £54 million (not devolved)
Comment
Mismanaged by Scottish Government. Council Tax bands still based on 1991 values. Increases in the multiplier on the top four bands from 1 April 2017. A seven-year period in which the Scottish Government effectively imposed a Council Tax freeze. Fundamental reform difficult without comparable change in England
Property valuations problematic because of economic change such as the growth of online retailing. Unlike England, Scotland continues to fully pool revenues. Problems with the system highlighted by the Barclay Report (2017)
Tax base and Personal Allowance are not devolved. Only Non-Savings and Non-Dividend income is devolved. Dysfunctional relationship with National Insurance Contributions
Partial VAT assignment increased the headline selffinancing percentage to over 50%. It adds little to fiscal accountability because there is no policy control. Cyclical fluctuations and data uncertainties could make the Block Grant Adjustment for VAT highly volatile
LBTT adopted a graduated schedule in place of the ‘slab’ system of SDLT. Rest of UK quickly moved to graduated schedule. Scotland followed rUK in introducing Additional Dwelling Supplement. Transaction taxes on property distort property and housing markets but are less visible to taxpayers
Calman Commission sought to maximise the package. The small amounts of revenue are not the main motivation for devolution. Successful environmental taxes will produce less revenue. EU state aid issues are unavoidable even after Brexit. Air Departure Tax shows conflict between economic growth and environmental objectives and the Scottish Greens have vetoed implementation
Source: Author’s own compilation from multiple sources.
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2019-20 Forecast Revenue
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Puzzlingly, the Mirrlees Review omitted reference to local government finance and to devolution finance, indicating that the Inquiry thought in terms of the unitary state, not of the multilevel state. In the latter, there is tension between (a) neutrality (reflecting the Mirrlees Review’s desire to minimize damage to economic efficiency) and (b) subsidiarity (facilitating autonomy and accountability at lower levels of government). There will be a trade-off between neutrality and subsidiarity if sub-national governments are to exercise taxation powers in order to enhance their fiscal accountability. Local government taxes were often ignored by those who argued that the Parliament had negligible tax powers, even though the structure of local government taxation was fully devolved. Midwinter and McVicar () observed how cautious Scottish devolutionists had been in their proposals for devolved taxation powers, citing Heald’s () proposals to the Scottish Constitutional Convention. Indeed, the common theme then was ‘fiscal accountability at the margin’ (Blow et al. ). The Scotland Act brought a selffunding ratio of per cent: the Scottish Variable Rate of Income Tax only applied to the basic rate (three percentage points up or down). The per cent after the Scotland Act reflects the cautious approach of the Calman Commission. This reduced the rate of UK income tax for Scottish taxpayers by percentage points and set no limit on what the Scottish Parliament could substitute, but required the same percentagepoint increase to be applied to all tax bands. The four smaller taxes were seen to add some ballast to the Calman package, but modest amounts of revenue (see Table .). The Scotland Act’s jump to per cent reflects the political circumstances, after the eve of Referendum ‘Vow’ by the three main UK party leaders, of strengthened devolution (Cameron et al. ), rather than changes in fiscal fundamentals. All revenue from Non-Savings Non-Dividend Income (that is, income from employment, self-employment, pensions, and property) is devolved. There are no constraints on rates or on bands other than UK setting of the Personal Allowance. Fifty per cent of VAT revenue is assigned to Scotland. Calman’s caution was set aside. Value Added Tax assignment seemed to result from a political desire to raise the self-funding percentage to over per cent. In popular discourse, acquisition of more taxation powers was usually presented as conferring more power: in practice, the Scottish Parliament has taken on much more risk, particularly from differential economic performance to rUK and in contestable calculations such as the BGAs for each devolved or assigned tax. Those opposing Scottish independence, particularly after the ‘Vow’ of strengthened devolution, thought that saving the Union required a dramatic gesture which would show that the devolved Scottish Parliament enjoyed real power. This was to protect the legitimacy of devolution as an alternative to independence. Astonishingly, the design of fiscal decentralization (a UK matter) was delegated to the Smith Commission consisting of five Scottish political parties, with an independent chair (Sir Robert Smith) appointed by the UK Government (Kenealy et al. ). This appears to have resulted from UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s willingness to take risks and his expectation that what would be proposed would be acceptable.
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This dramatic shift of support towards extensive tax devolution might have energized political opinion: the Smith Commission was solely a Scottish event, the results of which two UK Governments signed up to. Yet the policy dilemmas and practical UK constraints have not changed. Constitutional asymmetry and small geographical distances still make devolved taxes technically difficult to operate in the UK. Moreover, UK-based parties worry about electoral spillovers to England from high-spending/ ‘fiscally irresponsible’ devolved administrations under their control. These could include the perception of Scotland as the highest-taxed part of the UK; or portrayals of the Labour-controlled NHS Wales as a disaster warning to English voters. This constrained the settlement and contributed to the atrophying of the tartan tax which Labour First Minister Jack McConnell promised not to use. Higher income tax in Scotland than in England would be denounced as damaging the Scottish economy. Lower income taxes than in England might bring down the Barnett funding mechanism, a development feared by Scottish Executive/Government civil servants in the s when it was impossible to spend all the Barnett consequentials generated by years of large increases in English education and health spending. There has thus far been limited experience of the post-Scotland Act powers due to newness and phased implementation. Table . summarizes how powers have been accumulated and whether and how they have been used to date. The political context must be remembered: these are the years after the Independence Referendum, after the SNP Government’s loss of its majority in the Scottish Parliament election, and after the Brexit Referendum. The Scottish Variable Rate of Income Tax ( Act) was never used, HMRC’s administrative capacity to implement it being secretly allowed by the Scottish Government to disintegrate. The Scottish Rate of Income Tax ( Act) only applied to one tax year (–) and was set to ensure no difference between UK and Scottish income tax, as the Smith Commission tax powers were already being legislated (Barbour ). Table . sets out the position in tax year – after three years in which the Scottish income tax has applied. The loss of the SNP Holyrood majority in was a critical event, especially as its strict party discipline could make a very small majority work. All these changes were negotiated between the SNP Minority Government and the Scottish Green Party. Because of the issue of a second Independence Referendum, the ‘Unionist’ parties are unlikely to support an SNP budget, unless the Conservatives could be detached by tax-cutting policies, though these might alienate ‘Yes’ supporters. Two aspects of the UK-set Personal Allowance are important: the UK Government has increased this to £, (compared with £, in –);¹⁴ and it is reduced by £ for every £ earned over £,. The cumulative result of three years of SNP– Greens budget deals was that Scotland split the basic-rate band into three; Scotland has
¹⁴ Given differences in the profile of Scottish incomes and rUK incomes, policy-driven increases in the Personal Allowance reduce Scottish revenues more than rUK revenues, thereby increasing the BGA.
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Table 28.3 Scottish Income Tax Compared to Rest of United Kingdom, 2019–2020 rUK Tax Bands Personal Allowance Basic Rate Higher Rate Additional Rate
12,500 From 12,501 – 50,000 From 50,001 – 150,000 Over 150,000
Personal Allowance Starter Rate Basic Rate Intermediate Rate Higher Rate Top Rate
Scottish Tax Bands 12,500 From 12,500 – 14,549 From 14,550 – 24,944 From 24,945 – 43,430 From 43,431 – 150,000 Above 150,000
rUK Tax Rates 20% 40% 45% Scottish Tax Rates 19% 20% 21% 41% 46%
Note: The Personal Allowance is reduced by £1 for every £2 earned over £100,000. Source: Official websites.
a much lower higher-rate threshold (£, rather than £,); and Scotland’s top two bands are one percentage point higher than their rUK counterparts. Figure . shows the effects of these changes on Scottish taxpayers’ Marginal Rate of Tax (i.e. how much extra tax is paid on an extra £ of income) (black line) and their Average Rate of Tax (what percentage of income is taken as tax) (grey line) at income levels between £ and £, (an arbitrary upper cut-off). Other complications could be introduced, including the interaction of income tax and National Insurance, which is not devolved.¹⁵ National Insurance is a second income tax on a narrower base that seems to be less disliked by voters, hence UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown’s use of increased Contributions when UK Labour election promises had ruled out increases in income tax rates. The first complication this causes is that the lower threshold (£,) is much lower than the income tax threshold (£,), so many non-income taxpayers are paying Contributions. Second, adding the two together produces a cumulative Marginal Rate of Scottish Income Tax and National Insurance (dotted line) of over per cent on incomes above £,. Third, whereas the rUK higher-rate threshold is aligned with the National Insurance Upper Earnings Limit (at which the Contribution rate falls to per cent), there is a wide range (£,–£,) over which both these higher rates apply to Scottish taxpayers. This explains the spiking in Figure . of the combined Marginal Rate at per cent. In all three years (–, – and –) of the Scottish Income Tax, the width of the spike has grown as the gap between the ¹⁵ For example, in relation to the tapered withdrawal of child benefit and to the interaction of income tax with the benefits system.
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70 60
% Tax Rate
50 40 30 20 10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125 130 135 140 145 150 155 160
0
Income, £000s Average Tax Rate
Marginal Tax Rate
Average IT+NIC
Marginal IT+NIC
. Scottish Income Tax and UK National Insurance Contributions, – Source: Author’s drawing.
Scottish and rUK higher-rate threshold has widened. Fourth, the UK-determined withdrawal of the Personal Allowance results in a combined spike of . per cent on incomes between £, and £,. The grey line in Figure . plots the Average Rate (AR) of Scottish Income Tax and the dashed line the Average Rate of Scottish Income Tax and National Insurance Contributions. This shows a progressive structure (the AR lines are always increasing), but there is flattening when incomes exceed £, (at the end of the withdrawal of Personal Allowance). The SNP–Scottish Greens’ budget deals purported to achieve greater fairness in the distribution of the tax burden, but they failed due to faults in both the UK system and in the way these Scottish deals were constructed. Over the same income range as before, but focusing solely on income tax, Figure . shows the percentage that a Scottish taxpayer will pay more or less than their English counterpart. The ‘less’ part (below the horizontal axis) results from the effects of the per cent starter rate. The maximum saving is £. per year. The switchover point is £,, above which a Scottish taxpayer pays more than their rUK counterpart; the maximum excess is . per cent on an income of £,. At an income of £,, a Scottish taxpayer pays £, more. The shape of the ‘less or more’ line in Figure . is indefensible in relation to the Muscatelli or other principles of equitable or efficient taxation. Because there are a lot of taxpayers at the bottom end of taxable income, the Scottish Government was able to proclaim that in – the majority of Scottish taxpayers paid less than their English counterparts. The design of the package was driven by public relations considerations, in the context of limited public understanding of how
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25%
Maximum ‘tax saving’ is £20.49 £26,993 is the switchover point
15% 10%
Maximum excess % is 20.59% at £50,000 At £50,000 pay £1,544 more At £100,000 pay £2,044more At £150,000 pay £2,669 more
5% 0%
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125 130 135 140 145 150 155 160
Excess Scottish Income Tax
20%
–5%
Income, £000s
–10%
. Lower or Higher Scottish Income Tax Paid, – Source: Author’s drawing.
income tax works. Excessive attention is paid to tax rates in isolation from the overall effects of bands and rates. Scotland’s splitting of the basic-rate band into starter, basic, and intermediate from – (see Table .) marked the first ‘basic-rate’ increase in the UK since –. After the atrophying of the tartan tax, willingness to use the Act powers was welcome. How these have been used is seriously defective. First, introducing five bands instead of three for presentational reasons runs directly counter to the Muscatelli principle of Simplicity/Transparency. Unintelligibility damages vitally important consent. Second, the spikes in both the marginal rate schedules are indefensible: the lower spike around the higher-rate threshold derives from Scottish decisions but the upper spike derives from UK decisions.¹⁶ Treating £, to £, as ‘rich’ in contemporary Scotland imposes high marginal rates on, for example, principal teachers and senior nurses. Marginal rates drive incentives and also do reputational damage. This is a sensitive part of the income distribution, not least because of the UK policy of child benefit withdrawal. In the case of professional households with two earners, there are incentives for reductions in hours which are now much easier to negotiate with employers but will adversely affect labour supply. Fewer Scottish taxpayers will be located at the upper spike, but the way in which the BGA works means that revenues from taxpayers near the top end of the income distribution are vitally important. There are well-known means for converting income ¹⁶ In the Budget, Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling announced the withdrawal of Personal Allowance from – as a budgetary response to the global financial crisis. Large increases in the Personal Allowance since then have widened this upper spike.
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into capital gains or corporate income, both taxed by the UK Government. Highincome Scottish taxpayers have access to professional advice and may have multiple residences, some outside Scotland, thereby raising enforcement issues about residence. Once taxpayers become more involved in tax planning and avoidance, such practices might spread. Examples include the reported reaction of NHS consultants to UK pension taxation changes, which resulted in some refusing additional shifts and some taking early retirement (Taylor ). UK controversies about backdated HMRC-imposed charges for remuneration disguised as loans warn about the extent of past and current avoidance activity. Third, the Marginal Rate profiles in Figure . make it difficult to secure an upwards tilt in the Average profiles, which would be consistent with Green, Labour, and Liberal Democrat objectives of making the tax system more progressive. The interaction of income tax and National Insurance is dysfunctional: the latter is effectively a second income tax on employment income, starting at a lower level than the Personal Allowance, creating high combined marginal rates on moderate earners, even without considering the interactions with the benefits system. Furthermore, Scotland alone cannot respond to the concentration of income in the top per cent and per cent, this being a challenge for UK tax policy and for international action against avoidance and evasion.
C
.................................................................................................................................. The fiscal dilemmas addressed in this chapter are partly inevitable consequences of Scotland being one component of a multilevel state, yet partly the product of the unusual structure of the UK, whose fiscal characteristics have been made heavily pathdependent by history.¹⁷ The commonalities make Scotland’s case interesting to a wider international audience, but the constraining specificities must be unravelled before valid policy conclusions can be drawn about the desirability or durability of present or other arrangements. Devolution arrived just before a period of strong UK public expenditure growth fuelled by concerns about the quality of public services, particularly in England, which automatically brought additional funding to Scotland via the Barnett formula. Then came the austerity of the s, to which devolved Scotland was similarly subjected since Scotland’s public finances are deeply embedded within UK public finances. The increase in transparency about fiscal arrangements has been slow, but some gains from that have been offset by increased funding complexity as a consequence of tax devolution. Such inaccessibility encourages political and media debate to remain badly informed. ¹⁷ For example, concentration of tax revenue at the central government tier; neglect of the local government taxation system; a narrower VAT base than later adopters; and a dysfunctional relationship between income tax and National Insurance Contributions.
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Strategic choices about the public expenditure/GDP ratio will continue to be taken by the UK Government. Nordic-quality public services cannot be funded by US-level taxation. The devolved administrations have some capacity to soften the effects of austerity, via territorial politics to gain additional off-system resources (‘Barnett plus’) or by use of their own taxation powers, but should taxation rise to significantly higher levels than in England, the claim that Scotland prefers higher public spending than England would be tested. Such countervailing action will always be met by claims that differentially lower taxation would increase relative economic growth. Moreover, the Office for Budget Responsibility (: para ) has warned that UK public finances are fiscally unsustainable because unchanged expenditure and taxation policies would lead to a net debt ratio of . per cent in –, whilst still on a rising path. There are sometimes orderings of political objectives which assert the absolute primacy of one in particular, such as: national identity (for example, German reunification in and Brexit); location on the state–market spectrum (such as the Thatcher and Reagan reforms in the s); and commitment to policy and fiscal decentralization within the dominant political entity (such as Spanish decentralization after Franco). Alternatively, complex trade-offs might be made between all three. Scotland is caught up in the fact that the UK has not addressed these objectives in an integrated manner, and there is no consensus view on which matters most or what the trade-offs should look like. Viewing the post-Scotland Act powers as a fiscal trap overstates the coherence of UK Government policy and ignores the historical record of within-Scotland pressures for ‘fiscal autonomy’, whether that be ‘devolution max’ or ‘full fiscal autonomy’. Developments in Scottish income tax in –, – and – were conditioned by several factors: the SNP Government’s dependence on the Scottish Green Party to pass its budget (the possibility of a second Referendum alienating other Holyrood parties); the rushed deliberations of the Smith Commission; and the belief of the UK Conservative Party and UK Liberal Democrats in the redistributive value of higher Personal Allowances. Such increases take a higher proportion of the Scottish population out of paying income tax, reduce the Scottish tax base more than the rUK tax base due to the different income distribution, and increase the BGA. Austerity in the s has opened up the question of whether Scottish Governments will levy higher taxes in Scotland than in rUK in order to protect public services, as opposed to having these funded by higher per capita grants. This context has produced a more coherent anti-taxation argument in Scotland than before, with the SNP Government opportunistically attacked by Conservative and Labour for real-terms expenditure reductions and for—relatively minor in revenue terms— higher rates of taxation. The political configuration at Holyrood has meant that the viable budget deals for the minority SNP Government have been with the Scottish Greens, the results of which have been to create the lower spike in the Marginal Rate of Income Tax schedule. If Scotland wishes to support a higher public expenditure/ GDP ratio than is underpinned by UK public finances, then it would be possible to
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set rates and thresholds in order to achieve a more progressive Average Rate of Taxation schedule. The obvious obstacle is that politicians, media, and international comparisons focus on income tax rates, neglecting the effects of the definition of income, of Personal Allowance and thresholds, and of social security taxes such as National Insurance Contributions. Making devolved tax policy is not easy. Scotland has mismanaged local government taxation just like England: levying council tax in on the basis of valuations invites ridicule. The distortions have become so great as to make reform more difficult than it would have been at the time of the Burt Committee (Burt ) when Barnett funding was plentiful but political courage was lacking. Moreover, revenues from NonDomestic Rates (Barclay ) are threatened by rapid economic change, such as the growth of online retailing. There are more encouraging signs in relation to the design of the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax, but the much-delayed Air Departure Tax was always intended to be a source of revenue loss. Convincing arguments for tax devolution include seeking to make sub-national governments fiscally responsible when they no longer so heavily depend on transfers from higher-tier governments. Issues of relative power, as well as of principle, always lurk behind territorial fiscal politics. In the first twenty years of devolution, Scottish Governments and Parliaments have mismanaged the two significant tax sources that came to them in . Political paralysis has afflicted policy on council tax and NonDomestic Rates. There are similar risks of mismanagement of devolved income tax, which reinforce the point that there are difficult trade-offs. Moreover, a new source of fiscal risk comes from demand-led devolved social security benefits (Scottish Fiscal Commission ), even when ‘generosity’ is similar to that in rUK. The issue is usually not that UK Governments are trying to frustrate devolution, but that the implications of UK policy on devolution are neither understood nor cared about. The destabilizing potential is dangerous, especially in the absence of a settled constitutional position for Scotland. Since the Independence Referendum, Scotland has effectively sacrificed fiscal certainty for (a) the notion that greater fiscal powers are always one more step on the journey to independence (the ‘Yes’ side); and (b) the notion that they provide greater political legitimacy for devolution (the ‘No’ side). Thus, politics continues to trump orderliness in Scotland’s public finances.
R Albouy, D. . ‘Evaluating the Efficiency and Equity of Federal Fiscal Equalization’, Journal of Public Economics, /–: –. Audit Scotland. . Scotland’s New Financial Powers: Operation of the Fiscal Framework. Edinburgh: Audit Scotland. Barbour, C. . The Management of Taxes in Scotland, nd edition. London: Bloomsbury. Barclay, K. . Report of the Barclay Review of Non-Domestic Rates. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Barnett, J. . Inside the Treasury. London: André Deutsch.
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Barnett, Lord J. . ‘Oral Evidence’, in House of Lords Select Committee on the Barnett Formula, The Barnett Formula: Report with Evidence. st Report of Session –. HL Paper . London: The Stationery Office, –. Beatty, C. and Fothergill, S. . ‘The Long Shadow of Industrial Britain’s Demise’, Regions: Quarterly Magazine of the Regional Studies Association, /: –. Bell, D. and Christie, A. . ‘Finance—the Barnett Formula: Nobody’s Child?’, in A. Trench (ed.), The State of the Nations . Thorverton: Imprint Academic, –. Bell, D., Eiser, D., and Phillips, D. . Scotland’s Fiscal Framework: Assessing the Agreement. London: Institute for Fiscal Studies. Blow, L., Hall J., and Smith, S. . Financing Regional Government in Britain. London: Institute for Fiscal Studies. Bulpitt, J. . Territory and Power in the United Kingdom. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Burt, Sir P. (chair). . A Fairer Way: Report by the Local Government Finance Review Committee. Edinburgh: Local Government Finance Review Committee. Cabinet Office. . UK Government Financial Support for Northern Ireland, June, mimeo. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file//UK_Govt__financial_support_for_Northern_Ireland. pdf, accessed July . Cameron, D., Miliband, E., and Clegg, N. . ‘The Vow.’ Daily Record, September. Commission on Scottish Devolution (chair: Sir Kenneth Calman). . Serving Scotland Better: Scotland and the United Kingdom in the st Century: Final Report. Edinburgh: Commission on Scottish Devolution. Conservative and Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party. . Agreement between the Conservative and Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party on Support for the Government in Parliament, June. Available at: https://assets.publish ing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file//Con fidence_and_Supply_Agreement_between_the_Conservative_Party_and_the_DUP.pdf, accessed July . Cuthbert, J. . ‘The Effect of Relative Population Growth on the Barnett Squeeze’, Fraser of Allander Quarterly Economic Commentary, /: –. Dorling, D. and Thomas, B. . People and Places: A st-century Atlas of the UK. Bristol: The Policy Press. Feld, L., Kirchgässner, G., and Schaltegger, C. . ‘Decentralized Taxation and the Size of Government: Evidence from Swiss State and Local Governments’, Southern Economic Journal, /: –. Goudie, A. . ‘GERS and Fiscal Autonomy’, Scottish Affairs, : –. Hallwood, C. and MacDonald, R. . The Political Economy of Financing Scottish Government: Considering a New Constitutional Settlement for Scotland. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Heald, D. . Financing a Scottish Parliament: Options for Debate. Glasgow: Scottish Foundation for Economic Research. Heald, D. . ‘Territorial Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom’, Public Administration, /: –. Heald, D. . ‘Cultivating illusions, while kicking fundamentals into the long grass’, written evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Devolution (Further Powers) Committee, DFP/S// /, p. . Available at: http://www.parliament.scot/Papers__updated_... pdf, accessed June .
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Heald, D. and Geaughan, N. . ‘The Tartan Tax: Devolved Variation in Income Tax Rates’, British Tax Review, : –. Heald, D. and McLeod, A. . ‘Beyond Barnett? Financing Devolution’, in P. Robinson and J. Adams (eds), Devolution in Practice: Public Policy Differences within the UK. London: Institute for Public Policy Research, –. Heald, D. and McLeod, A. . ‘Embeddedness of UK Devolution Finance within the Public Expenditure System’, Regional Studies, /: –. HM Government and Scottish Government. . The Agreement between the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom Government on the Scottish Government’s Fiscal Framework. London and Edinburgh: HM Government and Scottish Government. Jamieson, B. (ed.) . Calling Scotland to Account. Policy Options for Spending and Taxation. Edinburgh: Policy Institute. Kellas, J. . The Scottish Political System, th edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kenealy, D., Eichhorn, J., Parry, R., Paterson, L., and Remond A. . Publics, Elites and Constitutional Change in the UK. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kentish, B. . ‘Brexit: May accused of “bribing” Labour MPs as new £.bn fund for deprived towns unveiled’, The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/ news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-theresa-may-deal-bribe-towns-fund-deprived-areas-votelabour-remain-leave-a.html, accessed July . Kerslake, Lord (chair). . Fairer and Stronger—Rebalancing the UK Economy: First Report. Sheffield: UK Commission. King, D. . Fiscal Tiers: The Economics of Multi-Level Government. London: George Allen & Unwin. King, D. and Eiser, D. . ‘Reform of the Barnett Formula with Needs Assessment: Can the Challenges be Overcome?’, Regional Studies, /: –. Levitt, I. (ed.) . Treasury Control and Public Expenditure in Scotland, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy. Mackay, D. and Bell, D. . The Political Economy of Devolution. Edinburgh: Policy Institute. Mackintosh, J.P. . The Devolution of Power: Local Democracy, Regionalism and Nationalism. London: Penguin. Macwhirter, I. . ‘Chancellor Philip Hammond’s Budget Raid on National Insurance will create taxing times for Sturgeon’, Herald, March. McCrone, G. . ‘Scotland’s Public Finances from Goschen to Barnett’, Fraser of Allander Quarterly Economic Commentary, /: –. McGregor, P. and Swales, K. . ‘Economics of Devolution/Decentralization in the UK: Some Questions and Answers’, Regional Studies, /: –. McKinnon, R. . ‘Market-preserving Fiscal Federalism in the American Monetary Union’, in T. Ter-Minassian and M. Blejer (eds), Macroeconomic Dimensions of Public Finance: Essays in Honour of Vito Tanzi. London: Routledge, –. McLean, I. . ‘Financing the Union: Goschen, Barnett, and Beyond’, in W.L. Miller (ed.), Anglo-Scottish Relations from to Devolution, Proceedings of the British Academy . Oxford: Oxford University Press, –. McLean, I. and McMillan, A. . State of the Union: Unionism and the Alternatives in the United Kingdom since . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Midwinter, A. and McVicar, M. . ‘Uncharted Waters? Problems of Financing Labour’s Scottish Parliament’, Public Money & Management, (): –. Midwinter, A., Keating, M., and Mitchell, J. . Politics and Public Policy in Scotland. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. . Stronger Town Funds, March . Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/stronger-towns-fund, accessed July . Mirrlees, J., Adam, S., Besley, T., Blundell, R., Bond, S., Chote, R., Gammie, M., Johnson, P., Myles, G., and Poterba, J. . Tax by Design: The Final Report of the Mirrlees Review. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, J. . Governing Scotland: The Invention of Administrative Devolution. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Muscatelli, A. . First Evidence from the Independent Expert Group to the Commission on Scottish Devolution. Edinburgh: Heriot-Watt University. Musgrave, R. . ‘Approaches to a Fiscal Theory of Political Federalism’, in National Bureau of Economic Research (ed.), Public Finances: Needs, Resources and Utilization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, –. Oates, W. . Fiscal Federalism. New York: Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich. Office for Budget Responsibility. . Fiscal Sustainability Report—July . London: Office for Budget Responsibility. Scotland Act. , Chapter . UK Public General Act. Scotland Act. , Chapter . UK Public General Act. Scotland Act. , Chapter . UK Public General Act. Scottish Fiscal Commission. . Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecast May . Edinburgh: Scottish Fiscal Commission. Scottish Government. . Fiscal Autonomy in Scotland: The Case for Change and Options for Reform. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Government Expenditure & Revenue Scotland –. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Smith Commission (Chair: Lord Smith of Kelvin). . Report of the Smith Commission for Further Devolution of Powers to the Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: Smith Commission. Strathclyde Commission (Chair: Lord Strathclyde). . Commission on the Future Governance of Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. Taylor, M. . ‘Pension changes are leading to a consultant crisis in Scotland’s NHS’, Herald on Sunday, March. Torrance, D. . ‘Nationalists should be careful what they wish for.’ The Herald, July. Available at: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/.david-torrance-nationalistsshould-be-careful-what-they-wish-for/ (accessed July ). Treasury. . Needs Assessment Study: Report. London: HM Treasury. Treasury. . Public Expenditure: Statistical Analyses . Cm . London: The Stationery Office. Wilson, A. (chair). . Scotland—The New Case for Optimism: A Strategy for InterGenerational Economic Renaissance—The Report of the Sustainable Growth Commission. Edinburgh: Sustainable Growth Commission. Younger, G. . Hansard. April, cols. –.
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.................................................................................................................................. T place of local councils in Scottish politics is one that has not been in sharp focus for some time. Local government viewed narrowly is a dry, administrative, and boring affair about public administration, management, and implementation of public policy at the local level. Post-devolution it has been in the shadow of both the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government and has become a rather neglected, niche subject in academic focus and enquiry. This was not always the case—Midwinter and Mair (), Keating (), Kerley (), Midwinter () and McConnell () published books in which the full focus was specifically on the politics of locality in Scotland. These books reflected that pre-devolution local government was a key institution in the development and consolidation of the welfare state in Scotland, the planning of regions, cities, and suburbs, and confronting and responding to key challenges in the fields of infrastructure, utilities, health, education, and social care need. The story of the politics of the poll tax was an important back-story to the campaign for home rule. The first Scottish Parliament debate was on the potential impact of devolution on local government. Since then local government has given way to the ‘bigger’ matters of Scottish Government and Parliament, independence, Europe, economic performance, and the health of the nation. Post-devolution academic studies in politics have shifted focus towards parties, elections, constitutions, and more supranational and global concerns. References to local government and democracy during the Referendum campaign were notable only for their absence. The Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy () report, barely registered. Local government appeared somewhat incidental in Scotland’s constitutional debate (McGarvey ). To an extent this is justifiable. Set against the past and the broader picture of Scottish politics, today’s local councils are marginal, weakened institutions. The story of local government in Scotland tends to be narrated through either themes of centralization
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and declining autonomy or partnership and interdependency (Scottish Executive and COSLA ; Scottish Government and COSLA ). Perhaps a third theme should be added: neglect. Its negligible importance, reflected in bland descriptive outlines of the role local government serves, reflected in narrations based around themes of service delivery, representation, and accountability with acknowledgement of statutory and regulatory frameworks, which place Scottish Government in an oversight and directive role. This chapter will seek to go beyond such descriptive outline and raise questions about local government’s wider role in Scottish politics. It will suggest that local government is not the inconsequential, mundane sidelined institution in Scottish politics it is often portrayed to be. Rather, it will be argued that an analysis of developments in local politics can be illuminating and add depth to the wider story of Scottish politics. First, the pre-devolution legacy. This is important as local government, like the Scottish Government and its political parties, has been shaped by organic development. To gain an understanding of its role in contemporary Scottish politics one must appreciate its historical institutional development and many of its inherited practices (Stewart ). In particular, how the dynamics of other institutions in UK and Scottish politics have provided the contours through which to understand Scottish local government today. The role of local government today is reflective of the purposes for which it was created and its relationship with other political institutions. The second section reflects on post-devolution local government. It has been overshadowed by the focus on Scotland’s new democratic governing institutions in Edinburgh. There has been little evidence of any fundamental reconsideration of local government’s role as the traditional trajectory of declining autonomy and continuing fiscal dependence remains today. This is important as local government practice and its approach to the fulfilment of its role is an important signifier of the kind of state Scotland is. Is its approach to the provision of public services in the community universal or targeted? Centrally directed or locally driven? Is efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery more important than accountability and transparency? The third section will suggest that local government can also provide insight into democratic practice. Celebrations of the vibrancy of Scottish democracy since the referendum tend to overlook the long-term and consistent failings in the field of Scottish local democracy. Its weakness in terms of low electorate participation is a recurring theme. The dynamics of coalition formation in local council chambers and the practice of politics locally provides an insight into the vibrancy and health of political parties in Scotland. The fourth section will reflect on local government’s place as a key part of the wider welfare state in Scotland and the UK. In comparison to the NHS, it has little political capital, despite the philosophy of social solidarity underpinning much of its purpose and the post-devolution dominance of social democratic parties in the form of Labour and the SNP.
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The final section looks more broadly at that purpose, reflecting on local government’s place within the wider Scottish polity. Fundamentally the role local government plays in Scottish politics is an important signifier of how Scotland’s political system developed, the role of the state today, as well as the state of Scottish democracy.
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.................................................................................................................................. The geographic outline and parameters of Scottish local government today partly reflect centuries-old sheriffdoms or counties in Scotland. Councils were originally established for the purpose of tax collection and local administration. As the industrial revolution progressed in the nineteenth century, local government in Scotland was a pluralistic mixture of corporations, counties, burghs, parishes, and towns, often with more than one level of government administering services in a particular area. These small fore-runners to modern councils were largely autonomous. Local Government Acts in and rationalized things to a small degree, but the overall picture remained complex with large and small burghs, county councils and city councils, with an array of often confusingly interrelated responsibilities and powers up until the s. Local authorities as they exist today did not emerge organically from some ancient right to self-government or grass-roots autonomous movements in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, or Aberdeenshire. Like many key political institutions in Scottish politics, local councils owe their existence to an Act of the UK Parliament. They are reflective of the historical constitutional structure of Scotland and the UK, though Scottish particularism in terms of structure was accommodated within the Union. This structure was overseen from by the Scottish Office, the institutional expression of the UK state in Scotland (Mitchell ). Although policy particularism and difference in fields such as education and regeneration and administrative difference was accommodated, local councils in Scotland were subject to many of the same political, economic, and constitutional external pressures as those throughout the UK. The post- Labour Government’s creation of the NHS, welfare state, and nationalization of key utilities was an important development for local government across the UK. In the post-war era, as the role of the state grew, local government took on broader roles in public services such as education, social work, housing, and planning. Scottish local councils as institutions grew throughout the second half of the twentieth century and up until . That growth was facilitated and driven by increased financial dependency and central government direction. In the post-war era ‘local government was expanded on the values that underpinned the welfare state—statutory standards achieved through regulation and underpinned by a public sector ethos’ (Cairney and McGarvey : ). Welfare state expansion tended to be based around assumptions
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of universalism and this tended to mean a degree of centralization with some implied notion of uniformity (at least of access). The attachment to the idea of universal undifferentiated public services with an emphasis on trust and collaboration with professional service providers (and an eschewing of market-based mechanisms) has proved durable in the Scottish public sector (Greer ). Post- the logic of all of Scotland’s population receiving equal access to public services was the justification through which local policy initiatives were stifled and local councils became increasingly dependent on grants from the Scottish Office in Edinburgh. New policy initiatives tended to be funded directly from central government, resulting in increased financial dependency on grants, with the share of local expenditure funded from local taxation, rents, fees, and charges gradually diminishing. As the post-war scale of local government grew it was decided that some major rationalization was required and a more rational ‘modern’ approach to local government be established. It was also the era when political parties mobilized and organized to gain local office. The s reorganization created a two-tier system of nine regions and fifty-three district councils, plus three unitary islands authorities. In this era the ‘corporate management revolution’ swept through Scottish local authorities with corporate functions centralized around newly created chief executive officer posts and new overarching policy and resources committees on the political side. Corporate management was rooted in the ideal of rational planning, objective setting, implementation, review, and evaluation of policy and service delivery. Scotland’s newly created nine regional councils were of a size to exploit economies of scale in pursuit of more efficient modes of service delivery. The rationale for the new regional structures gave emphasis to the creation of more effective organizations of service delivery over notions of local democracy, identity, and participation. Midwinter () summarizes the essential features of modern Scottish local government: multi-purpose bodies directly elected by popular franchise with responsibility for service provision within a defined area; limited by specific powers set out by Parliament; power to raise local taxation (though this accounts for only a fraction of overall expenditure); and corporate bodies where power is vested in the whole council. Local government is all-encompassing: from planning and regulating homes, shaping the pavements and roads, regulating standards of food served, educating children, and providing services that underpin community and society (Fellows et al. ). A second major structural reform in transformed Scottish local government into thirty-two unitary councils covering all of Scotland. Scottish councils are contrasting in scale and coverage: the largest in Glasgow has a population of over ,, Orkney has only ,; Highland covers , square miles, Dundee (with a larger population) covers only square miles; Argyll and Bute has twenty-three uninhabited islands; Fife covers the whole of the ancient Kingdom with a population of ,; neighbouring Clackmannanshire has a population of only ,. The structure remains in place today. Both the s and s reorganizations were predicated on notions of creating a more efficient and effective mode of local government. Discussions of local
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identity, participation, and democracy were somewhat secondary to centrally imposed boundaries (Midwinter ). The debates and the process which accompanied each restructuring provide a snapshot of local government’s place in Scottish politics at each time. In the s, ideas of the co-ordination of services and regional planning led to the two-tier structure where there were nine regional mainland Scottish councils based loosely around the travel to work populations of Scotland’s cities and regional identities. These regions were responsible for education, social work, strategic planning, transport, police, fire, and services that were deemed to require a broader regional perspective. Below them were fifty-three smaller district councils undertaking operational service delivery in services such as housing, refuse collection, and environmental services. The – restructuring abolished all the regions apart from Highland and Fife and was imposed in a top-down fashion by an outgoing Conservative-run Scottish Office amid accusations of party political gerrymandering. Somewhat surprisingly, these boundaries imposed from above that caused such controversy at the time, have rarely been revisited except for minimal adjustment over two decades later. There are, however, new suggestions of potential change in the present ongoing review of Scottish local governance. The pre- structure of local government was consistent with UK norms. Local government of a size required to exploit economies of scale focused on the efficient and effective delivery of a range of public services. The underpinning constitutional and financial frameworks reflected a top-down model of governance, reinforced by decades of enhanced centralization and control (Copus et al. ). Comparatively, UK and Scottish local councils were subject to some of the most stringent controls of any liberal democracy. The orthodoxy of the literature on UK local government is that its role and status has been in decline for the past half-century. Financial autonomy has weakened and central control is increasing. The analysis of Scottish local government over that period does not digress from this orthodoxy (Midwinter ). The ‘Whitehall Model’’s centralist philosophy of statecraft appealed to both Labour and Conservative politicians. In the Whitehall model professional technical expertise is devolved to the local government level. Local bureaucracy is dominated by teachers, social workers, planners, housing, and other professionals. The ‘upper’ central level retains responsibility for policy, and ‘guidance’ is issued to local councils. Within this tradition Parry notes, ‘a general sense of concept taking and fitting in with UK practices’ amongst the civil service in Scotland. This culture is largely replicated in the relationship between Scottish local councils and the civil service in Scotland. Complying with statute or, in its absence, reliance on central guidance is an endemic feature of local government. At the local level, traditional approaches involved the direct delivery of public services through a line management of accountable bureaucracy within departments, a political framework emphasizing elections, councillors’ policy mandates and political oversight via committee, and administration via mutuality and professionalism. Since the s these have been overlaid (some may say eroded) by new managerial ideas
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emphasizing decentralization, devolution, and disaggregation of council organization. This has resulted in a new more networked mode of operation with more engagement with other public, commercial, voluntary, third sector, and community organizations. Kelly () argues that the weak constitutional position of local government in the UK results in an environment where wariness is embedded in local authorities’ structures and practices, with practitioners obliged to ensure that councils, as legal entities, fulfil their managerial, political, democratic, and constitutional responsibilities. Cultures of statutory compliance and caution are endemic. Professional associations are largely complicit in this—policy maintenance, continuity, and conservatism fits neatly into the culture of professionalism (Laffin ; Stewart ). Through inspectorates, regulatory bodies, and statutory instruments central government constrains councils by prescribing the implementation of primary legislation (McGarvey b). The Whitehall model did, of course historically, allow for a degree of Scottish Office autonomy and particularism as regards policy pre-, but within an overall framework of Whitehall policy leadership. This accommodation came under strain during the Conservative years in office –. The Thatcher era in the s, one could argue, solidified centralization (particularly financial) as the norm of central–local government relations throughout the UK. A more unitarian unionist philosophy informed the Scottish Office’s approach. The post-war model of welfare state expansion and development, and the accommodation of Scottish difference, was threatened by the Thatcher Government’s ideologically driven policies such as compulsory competitive tendering, transport de-regulation, rate-capping, right-to-buy, poll tax and school opt-outs. It was at this stage that the campaign for devolution in Scotland was invigorated. Whilst the Conservative-run Scottish Office had the constitutional and legal authority to develop and pursue such policies, its lack of democratic legitimacy brought their policies into sharp political focus. The decline of the Conservative party in Scotland gave emphasis to notions of a ‘democratic deficit’. Devolution was largely driven by a Scottish desire to protect and nurture the postwar welfare settlement. Scottish local government was a significant part of that home rule campaign with COSLA providing operational support for the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the s. The experience of eighteen years of Conservative Government undoubtedly enhanced the perceived attractiveness of a new constitutional settlement.
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.................................................................................................................................. The process of devolution in was largely evolutionary from the Scottish Office. It transformed overnight from ‘Office’ to ‘Executive’ with a simple cut and paste of letterhead and building signage (repeated in for the change to ‘Government’).
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Whilst not underestimating the importance of symbolism and its impact on political practice, central–local government relations reflected evolution rather than revolution in . As Parry (Chapter in this Handbook) notes, the devolved Scottish Government inherited the ‘Whitehall model’ UK tradition of non-partisan, meritocratic, intellectually elitist bureaucracy. It is useful to differentiate the ‘political’ from the ‘administrative’ aspects of Scottish Government–local government relations. In the absence of clear political philosophy or guidance, the civil service inevitably fills any policy vacuums. The continuance of the Home civil service model, the differing professional basis (generalist versus specialist) of central and local bureaucracy, creates and sustains distance. Early post-devolution research (Bennett et al. ) noted mutual distrust on the bureaucratic side of the central–local relationship, coupled with improvement on the political side. Shared Labour Party political connections and a degree of social policy consensus were undoubtedly a facilitator of trust and the development of shared policy processes and priorities from to . McConnell () notes a similar policy initiative in the local government field north and south of the border around the themes of best value, grant ring-fencing and the retention of business rates by the Scottish and UK governments. This seems a fair assessment—differences in structure, agenda, process, and output of local government were conditioned by a Scottish Executive led by the Labour Party that was largely in tune with the UK Labour Government in the broad parameters of policy (McGarvey ). Devolution did not fundamentally change the economic and constitutional environment of local government. It remained legally subordinate to Parliament, albeit (most directly) the new one in Edinburgh. Councils remain subject to much the same constitutional and statutory limitations on their autonomy. Treasury-driven UK government public expenditure policies as regards taxation and finance, implemented via the Scottish Government, allowed scope for expansion in the first decade of devolution but UK governments have retrenched expenditure since . As devolution (until recently) left the Scottish Government almost wholly reliant on a UK Treasury block grant, UK budgetary decisions still have important knock-on consequences for both Scottish central and local budgets. The existence of a Scottish Government and Parliament in Edinburgh has undoubtedly created more inclusive forums for politics and consultation and enhanced legislative scrutiny. It essentially opened up a new channel of access to decision-making. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities switched from a position of opposition to one of dialogue (though that switch perhaps pre-dated devolution). The Local Government in Scotland Act set out the same traditional role of local councils: providing services; regulation of taxis and licensed premises, and the like. However, it also gave emphasis to community leadership and strategic planning and setting out long-term objectives for their area, involving the bringing together of other agencies to promote overall well-being in an area. Councils are increasingly required to work alongside other public services such as transport, police, fire, and NHS authorities. In fields such as museums, leisure, and property maintenance they often establish
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arm’s-length external organizations (ALEOs) with some influence in their governance. Local councillors often are part of the boards of these bodies—the wider public would still think of the services they provide as ‘council’ services. Many post-devolution policy initiatives still reflect the pre-devolution centralizing tendencies. Whilst bureaucratic and professional control and guidance are more prevalent in the Scottish mode of governance than at the UK level, where these are mixed with market and more formal regulatory modes, the overall directive tendency remained. In the first eight years of devolution the Scottish Executive largely replicated the directive UK government approach of detailed regulation, monitoring, inspection and ring-fencing (though it did eschew the more extreme naming and shaming, takeover and direct interventions options). Initially, in , the incoming SNP minority Government reversed this approach, but in return councils had to agree to freeze council tax levels in exchange for financial compensation through an addition to their central funding grant. Gradually the ‘norm’ of centralization has become more evident with nationalization of police and fire services and the development of national policies in areas such as education. Between – and – the local government budget decreased . percentage points more than the Scottish Government budget. The squeeze has become more pronounced in recent years—since – the local government settlement has fallen . per cent in real terms whereas the Scottish Government has increased by . per cent (SPICe ). The Whitehall model of government has retained lingering influence postdevolution. Contrary to notions of Scottish differentiation, their remains within Scottish Government a strong streak of centralist philosophy consistent with traditional UK models of statecraft (Marsh and Hall ). Peter John has referred to this as, ‘contempt for local government by the London elite’ (: ). McAteer (: ) has noted that ‘narratives regarding the need for a strong central leviathan run deep within the British and indeed Scottish political psyches’. The Whitehall mind-set and understanding and interpretation of local government’s place in the polity has proved durable with the limitation of autonomy and a trend towards weaker local government still evident. The narrative is so dominant in public, media, civil servant, and political perceptions that few, beyond local political actors, ever question it. Devolution has strengthened public and media perceptions of local government’s place in the polity as secondary. Scottish politics is perceived through the media lens of centrally driven rhetoric and actions. News coverage is about the First Minister, the machinations of parties and their leaders in Parliament and Government. This undoubtedly shapes and influences the opinions of both the wider public and key political actors. A critical appraisal of devolution is that it has merely replaced governance by London’s centralist political elite by a newly empowered body of political elites in Edinburgh. As with the Scottish Office vis-à-vis UK government before devolution, access to central resources is often deemed to be of greater significance to local political actors than the gaining of enhanced policy autonomy. Over the decades central government
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has regulated localities with its toolkit of financial carrots and sticks. Much of the policy approach has been small ‘c’ conservative. For example, reform of local finance and taxation was on the agenda of the SNP for years whilst in opposition. In office, it failed to materialize beyond a nine-year freeze on council tax (when abolition was in the manifesto) and a few tinkering adjustments to council tax bands. Scotland’s local taxation system was introduced in and, nearly thirty years later, remains based on the property values in that year. Over the devolution period –, local government’s share of the Scottish Government’s budget has decreased from . per cent to . per cent, although much of the drop is explained by police and fire budgets dropping out of local government in –. If this change is accounted for the drop is actually only very marginal to . per cent. The scale of financial dependency remains broadly similar too. In –, . per cent of local government revenue expenditure came from the Scottish Government; in – it was . per cent; in – it reached . per cent (SPICe ). By any measure Scottish local government is financially dependent. These steady proportionate shares of overall public expenditure mask the profound effect of austerity on council budgets since . Council revenue funding has fallen in real terms by . per cent between / and /. Given that much of what local councils spend is relatively inelastic or even fixed (salaries, pensions, debt interest and repayment, leases) the impact of these cuts cannot be masked or absorbed in ‘efficiency savings’. The scope for autonomous local democratic decision-making has been lessened. Overall, years of expenditure retrenchment, tax freeze, central compliance, and accommodation have shifted the emphasis of their role from local government to local government—a movement from an autonomous institution responsible for the governance of a particular locality, to one responsible for the implementation of national government policies. Consideration of local governments as institutions of effective democratic governors of their locales has been diminished in favour of a conception that gives emphasis to its service delivery role with policies and priorities driven by the Scottish Government.
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.................................................................................................................................. Since the s local democracy has been dominated by political parties, who rapidly displaced local parties and independents, a process that started as early as the inter-war years in the cities. In the Highlands and Islands, however, independents remain important. Scottish local elections are a pluralistic and disaggregated collection of contests with an eclectic mix of party successes and failures. Diversity has been accentuated since the introduction of the single transferable vote (STV) in . This replaced the previous single member plurality system where one member would be elected to represent a geographic ward—this was essentially the
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House of Commons constituency-based ‘First-Past-The-Post’ electoral system in miniature. STV was introduced on the recommendation of the Kerley Commission, a group created by the Labour–Liberal Democrat Scottish Executive coalition after the first Scottish Parliament elections in . STV involves three- or four-member wards and preference voting in which voters mark a against their first preference, against the second and so on. STV involves voting for individual candidates, it tends to result in more proportional representation, fewer wasted votes and allows more scope for minority party representation. STV has opened up town halls and chambers to a broader set of elected representatives. It has more accurately converted parties’ share of the vote into seats on councils. The geographic variance of Scotland’s electorate and the fluidity of party competition is reflected in the political governance of Scotland’s localities today. Since the introduction of STV, single party majority control of council chambers is almost non-existent with a multitude of coalition combinations in evidence. Minority and coalition politics is the new norm in Scotland’s council chambers. It is possible to identify almost all coalition governing formations amongst the mainstream parties since (see Table .). In the early years of devolution, local elections occurred on the same day as Scottish Parliament elections. They were, however, largely overshadowed and forgotten. The Arbuthnott Commission recommended their de-coupling from . This de-coupling brings its own issues. Local electoral turnout has gone down and often local elections are not reported as these disaggregated separate contexts in Scotland’s cities, towns, suburbs, countryside, and islands. Instead they are a preview, a sideshow or barometer of a forthcoming ‘first- or second-order’ election for Parliament in Edinburgh or London. They tend to be reported through either the Scottish or UK ‘national’ lens with projections given of Scottish and UK Parliament representation. The most glaring fact to be reported about Scottish local elections is that consistently the largest group of ‘voters’ are those who choose not to bother. Turnout at Scottish local elections is consistently below per cent. At the local elections it was . per cent at the height of a period of heightened political consciousness (a UK General Election had just been called by then Prime Minister Theresa May). This weakens the political legitimacy of councils claiming to represent the expressed wishes of their electorate. This indicator of electorate apathy does tend to make councils more vulnerable than other institutions to cutback and retrenchment during times of austerity. They fail to hold the same public appeal as bodies such as the NHS and police. The introduction of STV, in combination with a falling share of the vote, has weakened Labour in local government post-. The SNP have replaced Labour as the largest party in Scottish local government but they are not in a position of dominance in any local authority. Labour has votes at each election between and , though it did tend to retain a sizeable presence in many councils in central Scotland. After , the Conservatives recovered to be a sizeable presence in most council chambers, overtaking the Labour Party. The Liberal Democrats remained on the fringes in much of Scotland though retaining significant presence in their
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Table 29.1 Political Control of Scotland’s Local Councils (2018) Council
Administration
Aberdeen Aberdeenshire Angus Argyll & Bute Edinburgh Clackmannanshire Comhairle nan Eilean Siar Dumfries & Galloway Dundee East Ayrshire East Dunbartonshire East Lothian East Renfrewshire Falkirk Fife Glasgow Highland Inverclyde Midlothian Moray North Ayrshire North Lanarkshire Orkney Perth & Kinross Renfrewshire Scottish Borders Shetlands South Ayrshire South Lanarkshire Stirling West Dunbartonshire West Lothian
Conservative, Independent Conservative, Liberal Democrats, Independent Coalition Independent, Conservative, Liberal Democrat Conservative, Liberal Democrats, Independent SNP, Labour SNP Minority Independent Labour, SNP SNP, Independent SNP Minority Conservative, Liberal Democrats Labour Minority SNP, Independent, Labour SNP Minority SNP, Labour SNP Minority Independents, Liberal Democrats, Labour Labour Minority Labour Minority SNP Minority Labour minority Labour Minority Independents Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Independent SNP Minority Conservative, Independents Independent SNP, Labour, Independent working arrangement SNP Minority SNP, Labour SNP, Independent SNP, Independent
Source: http://www.cosla.gov.uk/councils/political-control.
heartlands such as the Borders, Highlands, Argyll & Bute, Aberdeenshire, and parts of suburban Scotland. Scotland’s ‘left behind’ areas have, to date, been immune from the populist charms of UKIP. The independent councillor tradition remains alive and well in large tracts of the islands, highlands, and southern rural Scotland. Table . highlights the extent of independent influence in councils throughout Scotland. There has been no Scottish empirical research into the impact of party political affiliation and control on the actual outputs of Scottish local councils. One suspects the impact would be somewhat marginal as Scotland’s mainstream political parties do not have significantly different ways of ‘doing’ local government. There is a high degree of
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Table 29.2 Local Elections and Parties, 2017 Party
Seats
SNP Conservative Labour Independents Liberal Democrat Green Other
431 276 262 169 66 19 4
Source: Author’s own compilation.
consensus around the basic parameters of what a local council should do. Coalition and minority party control is the new norm and that inevitably means bargaining and compromise. Key initiatives such as Community Planning Partnerships and a commitment to reducing inequalities enjoy multi-party support (Mitchell ). All agree on the Christie Commission’s () emphasis on engaging in collaborative approaches which emphasize prevention, although there are inevitable conflicts over the practicalities of prioritization and delivery (Chapter in this Handbook). Preventative measures are those that involve collaborative initiatives aimed at reducing Scotland’s cycle of deprivation and low aspiration and reduce longer-term pressures on services such as health care, social services and the judiciary. Such initiatives tend to enjoy cross-party support in councils. The party differences that do exist probably stem more from the legacy of long-term incumbency on the part of many Labour majority-run councils than fundamental differences. As Mitchell () notes, the parties tend to argue for decentralization when in opposition nationally, then revert to the centralizing norm when in power. Within local councils, politicians in leadership positions are increasingly being asked to fulfil a community leadership function. The theory is that elected members should set the public policy outcomes, such as health improvements, reducing inequalities, attainment in schools, that they are seeking to achieve; then agree strategic and delivery plans to deliver those outcomes and then delegate delivery to those within the council and/or new bodies charged with delivering them. This is a very managerialist conception of the role of political leadership. Politicians are there to set overarching political objectives and ‘manage the local state’. It resonates with the psephology literature on Scottish Parliament elections which increasingly has as its orthodoxy the idea that the Scottish voter is concerned more with leadership, performance, and competence than ideological positions (Carman et al. ; Johns and Mitchell ). This is consistent with the non-ideological, practical, pragmatic approaches of some local council leadership groups. In recent decades with the extent of the stripping of local powers and autonomy, that there is an element of structural de-politicization in Scottish local government. In , McConnell (: ) suggested, ‘the subterranean
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relationships between councillors, party groups and officers should be our real focus if we wish properly to understand who holds power over local decisions’. This is undoubtedly true but one must be aware of the limiting context within which local political actors operate. They are, in essence, managing the marginal differences of Scottish local politics. STV, in collapsing single party local councils, has changed the character of that local politics. It dealt a blow to the machine politics associated with brokerage and clientelism that were common in councils dominated by the Labour Party. The old Labour Party machine in areas like Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire was no longer capable of delivering unchallengeable majorities in a context of proportional representation, multi-member wards, and a resurgent Scottish National Party. Local Labour Party machine politics tended to deliver a form of politics based on internal party factions and apparatchiks with little transparency to outsiders and consistent accusations of nepotism and cronyism. The lack of external accountability inevitably led to charges of corruption (Hassan and Shaw : –). The late Ian Bell gave a scathing account in , the Labour Party was ‘scarcely accountable, rarely transparent, rank with nepotism, cronyism and freeloading’ with Labour councillors depending on local government for their livelihoods (cited in Hassan and Shaw : ). More recently, the creation of ALEOs in areas such as leisure, parking, culture, and maintenance were often overseen by boards of councillors receiving additional pay who were dependent on the patronage of the council leader. STV however has not had much impact on the demography of councillors. They remain largely unchanged from their pre-devolution counterpart—women, the working class, and the young remain under-represented (Kerley and McGarvey ; Chapter in this Handbook). Despite STV, Scotland’s councillors are a long way from a microcosmic representation of the population. Scottish local government has continued with what could be termed a tradition of invisible local political leadership post-devolution. The leaders of Scotland’s councils are largely anonymous outwith (and often within) their own council areas. There are no Scottish equivalent of elected mayors—local politicians that carry a broader regional or national political profile. Very few can name their council leader and even the political leaders of Scotland’s large cities have little national profile.
T W S L G
.................................................................................................................................. Since the post-war expansion of the welfare state, when Scottish local government was a key beneficiary of finance and manpower, it has gradually lost its status. Pervasive narratives about council waste, mismanagement, and poor efficiency condition the public mood about local government in Scotland. Reforms since then have tended to be focused on tackling its perceived failings whether they be in efficiency, effectiveness,
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bureaucracy, accountability, transparency, or the like. The relative institutional status of local government has been diminished. Devolution has somewhat shielded Scottish local government from the UK government agenda of modernization and marketization. Scotland’s ‘national world of local government’ of professional, public sector, and trade union interests carry more influence and this tends to be reflected in both policy process and output. The association (COSLA) representing local councils is far closer to the political centre of power than its English equivalents. There is a lubricant of geographical proximity in party political, regulatory, professional, and governmental networks between central and local political actors in Scotland (McGarvey a). This, along with the weakness of the Scottish Conservatives, has limited the impact of marketization and enhanced the differentiation between Scottish and UK government approaches. The agenda of Scottish local government has for the past two decades been dominated by the ideas of shared capacity, partnership, joint working, joint procurement, joint governance, and co-production. All these labels emphasize that local government must engage with external agencies in order to operate effectively. The sharing of services is based on the idea that in a fragmented, complex, and interconnected policy and service delivery environment, local councils rarely possess the capacity and wherewithal in any given policy area to act alone to achieve objectives (McGarvey ). Shared services and shared capacity are evident in services like roads, trading standards, scientific services, social work, and environmental health. In procurement, back office, and front-line services there has been aggregation through collaboration. More profoundly the Act compels local and health authorities to form partnerships in the field of social care (Chapters and in this Handbook). The ‘prevention agenda’ institutionalized by the Christie Commission () has, albeit slowly, transferred more council resources into services targeted at the local economy and employment, early years education, co-produced services with communities aimed at improving local area environment, and safer streets. These initiatives are designed to reshape education and health cultures and community resilience of Scotland’s communities. More recently, there has also been an agenda of rationalization and nationalization. Police and fire were transformed from regional to national bodies through the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act . National local government interests such as COSLA and professional associations in bodies such as teaching and social work remain close to the Scottish Government. Such national associations, one could argue, are willing to forego local autonomy in policymaking in return for an accentuated role in policy deliberation and development. Scottish local government remains a key deliverer of welfare state-related services. Many, such as education and social work, are universal. The welfare state was built and developed around notions of social solidarity, equal access, and citizenship. This delimited local government’s scope for autonomy. Although universal services need not necessarily be standardized, as often services tend to require local adaptation to the different contexts and localities in which they are delivered, the universalist philosophy
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does tend to be more suggestive of standardization than diversity. Post-devolution policies such as free personal care for the elderly, free prescriptions, free school meals are based on such philosophy. These policies highlight the extent to which the UK welfare state has been increasingly territorialized since . This should not be surprising—as McEwen () notes, the defence and promotion of the welfare state was a key part of the campaign for the establishment of a Scottish Parliament. Since Scottish politics has become increasingly self-contained with UK wide approaches increasingly eschewed in favour of ‘Scottish’ policies. The same philosophy of social solidarity lies at the heart of many of the services that local government and the NHS provide. In recent years non-statutory services in fields such as social services, housing, libraries, and leisure have come under increasing pressure from the agenda of austerity. Often these are exactly the type of services that can make the most difference in the prevention of difficult health and education problems in later life. They shape local environments and how individuals in a community see their place in Scottish society. This is despite the fact that Scottish local government is such an important funder, regulator, and commissioner in many policy areas such as transport, leisure, and social care. The vast bulk of Scottish councils sought to retain in-house provision of contracted services in the s and s. Despite waves of reform, there remains a durable political commitment to ‘in-house’ public sector service provision, though the form that it takes tends to be more partnership-oriented, collaborative, and flexible. There has been some consequent fragmentation of policymaking and politics, though councils still remain the default provider of many public services. That said, the commercial sector has enhanced its role in large-scale capital finance projects such as the building of schools and new facilities, and voluntary agencies have accentuated their role in social service provision. Local councils themselves have been disaggregated with a variety of arm’s-length enterprise organizations (ALEOs) taking over the management of local services. These have not been created for ideological reasons but, rather, to enhance flexibility, efficiency, focus, and economy (ALEOs have a different tax-status) within councils, and more clearly separate strategy from operations within the council structure. Although Scottish local government has been significantly less influenced by the agenda of marketization, competition, and choice in fields such as education and social care it has not been immune to the agenda of disaggregated restructuring. These and other developments are likely to raise questions about the role local government plays. It is to this question that we now turn.
T R L G
.................................................................................................................................. There is a strand of the UK local government literature that has sought not to describe, understand, and explain the place of local government but to justify, prescribe, and
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outline what its place ought to be (Jones and Stewart ; Pratchett and Wilson ). In Dilys Hill asserted: In Britain the legitimacy of local democratic institutions derives from philosophical and administrative traditions inherited from the nineteenth century. (: )
Fellows et al. () suggest that in the recent history of local government there has been a tendency to identify a problem and then a clear mechanical and structural solution to it. Reflections on the role and purpose of local government in mainstream Scottish politics are notable only for their absence. Much of the analysis of localities tends to be prefixed with the notion of ‘challenges’, ‘pressures’, and ‘demands’ (see, for example, Mair ). Local government is perennially viewed as a problem that needs some form of solution. The contrast with political discussion of the National Health Service is quite striking. Whilst the NHS is viewed as an inherently good public institution, local government is viewed through a more negative template and prism of thought. For example, a December poll indicated per cent of the Scottish public perceived standards in local government to have ‘gotten worse’—with only per cent suggesting improvement (What Scotland Thinks ). The present constitutional underpinning of local government outlined above feeds directly into a centralist understanding. The fact that Scottish local authorities were and are ‘created from above’ is reflected in the actuality of their functioning in that they tend to prioritize compliance with statutory service delivery and managerial governance over more localized democratic concerns. Central political actors view local government as instrumental in delivering many of their policy objectives. Often this leads directly into a path of establishing elaborate instruments of control in the name of efficiency and performance management. In Scotland, local councils in their everyday practice are fundamentally first and foremost about the delivery of a range of localized public services. They play a role in the co-ordination, delivery, and governance of services as well as the solving of complex societal problems. They can be transformative institutions in local communities with their services enhancing the well-being of local communities. As these services expanded (particularly over the course of the twentieth century) councils gradually evolved (or were compelled to create) more corporate governing structures. Service delivery orientation is reflected in much of the research in Scottish local government today. It is often not undertaken to explain and understand solely for the purpose of enlightenment, instead there is a practical orientation with much of the work commissioned by government bodies, charitable foundations, or voluntary agencies. Bodies such as the Improvement Service, Audit Scotland, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and Local Government Boundary Commission Scotland have published much research on local government but reflections on democratic participation, deliberation, and representation are secondary to concerns with efficiency and effectiveness or of conceptions of their role as agencies, or local implementing of centrally determined policies and priorities.
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Long-term trends of disaggregation and more eclectic forms of governance have tended to weaken local councils’ capacity to hold services to account in a political sense. The fragmented structures of local service delivery place some services beyond the immediate direct control of local councillors. Whilst oversight, monitoring, and regulatory activity remain possible, the capacity to influence and hold to account is more difficult. Local political actors in Scotland have been surprisingly acquiescent over the decades. This is perhaps indicative of the hierarchical structures of parties and the inducement of loyalties within them. Scottish central party machines have become more professional, top-down, and demanding of loyalty. Their power and influence over young party politicians with broader career aspirations is very real. There is a greater tendency for them to dictate the ‘appropriate’ behaviour of local parties (particularly over coalition formation). The relationship between parties and local councillors is an under-explored one, but it is difficult to find evidence against the notion that the political voice of localities has been somewhat muted. Scottish local councillors can play a role in linking citizens to power by representing, scrutinizing and giving voice to communities—they retain a significant degree of autonomy in shaping their role (Kerley and McGarvey ; McGarvey and Stewart ). It is perhaps time they rediscovered their wider political role.
C
.................................................................................................................................. This chapter has suggested local government to be a rather peripheral, niche, and neglected, feature of the Scottish political landscape today. In outlining the broader picture of local government’s constitutional standing, structure, and responsibilities, it has highlighted the durability of inherently centralized, pre-devolution institutional structures. Successive post-devolution Scottish Governments have been driven by rather conservative, risk-averse, politically pragmatic styles of governance. Despite a nationalist-led government for over a decade Scotland remains locked into a UK-derived internal constitutional framework, with central control the default political setting. The conventional UK constitutional paradigm of local subordination remains in place. This is underpinned by narratives of distrust and inefficiency of localities, with emphasis on centrally derived national Scottish policy standards and outcomes, universalism, and regulation. There is, of course, some logic in an SNP Government fostering a sense of Scottish collectivism and solidarity which naturally leads in the direction of nationalization. However, whilst it may secure enhanced democracy and accountability of Scottish government at the centre, it does not reverse the pre-devolution, locally debilitating trajectory of national accretion and centralization. Philosophically, Scottish local government remains rooted in British traditions associated with constitutional limitations and an emphasis on primary responsibilities of fiscal responsibility and fulfilling statutory duties over autonomy and responsiveness in local government. The SNP has, to date, been complicit in this. Their default
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political approach has been based around a cohesive Scottish ‘centre’ gaining ‘full powers’. This ‘becomes, without thinking, a narrative about the political centre of the country accruing yet more powers’ (Hassan and Barrow ). These give emphasis to effective and efficient service delivery over notions of local democracy, identity, and difference and have tended to result in the adoption and retention of very large, by comparative standards, structures of local democracy. The power of central Labour and SNP party machines, and the spread of their influence and oversight to councillors, has had a corrosive effect on the potential of an agenda of localism breaking out in Scottish local government. There are, however, murmurings of a change of direction. A local governance review launched in suggested the potential for some wider new conversations and reconsideration of local government’s place in Scottish politics. This review was to ‘consider how powers, responsibilities and resources are shared across national and local spheres of government’ (Scottish Government a). Mitchell (), a leading figure in the review, suggests scope for asymmetry, collaboration, and integration; subsidiarity, empowerment, and participation; local democratic accountability; and fiscal empowerment. Many of these are long-standing buzzwords and buzz phrases of reviews. Mitchell () himself acknowledges, ‘There is some cynicism in local government that this local governance review is the latest in a long list of reviews that lead to little change. The challenge for Scottish Government is to disprove this view.’ The review is suggestive of an acceptance that there will be increased pluralism and variation of decision-making structures across Scotland. The – programme for Government outlined an intention to ‘decentralise power to a more local level in Scotland and launch a comprehensive review of local governance ahead of a Local Democracy Bill later in this Parliament’ (Scottish Government b). The review has COSLA/Scottish Government joint oversight and seeks to consider local government’s place within the wider Scottish public sector. This is welcome—asking deeper and more politically challenging philosophical and normative questions about what devolved Scottish local democracy should look like is long overdue. If local government is to merit the title, it must do more than simply administer and implement Scottish Government policy. Scottish local councils also have broader responsibility for the present and future welfare, including the economic, social, and cultural vibrancy of the communities they serve. This requires co-ordination with other agencies—public, voluntary, and commercial—to enhance collective governance in localities.
R Bennett, M., Fairley, J., and McAteer, M. . Devolution in Scotland: The Impact on Local Government. York: York Publishing Services. Cairney, P. and McGarvey, N. . Scottish Politics, nd edition. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
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Carman, C., Johns, R., and Mitchell, J. . More Scottish Than British: The Scottish Parliament Election. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Christie Commission. . Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/commission-future-delivery-public-services/. Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy. . Final Report. Available at: https:// www.localdemocracy.info/news/final-report/. Copus, C., Roberts, M., and Wall, R. . Local Government in England: Centralisation, Autonomy and Control. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Fellows, K., Mitchell, J., and Muirhead, H. . ‘What is the Future of the Scottish Public Sector?’. Available at: https://www.lgiuscotland.org.uk////what-is-the-future-ofscottish-public-sector/. Greer, S. . ‘The Politics of Health Policy Divergence’, in J. Adams and K. Schmueker (eds), Devolution in Practice: Public Policy and Differences in the UK. Newcastle: IPPR. Hassan, G. and Barrow, S. . ‘The SNP, Modern Scotland and Power in Transition’, in G. Hassan and S. Barrow (eds), A Nation Changed? The SNP and Scotland Ten Years On. Edinburgh: Luath. Hassan, G. and Shaw, E. . The Strange Death of Labour Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hill, D. . Urban Policy and Politics in Britain. London: Red Globe Press. John, P. . ‘Why Study Urban Politics?’, in J.S. Davies and D.L. Imbroscio (eds), Theories of Urban Politics, nd edition. London: Sage. Johns, R. and Mitchell, J. . Takeover: Explaining the Extraordinary Rise of the SNP. London: Biteback. Jones, G. and Stewart, J. . The Case for Local Government (Local Government Briefings). London: Unwin Hyman. Keating, M. . Glasgow—The City That Refused to Die—The Politics of Urban Regeneration. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Kelly, J. . ‘The Curious Absence of Inter-Municipal Cooperation in England’, Public Policy and Administration, : –. Kerley, R. . Managing in Local Government. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kerley, R. and McGarvey, N. . Report: Councillors’ Roles and Workload. Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland. Edinburgh: LGBCS. Available at: http://www.lgbcscotland.gov.uk/publications. Laffin, M. . Professionalism and Policy: The Role of the Professions in the Central–Local Relationship. Aldershot: Gower. Mair, C. . ‘Why councils must keep decisions open and transparent’, Holyrood, March. Available at: https://www.holyrood.com/articles/comment/colin-mair-chief-executiveimprovement-service-why-councils-must-keep-decision. Marsh, D. and Hall, M. . ‘The British Political Tradition: Explaining the Fate of New Labour’s Constitutional Reform Agenda’, British Politics, /: –. McAteer, M. . ‘What Future for Local Democracy in Post-Referendum Scotland?’. Available at: https://paulcairney.files.wordpress.com///mark-mcateer--localgovernment-paper.pdf. McConnell, A. . Scottish Local Government. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. McEwen, N. . ‘State Welfare Nationalism: The Territorial Impact of Welfare State Development in Scotland’, Regional and Federal Studies, /: –.
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McGarvey, N. . ‘Intergovernmental Relations in Scotland Post-Devolution’, Local Government Studies, /: –. McGarvey, N. a. ‘Expectations, Assumptions and Realities: Scottish Local Government Post-Devolution’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, : –. McGarvey, N. b. ‘Inter-Municipal Co-operation: The United Kingdom Case’. Available at: http://www.regione.emilia-romagna.it/affari_ist/Rivista__/McGarvey.pdf. McGarvey, N. . ‘The Smith Commission, Top-Down Politics and Local Government’, in Beyond Smith: Contributions to the Continuing Process of Scottish Devolution. Edinburgh: Centre on Constitutional Change. McGarvey, N. . ‘Shared Services in Scotland’, Local Government Information Unit Scotland Briefing. Available at: https://www.lgiuscotland.org.uk/briefing/shared-servicesin-scotland/. McGarvey, N. . ‘The SNP and Local Government’, in G. Hassan and S. Barrow (eds), A Nation Changed? The SNP and Scotland Ten Years On. Edinburgh: Luath. McGarvey, N. and Stewart, F. . ‘The Role of the Councillor’, in R. Kerley, J. Liddle, and P. Dunning (eds.), Routledge Handbook of International Local Government. London: Routledge. Midwinter, A. . Local Government in Scotland. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Midwinter, A. and Mair, C. . Rates Reform: Issues, Arguments and Evidence. Edinburgh: Mainstream. Mitchell, J. . Governing Scotland: The Invention of Administrative Devolution. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Mitchell, J. . ‘Swift Read: Local Governance Review – The State of Play’, Local Government Information Unit Scotland (SLGIU) November. Available at: https://www. lgiuscotland.org.uk/briefing/swift-read-local-governance-review-the-state-of-play/. Pratchett, L. and Wilson, D. . Local Democracy and Local Government. London: Red Globe Press. Scottish Executive and COSLA. . Partnership and Covenant between Scottish Executive and Local Government. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Scottish Government and COSLA. . Concordat between the Scottish Government and Local Government. Available at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc//. pdf. Scottish Government. a. Local Governance Review. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/ policies/improving-public-services/local-governance-review/. Scottish Government. b. Local Governance Review letter: June . Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/local-governance-review-letter--june-/. SPICe. . Local Government Finance: Facts and Figures, –. Available at: http:// www.parliament.scot/ResearchBriefingsAndFactsheets/S/SB_-_Local_Government_ Finance_facts_and_figures_-.pdf. Stewart, J. . The Nature of British Local Government. Basingstoke: Macmillan. What Scotland Thinks. . Available at: http://whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/thinkingabout-local-government-in-scotland-do-you-think-that-standards-have-im#table.
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Two Decades of Co-operation, Competition, and Constitutional Change ......................................................................................................................
I: A S S
.................................................................................................................................. H more than one government inside the UK over the last two decades has been a shock to the British political system. Accustomed to centralized political power—inside Scotland, like the rest of the UK—politicians and institutions have struggled with the idea that government is multilevel and power more widely distributed. The system of intergovernmental relations (IGR) has not yet settled down into a stable equilibrium. Welsh devolution has been a constantly changing work in progress, and Northern Irish devolved government has been unstable. In Scotland since IGR, like the rest of Scottish politics, has been dominated by the independence question. Most recently, the whole UK polity has been destabilized by the European referendum, which shakes the constitutional architecture on which devolution was built. IGR between Westminster and Holyrood are asymmetric, ambiguous, and contested. Asymmetry is unavoidable given Scotland is less than one tenth of England’s size (even all three devolved nations comprise only per cent of the UK population) and because England has no remotely comparable decentralized institutions. Issues which are central to the ambitions of the Scottish Government may seem peripheral from the wider UK perspective, and the UK government struggles to distinguish clearly its English from its UK responsibilities. Relations are ambiguous because different perceptions of the Scotland–UK relationship and different views of sovereignty can be projected onto the institutions of devolution. Ambiguity can be constructive,
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allowing those with different political ambitions to work together, but differing implicit assumptions can also be a source of conflict. They are explicitly contested, mostly by the Scottish National Party’s aspiration for a separate Scottish state, so that exchanges ostensibly about IGR are actually about the case for or against independence. The implications of these deep structural questions are discussed later. Intergovernmental relations are not new to the UK, but such historical models as there were—the Stormont parliament from , and local government—were clearly not suitable for devolution. The second section of this chapter describes the stuttering development of bilateral relations and multilateral joint ministerial committees, the formal intergovernmental machinery. At the outset the latter struggled to find a role, but have recently been the formal locus for increasingly difficult discussions about Brexit. They nevertheless provide an authorizing framework for daily co-operation between officials and the bilateral management of individual issues, some examples of which are given later. Whether having a single British civil service, with common values and recruitment standards is an important part of these relations is an open question. Identifying the flow of territorial funding is an excellent guide to understanding power relationships. In any state with multilevel government ‘vertical fiscal transfers’ from central to sub-state institutions are inevitable: tax is better managed over large areas, and spending in smaller ones. This has been very obviously true for Scotland in the UK, where devolution was initially financed solely through Treasury grants. The Scottish Government has a particular relationship with the Treasury, distinct from wider intergovernmental relations. All IGR shows signs of path dependence, but the Treasury relationship would be very familiar to those who knew it before devolution. Many of the most important issues between governments have been dealt with outwith formal, multilateral, machinery. This is most notably true of changes to the devolution settlements themselves. The Welsh Assembly government has for twenty years pursued a dogged path of incremental changes to the initially unsatisfactory settlement, via multiple referendums. In Scotland, changes—mainly to increase the taxation powers of Holyrood—were the stuff of high politics, and very detailed bilateral intergovernmental negotiation. Much can reasonably be claimed as successful intergovernmental working, although the implications of Brexit have proved less tractable. Politics is about the management of difference, so IGR will not simply be a matter of one government or another getting its way, or of successful compromises. Much pointless effort has been devoted to unworkable schemes of conflict resolution. Conflict and political competition are inherent in government. In the end, disagreements are expected and sometimes welcome, even if that leads to stalemate. The voters may then resolve the matter one way or another. Nevertheless, the framework of IGR has an unfinished feel to it, like the territorial constitution as a whole. It will certainly change, in the longer run, as a result of Brexit, and the later sections of this chapter explore the implications of that.
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U, F C U I R
.................................................................................................................................. The United Kingdom is famously a union state (Rokkan and Unwin ), one formed by the union of pre-existing countries, whilst retaining some of the pre-union institutions. This is not federalism, but from the perspective of Edinburgh–London relations, the UK has much of the look and feel of a federal country, with institutions reflecting both self-rule and shared rule. Indeed, the institutions of self-rule in Scotland are in many respects stronger than in some federal states, especially now tax powers have been devolved. (See McLean et al. () for comparisons of spending and tax decentralization.) So it may help to compare London/Edinburgh IGR to federal experience. Various models have been described in the literature (Watts ). Dual federalism imagines a world in which two levels of government simply operate independently of one another. At the other extreme, ‘coercive’ federalism is used to describe a system in which central government uses its legal or economic power to bend states or provinces to its will. This has sometimes been used to characterize relations between Washington and US states, but it might equally fairly be used to describe relations between central and local government in Scotland since . The contrast most commonly invoked, however, is between ‘competitive’ and ‘co-operative’ federalism. Co-operative federalism might be a normative expectation— different levels of government should work together using their complementary powers for the benefit of citizens (Calman ). Competitive federalism envisages both economic and political competition between different levels of government, and different states or provinces, notably where powers overlap. Political competition may be most obvious where federal states face secessionist movements, as in Québec or Catalonia. The starkest model of economic competition is the idea of Tiebout () sorting, when different parts of a jurisdiction offer different mixtures of taxation and spending to attract citizens or companies who prefer them. Such abstract economic notions of competition are obscured in the reality of governments seeking to present themselves to voters, but as we shall see, as the powers of the Scottish Parliament have widened, the scope for competition has increased. Devolution in a Union state, however, involves a particular set of legal, constitutional foundations which condition IGR and the means of co-operation or competition. The Scotland Act , which created the Scottish Parliament, conferred wide legislative powers: anything not specifically reserved to Westminster is devolved (a model now finally being followed for Wales). They are otherwise substantially constrained only by European Union law (for now), and the European Convention on Human Rights. The courts can strike down Scottish legislation which outwith devolved competence. Giving Holyrood power to legislate, however, did not remove Westminster’s power.
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Quite the opposite: the Act explicitly confirmed Westminster’s untrammelled right to legislate. This has given rise to the Sewel Convention about when Westminster might legislate on devolved matters, on which surprisingly much hangs, including much of the substance of IGR—providing, as we shall see, opportunities for both co-operation and conflict. By contrast, the legal transfer of devolved power to Scottish ministers is complete, so that the UK government retains no power to act on devolved matters. In contrast with many federal countries, there are few concurrent powers (none of much significance hitherto). This too has consequences. In some respects, it eases relations, on the principle that good fences make good neighbours. Seldom, if ever, have the two governments been in dispute about using ministerial powers on the same matter. Conversely, this strong separation—like a dual federalism—meant less need for regular intergovernmental contact, which may have contributed to the desuetude of formal intergovernmental machinery during the early years of devolution. Overlapping legislative power, however, creates an obvious need for co-ordination. During the passage of the Scotland Act, the then Scottish Office minister Lord Sewel enunciated the principle which still bears his name: the government ‘hoped a convention would develop under which Westminster would not normally legislate on devolved matters without devolved consent’. As it has turned out, Westminster legislation on devolved matters with devolved consent has been big business since then, and the mechanics of the remarkable intergovernmental co-operation involved are discussed later. This was placed on a statutory footing in the Scotland Act , which amended the Act by acknowledging: it is recognised that the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament.
The same Act also declared the Scottish Parliament to be a permanent feature of the UK constitution. The convention has another aspect relating not strictly to legislation on devolved matters, but to legislation affecting the powers of the Scottish Parliament. This developed by analogy with the principle that, since Orders in Council under the Scotland Act altering the parliament’s powers required devolved consent, so too should changes to those powers made by primary legislation. It is set out in administrative guidance, not statute. For a Scottish government this convention is a vital tool in negotiations about devolved powers: as we see later, by threatening to withhold consent the Scottish Government secured amendments to both the Scotland Act and the fiscal framework for the Scotland Act . Withholding consent, however, did not achieve the result the Scottish Government sought in the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. Interventions by the Scottish and Welsh governments in the case of Miller (in which the Supreme Court agreed the government needed statutory authority to give notice to withdraw from the European Union) enabled the court to say that the Sewel Convention was a
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political not a legal requirement—‘policing of its scope and the manner of its operation does not lie within the constitutional remit of the judiciary’ (Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, ) and as a result made it easier for UK ministers to override it. This complex legal structure is susceptible to different political interpretations. The Scottish Parliament may be merely a creature of Westminster statute, able to be abolished at its whim and (slightly to misquote Dicey’s jibe about the Act of Union¹) have no more constitutional status than the General Dental Council. Or Holyrood may be the present embodiment of the Scottish nation’s ‘claim of right’ to decide its own form of government, and perhaps the early stage of a sovereign Scottish parliament. Indeed, the idea of sovereignty bedevils intergovernmental relations in the UK. Most obviously, arguments about the sovereignty of Scotland have dominated Scottish political discourse for decades. Every intergovernmental issue is seen through that lens, and every disagreement is potential ammunition for a constitutional project. As it happens, the Supreme Court has addressed just how sovereign the Scottish Parliament is in some detail, in the case of AXA (AXA General Insurance Limited v The Lord Advocate, ). The court carefully distinguished the status of the Scottish Parliament from that of Westminster and that of a mundane public body. It was not sovereign like Westminster (though the judges went out of their way to point out that Westminster sovereignty was not always beyond the reach of legal challenge) but its powers were full within its competence, and its legislation required no justification other than the will of the democratically accountable parliament. Careful legal parsing, however, cuts little political ice. Nationalist demands for future Scottish sovereignty are easily conflated with assertions of present sovereignty. Conversely, ill-understood ideas of Westminster sovereignty remain implicit in the minds of many UK politicians and officials. The notion of parliamentary sovereignty was essentially a transfer of power from the Monarch alone to the Crown-in-Parliament in the so-called glorious Revolution of . At its extreme, as presented by Dicey at the height of Empire, it became equivalent to the idea that parliament, and perhaps government, was able to do anything it wanted. That was never of course true, and today commentators such as Bogdanor () can assert that the rule of law, not parliamentary sovereignty, is the key principle of the British constitution. In part, that may be because Parliament’s sovereignty has gradually been shared, not just with the courts, but with the EU and the devolved legislatures. But it also reflects the reality that parliament has accepted other constraints—sometimes in ways which are formally consistent with unbridled sovereignty, such as allowing the courts to declare legislation incompatible with the European Convention, but not overturn it (in contrast with the Scottish Parliament’s position). But realizing devolution is an effective constraint on parliamentary sovereignty is a lesson which each generation of ministers and officials in Whitehall seems to have to learn anew. ¹ ‘[N]either the Act of Union with Scotland nor the Dentists Act, , has more claim than the other to be considered a supreme law’ (Dicey ).
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Countries which, unlike the UK, have codified constitutional documents setting out the different powers of state and federal governments may have a clearer formal understanding of these issues. In practice, however, the interpretation of such constitutional text (via litigation) might produce at least as much uncertainty about powers and outcomes. Indeed, the inflexible application of the text can make conflict much harder to avoid or resolve, as can be seen in the conflict between Spain and Catalonia. In the absence of a Philadelphia moment—a completely fresh start like US independence—for the UK, a new, comprehensive, codified constitution is in any event out of reach. Whether anything more could be done on ‘entrenchment’—establishing Holyrood’s status independently of the views of the Westminster Parliament of the day—and what that might mean for intergovernmental relations remains an open question.
M C-
.................................................................................................................................. Whatever the constitutional framework, governments do have to work together. The boundary between devolved and reserved responsibilities has been surprisingly well defined. This is an example of the path dependence seen throughout devolution. The competences of the Scottish Parliament were (and still largely are) defined by the administrative responsibilities of the pre-devolution Scottish Office. These had grown over the twentieth century, incrementally, so that by they comprised most domestic policy in Scotland, other than taxation, macroeconomic policy, and social security. Over the same period, relatively clear delineations of responsibility between government departments had emerged, and the devolved bodies inherited them. So devolution was achieved with minimal disruption: a Scottish Executive and parliament appeared to leap into existence, fully formed, in because the profound constitutional change of devolution in practice comprised adding domestic political accountability and legislative competence to a pre-existing government structure. And also as a consequence, the new Scottish administration inherited a network of official (and, due to the initial party-political congruence, political) relationships of co-operation. Intragovernmental relations segued into intergovernmental relations. In consequence, much IGR even today still happens below the political radar. Examples are mundane but important, usually managed at official level. NHS pay and conditions remain largely similar, and governments work together, despite some divergences in pay rates, to negotiate settlements. Patients cross borders to receive NHS treatment, and prisoners are transferred between jurisdictions. Some regular cooperation has involved ministers. For example, the need to work together within an EU framework meant that agriculture and fisheries ministers established a regular series of meetings to hammer out UK positions on EU negotiations. And despite disagreements over precedence, Scottish ministers sometimes formed part of the UK delegation to Brussels.
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The most remarkable example of effective intergovernmental co-operation is how the Sewel Convention has worked in practice. Since , the UK government has shared bilaterally with the Scottish Government, in advance, its draft legislation to identify points on which legislative consent from Holyrood might be required, just as UK departments used to share their draft Bills with the Scottish Office. Often this deals with minor tidying-up issues, but can also be a deliberate choice by both governments to deal with a topic in one piece of legislation, in Westminster but with Holyrood’s consent. Early examples include the Proceeds of Crime Act , which had almost as many Scottish as England and Wales clauses. As a result, Westminster legislation on devolved matters has been surprisingly frequent since . The practice did not change radically with the election of an SNP administration in , though its use declined in recent years, perhaps in part because of the decline in the number of bills passed at Westminster. Table . shows the number of legislative consent motions carried in the Scottish Parliament each year. Most of these are routine: the few subject to significant political attention are discussed later. Largely unstructured bilateral relationships can cope with some highly politically sensitive issues. For example, Abdelbasset Al Megrahi was given up for trial by the then Libyan government and convicted in a Scottish court of multiple murder over the Lockerbie air disaster and imprisoned in Scotland. Ten years later, Prime Minister Blair visited Tripoli to agree new forms of co-operation with the then Libyan regime, including over judicial matters. The Libyans wanted this to cover prisoner transfers (common in such agreements) with a view to getting Megrahi back. UK ministers could sign such an agreement, despite Scottish ministers’ objections, but could not release the prisoner: that was a devolved responsibility. These proprieties were carefully observed in a series of bilateral official and political discussions, and in the event the Scottish
Table 30.1 Legislative Consent Motions since 1999 Session 1999–2003 2003–2007 2007–2008 2008–2009 2009–2010 2010–2012 2012–2013 2013–2014 2014–2015 2015–2016 2016–2017 2017–2018
Number of legislative consent motions 41–approximately 10 per annum 36–9 per annum 10 11 10 13 13 11 7 4 9 7
Source: Scottish Parliament, www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/ Bills/31308.aspx.
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minister chose not to transfer him but to release him on compassionate grounds, on the basis he only had months to live.² Such informal deal making does not, however, demonstrate clearly that there is effective IGR. It is not enough, for devolved politicians especially, to point to individual transactions with the centre. Something more formal and structured was needed, and was set up in . The mechanism chosen was joint ministerial committees (JMCs). These multilateral bodies were established administratively under a memorandum of understanding between the UK and devolved governments,³ with no legal standing or statutory backing. The model was the committees of the UK Cabinet (indeed, some devolved ministers initially thought existing Cabinet committees might just become joint between the different governments). Membership included all the devolved administrations and they were serviced by the UK Cabinet Office and the devolved administrations together. A plenary joint ministerial committee was to be chaired by the Prime Minister or his or her representative, and various subcommittees were set up. Joint ministerial committees got off to a very poor start. The plenary met only a few times before , when it stopped entirely. Initial subcommittees, such as on health, did not last due to a lack of understanding of the purpose they served. By the end of , JMCs had fallen into desuetude, with one exception. The JMC (Europe) was effectively the continuation of the previous Cabinet committee in which UK European policy on subjects such as agriculture, fisheries, or other EU issues was hammered out, and it continued to meet at least three times a year in advance of European Council of Ministers’ meetings. This went on from until the Brexit vote; it has recently been supplemented by the fractious committee discussing the terms of EU withdrawal. Another exception was regular finance minister meetings (covered more later). After the election of an SNP administration in Scotland in the joint ministerial committees were revived, in slightly different formats. The plenary joint ministerial committee was supported by an all-purpose Domestic committee chaired by a UK Cabinet minister. After a slow start, these committees settled into a sporadic working pattern, later enlivened by the new committee on European relations. Table . shows the frequency of meetings since . It seems the JMC (Domestic) is now in abeyance, another illustration of the ad hoc administrative nature of these structures. Joint ministerial committees—notably the plenary—are occasions for show and for politics. This is an important part of their purpose. Statements made after them tend to emphasize the fact of the meeting, and acknowledge the issues of the day—in , for example, concentrating on the financial crisis—but will usually record points of disagreement or current dispute, most recently over Europe. To say so is not to criticize them: politics is about the management of disagreement, and much international diplomacy is exactly like this. For the devolved administrations, JMCs represent opportunities to express disagreement with the UK government, or sometimes to
² Megrahi died some years later in Libya. ³ The most recent version of this is at Cabinet Office ().
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Table 30.2 Joint Ministerial Committee meetings, 2007–2010 et seq. Year
JMC
JMC(D)
JMC(E)
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
0 1 1 1 [1]
0 0 2 2 [0]
4 4 4 4 [1]
Source: Author’s own compilation.
claim success through negotiation. Inevitably, they matter much more politically to the devolved than to the UK government. JMCs provide ‘top cover’ for dialogue between officials of the different administrations. Devolved officials can use the possibility of JMC discussion as a warning to their colleagues of political problems which will need resolution. Initially this leveraged existing official relationships, and the common culture and values of the home civil service. Twenty years after devolution, the idea of the shared UK home civil service as part of the ‘glue’ which maintains relationships between the devolved administrations and the UK seems less plausible (Chapter in this Handbook). There is one further formal locus for IGR, the British-Irish Council. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Council of the Isles’, this body was set up as part of the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, and brings together not merely the UK government and the devolved bodies, but the government of the Republic of Ireland and representatives of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. To describe it as a talking shop is not necessarily a criticism: it has no substantial executive responsibilities (although unlike the JMCs it has its own secretariat) but provides an opportunity for ministerial dialogue.
IGR T F
.................................................................................................................................. The joint ministerial machinery does not deal with territorial finance. The Treasury still regards money as uniquely its business, and conducts its own streams of IGR, some multilaterally, some bilaterally. In recent years, with the extension of Scottish tax powers, engagement has been markedly more complex and has involved HM Revenue and Customs as well as the Treasury. Funding is where path dependence from predevolution arrangements is at its most evident. The UK is still using the Barnett formula, developed in the s and s to deal with the budgets of the Scottish Office and the other territorial departments of government (Chapter in this Handbook). Barnett is remarkably simple. The vast majority of the Scottish budget (referred
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to, tellingly, as the Scottish Government’s ‘departmental expenditure limit’) is determined by changing the inherited ‘baseline’ budget by a population share of the change to the budgets in comparable English (sometimes English and Welsh) departments. This shows how devolved finance is still intimately linked with the financing of the UK government itself. A system which funded a department of the UK government now funds a separate government, and an administrative measure inside government has become an intergovernmental arrangement. A working agreement between officials has evolved into something close to a constitutional principle, embodied in increasingly detailed Treasury statements of funding policy, applying to all three devolved administrations. Recently these have been updated and published in each triennial spending review. The last can be found in HM Treasury (). The key moment in this change was when the White Paper, Scotland’s Parliament (HM Government ) promised that the Barnett formula would be retained after devolution. This was only possible because throughout the s and s it had been progressively extended to cover most of the Scottish Office budget, and had been increasingly recognized as advantageous to Scotland. The second striking characteristic is the simplicity of a formula which relates only to the inherited levels of spending and the relative population of Scotland: it pays no attention to Scotland’s revenue raising capabilities nor its assessed spending needs. So no elaborate procedure is required to assess relative spending need and tax capacity, such as is big intergovernmental business in Australia. No other country uses anything remotely like the Barnett formula. But most striking of all from an IGR perspective is that the grant calculated under the formula is transferred to the Scottish Government to spend without any conditions attached. Money is split between capital and revenue, but it is not hypothecated to any particular service or purpose. The UK government transfers tens of billions of pounds each year to the Scottish Government (in the language of fiscal federalism, a ‘vertical fiscal transfer’—from one level of government to another) without seeking any say whatsoever over how it is spent. Once again, no other country does this. Understandably, national or federal politicians, who attract the opprobrium of raising the taxes, usually want some of the credit for how the money is spent. Watts () gives the examples of the US, Austria, Switzerland, and Spain where the conditional proportions of federal fiscal transfers were respectively , , , and per cent. This is path dependence in operation. There was no need to hypothecate before devolution, and little thought was given to it immediately at the transition. The Scottish constitutional debate on ‘fiscal autonomy’ for Holyrood takes this extraordinary fiscal autonomy for granted. The final remarkable characteristic of the Barnett formula is its result: over the period of devolution it has ensured that Scottish devolved expenditure is approximately per cent higher than equivalent spending in England (Gallagher ). This is, in the language of fiscal federalism, a ‘horizontal fiscal transfer’—a transfer of resources from one part of the UK’s territory to another—amounting to about per cent of Scottish GDP. It grew rather than was designed and is in large measure due to the relative
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population decline of Scotland compared to England, and to some extent the leverage which threats of nationalism gave Scottish ministers (before and after devolution) in Treasury negotiations. It has sometimes been justified as recognition of the additional revenue which accrued to the UK from North Sea oil, which would have been part of Scottish revenue had the country been independent, but there is no formal connection between the two. As a result of its great simplicity, Barnett itself does not require the elaborate negotiation of budgets often seen in federal countries. It nevertheless throws up issues which require intergovernmental discussion, as do the arrangements for the management of the much smaller expenditure which is not included in the formula but is managed annually—such as some public service pension payments. So finance has its own set of intergovernmental arrangements, including a multilateral series of meetings between Treasury ministers, usually the Chief Secretary, and devolved finance ministers, known as the Finance Ministers Quadrilateral. These have been a regular, often low-key, feature of intergovernmental relations since . Here again, these provide an opportunity for the devolved administrations to raise grievances, and make political points, but much of the work is relatively mundane. Devolution finance has however recently changed, and is changing further. Following the reports of the Calman and Smith Commissions, the Scottish Parliament now has very substantial tax-raising powers, mainly over income tax. A number of other small taxes have been devolved to add to Holyrood’s existing portfolio of council tax and non-domestic rates. This, too, has required new intergovernmental machinery, in this case bilateral rather than multilateral, under the title of Joint Exchequer Committees (one for Scotland and one for Wales). Each of these committees meets several times a year, as need be, but usually without fanfare. Implementation of the income tax powers requires co-operation between HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the Scottish Government. HMRC is a nonministerial department, and official level relations are overseen in the Joint Exchequer Committee. For some years, Edinburgh paid a small fee to HMRC to maintain the tax powers which the Scottish Parliament had in (to vary the basic rate of income tax by p in the pound) but there was little serious prospect of any administration using them. Indeed, at one point the SNP administration stopped making this payment, and abandoned even this small tax power. With the wider Calman and Smith powers, serious efforts were made to identify Scottish taxpayers, and to ensure employers and others could discharge their obligations under the new system. The first changed Scottish tax rates became effective in , and seem to have worked smoothly: another unheralded example of effective intergovernmental co-operation. Disputes about the design of the new fiscal system to support tax devolution—in short how much the grant calculated under the Barnett formula is reduced to take account of the new stream of income Holyrood will receive from devolved taxes—were, however, much more challenging, and almost led to the Scottish Government turning down new tax powers by refusing Sewel consent to the relevant Bill. In the event, they were able to secure agreement from the Treasury that if there was any relative decline in
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Scotland’s population compared to England, the grant would be increased to make up the resultant shortfall in tax income. This showed very clearly that they fully understood how generous the Barnett formula was (Gallagher ). The Smith Commission also proposed assigning half of the revenue from value added tax in Scotland to the Scottish budget (so that it could be seen that at least half of the Scottish Parliament’s revenues were coming from its ‘own resources’) and reducing the grant accordingly. This calculation has not yet been done, and is likely to prove even more challenging than its income tax equivalent. Overall, the financial arrangements for the Scottish Parliament are unique by international standards: there is no hypothecation of vertical fiscal transfers; no reference to spending need in calculating those transfers, and little heed paid to taxable capacity in determining the overall amount, rather than how it will change from year to year. As a result, IGR needs have been light and finance has not been the flashpoint that one might have expected for disputes between governments. As devolution develops, however, and the significance of the inherited elements of the system gradually declines, the complexity of tax-raising and allocation increases, and new funding mechanisms are needed post-Brexit, relationships could become more complex.
T IGR C C
.................................................................................................................................. John Smith famously declared devolution was the ‘settled will’ of the Scottish people, but devolution has been anything but settled. Since , the powers of the Scottish Parliament have repeatedly been extended, sometimes incrementally, and sometimes in moments of high political drama, with intense, mostly bilateral, negotiations, largely outside formal IGR processes. Like the changes made for Wales and Northern Ireland, this has been a response to the individual circumstances of Scotland, rather than a measured UK strategy to develop the territorial constitution. The Scotland Act provides a procedure for changing devolved powers by secondary legislation, but of the most exalted sort, Orders in Council, made by the Monarch with the agreement of both Houses of Parliament and Holyrood itself. It is therefore a co-operative process, like a range of other Scotland Act orders, such as those adjusting reserved law in the wake of devolved legislation. Numerous orders have been made, notably in the early years of devolution, some minor but others of substance, such as giving the Scottish Government the power to run the rail franchising system in . This day-to-day co-operation between administrations is largely mediated at official level. Bigger changes to devolved powers, however, have been made by primary legislation. The convention has been followed that changes to devolved powers require Holyrood’s consent, but the processes in each case have been much more complex and multilayered than simple intergovernmental discussion and a Sewel motion. The two biggest changes—following the Calman and Smith commissions, and the resulting Scotland
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Acts of and respectively—have been responses to the electoral success of the SNP, and the outcome of the independence referendum. These required co-operation, but were also prime examples of political competition. Each of the two commissions was an unusual mix of governmental and party political. Calman was set up on the initiative of the Scottish Parliament (when the SNP was in a minority) but with the co-operation of the UK government. Opposition Parties were represented (the SNP declined to join), as were a range of civil society stakeholders. It was a deliberative body, producing two substantial reports informed by analysis and consultation. It recommended increased tax powers for the Scottish Parliament (p in the pound on income tax under their control, plus some minor taxes devolved), which was the subject of detailed intergovernmental negotiation over implementing legislation at Westminster. Consent under the Sewel Convention was given at the very last stage of the Westminster legislation, as the Scottish administration held out against some minor reservations proposed.⁴ The Smith Commission was even more openly political. It was set up to deliver on commitments made during the independence referendum to increase the powers of the Scottish Parliament. Although it had an independent chair, it was essentially a forum for negotiations between the political parties this time including the SNP, but supported (as it had to be implemented) by the UK government. Again the Scottish Government’s ultimate leverage was Sewel consent on the implementing legislation, as the SNP commanded a majority in Holyrood. This, too, went to the wire, although over the more substantive issue on how the grant system would be adjusted to take account of tax powers. The most striking example of intergovernmental co-operation and competition, however, was the so-called Edinburgh Agreement (Scottish Government ) under which the Scottish Parliament was given temporary power to legislate to hold an independence referendum. It was a bilateral agreement between governments. The necessary Order in Council to put it into effect was negotiated between ministers in under a year. It was notable for the wide discretion given on the terms of a referendum (subject only to there being a single question and oversight by the Electoral Commission). The contrast with Spain and Catalonia is striking, in part, perhaps, because of the greater constitutional flexibility open to the UK government, but primarily because of its willingness to accept either outcome. Prime Minister Cameron was no doubt betting on a No vote, and trying to maximize the chances of ‘loser’s consent’ by allowing Holyrood to control the referendum process. By contrast the European referendum caused significant upset in intergovernmental relations. The Leave vote initiated extensive multilateral discussions on the implications for devolution. The absence of EU law constraints on devolved competence will substantially widen Holyrood’s powers, and negotiations on the implications proved seriously problematic. They were greatly hampered by the absence of any clear UK ⁴ The regulation of some professions related to medicine; they did however consent to the reservation of Antarctica.
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government policy for future EU relations, and by the UK government’s initial plan to begin by substituting Westminster’s authority for Brussels’ on what would otherwise be devolved matters. The immediate Scottish Government demand for another referendum on Scottish independence added to mutual mistrust. After multilateral negotiation, however, a compromise was reached, involving potential temporary reservation of some areas of EU law, but whilst this was acceptable to the Welsh Assembly government, it was rejected by the Scottish First Minister. The Scottish Government’s position was that every temporary reservation required devolved consent. This obscure implication of Brexit became a major political issue for the Scottish Government who claimed it fundamentally undermined devolution. It hardly does, being much watered down and probably never to happen in practice, but it does illustrate the potential for different underlying assumptions about the nature of the UK’s territorial constitution to lead to conflict. The Scottish Government’s view that Holyrood’s consent is an absolute requirement before any change can affect its powers is conditioned not merely by its aspirations for independence, but its view that the Scottish Parliament is the most or only legitimate representation of the will of the Scottish people. The view of the UK government is that Westminster has responsibility for ensuring, for example, the smooth operation of the UK single market, and so can if necessary make adjustments to devolution to ensure this. This, in its turn, is conditioned by the assumption that, ultimately, in the UK constitutional system parliament is sovereign. This difference may explain why agreement was able to be reached in Wales, but not in Scotland. The prolonged dispute, however, has been at the expense of more substantive intergovernmental discussion on how to deal with the consequences of Brexit.
D D, M C
.................................................................................................................................. Reviewing UK–Scotland IGR over the two decades since devolution, three main themes emerge: co-operation, competition, and constitutional change. The balance between them has changed, and will change further in future. The first two terms of the Scottish Parliament show devolution creating almost a system of dual federalism—two levels of government largely getting on with their own business. Day-to-day co-operation— notably Sewel consent for legislation—was mediated by officials, often maintaining pre-existing practices and relationships. Despite individual political rivalries, competition between administrations was largely absent too; constitutional change consisted largely of bedding in, then gradually extending, devolved competence. Two different electoral points of inflection can be identified. The first was the minority SNP administration in . This ended the comfort of political congruence,
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and initiated what most systems of multilevel government would regard as normal service—not just co-operation but also rivalry for voters’ allegiance and trust. It also put the possibilities of more radical constitutional change on the agenda. Not only did the SNP use the platform of government to argue the merits of independence, but the UK government and pro-devolution parties had to address themselves to whether the devolution settlement was adequate, and in particular whether funding a legislature and executive entirely by vertical fiscal transfers was appropriate. The arrival of an SNP majority administration in was a game changer for IGR, as it had to deal with a question which was existential for the UK. That relations were robust enough to cope with such a constitutional moment reflects well on both sides. IGR cannot, however, always come to conclusions that satisfy both sides: politics is about the management of disagreement. Nor is it easy to envisage a mechanism for the authoritative resolution of differences between governments. One of the unsung successes of devolution has been the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court which in several cases (notably AXA, as referenced earlier) has demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of the status of the Scottish Parliament. But this concerned legislative competence, not political or policy disputes between governments. The governments have however agreed a dispute resolution protocol (used in a long-running multilateral argument with HM Treasury on how to calculate the Barnett consequentials from spending on the Olympics) whose essence is continued formal dialogue. This sets an expectation of constructive discussion. In the end, however, whilst discussion, negotiation, even mediation, are always possible, arbitration or authoritative resolution of such disputes is not. More disputes, however, are coming. Over two decades of devolution, relations have evolved from a kind of dual federalism through a co-operative model to something more competitive. Political competition between levels of government is likely to continue and intensify. Some of this will be driven by the constitutional ambitions of the SNP, especially if they think another independence referendum is a realistic prospect. But much will be driven by competition for relevance in the minds of voters between the different levels of government as well as political parties. The territory for competition is widening to include tax and welfare as well as economic development and public services. Tax competition may become an example of direct economic competition, most obviously to create advantageous tax conditions for business investment. The gradual divergence in income tax rates and bands (driven as much by change in the rest of the UK as in Scotland) will focus accountability on the Scottish Government where its decisions lead to higher tax bills—gainers, inevitably, will be silent. More interesting, perhaps, is the potential competition on welfare. Not only can Holyrood now run substantial social security programmes, such as support for disabled people, it has the powers to offset reductions in the UK system or supplement inadequate benefits. Given its tax powers, and its inherited level of spending under Barnett, the Scottish Government will have fiscal as well as legal scope to make an impact on benefit payments. But this will require some hard choices on taxation or spending reallocation, not merely virtue signalling.
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Hitherto, the asymmetry of the constitutional settlement has favoured devolved government in such political competitions—perhaps unexpectedly, given the formal difference of power and status between the two levels of government. Issues which are, or can be made to seem, significant in Scottish politics may be second-order for the UK government. It is unlikely to be facing similar demands from representatives of England (there are none). So it can consistently find itself reacting belatedly to agendas set in Edinburgh, and starts with the handicap that devolved government is more likely to be trusted to look after purely Scottish interests. Given the width of devolved responsibilities, the dominance of the self-rule aspects in the Scottish settlement means a UK government may struggle to find ways of being directly relevant to Scottish voters. This political balance of power is however changing, as the Scottish Government faces more tax and spending trade-offs, and there are some signs that UK ministers are beginning to recognize the nature of the competition in which they are involved, and the need to have greater visibility and more direct relevance. So the UK government’s ‘City Deals’ in which it uses both its convening power and the power of the purse to set economic development agendas, and (it hopes) gain credit, may be only the first examples of behaviour like a more conventional federal administration. Brexit might increase such opportunities for UK ministers if EU responsibilities are distributed between the different levels of government. EU structural funds might be replaced by some form of UK economic development funding (economic development is one of the few shared ministerial functions) which UK ministers are likely to see as an opportunity to stress their relevance to Scottish voters. Agriculture may be devolved, but a GB- or UK-wide food and agriculture policy and subsidy system could replace the CAP, and that will inevitably involve a role for the UK government which is more than simply dealing with English agriculture. This increasing competition between levels of government may put further pressure on the devolved financing system. English opinion already resents the scale of the fiscal transfer north of the border, and if this is used to promote tax, welfare, or economic competition, complaints may increase. Conversely, a UK government which wants to use its fiscal power to emphasize its relevance in Scottish politics will be less inclined to make unhypothecated fiscal transfers. Barnett would be hard to operate, and harder to justify, for agriculture or economic development funding, and the temptation to attach strings to the block grant element of the Scottish budget can only grow. It would however be premature to predict the demise of this remarkable survivor of the s. Any UK government will realize how unattractive losing Barnett makes independence look; but also Barnett works for an asymmetric system in which the UK government’s integrated budget includes expenditure on devolved services in England. Until that changes, devolution finance will most likely continue be part of a UK-wide fiscal system. The increasing complexity of tax devolution, and the possible new ways of funding EU competences, however, can only increase the need for intergovernmental discussion, and more formal intergovernmental relations on expenditure and taxation. Leaving the EU may create more competition, but may also demand more detailed co-operation on matters repatriated to the UK. A set of European programmes
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(agriculture, fisheries, structural funds, university funding, etc.) and a remarkably wide range of European regulations, most notably dealing with the single market, cannot simply vanish. If the UK were no longer inside the European single market, that regulatory framework would be the starting point for UK single market regulation, but subject to international obligations (most likely to Europe). Much of this will require devolved co-operation. The joint ministerial committee on Europe will have to be replaced by some new mechanisms. Similarly, if the UK did become able to negotiate new international trade deals, devolved interests would have to be brought into the discussions on, for example, trade in agricultural products. Overall, leaving the EU would increase the power of the devolved administrations: the default assumption is that repatriated powers within devolved competence will remain there, and any new UK frameworks for these matters will require to be negotiated in a formal intergovernmental process. In the absence of certainty about future UK–EU relations the content of such negotiations (if any) remains a matter of speculation. It is not obvious that the present architecture of IGR will be adequate for these purposes. In the centre of government, the UK has long struggled to find the right departmental structure to ensure a consistent focus on, and understanding of, territorial issues, other than at times of high excitement like the Scottish referendum. As devolved administrations become more powerful, the demands on the UK centre will be greater, and long-standing arguments about the need for a more powerful central government department to guarantee continued focus on this issue will once again be raised. In the devolved government the challenge will be to develop suitable policy capacity to deal with any new powers. At a constitutional level, the only quasi-legal requirement for intergovernmental negotiation and co-operation is the Sewel Convention. It has proved surprisingly effective over time, but struggled to carry the weight of the EU referendum. Whilst a convention which operates ‘normally’ might not have been expected to deal with the abnormal circumstances of Brexit, the Scottish Government chose not to compromise to avoid undermining it, as the Welsh government did. This does raise the question of how the status of all the UK’s devolved institutions can be preserved in times of constitutional turmoil. Short, however, of a complete reconstruction of the UK constitution, and a codification would ‘entrench’ devolved and reserved powers in a way the Supreme Court could adjudicate upon (which seems a remote possibility at best), few plausible options for entrenchment beyond the declaratory provision of the Scotland Act have been proposed. Nevertheless some further development of the territorial constitution in response to recent pressures is likely, perhaps alongside another central government reorganization. The purely administrative structure of formal IGR, so obviously path-dependent from the pre-devolution world, may prove unsuitable for the longer run. One prospect is statutory codification and regulation of both joint ministerial committees and Treasury committees to make them more formal and free-standing, suitable for the increasingly federal nature of the United Kingdom, and to reconstruct relationships once the trauma of Brexit is over. There might be scope for at least a partial merger
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with the institutions of the British-Irish Council, which already includes a body of equivalent status to the UK government (the Irish Government), and has an independent secretariat.
C
.................................................................................................................................. Relations between the Scottish and UK governments still bear the imprint of where they started, notably in relation to finance, and the constitutional underpinning of the Sewel Convention especially. But over that time they have evolved from a system of something like dual federalism to one in which co-operation and competition are both seen. Greater competition is inevitable as powers widen. Co-operation has achieved much, notably holding an independence referendum, and transferring very substantial tax and welfare powers to Holyrood. Relations are overshadowed by constitutional disagreement. Whilst some constructive ambiguity about the status of the Scottish Parliament has made co-operation easier, the SNP ambition to turn intergovernmental relations into international ones sets real challenges for IGR. So, most obviously, has the irruption of another nationalist process, Brexit. Relations will inevitably evolve further, perhaps in the form of more statutory codification of IGR together with attempts to bolster the status of devolution in the UK constitution. It is, however, unrealistic to expect that in a highly contested political environment IGR can be reduced to well-defined, smoothly operated procedures. Just as politics is a process for managing difference and conflict, so territorial politics and the design of federal or quasi-federal systems is about reconciling not merely the advantages of scale versus autonomy, but different interests, aspirations, or constitutional perceptions in different parts of the territory. In future, as hitherto, no one unable to ride several horses simultaneously should perform in the IGR circus.
R AXA General Insurance Limited v The Lord Advocate, . Available at: www.supremecourt. uk/cases/docs/uksc---judgment.pdf. Bogdanor, V. . The New British Constitution. London: Hart. Cabinet Office. . Devolution: Memorandum of Understanding and Supplementary Agreements. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/devolution-mou. Calman, K. . Serving Scotland Better: Scotland and the United Kingdom in the st Century. London and Edinburgh: The Stationery Office. Dicey, A.V. . Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. London: Macmillan. Gallagher, J. . Algebra and the Constitution, the Fiscal Framework of the Scotland Act. Available at: www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/media//gallagher-wp-algebra-and-theconstitution.pdf.
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Gallagher, J. . Public Spending in Scotland: Relativities and Priorities. Available at: https:// www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/media//--public-spending-in-scotland-relativities-andpriorities.pdf. HM Government. . Scotland’s Parliament. Cm . Edinburgh: HM Government. HM Treasury. . Statement of Funding Policy, Funding for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland Assembly. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov. uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file//statement_of_fund ing__print.pdf. McLean, I., Gallagher, J., and Lodge, G. . Scotland’s Choices. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, . Available at: www.sup remecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc---judgment.pdf. Rokkan, S. and Unwin, D. . The Politics of Territorial Identity: Studies in European Regionalism. London: Sage. Scottish Government. . Agreement between the United Kingdom Government and the Scottish Government on a Referendum on Independence for Scotland. Available at: http:// www.gov.scot/Resource//.pdf. Tiebout, C.M. . ‘A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures’, Journal of Political Economy, /: –. Watts, R.L. . Comparing Federal Systems. Montréal: McGill-Queens University Press.
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I
.................................................................................................................................. S has had a continued parliamentary representation at Westminster since the Act of Union in and the creation of the Parliament of Great Britain. Since that time, Scottish MPs have, on a number of occasions, played a key role both in Westminster and Whitehall, at many times exerting an outsized political influence. This influence has continued post-devolution, despite a reduction in the number of Scottish constituencies as new boundaries were implemented in time for the General Election with the number of Scottish seats reduced from seventy-two to fifty-nine. Scottish constituencies have returned six Prime Ministers since the Reform Act, a list that includes such political heavyweights as William Gladstone (Midlothian), Herbert Asquith (East Fife) and, most recently, Gordon Brown (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath). Welsh constituencies, in contrast, have returned only three Prime Ministers, David Lloyd George (Caernarvon Boroughs), Ramsay MacDonald (Aberavon) and Jim Callaghan (Cardiff South). MPs from Scottish seats have represented all the ‘Great Offices of State’ and, despite devolution, the Scottish influence at Westminster continues to remain strong. This chapter examines the continued role of Scotland at Westminster, postdevolution. It does so, first, by exploring the role of Scottish MPs within the Westminster party system and how, following the success of the SNP and the collapse of the Liberal Democrats, the SNP became the ‘third party’ at Westminster with the (limited) additional rights and privileges that that bestows. This status provides the SNP, and thus its bloc of Scottish constituency MPs, with guaranteed questions at Prime Ministers Questions, opposition day time (three of the twenty Opposition Days are at the disposal of the leader of the second opposition party—the SNP) and the likelihood that at least one of its amendments to bills or the Queen’s Speech will be selected by the Speaker for the House to vote upon (Kelly ).
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The second section looks at the institutional avenues for Scottish interests to be represented at Westminster. These include the Scottish Affairs Committee which scrutinizes the Scotland Office and the UK Government’s policies in Scotland; the Scottish Grand Committee, a Committee of all Scottish MPs which in a number of respects can act as a smaller-scale version of the House of Commons (although this body has not met since ); and departmental questions, including questions to the Secretary of State for Scotland. Lastly, the chapter looks at a recent procedural reform in the House of Commons with clear consequences for Scottish MPs, English Votes for English Laws (EVEL). EVEL marks the latest stage in a debate as old as devolution (including the Irish Home Rule debates) about the parliamentary representation at Westminster for those territories within the UK that have been granted devolution. Scottish MPs and Peers have long been well established within the traditional Westminster party system, providing, at various points, key elements of the senior leadership teams of the Liberal, Labour, and Conservative parties, and, since the late s, Scotland has also had a distinctive presence at Westminster in the form of the Scottish National Party.
T L L D
.................................................................................................................................. Scottish influence within the modern Westminster party system can be first witnessed in the leading role that Scottish constituency MPs played within the Liberal Party. As Tom Devine (: ) has noted, the Liberals enjoyed ‘unrivalled hegemony’ in Victorian Scotland. Whilst the Scottish Liberal electoral machine suffered from the Irish Home Rule split between Liberals and Liberal Unionists in , and experienced notable setbacks in the and General Elections, the party ‘remained the party of government north of the border’ in the years preceding the Great War—years that included the Liberal landslide of (Devine : ). If we look at the major figures within British Liberalism in the decades between the Reform Act and the fatal blow of the Asquith–Lloyd George schism in , then we see a high level of integration between Scotland and Westminster. Three of the four Liberal Prime Ministers, prior to Lloyd George’s accession to power and the schism of the party in , held this office whilst representing Scottish seats—the most famous of all being Gladstone following his celebrated Midlothian campaign in –. The others were Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith, whilst the fourth was a Scottish Peer Lord Rosebery. This dominance of Scottish-based MPs within the upper echelons of the Liberal Party continued even after the party’s decline and fall, post-. During the interregnum between the loss of Asquith’s East Fife seat in and his return to Parliament at the Paisley by-election, the leader of the Liberal Party and unofficial Leader of the Opposition at Westminster was Donald Maclean, the then Member of Parliament for Peebles and Southern Midlothian.
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Of the seven leaders of the Liberal Party between Asquith’s second tenure and the merger of the party with the SDP in , three were MPs representing Scottish seats. Sir Archibald Sinclair (MP for Caithness and Sutherland, –) led the party from to and, prior to the – Coalition Government, was the last Liberal to hold Governmental office as Secretary of Air during the wartime coalition. Jo Grimond (MP for Orkney, –) led the party on two occasions, between and and, briefly, in following the resignation of Jeremy Thorpe. David Steel (MP for Rockburgh, Selkirk, and Peebles from to and then for Tweeddale, Ettrick, and Lauderdale from –) led the Liberals, from to , through the ‘Lib-Lab pact’ (–) and merger with the Social Democrats in . Two of the Leaders of the short-lived Social Democratic Party were Scottish constituency MPs: Roy Jenkins, MP for Glasgow Hillhead (–); and Bob Maclennan, MP for Caithness, Sutherland, and Easter Ross (–), who led the party during its merger negotiations with the Liberal Party. Post-merger, the Liberal Democrats have continued to have a strong tartan hue. Of the eight leaders of the party since , three have been Scottish. Charles Kennedy (MP for Ross, Skye, and Inverness West from – and then Ross, Skye, and Lochaber from –) led the party from to , a period that saw the party record, at the General Election, the strongest post-war third party performance, in seats returned, since the war (sixty-two Lib Dem MPs were elected). Ming (now Lord) Campbell (MP for North East Fife from to ) led the party from to . Most recently, Jo Swinson led the party from July until December when she lost her East Dunbartonshire seat in that year’s General Election. Scottish influence was also felt during the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition Government. For near enough the entire length of the coalition, two of the five Cabinet seats allocated to the Lib Dems were held by Scottish MPs of which one (the Chief Secretary of the Treasury, Danny Alexander) was a member of the all-powerful ‘Quad’ that acted as the Government’s ‘inner-Cabinet’ and consisted of the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Chancellor, and Chief Secretary (Cowley and Kavanagh : –).
T U P/C U P
.................................................................................................................................. When one thinks of Scotland and Westminster, the Conservative and Unionist Party does not come immediately to mind. The post- history of the party north of the border has been, at least prior to the General Election, one of failure and, at times, ridicule. One particularly well-used joke was that Scotland had more Pandas than Conservative MPs. However, the party has had a long and complex relationship with Scotland. For most of the twentieth century, Conservatism in Scotland was represented by the Unionist Party, a party that, although integrated with the Conservative Party at Westminster,
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represented a distinctive and Scottish electoral brand (Chapter in this Handbook). It was, following the decline of the Liberal Party, the most successful force in Scottish politics until the late s (Seawright ; Devine ). At the General Election, the Unionist Party won a majority of seats in Scotland (thirty-six), whilst in it had its greatest moment of triumph winning forty-eight out of Scotland’s seventy-one seats as part of the National Government landslide. In , the Unionists and their National Liberal allies won thirty-six seats in Scotland and . per cent of the popular vote (Audickas et al. ). Notwithstanding this dominance, the actual influence of Scottish constituency MPs in the corridors of power was markedly less than that experienced under the Liberal hegemony. Two Unionist MPs served as Prime Minister, albeit for short periods of time. Andrew Bonar Law (Unionist MP for Glasgow Central –) served as Prime Minister from until his death in . Alec Douglas-Home (Unionist MP for Kinross and West Perthshire from to , and previously MP for Lanark over two spells: – and –) was Prime Minister from to . Robert Horne (Unionist MP for Glasgow Hillhead from –) held office as Chancellor from –, whilst Douglas-Home also served as Foreign Secretary from – and from to . Following increasing concern about the image and organizational and electoral health of the Unionist Party, the party changed its name to the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association in , paving the way for full integration into the British Conservative Party (Mitchell : –). This did little to boost the fortunes of the party and its electoral performance was generally rather anaemic with the party bobbing around the teens to low twenties mark in terms of number of MPs from to . From onwards, the party entered into a starker phase of decline, with the party reduced to ten MPs at that year’s General Election, picking up slightly to eleven in , before total wipeout in (Audickas et al. ). Nonetheless, during these years, and the two spells of Conservative Government from to and to , Scottish constituency MPs continued to have positions of influence within the Government. Alec Douglas-Home, for example, served for a second time as Foreign Secretary, holding office from to , whilst George Younger served as Defence Secretary during the Thatcher administration, from to . Malcolm Rifkind served successively as Defence Secretary (–) and Foreign Secretary (–), and Ian Lang as President of the Board of Trade (–), under John Major’s Premiership. In , the Conservatives were wiped out in Scotland and until failed to return more than a solitary Scottish MP at successive General Elections. During this period, Conservatism with a Scottish hue was largely the preserve of Scottish MPs representing English seats. Michael Ancram, who led the Conservative’s Parliamentary efforts against New Labour’s Scottish devolution proposals, was elected as the MP for Devizes following the loss of his Edinburgh South seat in . Malcolm Rifkind, one of the high profile casualties of the Conservatives’ crushing defeat in , returned to
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Parliament as the Member of Parliament for Kensington and Chelsea in . Michael Gove, served successively as Secretary of State for Education, Chief Whip, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. However, one of the most influential Scottish Conservatives at the UK level in recent years is not even an MP. Rather, it is the former Leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson. Only elected an MSP for the first time in Scottish Parliament elections, Davidson swiftly became leader of the party in Holyrood. During her time as leader, Davidson attracted substantial media attention and was singled out by a number of admirers as a potential Leader of the Party at Westminster and potential future Prime Minister (Groves ; Sim ). It says much of the regard with which she has been held by figures within the UK party, as well as of her experience from the Scottish independence referendum, that Davidson was included in the biggest of the TV debates during the EU referendum (Shipman ). Davidson also oversaw a remarkable transformation in the party’s fortunes north of the border. At the Scottish Parliament elections, the Scottish Conservatives doubled their number of seats from fifteen to thirty-one, overtaking Labour as the largest opposition party in the process. A year later, at the General Election, the Scottish Conservatives returned thirteen MPs, their largest number of MPs since . This posed a challenge that Scottish Conservatism has arguably not faced since the days of the Unionist Party: how to position itself within Westminster so as to secure the benefits of close co-operation and partnership with its UK colleagues whilst maintaining a distinctive ‘Scottish’ voice. In , however, they lost vote share and half their seats, being reduced to six.
L
.................................................................................................................................. The story of the Labour Party at the UK level is deeply interwoven with Scotland (Chapter in this Handbook). The founder of the Labour Party and its first MP, Keir Hardie was born in Lanarkshire and began his career as a miner, trade unionist, and journalist in Scotland, before winning election as an Independent Labour Party MP in West Ham South in . Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister (, –) was also a Scotsman. Two of the party’s leaders, post-Second World War, have represented Scottish constituencies: John Smith led the party after Neil Kinnock’s resignation until his untimely death in . Gordon Brown led the party from until . Other prominent Labour figures with strong Scottish connections included Emanuel Shinwell, Attlee’s Minister of Fuel and Power during the / winter crisis, who was twice MP for Linlithgow before seeking greater electoral security in England. Scottish influence within the UK Labour Party reached its peak during the thirteen years of Labour Government following the General Election. The reach of
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Scotland in Westminster and Whitehall during the New Labour years extended far beyond the internecine warfare between Blair and Brown. Scottish constituency MPs held a wide array of Cabinet posts in this period. This list includes Chancellor of the Exchequer (Gordon Brown, –, and Alistair Darling –); Foreign Secretary (Robin Cook, –); Home Secretary (John Reid, –); Defence Secretary (George Robertson, –, John Reid –, and Des Browne, –); Transport Secretary (Alistair Darling –, and Douglas Alexander, –); Work and Pensions Secretary (Alistair Darling, –); Trade and Industry Secretary (Alistair Darling, –); International Development Secretary (Douglas Alexander, –); and, despite devolution, Health Secretary (John Reid, –). Outside of Government, this period also saw a Scottish MP hold office as Speaker of the House of Commons (Michael Martin, MP for Glasgow Springburn – and Glasgow North East –, and Speaker of the House of Commons from to ) and a Scottish Clerk of the House of Commons (Sir William McKay, Clerk of the House from to ). It is, perhaps, little wonder that Jeremy Paxman famously claimed, in a mixture of jest and exasperation, that the UK was ruled by a ‘Scottish Raj’ (Peterkin ).
T SNP: F M P T P W
.................................................................................................................................. For much of its time since it first gained representation in the House of Commons in , the SNP has been a marginal presence at Westminster. Between , the first General Election where it returned a Member of Parliament, and , the SNP returned, on average, five MPs—with its pre- zenith being the October General Election when the party returned eleven MPs and polled over per cent of the vote in Scotland. Whilst, numerically, the SNP was a peripheral force in the House of Commons in this period, it had the capacity to catalyse action in Westminster and Whitehall. For example, the Hamilton by-election, which saw the election of Winnie Ewing in a seat that the SNP had not even contested in the General Election, sent a shockwave through the British political establishment (Devine ). This shockwave, intensified by further SNP successes at the local government elections and, alongside strong by-election performances for Plaid Cymru in Wales, prompted the Wilson Government to establish the Royal Commission on the Constitution (the Kilbrandon Commission). Whilst much of the period from to saw the SNP, in the words of Johns and Mitchell, as an ‘oppositional and amateurish party, struggling to maintain a significant presence at Westminster’, the election saw the party surge from six
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to fifty-six MPs (Johns and Mitchell ). The SNP supplanted the Liberal Democrats to become the third largest party at Westminster, the first sub-state nationalist party to be in this position at Westminster since the eclipse of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the General Election. Whilst losing twenty-one of its fifty-six seats at the General Election, the SNP held onto a majority of Scottish seats (/) and to their ‘third party’ status. In the General Election, the SNP increased their number of seats at Westminster to . Third party status in the House of Commons affords the SNP a number of additional rights, including (somewhat more) preferential treatment within the House of Commons. As a result of this status, the SNP, for example, became entitled to two Select Committee chairmanships and seats on nearly all Select Committees. The SNP do not take their potential allocation on the Northern Ireland Affairs, Welsh Affairs and Housing, Communities and Local Government committees and, through the ‘usual channels’,¹ have instead secured additional seats on the Scottish Affairs Committee. Furthermore, the leader of the SNP group in Westminster is entitled to guaranteed questions each week at Prime Ministers Questions and speaking slots at other set-piece occasions such as the budget or the first day of the debate on the Queen’s Speech. Other third party ‘perks’ include the allocation of opposition day time, with three of the twenty Opposition Days per parliamentary session being at the disposal of the leader of the second opposition party, as well as the likelihood that at least one of its amendments to bills or the Queen’s Speech will be selected by the Speaker for the House to vote upon (Kelly ; Thompson ). According to Thompson (: –), in the – Parliament, this status helped the party ‘to be taken more seriously by those inside and outside the chamber’. Angus Robertson, the party’s Westminster leader during this period, often secured plaudits from commentators in the media for his performances in Prime Minister’s Questions. However, it is important to acknowledge that there are clear limits to the additional benefits that arise from being the third party at Westminster. As Thompson () has argued, the Westminster system has a strong ‘two party’, government versus opposition, culture that can mean that, aside from the opening batsmen, the third party’s middle and lower-order batsmen can struggle for time at the crease. Despite these limitations, the SNP has had a unique platform from which to provide a distinctively Scottish voice to proceedings at Westminster.
S A C
.................................................................................................................................. One of the principal institutional means of Scottish representation at Westminster is the Scottish Affairs Committee (SAC). First established in as part of the Departmental Select Committee revolution, the SAC is appointed to ‘examine the ¹ This is the recognized code word for the party whips.
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expenditure, administration and policy of the Scotland Office’, including relations with the Scottish Parliament and the administration and expenditure of the offices of the Advocate General for Scotland (House of Commons , Standing Order ). The balance of representation on the Committee, decided by the ‘usual channels’, has better reflected the strength of the parties returned in Scottish seats than would otherwise be the case if membership purely reflected the balance of representation across the House as a whole (for example, in both the – and – Parliaments the SNP was allotted more seats than it would otherwise have been entitled to (and has thus waived seats on other committees that it would be entitled to as the third biggest party in the Commons, for example, on Welsh Affairs and Northern Ireland Affairs Committees). Unlike the Scottish Grand Committee, Members from seats outside of Scotland can sit on the SAC and have done so at periods when the electoral fortunes of particular political parties in Scotland have necessitated them to do so, for example, during the – Parliament when there were no Conservative MPs elected in Scottish constituencies, and, most notably, following the General Election when the SNP secured all bar three Scottish seats. As a result, the SAC between and , when Ian Murray MP resigned his post as Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, had only four Scottish constituency MPs as Members. The SAC can appoint a sub-committee and has the following powers: • To send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place, and to report from time to time; • To appoint specialist advisers either to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the committee’s order of reference; and • To report from time to time the evidence taken before sub-committees, and the formal minutes of sub-committees (House of Commons , Standing Order ). The role of the SAC is to scrutinize the work of the Scotland Office. The Committee’s scope and focus remit has waxed and waned as the powers of the old Scottish Office accumulated between and and then (as the Scotland Office) declined with the advent of devolution in .² In the – and – Parliamentary sessions, the sessions immediately prior to the transfer of administrative functions from the then Scottish Office to the Scottish Executive on July , the SAC held evidence sessions on the following topics: • • • •
Inward/Outward Investment in Scotland; The UK government’s housing policy in Scotland; Scottish Natural Heritage; The work of the Scottish Sports Council;
² In , the name was changed from Scotland Office to Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland but it has also been promoted as UK government in Scotland.
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• • • •
The administration of European Structural Funds in Scotland; The work of the Scottish Water Authorities; Care of the young chronically sick; and Health in Scotland.
All of the above were areas that were either wholly or partially devolved to the Scottish devolved institutions with effect from July and as the Scottish Office’s remit and direct policy influence was reduced, so too was the SAC’s. Since then, the focus of the SAC has moved to broader policy fields and areas where responsibility is still reserved at Westminster or where there is a continuing policy interest for the Office for the Secretary of State. In the – session, the SAC published reports on the drinks industry in Scotland, post-devolution news and current affairs broadcasting in Scotland, Customs Services in Scotland, and Employment in Shipbuilding on the Clyde. However, this is not to say that the SAC cannot have a political and policy impact. In the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum, the Committee, under the Chairmanship of the pugnaciously Unionist Labour MP, Ian Davidson, published a series of reports on the potential implications of a ‘Yes’ vote at the referendum: • The Referendum on Separation for Scotland: no doubt—no currency union; • The Referendum on Separation for Scotland: Implications for Pensions and Benefits; • The Referendum on Separation for Scotland: Scotland’s Membership of the EU; • The Referendum On Separation For Scotland: The Impact on Higher Education, Research and Tuition Fees; • The Referendum on Separation for Scotland: A Defence Force for Scotland—A Conspiracy of Optimism? • The Referendum on Separation for Scotland: The Need for Truth. With the passage of the Scotland Act , Scotland’s reserved powers model of devolution moves on to a new era with new concurrent competencies shared between the UK and Scottish Governments and Parliaments, most notably social security and tax powers. These shared powers create new opportunities for the SAC, including in its engagement and collaboration with the Committees of the Scottish Parliament. The joint working between the Scottish Affairs Committee and the Scottish Parliament’s Social Security Committee in March on the implementation and transfer of new social security powers to Holyrood, including the creation of shared powers, could well prove to be a portent of how the SAC adapts to devolution post-Scotland Act . As with other Select Committees, the SAC can bid for time on the floor of the House of Commons, either as a statement marking the publication of a report or the launch of an inquiry (Standing Order D), or in Westminster Hall. Select Committee Statements on the floor of the House have become a popular vehicle for chairs to draw attention to a Committee’s work, although they have far stricter time restrictions than in Westminster Hall. In the latter forum, Committee reports can be the subject of
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potentially up to three hours of debate on Thursday afternoons, subject to the approval of the Liaison Committee (Standing Order ).
S G C
.................................................................................................................................. In contrast to the Scottish Affairs Committee, which provided a platform for Scottish MPs to have a continuing influence at Westminster, the Scottish Grand Committee (SGC) appears to have long since withered into little more than a historical and procedural curiosity. Following a brief experiment under Rosebery’s Liberals in –, a Scottish Standing Committee was established in (Mitchell ). Initially charged with the consideration of exclusively Scottish bills at their Committee Stage, these powers were expanded in to enable Scottish bills to be referred to the SGC ‘for consideration in principle before a second reading was taken without debate on the floor of the Commons’ (Mitchell ). Further reforms under the Conservative Governments in –, as part of an attempt to pitch the SGC as an alternative to a separate Scottish Parliament, enabled the SGC to meet in Scotland, for questions to be asked of the Secretary of State for Scotland and other ministers, for other senior ministers including the Prime Minister to appear before and participate in the proceedings of the SGC, for Ministerial statements to take place, and for greater opportunity for general debates (Gay ; Munro ). Despite the expansion of its remit, particularly under the Major Government, the SGC has been a victim of devolution and the creation of a Scottish Parliament. This shift in the SGC’s fortunes can be witnessed in the number of times it met in the runup to, and the aftermath of, the election of the first Scottish Parliament in (Table .). Table 31.1 Meetings of Scottish Grand Committee Parliamentary Session 1994–1995 1995–1996 1996–1997 1997–1998 1998–1999 1999–2000 2000–2001 2001–2002 2002–2003 Source: Author’s own compilation.
Number of Sittings 12 25 10 9 4 4 1 5 3
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The SGC has not met since November when it heard a statement on fisheries from a junior DEFRA minister, held a substantive debate on the adjournment on constitutional affairs, and then closed proceedings with an adjournment debate on pension credit. Nonetheless, the SGC remains on the Standing Orders of the House of Commons and, at least in theory, could be reconvened in the future.
D Q
.................................................................................................................................. The other principal mechanism available to MPs to scrutinize the work of the Scotland Office and the UK government’s role and policies in Scotland, including its relationship with the devolved administrations is through tabling oral or written questions to departments, in particular Scotland Office questions. Departmental questions occur most sitting days, bar Fridays, with departments taking it in turns to answer questions on a rotational basis (roughly each Department answers questions once every five weeks). These question times take place on the floor of the House of Commons and last around thirty minutes. Questions for oral answer are tabled through the Table Office of the House of Commons, the Table Office’s key function in this regard is to ensure that questions are within the House’s rules of order. The main rules of order are as follows: . Ministerial Responsibility: a question must relate to an area of public affairs or government for which the minister is responsible and can legitimately be held to account. In determining this, the Table Office will take into account recent answers to parliamentary questions, policy announcements, and Ministerial statements; . Basis: Questions may not be based on unsubstantiated media reports, rumours, or improbable suppositions. In addition, questions should seek information and not provide it; . Readily available: Parliamentary questions should not be the first recourse for Members seeking information and Members should explore likely sources of readily available information before tabling questions. Questions are ruled inadmissible if they seek information that is easily accessible to Members. . Sub judice: a question is inadmissible if it refers to a case in which proceedings are active in UK courts; . Content, tone, and form: rules are in place to ensure that a question is a question, not a disguised statement or debating point, and that it is capable of receiving a meaningful answer. As such, questions must be comprehensible and clearly targeted; be neutrally phrased and must not contain offensive language, argument or debate; must not be trivial, hypothetical or overly broad or ambiguous. Multiple choice questions are not in order. In addition, and of particular salience for Scottish MPs (as well as for other MPs representing constituencies in the devolved nations), there is what Erskine May has
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termed the ‘self-denying ordinance’ of the House of Commons on devolved matters (Norton ; Erskine May ). On October , the House of Commons passed the following resolution: That, subject always to the discretion of the Chair, and in addition to the established rules of order on the form and content of questions, questions may not be tabled on matters for which responsibility has been devolved by legislation to the Scottish Parliament or the National Assembly for Wales unless the question: a) seeks information which the United Kingdom Government is empowered to require of the devolved executive, or b) relates to matters which: i. are included in legislative proposals introduced or to be introduced in the United Kingdom Parliament, ii. are concerned with the operation of a concordat or other instrument of liaison between the United Kingdom Government and the devolved executive, or iii. United Kingdom Government ministers have taken an official interest in, or c) presses for action by United Kingdom ministers in areas in which they retain administrative powers (Commons Journal (–) p. ).
Whilst this is, therefore, not a blanket ban on the discussion of devolved matters, it is something of a restriction on the activities of MPs and adds credence to the concept of the West Lothian Question post-devolution (Norton ).
T W L Q
.................................................................................................................................. 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 and a substate legislature (Evans ). Whilst 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 Westminster in the face of asymmetric devolution that would carve out Parliament’s remit in some, but not all parts of the UK. This issue was first identified with the question of Irish representation at Westminster during the debates on Gladstone’s two Home Rule bills (Kendle ; Bogdanor ; McLean and McMillan ), followed in the s with a discussion as to the ability of Northern Irish MPs to vote on matters at Westminster that were otherwise devolved to the Stormont Parliament (Walker and Mulvenna ). However, its most famous iteration came in the form of a series of contributions made by the MP for West Lothian, Tam Dalyell during the protracted debates on devolution to Scotland and Wales in the s. On November , Dalyell asked the then Prime Minister, James Callaghan whether, under the Scotland Bill announced in that year’s Queen’s Speech, he would
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‘still be able to vote on many matters in relation to West Bromwich but not West Lothian’ and whether the Prime Minister, the MP for Cardiff South, would ‘be able to vote on many matters in relation to Carlisle but not Cardiff ’ (Parliamentary Debates a). Returning to his theme, on November , Dalyell put forward his argument in a rather stronger fashion: For how long will English constituencies and English hon. Members tolerate not just Scots, Welsh and a number of Ulstermen but at least hon. Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland exercising an important, and probably often decisive, effect on English politics while they themselves have no say in the same matters in Scotland, Wales and Ireland? Such a situation cannot conceivably endure for long. (Parliamentary Debates b)
This proposition was christened, later in the course of the debate, the ‘West Lothian Question’ by Enoch Powell. Whilst the relative failures of the Scottish and Welsh devolution referendums in meant that the issue lay dormant for the best part of two decades, it was to reawaken from its slumber in the late s following the Labour Government’s programme of national devolution for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The Conservative Party quickly committed itself, post-devolution, to a policy of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ as an answer to the West Lothian Question. However, EVEL has gone through a number of different iterations. The first version was a variant of EVEL proposed by the Commission to Strengthen Parliament, established by the then Conservative Party leader William Hague and chaired by a leading authority on Parliament, Professor the Lord Norton of Louth. It recommended a scheme of EVEL that would see a bill certified as either English, or English and Welsh, only go through an exclusively English (and Welsh) second reading Committee and Report stage (Commission to Strengthen Parliament : ). A second variant of EVEL was proposed in by the Conservative Democracy Task Force () under the Chairmanship of Ken Clarke MP. Conscious of the potential pitfall of the question of what would happen were a UK government of one party to be confronted with a House of Commons majority of English MPs of another party or parties, the Task Force recommended a scheme of EVEL whereby bills certified as English would go through First and Second Reading as usual but where Committee and Report stages would be undertaken by English MPs only. Third Reading would continue to be voted on by the House as a whole. However, as no amendments are possible at Third Reading, the governing party would have to accept any amendments made in Committee or at Report stage, or have the bill voted down and lost. Overall, the Task Force claimed that this arrangement would have the benefit of protecting England from having measures that a majority of English MPs opposed from being passed by MPs from outside England (by limiting Committee and Report stage of certified bills to English MPs), whilst also protecting a Government with a majority across the House as a whole from having measures it opposed being imposed upon it by English MPs (by reserving Third Reading as a UK-wide vote) (Conservative Democracy Task Force ).
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Following the General Election, the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition’s Programme for Government pledged to establish a Commission to examine the West Lothian Question (HM Government ). This Commission was set up in under the Chairmanship of Sir William McKay, a former Clerk of the House, with the following terms of reference: To consider how the House of Commons might deal with legislation which affects only part of the United Kingdom, following the devolution of certain legislative powers to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the National Assembly for Wales (McKay Commission : )
The McKay Commission reported in March and recommended that the following principle be adopted by a resolution of the House of Commons: Decisions at the United Kingdom level with a separate and distinct effect for England (or for England-and-Wales) should normally be taken only with the consent of a majority of MPs for constituencies in England (or England-and-Wales).
The Commission’s report suggested that adherence to this principle ‘would be facilitated by the declaratory resolution [outlined above] and changes to Standing Orders’, and proposed a ‘menu of proposed adaptations to parliamentary procedure to hear the voice of England’ (McKay Commission : –). This menu included, amongst other items, an equivalent to the legislative consent motions used in the devolved institutions, specially constituted English (or English and Welsh) public bill committees as ‘the minimum needed as an effective means of allowing the voice from England (or England-and-Wales) to be heard’ and the idea of a specially constituted Devolution Committee in the House of Commons (McKay Commission : ). However, the McKay Commission was clear that, unlike the proposals of the Commission to Strengthen Parliament and the Conservative Democracy Task Force, ‘MPs from outside England should not be prevented from voting on matters before Parliament’ and warned that such an arrangement ‘would create different classes of MP and could provoke deadlock between the UK Government and the majority of MPs in England’ (McKay Commission : ). According to McKay, ‘the concerns of England should be met without provoking an adverse reaction outside England’. During the frantic final weeks of the Scottish independence referendum, the leaders of the three main Unionist parties signed ‘the vow’ that committed them to the delivery of ‘extensive new powers’ for the Scottish devolved institutions. Speaking on the steps of Downing Street on the morning of September , a few hours after Scotland voted against independence, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced that Lord Smith of Kelvin would chair a cross-party commission to take forward the commitments made in the vow ‘with powers over tax, spending and welfare all agreed by November and draft legislation published by January’. The Prime Minister also stated, to the apparent consternation of senior figures within the Better Together campaign, that ‘as the people of Scotland will have
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more power over their affairs, so it follows that the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland must have a bigger say over theirs’. Importantly, for England this meant taking forward ‘the question of English votes for English laws . . . in tandem with, and at the same pace as’ the process of extending devolution in Scotland (Pike : –). On October , following the return of a majority Conservative Government at that year’s General Election, the House of Commons voted by a margin of to to amend the Standing Orders of the House so as to establish a system of EVEL. Under this system, prior to a bill’s Second Reading, the Speaker will certify bills, or provisions within those bills, if they relate ‘exclusively to England or to England and Wales’ and is within devolved competence. This is the case even if a bill includes clauses or schedules that may have ‘minor or consequential effects outside the area in question’ (SO J). As explained by the House of Commons’ Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) in its report on EVEL, for Scottish MPs, the key change brought about by the Standing Orders are the new post-Report Stage procedures for certified bills: . Standing Order No. L sees a recertification of a previously certified bill by the Speaker after report stage. This is to ensure English/English and Welsh MPs are asked to consent to the bill, or English/English and Welsh provisions within it, in the legislative consent motion (LCM) process. The same test is applied as in the first certification. . Following this, Legislative Grand Committees are established, post recertification, to vote on an LCM for qualifying bills. LCMs can be amended if MPs wish to veto specific clauses/schedules, rather than the entirety of a bill. . Reconsideration: If an LCM has been vetoed for a whole bill/provisions of a bill, MPs reconsider it. At reconsideration stage, the LGC can decide to either withhold consent from the bill in its entirety or from specific schedules/clauses of the bills. In the former case, then the bill as a whole may not be given a Third Reading. However, in the latter scenario, then the bill is amended to remove the offending provisions and the amended bill proceeds to Third Reading. . Consequential Consideration: The stage considers ‘minor or technical changes in consequence of the removal of provisions’ at reconsideration stage. Unsurprisingly, the revised Standing Orders have been the subject of some controversy (Gover and Kenny ) and were opposed by all of the opposition parties and therefore all bar one of the fifty-nine Scottish MPs. One of the most strident critics was the SNP’s shadow Leader of the House of Commons and the Chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee, Pete Wishart who denounced the EVEL Standing Orders as ‘constitutional bilge’ that would create two classes of MP and have a ‘significant impact on our [Scottish MPs’] ability to look after our constituents and to stand up for their interests in this House of Commons’, as well as putting the Speaker in a ‘politically invidious position’ (Parliamentary Debates ).
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The reality, at least at the time of writing, so far has been rather less dramatic. As research by Gover and Kenny () highlights, in the first year of EVEL’s operation there were no divisions where EVEL affected the outcome. Furthermore, of the fourteen divisions held on certified bills/instruments, none took place at LGC stage, initially seen as the main vehicle for England’s voice to be heard (Gover and Kenny ). Indeed, they describe the LGC stages during the first year of EVEL as ‘almost entirely perfunctory’, most, according to Gover and Kenny, have lasted for around two minutes ‘and have been almost invisible within the legislative process’ (Gover and Kenny : ). If anything, Gover and Kenny suggest that EVEL, as currently constituted in the House of Commons Standing Orders, ‘does not give adequate opportunity for the expression of England’s voice’ (Gover and Kenny : ).
C
.................................................................................................................................. Scottish influence at Westminster has ebbed and flowed over time, from the highs of Victorian Liberalism to the relative lows of the mid-Twentieth Century and then back again to the dominance of the New Labour era. The latter era coincided with the advent of legislative and executive devolution to Scotland, a moment of huge constitutional significance and one with the potential to have just as significant an effect on the role and rights and privileges of Scottish MPs. The Scottish Grand Committee, never a particularly loved creation, has to all effects and purposes disappeared post-devolution, whilst the ambit of the Scottish Affairs Committee has also been markedly reduced (reflecting the reduced responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Scotland). Having previously returned seventy-two MPs, Scotland has, since the General Election, returned fifty-nine Members to Westminster, and devolution has also brought with it the re-emergence of the West Lothian Question, culminating in the House of Commons adopting a system of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ following the General Election. However, despite these developments, for much of the period post-devolution, Scotland has continued to boast significant influence at Westminster. The New Labour era, from to , saw MPs from Scottish constituencies command considerable power, either in Government or in the offices of the House of Commons. More recently, the success of the Scottish National Party and its eclipse of the Liberal Democrats as the ‘third party’ in the House of Commons has meant that Scottish MPs have guaranteed speaking time at Parliament’s ‘set-piece’ occasions, including PMQs and budget day, and representation across the Select Committee corridor. It is too early to say what, if any, long-term impact will arise from EVEL or whether the SNP will continue to hold onto its position as the largest party in Scotland and the third party in the House of Commons. However, for now, Scottish influence remains strong at Westminster, buttressed by the party system and the deliberate, and more general, institutional avenues for representation that exist in Parliament.
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R Audickas, L., Hawkins, O., and Cracknell, R. . UK Election Statistics: –. Briefing Paper No. CBP. London: House of Commons Library. Bogdanor, V. . Devolution in the UK. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Commission to Strengthen Parliament. . Strengthening Parliament: The Report of the Commission to Strengthen Parliament. London: Commission to Strengthen Parliament. Conservative Democracy Task Force. . Answering the Question: Devolution, the West Lothian Question and the Future of the Union. London: Conservative Democracy Task Force. Cowley, P. and Kavanagh, D. . The British General Election of . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Devine, T. []. The Scottish Nation: A Modern History. London: Penguin. Erskine May. . Erskine May Online, part , chapter , paragraph .. London: Parliament. Available at: https://erskinemay.parliament.uk/indexterm//devolutiondevolved-subjects-selfdenying-ordinance/. Evans, A. . Devolution and Parliamentary Representation: The Case of the Scotland and Wales Bill, –, Parliamentary History, /: –. Gay, O. . Scotland and Devolution, House of Commons Library: Research Paper /. Gover, D. and Kenny, M. . Finding the Good in EVEL: An Evaluation of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ in the House of Commons. Edinburgh: Centre on Constitutional Change. Groves, J. . ‘Is Tory star Ruth going to challenge for leader? Scottish Conservative reveals she may stand for Parliament at the next election’, Daily Mail, December. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-/Is-Ruth-Davidson-going-challenge-Toryleader.html, accessed December . HM Government. . The Coalition: Our Programme for Government. London: HM Government. House of Commons. . Standing Orders: Public Business , HC . House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. . The Future of the Union, part one: English Votes for English Laws, Fifth Report of Session –, HC . Johns, R. and Mitchell, J. . Takeover: Explaining the Extraordinary Rise of the SNP. London: Biteback. Kelly, R. . Queen’s Speech Debate: Selection of Amendments—Standing Order No. . House of Commons Library Briefing Paper (No. ). Kendle, J. . Ireland and the Federal Solution. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. McKay Commission. . Report of the Commission on the Consequences of Devolution for the House of Commons. Available at: http://tmc.independent.gov.uk. McLean, I. and McMillan, A. . State of the Union: Unionism and the Alternatives in the United Kingdom Since . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, J. . The Scottish Question. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Munro, C. . ‘Scottish Devolution: Accommodating a Restless Nation’, in S. Tierney (ed.), Accommodating National Identity: New Approaches in International and Domestic Law. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, –. Norton, P. . ‘Parliament: A New Assertiveness?’, in J. Jowell, D. Oliver, and C. O’Cinneide (eds), The Changing Constitution, th edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, –. Parliamentary Debates. a. (Hansard). House of Commons Official Report, Series , HC Deb ( November ) Vol. , c..
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Parliamentary Debates. b. (Hansard). House of Commons Official Report, Series , HC Deb ( November ) Vol. , c.. Parliamentary Debates. . (Hansard). House of Commons Official Report, Series , HC Deb ( July ) Vol. , c.. Peterkin, T. . ‘Britain run by Scottish Raj, claims Paxman’, The Telegraph, March. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews//Britain-run-by-ScottishRaj-claims-Paxman.html, accessed December . Pike, J. . Project Fear: How an Unlikely Alliance Left a Kingdom United but Ultimately Divided. London: Biteback. Seawright, D. . ‘The Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party: “The Lesser Spotted Tory”?’, POLIS Working Paper No. , Leeds University School of Politics and International Studies. Available at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=... .&rep=rep&type=pdf, accessed December . Shipman, T. . All Out War? London: William Collins. Sim, P. . ‘Profile: Scottish Conservative Leader Ruth Davidson’, BBC News, June. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-, accessed December . Thompson, L. . ‘Understanding Third Parties at Westminster: The SNP in the Parliament’, Politics, /: –. Walker, G. and Mulvenna, G. . ‘Northern Ireland Representation at Westminster: Constitutional Conundrums and Political Manoeuvre’, Parliamentary History, /: –.
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Understanding Scotland’s International Relations ......................................................................................................................
I
.................................................................................................................................. S has a long history of international relations and connections, shaped by conflict, migration, trade, and empire amongst other factors, as well as by the continued existence of Scottish organizations and networks after and before and after devolution in . Scotland and its institutions have responded to Europeanization and internationalization in recent decades, through government, commercial, and societal activity, with devolved government adopting a strong, strategic role in linking economic development to the global economy. From a historical and contemporary perspective, the lives of many individuals and families have been shaped by migration/ immigration, voluntary or compulsory military service, travel, and tourism, as well as connections through businesses, churches, charities, and universities. Many of these connections are deep and long lasting and whilst some involve government and public policy, many others are informal and personal—who we meet, marry, and become friends with over the years. They also go back centuries but continue to have some influence over daily life, politics, the economy, and culture. Before the Union of , Scotland’s international relations had a more state-like aspect, through military action and treaties. The Union then brought new international connectivity through the military, empire, and colonial service (which you can understand as activities related to conquest and administration, as well as education, scientific discovery, and religion). But connectedness also comes outwith government through the universities, religion, economic activity, and travel whether for work or pleasure, including sport, whether that is international sporting events held in Scotland like the Commonwealth Games (hosted three times in Scotland) and Ryder Cup or
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Scottish teams and competitors in football, rugby, tennis, and athletics, all linked to Scotland’s sense of history and identity and international projection (Brand ; Jarvie et al. ). Similarly, organizations like the Scottish Council Development and Industry have had decades of international engagement over trade, the economy, and development since its formation in . Since devolution in , there has been more intensive Scottish Government activism internationally, with a series of strategies and initiatives and soft power paradiplomacy as the new devolved institutions interacted with culture, economics, and development (Keating et al. ). Paradiplomacy is essentially the practice of foreign relations by regions or cities and it has become pervasive in many states in recent decades, through individual and collective action. It reflects the complexity of multilevel government systems, globalization, and policies and contrasts with the ‘normal’ diplomacy of states in relation to war, treaties, international representation, and citizenship though, in some cases, it may overlap (for an example, see the international roles of Flanders and Wallonia in Belgium). Regions and cities undertake paradiplomacy in pursuit of economic growth, environmental goals, transport connectivity, education, and international development goals—reflecting domestic policy power and responsibilities as well as particular policy aims (Keating ). Some of this paradiplomacy activity is common to subnational governments around the world— through economic development, tourism, or cultural promotion, but some is related to nation-building and projecting a positive image of Scotland domestically as well as to an international audience. Aspects of this can be related to the SNP Government’s support for independence, not least through the prospectus for the independence referendum (Scottish Government ), but elements of nation-building were also visible in the Labour-led devolved administrations of Henry McLeish and Jack McConnell (Lynch ). Tavares (: ) has referred to this as ‘sovereign paradiplomacy’ and it was certainly sharper under SNP administrations than under the first two devolved governments formed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats (– and –). Devolution has given government a directive and strategic role in international engagement, and it is not just the Scottish Government that is active here. The Scottish Parliament has an active external relations role through interparliamentary organizations and the consular corps in Scotland in addition to assessing the government’s policies in the area (Scottish Parliament ). Most frequently, government approaches and strategies have had an economic dimension related to policies to improve the Scottish economy that reach back into the s. Government approaches of the last two decades have seen four different sets of relationships: diaspora-relationships on the economy and culture with Australia, Canada, and the USA; a long-term engagement with China; international development relationships with Africa and Pakistan; and a series of state and regional government relationships within the European Union (EU) that have been called into question with the UK’s decision to exit the Union in . This latter engagement has involved Scottish local government in a series of EU institutions like the Committee of the Regions and the Council of European Municipalities and Regions but also in non-EU
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organizations like the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions and the North Sea Commission. Individual councils and cities also enjoy some international partnership arrangements as well as more basic twinning (Tavares ): for example, Aberdeen City Council has partnerships with other key energy cities/regions in Brazil, Canada, Faroe Islands, Kazakhstan, and Mexico whilst Edinburgh is a UNESCO City of Literature and helped to establish the Creative Cities network.
E S’ I C
.................................................................................................................................. The Empire offers a clear example of Scotland’s international connectedness in the Union as British colonies provided economic and employment opportunities not least through military service, trade, travel, and fortune-seeking. Colonies provided emigration opportunities and diaspora-creation with historical reach and some of this emigration has continued into the twenty-first century. This is effectively the cornerstone of the Global Scots business network. Whilst it had an economic and military focus, the effects of Empire extended to influence education, medicine, religion, and science and engaged domestic institutions and populations. Scotland has a history of coming and going—individuals and families shaped by immigration and emigration. Many Scots have moved abroad in both positive and negative circumstances, either to the UK or to the new world. It does not take long to find Scots and Scottishness in Australia, Canada, the USA, or New Zealand, with Scottish societies and institutions in many other countries around the world too. There has been a considerable literature on the Scottish diaspora (Kay ; Sim ; Devine ; Bueltmann et al. ; Leith et al. , ). Many Scots have relatives and friends who have migrated, providing a source of travel and cultural exchange. Emigration has also created a Scottish diaspora in a variety of countries though one that is politically distant from the current Scotland. Emigration and immigration also brought new communities to Scotland like the Irish, English, Indians, Pakistanis, Italians, and Poles, and over time a more multicultural Scotland has emerged domestically with different international connections between communities in Scotland and abroad, with immigration promoted by Scottish governments of different parties.¹ Some of the most recent international engagements have built on diaspora in a different way through links with India and Pakistan (Scottish Government b, c). In spite of secularization (Clements ), religion has both a historic and a continuing role in Scotland’s international connectedness. Historically, the Church of Scotland was an important domestic and international actor, in a practical as well as representative capacity through its missionary work and reach during the nineteenth
¹ The devolved government created a Relocation Advisory Service as well as Talent Scotland to attract businesses and individuals to locate in Scotland.
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and twentieth centuries. It currently has a World Mission Council of thirty-two members responsible for its overseas partnerships, missions, and links to overseas congregations, sometimes through or with a range of charities. The Church has partner churches and congregations in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Caribbean, and Europe, is involved in HIV programmes and in church twinning and Faithshare (Church of Scotland ). The Catholic Church is also involved in international development and education through the schools system, individual parishes and the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, which helps to mobilize support and finance for a range of international issues and projects. SCIAF has development projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and campaigns on social justice, climate change, and poverty. The Scottish Episcopal Church enjoys an international role through being part of the global Anglican Communion and through its own activities. It works in Scotland and abroad on ecumenical and development issues and has projects in Uganda, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It works with Christian Aid (Scotland) and the Scotland–Malawi Partnership on development issues and has a Global Partnerships Committee to guide its activities and campaigns on genderbased violence by linking to UN initiatives in this area (Scottish Episcopal Church ). In addition, the Muslim Council of Scotland contains a large number of local affiliate organizations, mosques, and charities that work domestically and internationally, such as the Aberdeen mosque, which runs projects in Bangladesh, Libya, Pakistan, and rural Sudan.² Culture in the broadest sense also offers an example of international connectedness and engagement. There is no agreement, however, on what Scottish culture is, and which version of Scotland should be promoted internationally (traditional Edinburgh Military Tattoo or Scotland’s high-tech gaming culture, to offer one contrast). Scottish culture has some connecting role internationally through the various Scottish societies and Highland games in North America, Australia, and New Zealand with events such as Tartan Day/Week each April, the Gathering, and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo offering diaspora tourism. In addition, look to the Edinburgh Festival (since ) and the annual Celtic Connections music festival as highly internationalized cultural events that offer representations of Scottish culture to an international audience and feature many international performances too. Glasgow was European City of Culture in , whilst Dundee entered the contest for (although this was blocked by Brexit); there are Robert Burns events around the world, as well as international film festivals in Edinburgh and Glasgow and events like Edinburgh’s Hogmanay that attract a large international audience to Scotland. There is cultural promotion around music and literature such as Creative Scotland’s International Programme – to help overseas promotion and presentation as well as the Made in Scotland programme that uses the Edinburgh Festival to showcase work to facilitate international tours through its Onward Touring Fund.
² See https://www.aberdeenmosque.org/Index/dynamic/-community/-relief-charities.
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Finally, if we look to post-Second World War political developments, we see a good deal of domestic activism and engagement in international issues. The development of a peace movement in reaction to the siting of nuclear submarines in Scotland is an example from the early s that has continued to this day, from Polaris to Trident, with protests at Faslane and against nuclear road convoys, linked to a broader peace movement in Europe and internationally. Similarly, Scotland had a key role in the antiapartheid campaign against South Africa. Scottish Liberal MP David Steel was chair of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement in the later s and was active in opposing the South African rugby team’s tour of the UK and Ireland, which included a game in his own constituency. The apartheid issue saw street namings (Nelson Mandela Place in Glasgow), scholarships, and honorary degrees for prominent ANC members, and Glasgow honouring Nelson Mandela by making him a Freeman of the City in , before it became a more popular and mainstream political issue in the UK and internationally.
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.................................................................................................................................. Under devolution, the Scottish Government has developed an active role in paradiplomacy—the practice of foreign relations by subnational governments (Aldecoa and Keating ) and it has a markedly economic focus as a result of political views on the Scottish economy and the outlook of successive devolved governments. This activity began before devolution in relation to the European Union though the Scotland Office and Scotland Europa, tourism (through the Scottish Tourist Board), and to economic development. The Scottish Office had some role in EU regional policy and administering the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy from to . It was also involved in seeking inward investment, allied with related agencies like Highland Enterprise (created as the Highlands and Islands Development Board in ) and Scottish Enterprise (created as the Scottish Development Agency in ). The economic focus was continued through the creation of Locate in Scotland in to attract inward investment as well as Scottish Trade International in to promote exports. These were merged to create Scottish Development International in as part of the government’s Global Connections strategy (Scottish Executive ). Since and under governments of different political stripes, there has been government activism in a number of aspects of paradiplomacy—tourism, export promotion, inward investment, international development policy, and culture. So, some level of foreign relations has become the norm for the Scottish Government, with annual events like Tartan Day in the USA, targeted Ministerial visits to build relationships with states, and a series of policies and strategies to focus international engagement with regional governments and states around the world.
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It is not just the Scottish Government itself that works on international connectivity. Scottish Development International is the Scottish Government’s inward investment and trade organization. The organization has international offices in Brussels, Washington DC, Toronto, and Beijing—often within UK diplomatic offices. Its reach involves a total of eleven offices in Europe, four in the USA, two in Canada, three in China, three in India, one each in Australia, Brazil, Dubai, Ghana, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, offering network linkages and knowledge into international markets. Similarly, Education Scotland has a strategy to internationalize schools education in Scotland and develop the global competencies of learners, develop international school partnerships, work on Fair Trade, provide educational support for Scotland’s partner countries, as well as develop language teaching (Education Scotland : –), whilst almost all Scottish universities have developed internationalization strategies and co-operate through the Connected Scotland organization to attract international students, researchers, and staff, with some creating campuses or partnerships in other countries around the world; for example, Glasgow Caledonian University in New York, Heriot-Watt in Dubai, and Malaysia and Glasgow University in China and Singapore. Government in Scotland has not lacked strategic focus and activism in relation to the economy and internationalization since devolution. Successive governments have designed overarching economic and trade strategies, international engagement strategies and a host of documents aimed at developing relations with the USA, China, Canada, Malawi, Australia, Germany, Sweden, etc. In some cases, there have been two to three strategies across different governments, with a degree of continuity and overlap from to . Economics is at the heart of these strategies, through the government’s own economic strategy plus documents like Global Scotland: Trade and Investment Strategy – (Scottish Government ), which was an eight point action plan to increase trade and investment and exports. Internationalization is one of Scotland’s current key economic priorities (Scottish Government ), is applicable to a range of other institutions like universities, and links to its international framework (Scottish Government ). The framework is aimed at creating an environment to recognize and benefit from international opportunities and attempt to exert influence in the world through strengthening international relationships, making Scotland internationally attractive, enhancing a global outlook in Scotland and protecting Scotland’s place in Europe (Scottish Government ). The current Scottish Government has five international engagement strategies focused on economic and cultural ties outside the European Union—with China, Canada, USA, India, and Pakistan—as well as an international development policy. The Scottish Government also sought to increase its representational role in international relations—meaning specific Scottish representation by the First Minister at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in and UN climate change conferences in Paris in and Bonn in . First Ministerial focus on international engagement has become commonplace—for example, in , the
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current First Minister had a five-day trip in the USA, attended the Arctic Circle Assembly, and hosted the Artic Circle Forum in Edinburgh. Such engagement has occasionally been controversial, with UK government concern at Scottish involvement in treading an autonomous line on policy, as well as criticism of the cost and impact of such engagements. Post- international engagement was shaped by a concern for global competitiveness and domestic economic change through the development of a knowledge economy. The devolved government’s first major economic strategy—A Smart, Successful Scotland—looked at global connections and the need to embrace globalization and alter the focus of Scotland’s enterprise agencies away from inward investment to exports, skills development, and international engagement. The new strategy stated that Our approach to globalisation must not be to resist change, but to embrace it. We need to be globally connected, integrating the Scottish economy into the world economy. We need to tell the world about Scotland and tell Scotland about the world. This will enable us to learn from abroad and earn abroad. To enable the improved flow of products, technologies and ideas in and out of Scotland, the measure of achievement will be making Scotland a globally connected nation. (Scottish Executive : )
One of the developments to flow from Smart, Successful Scotland was the Global Scots programme and ambassador network. Established in , it was intended as a longterm strategy to provide advice, support, and networking around the world through a Scottish networking infrastructure of Global Scots—diaspora mobilization to improve trade, investment, and business performance—with co-ordination by Scottish Enterprise (MacRae with Wight ). Notable Global Scots included Donald Trump until he was removed from the programme in . The linkage between economic development and immigration was also important to Scottish Government initiatives under the McConnell administration (–). His government created the Fresh Talent: Working in Scotland Scheme –, which allowed international students at Scottish universities to remain in the country for two years of post-study work in an attempt to retain highly skilled students to boost economic growth, the knowledge economy, and international connectivity. Whilst this programme was discontinued due to new UK immigration rules in , the Scottish Government sought other means to attract students and skilled staff. Since , various streams of the Saltire Programme have provided scholarships and fellowships in a number of areas of business, education, and networking. Domestically, Scotland has developed a two-way programme—the Saltire Scholarships to provide internships for third-year Scottish undergraduates in companies around the world and the Saltire Fellowship programme to develop business leadership with Babson College in Boston, USA. In addition, there is an externally directed programme of Saltire Scholarships to attract Masters students to Scotland from Canada, China (including Hong Kong), India, Japan, Pakistan, and the USA to study science, technology, and healthcare.
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.................................................................................................................................. Efforts to engage diaspora Scots through culture, events, economic development, and tourism have been an important aspect of Scottish international engagement, though not always well focused. The first Scottish Government diaspora strategy was in (Scottish Government ) following on from scoping work in that sought to understand the nature of the Scottish diaspora around the world (Scottish Government ). Diaspora engagement has focused on hosting domestic events like the Year of Homecoming in and (amongst a number of theme years organized by Visit Scotland), whilst also investing time and resources in Tartan Day/Week celebrations over a twenty-year period. The idea of a ‘Tartan Day’ began in Canada in the s, with efforts by Scottish clan societies and cultural organizations to form a symbolic link to Scotland and celebrate its culture. A range of other countries followed on from this, notably the USA. The Tartan Day events in the USA—which later became Tartan Week— experienced its twentieth year in so slightly pre-figured devolution. It was created by political lobbying in the USA and a decision by the US Senate in to designate th April as the official National Tartan Day—this was the day the Declaration of Arbroath was signed (Hague ). Intended to recognize the contribution of ScottishAmericans to the USA’s development, it came to form a platform for the Scottish Government to promote Scotland in the USA and subsequently Canada. In time, Tartan Day grew into a week of events, with a parade in New York and efforts at economic promotion—with a Ministerial programme of meetings and business promotions, cultural events, and efforts to raise Scotland’s profile in the USA—and some assessment of the nature of media coverage and website traffic from the week to determine if its impact led to US engagement and greater tourist inquiries (Scottish Executive ). There have been a number of individual Scottish Government strategies for the USA and Canada since devolution. Each sought to focus on economic growth and involved partnership working between the Scottish Government, tourism, and business agencies as well as the private and public sectors. Policy in this area followed a ‘Team Scotland’ approach involving the Scottish Government, the Scottish Affairs Office in the UK embassy in Washington DC plus a staff member based in Toronto, along with Scottish Enterprise, Visit Scotland, Creative Scotland, the national performing companies,³ Historic Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. The various organizations sought to establish a programme of annual set-piece events, year-round promotional activities and regular opportunities for cultural diplomacy in the USA and Canada, as well as Tartan Week events. The first Scottish Government strategy for the USA was published in , directly connected to the fact that the USA was Scotland’s largest export market, its biggest
³ The National Theatre of Scotland theatre company played hundreds of performances across the USA, whilst the Scottish Ensemble played across seven states.
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source of Foreign Direct Investment and its biggest source of tourism (Scottish Executive a). The Scottish–USA convergence saw Global Scots operating in the USA in as well as US-owned businesses operating in Scotland in (Scottish Government a: ). The strategy emphasized the need for bilateral engagement and was dependent on domestic partners and agencies in Scotland for implementation. The strategy sought to improve business links, student flows, raise Scotland’s profile in the USA, encourage scientific co-operation and increase employment opportunities through Fresh Talent. The strategy also proposed measurable targets such as a , US tourist target per annum by (Scottish Executive a: ), as well as looking to improve best practice in Scotland through policy learning with US authorities on issues like the smoking ban, FBI training, and drug courts (Scottish Executive a: ). Besides the Scottish Government, its associated economic development agency Scottish Enterprise was to focus its attention on Washington DC, California, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and Texas (Scottish Executive a: –). The second Scottish Government strategy for the USA focused on co-operation in science, universities, tourism growth, diaspora links, student recruitment and Fresh Talent, cultural links and promotion, links between artists and cultural organizations, policy, and government learning by Scottish organizations (Scottish Government a), with progress assessed in some detail (Scottish Government a). The third USA strategy (–) focused on key sectors and partnerships in premier consumer products and services; digital technology and manufacturing; healthcare and well-being; skills, knowledge, and innovation; and the low carbon economy (Scottish Government a). It aimed to increase exports, educational links, sustainable air routes and capacity, and the opportunities for Scottish organizations to exhibit and perform in the USA. It also sought to deepen connections with different levels of government in the USA, enhance diaspora links and educational connections, and for the USA to see Scotland as a source of high quality products and tourism, (Scottish Government a). The government’s Canada Strategy (–) sought to encourage cultural interactions in music and theatre. Its goals included increasing Scottish exports to Canada, increased talent flows, governmental links, stronger university and business cooperation, bilateral links in social enterprise, increasing the number of cultural presentations in Canada, and growing leisure and business tourism from Canada to Scotland (Scottish Government b).
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.................................................................................................................................. China has been an area of consistent engagement for the Scottish Government and a range of businesses and organizations under devolution. Over time, the government
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has produced three connected China strategy documents aimed at economic and cultural links. These have been influenced by China’s emergence on the global stage and a concern for economic competitiveness shared by governments and business communities across the West. The Scottish Government published its first China strategy in , which sought to plan for economic, educational, and cultural engagement up to based on ten measurable goals (Scottish Executive b). Engagement was aided by the creation of a new Scottish Affairs Office in the British Embassy in Beijing and the strategy aimed at increasing tourism, the number of Chinese students coming to study in Scotland, trade, increased awareness of Chinese culture and language in Scotland, and the strengthening of bilateral science links (Scottish Executive b: ). First Minister Jack McConnell visited China in and and there have been regular visits by First Ministers since then. Former First Minister Alex Salmond (–) participated in a six-day visit to China in and subsequent visits in , and . First Minister Nicola Sturgeon led a five-day trip to China and Hong Kong in and then to China in . Chinese delegations at various levels have visited Scotland and been entertained at Holyrood, Bute House, and by a host of organizations (see, for example, delegations from Shandong in , the National Administration for Industry and Commerce in , the China Entrepreneur Club in , and Vice-Premier Liu Yandong in ). Scottish Government Ministers and organizations like the Scottish Chamber of Commerce have been involved in relations with China over the years, with thirteen Scottish Ministerial visits since and the establishment of a chamber office in Beijing in . Most visits have sought to promote Scottish exports—salmon and whisky have featured regularly—as well as tourism (and sometimes the marketing of golf tourism in China), educational exchanges, and co-operation in science and energy. The first direct flights from China to Scotland began in June , with twice-weekly flights between Beijing and Edinburgh, to facilitate tourism, business connections, and Scotland’s attractiveness to Chinese students. However, engagement with China has been controversial due to human rights considerations throughout this period, not least when the Dalai Lama visited Scotland in , and engagement with China at different levels is a politically sensitive topic. The China strategies involve measurable goals and lots of partnership engagement in Scotland to design and deliver the strategies—meaning business organizations, companies, government agencies, schools, and universities. Some of this has built on existing links—Glasgow and Edinburgh have twinning arrangements with China, as do institutions like the Royal Zoological Society in Edinburgh. Institutionally, there has been a Chinese Consulate in Edinburgh for two decades and Scotland’s international trade organization Scottish Development International has four offices in China (in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Shenzen). Each provides a platform and opportunity for engagement with Chinese institutions. The Scottish Government’s second five-year engagement strategy with China outlined four priorities for China engagement—increased Scottish trade in China and
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Chinese investment in Scottish industry and infrastructure; extended education links; increased research and development co-operation; deeper cultural exchange and sporting links; and increased Chinese tourism to Scotland (Scottish Government : ). Economically, the Scottish trade strategy for China was focused on food and drink, energy, financial services, creative industries, and life sciences (Scottish Government : ). The strategy also sought to develop direct relationships with six main geographical locations—Beijing, Shanghai, Shandong province, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The Scottish Government’s third China strategy talked of the development of a strong, long-term bilateral partnership with China (Scottish Government : ). It aimed to build on a range of existing relationships and improve bilateral trade and investment, attract inward investment from China, export Scottish expertise in energy, engineering, finance, life sciences, tourism, textiles, and education (Scottish Government : ), as well as joint working on the environment and climate change, science and knowledge transfer, culture and heritage, and education and language learning. In relation to the latter, education has been one area of co-operation and engagement with China and its component cities and regions. The first Confucius Institute was created in Scotland in Edinburgh in (there are now five in total). It operates as an information gateway on China to provide education, business, and cultural support about the country, whilst also sponsoring cultural exhibitions and providing language classes. There is also a series of schools programmes in Scotland administered by the University of Strathclyde Confucius Institute for Scotland’s Schools. It works with twenty-two secondary schools involved in the Confucius Classroom Hub scheme (all with partner secondary schools in China), twenty-one primary schools, (half with partner primaries in China), four specialist classroom hubs at Edinburgh zoo, the Scottish Opera, the Royal Conservatoire and the Scottish Football Association. The institute also provides teacher training and mentoring for Chinese language teachers in Scotland, scholarships and professional development, and pupil and teacher exchanges. These developments remain politically sensitive, as they promote China and its soft power interests in Scotland at various levels, including the classroom, shaping political views and values.
I D
.................................................................................................................................. Scottish Government activity in relation to international development began under the second Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition government of –. It was influenced and facilitated by political leadership by First Minister Jack McConnell and the Scottish Parliament plus a developing UN campaign to address Third World debt and development problems, with the combined involvement of the G countries, World Bank, African Development Bank, and the campaign group Make Poverty History. The UK government made international development a political priority in these years,
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with the sponsoring of a Commission for Africa that was to feed into the G summit at Gleneagles in Scotland in . This situation opened the door for Scottish Government action, with the engagement of Ministers and MSPs in examining international development in general and, specifically, Scotland’s existing and potential links with Malawi in Southern Africa. The first Scottish Government strategy on international development was created by Jack McConnell’s administration in . It stated that ‘Although international development is a reserved issue under the Scotland Act, it is open to the Scottish Executive to play a role within the international community, where the work is complimentary to the work of DfID and other UK agencies, and is considered to be “assisting Ministers of the Crown in relation to foreign affairs”. There will be continuing close collaboration at both Ministerial and official levels to achieve consistency with UK government policy’ (Scottish Executive ). This change brought partnership links and funding programmes for a number of countries, particularly Malawi, with a Scottish Malawi Partnership (https://www.scotland-malawipartnership.org/who-we-are/about-us) founded in through work by Edinburgh and Glasgow councils, the churches, and universities. In addition, rather than see international development as a reserved power within the Scotland Act , policy in this area built on history and political will but also on Scottish domestic capacity in education, healthcare, renewable energy, water management, governance, sustainable economic development, and climate change—all devolved powers within the remit of the Scottish Government. Underpinning Scottish Government activism in international development were long-standing educational and religious links with a number of countries as well as the role of churches and charities in international development—long-standing civil society engagement. For instance, the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund was established in (Lynch ), with the Catholic Church in Scotland involved in a range of educational and development initiatives in Africa and Asia. The Church of Scotland had an international role through its missions and charity partners as well as links to congregations in countries such as Jamaica, Zambia, Malawi, and India. Within Scotland, the universities plus a range of charities, churches, and pressure groups were active in international development issues with around organizations in Scotland’s International Development Alliance (which was formed in as the Network of International Development Organisations in Scotland—NIDOS). In addition, development and international issues came to prominence at the Holyrood parliament with debates on international issues and a range of cross-party groups formed by MSPs on such topics as: international development (which includes representatives of the development alliance), China, Cuba, Fair Trade, Germany, Israel, Kurdistan, Malawi, Nordic Countries, Pakistan, Palestine, Poland, Taiwan, and Tibet.⁴ The Scotland– Malawi Partnership stated that Scottish organizations were actively engaged with
⁴ Current list of cross-party groups in , available at http://www.parliament.scot/msps/crossparty-groups.aspx#I.
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Malawi in .⁵ This level of engagement was indicative of the person-to-person dimension of the Malawi programme, which was about grass-roots partnership and common working, not traditional aid-giving (Anyimadua : ). In practical terms the Scottish Government’s development policy brought engagement and funding. An International Development Fund began in , focused on Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia, and Pakistan. A variety of programmes and interactions have continued since then, involving a range of Scottish organizations focused on a limited number of countries. The Scottish Government’s first co-operation agreement with Malawi focused on improving governance arrangements, civil society, and representation; sustainable development; health; and education (Scottish Executive a), with an action plan to develop co-operation in a range of areas and improved governance of the programme through the creation of a Scotland–Malawi Advisory Group for Ministers in as the engagement continued across different governments (Scottish Government ). The Malawi programme funded a range of initiatives such as the training of doctors and increasing medical capacity, mental health projects, increased cervical cancer screening, fisheries management in Lake Malawi, renewable energy projects, and vocational training in schools and communities. These initiatives were implemented in partnership with NHS Lothian, the universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews and Stirling, the James Hutton institute, co-operation between the national museums in Scotland and Malawi and work by the Scottish Law Commission amongst others. The Scottish Government launched a Climate Justice Fund in , with an initial budget of £ million and a later commitment to spend £ million a year on the issue from –. The budget helped fund climate change and water rights training in Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia, human infrastructure to help water management; tree planting; and safe water initiatives (Scottish Government a). The Fund was then divided into two parts from —the Climate Challenge Programme Malawi and the Climate Justice Innovation Fund. In Malawi, the focus was on water resilience, with the Climate Justice Innovation Fund providing project support in Malawi, Rwanda, or Zambia such as irrigation schemes, school orchard projects, local energy programmes and the development of micro-enterprises.⁶ International Development policy was then adjusted in in order to implement UN sustainable development goals in four countries, strengthen relationships with partner countries, and present Scotland as an outward-facing humanitarian nation, a good global citizen, with a ‘do no-harm’ approach to international development (Scottish Government a: ). Finally, the Scottish Government created a Humanitarian Aid Fund in in partnership with development and humanitarian organizations like Oxfam, SCIAF and Save the Children (Scottish Government a: ). ⁵ Scotland–Malawi Partnership evidence to Scottish Parliament European and External Relations Committee, inquiry into ‘Connecting Scotland—how the Scottish Government and its agencies engage internationally’, April . ⁶ See https://www.corra.scot/wp-content/uploads///List-of-projects-awarded-.pdf.
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.................................................................................................................................. Though Scottish engagement in international issues has a long history, shaped by multiple historical factors, the devolution period has seen considerable attention on Scotland’s connectedness at the governmental level. Some of this relates directly to economic issues and, in the post-devolution period, there has been a continuous level of targeted engagement in a fairly limited number of countries and markets. Since , the Scottish Government has pursued an ‘economy plus’ strategy towards international engagement, with economic development an intrinsic part of most strategies since the publication of Smart, Successful Scotland in , in addition to culture and education. The Scottish Government and a range of domestic agencies and organizations have engaged with the internationalization agenda at different levels from the early years of devolution onwards, with focused and long-term strategies for China and the USA in particular. Interestingly, this approach has seen a degree of continuity between the proUnion Labour and Liberal Democrat administrations that ran from – and the subsequent SNP governments. The difference between the administrations was shown through the SNP’s nation-building efforts linked to independence, although some of its paradiplomacy activities may well have been practised by pro-Union parties in government, too. Of course, measuring the impact of such soft power paradiplomacy is difficult, though on occasions the Scottish Government has tried to measure the economic impact of its activities in trade values, tourism numbers, and student exchanges. In addition, devolution saw government engagement in international development policy over four terms of the Scottish Government and parliament, underlain by Scotland’s long-standing international connections through churches, universities and charities, leading to focused policy and funding for Malawi as well as the extension of development and economic strategies to India and Pakistan in recent years.
R Aldecoa, F. and Keating, M. (eds). . Paradiplomacy in Action: The Foreign Relations of Subnational Governments. London: Routledge. Anyimadua, A. . ‘Scotland and Wales in Africa: Opportunities for a Coordinated UK Approach to Development’. Africa Programme Papers, AFP PP /, London: Chatham House. Brand, J. . The National Movement in Scotland. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bueltmann, T., Hinson, A., and Morton, G. . The Scottish Diaspora. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Church of Scotland. . Overseas Mission in the Life of the Local Church. Edinburgh: Church of Scotland. Clements, B. . ‘Religious Change and Secularisation in Scotland: An Analysis of Affiliation and Attendance’, Scottish Affairs, /: –.
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Devine, T.M. . To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora, –. London: Penguin. Education Scotland. . Education Scotland Core Strategies: International Engagement, to Enhance the Skills for Learning, Life and Work for all Scotland’s Learners. Livingston: Education Scotland. Hague, E. . ‘National Tartan Day: Rewriting History in the United States’, Scottish Affairs, /Winter: –. Jarvie, G., Murray, S., and MacDonald, S. . ‘Promoting Scotland, Diplomacy and Influence Through Sport’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Kay, B. . The Scottish World: A Journey in the Scottish Diaspora. Edinburgh: Mainstream. Keating, M. . ‘Regions and International Affairs: Motives, Opportunities and Strategies’, in F. Aldecoa and M. Keating (eds), Paradiplomacy in Action. The External Activities of Subnational Governments. London: Frank Cass. Keating, M., Loughlin, J., and Deschouwer, K. . Culture, Institutions and Economic Development: A Study of Eight European Regions. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Leith, M.S., Murray, S., and Sim, D. (eds). . The Modern Scottish Diaspora: Contemporary Debates and Perspective. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Leith, M.S., Murray, S., and Sim, D. . ‘Scotland’s Diaspora Strategy: The View From the Current American Diaspora’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Lynch, P. . ‘Catholics, the Catholic Church and Political Action in Scotland’, in R. Boyle and P. Lynch, (eds), Out of the Ghetto? The Catholic Community in Modern Scotland. Edinburgh: John Donald. Lynch, P. . ‘Governing Devolution: Understanding the Office of First Ministers in Scotland and Wales’, Parliamentary Affairs, /: –. MacRae, M. with Wight, M. . ‘A Model Diaspora Network: The Origin and Evolution of Globalscot’, in Y. Kuznetsov (ed.), Diaspora Networks and the International Migration of Skills: How Countries Can Draw on their Talent Abroad. Washington, DC: World Bank Institute. Scottish Episcopal Church. . th Annual Report. Edinburgh: Scottish Episcopal Church. Scottish Executive. . Scotland: A Global Connections Strategy. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Scottish Executive. . International Development Policy. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Scottish Executive. a. Cooperation Agreement between Scotland and Malawi. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Scottish Executive. . Evaluation of the ‘Tartan Week ’ Programme. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Scottish Executive. a. Scotland’s Strategy for Stronger Engagement with China. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Scottish Executive. b. Scotland’s Strategy for Stronger Engagement with the USA. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Scottish Government. . International Development Policy. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Engaging the Scottish Diaspora: Rationale. Benefits, Challenges. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Diaspora Engagement Plan—Reaching Out to Scotland’s International Family. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. a. The Scottish Government’s Plan for Engagement in the USA. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.
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Scottish Government. . Working with China: A Five-Year Strategy for Engagement between Scotland and the People’s Republic of China. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Future. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. a. Scottish Government’s Plan for Engagement in the USA—rd Annual Progress Report—June . Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Economic Strategy. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Global Scotland: Trade and Investment Strategy –. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. a. Global Citizenship: Scotland’s International Development Strategy. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. b. Scotland’s International Framework: Pakistan Engagement Strategy. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. c. Scotland’s International Framework: India Engagement Strategy. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s International Framework. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. a. Scotland’s International Framework: US Engagement Strategy. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. b. Scotland’s International Framework: Canada Engagement Strategy. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s International Framework: China Engagement Strategy. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. a. Contribution to International Development Report –. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Parliament. . Connecting Scotland—How the Scottish Government and its Agencies Engage Internationally, th report, Committee on European and External Relations. Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament. Sim, D. . American Scots: The Scottish Diaspora and the USA. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press. Tavares, R. . Paradiplomacy: Cities and States as Global Players. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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.................................................................................................................................. S stood out in the referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) as the most pro-EU constituent part of the UK, followed by Northern Ireland. This was not surprising given the big lead that polls gave to ‘Remain’ in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK ahead of the vote. Indeed, commentators were already speculating before the referendum, whether a UK vote to leave the EU would trigger a further independence referendum in Scotland, speculation that rose after Boris Johnson won the election. This pro-EU stance is one that has developed over time. In the EU referendum, whilst there was a majority in Scotland for remaining in the then European Economic Community, it was substantially less (at per cent) than the UK-wide majority (at per cent) for staying in—though Northern Ireland had the narrowest majority vote of all. The SNP is avowedly pro-EU (Chapter in this Handbook), though in the context of Brexit this encompassed both the goal of independence in the EU and a goal for the UK to stay within the EU. Indeed, in the run-up to the vote, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, demanded, but did not get, a veto over the EU referendum outcome for the constituent parts of the UK including Scotland. This created tension between the UK and Scottish governments, which impacted both on the devolution settlement and on the future direction of the UK as the UK government negotiated a Brexit withdrawal agreement with the EU and the outline framework of a future UK–EU relationship. The fact that, in the independence referendum, many pro-Union voices had argued an independent Scotland would find it difficult and very slow to re-join the EU as an independent member state, added to the sense of dislocation and division between Scotland and the rest of the UK as the Brexit process and debate unfolded. This is so, even though this division did not, in the first two years after the Brexit vote, lead to any sharp changes in support for independence. Here, we first consider how Scotland voted in the EU referendum, and what polling data show about the interconnections between views on Brexit and on independence in
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Scotland. We then analyse the subsequent evolution of political and policy stances in Scotland towards Brexit and the EU after June . First, we look at the initial response to the vote, and then how Scottish Government policy unfolded in the first two and a half years after the vote. We explore how those policy positions shifted between different options including calling for a differentiated Brexit deal for Scotland, a ‘soft’ Brexit for the UK as a whole, a call for independence, and eventual support for a ‘people’s vote’. Overall, as the UK negotiates its future relations with the EU, the Brexit process has created a range of divisions that will impact on future political dynamics within and between Scotland and the rest of the UK.
T EU R: S R UK
.................................................................................................................................. On the June , the UK as a whole voted to leave the European Union by a margin of . percentage points. Table . shows the breakdown of votes and turnout across the four constituent parts of the UK. Looked at across the UK’s nations and regions, only three of the twelve voted Remain: Scotland, London and Northern Ireland—in that order. At a more disaggregated level, the highest Remain vote was in Gibraltar (. per cent) followed by Lambeth and Hackney in London (. per cent). Across the UK, big cities tended to be Remain (BBC )—Birmingham an obvious exception—but again with a more pro-EU vote in Scotland’s big cities as Table . shows. Whilst the overall UK result was close—with a less than four percentage point winning margin—in Scotland the result was a clear and substantial majority for remaining in the EU. Scotland voted Remain across all its thirty-two council-voting areas. Whilst England and Wales—and Northern Ireland—were divided in numerous ways, Scotland produced a clear and distinct national result. Even so, some were surprised that the Leave vote was as high as per cent in Scotland—and a substantial part of that Leave vote came from pro-independence supporters (and indeed from SNP voters) despite the pro-EU stance of the SNP’s leadership. Some areas were close Table 33.1 EU Referendum Results Across the UK
UK England Northern Ireland Scotland Wales
Remain %
Leave %
Turnout %
48.1 46.6 55.8 62.0 47.5
51.9 53.4 44.2 38.0 52.5
72.2 73.0 62.7 67.2 71.7
Sources: BBC (2016), Electoral Commission (2016).
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Table 33.2 EU Referendum Results Across Big Cities in England and Scotland
London Birmingham Manchester Glasgow Edinburgh Aberdeen
Remain %
Leave %
59.9 49.6 60.4 66.6 74.4 61.1
40.1 50.4 39.6 33.4 25.6 38.9
Sources: BBC (2016), Electoral Commission (2016).
indeed, with Moray in particular electing to back Remain by . per cent. Overall, the result represented a major political challenge for both UK and Scottish political leaders: how to deal with the political and constitutional fallout from Scotland facing being taken out of the EU against its clear majority wish to remain. Some of the divisions between Leave and Remain voters for the UK as a whole were also visible for Scotland—younger and more educated voters were more likely to vote Remain in Scotland, too, but by a somewhat smaller margin than in England and Wales (Curtice ). Compared to England and Wales, UKIP had little presence in Scotland and some of the neuralgia in England on Brussels’ ‘dominance’ was much less felt in Scotland (Jeffery et al. )—whilst, of course, the pro-EU SNP was in government in Scotland (and did not exist in England). At the same time, it was notable that around per cent of SNP voters in had voted Remain, meaning there was a substantial number of independence supporters who voted Leave. This became a political conundrum for the SNP, just as Leave voters in England impacted on Labour’s political calculations after the Brexit vote. Different polls have given different emphases to how Scotland’s Remain–Leave divide intersects with its yes–no divide on Scottish independence. In September , a Panelbase () poll found independence in the EU to be the first choice whilst a YouGov poll () found remaining in the UK and EU was first choice—as shown in Table .. These results underline the principal divisions in Scottish politics—so whilst a majority wanted to remain in the EU, that Remain majority is split between staying in the UK and independence. The results also underline that Leave voters are also divided on independence—with a significant number of Leave voters being proindependence. Consequently, only a fifth to a quarter of Scottish voters, according to these two polls, supported the actual direction the UK was going in, in its entirety to leave the EU as part of the UK. Earlier work has found almost no relationship between attitudes to independence and Europe. After the Brexit vote, however, some recent surveys suggested that this was changing to a certain extent. The British Social Attitudes Survey suggested that attitudes had shifted somewhat, with Brexit and independence becoming more
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Table 33.3 How Scotland’s Remain–Leave and Independence–UK Divides Interact
Independence with Scotland in the EU Scotland in the UK inside the EU Scotland in the UK and leaving the EU Independence outside the EU
Panelbase %
YouGov %
34 29 25 12
27 35 20 18
Sources: Panelbase (2016), YouGov (2016).
intertwined. Where at least one in three independence supporters were in favour of Leave in , ahead of the independence referendum, by the figure was closer to one in four (Curtice and Montagu ). The same survey found that per cent support independence outside the EU and per cent support independence inside the EU. This presented a difficult strategic challenge for First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon. Whilst the SNP’s stance on the EU and Brexit could explain part of the losses the SNP experienced in the General Election, it did not explain all the shifts, with another part of the explanation being that more younger voters were choosing to vote Labour. Results from the British Election Study also suggested that there was a divergence amongst SNP supporters. Nine out of ten of those who had voted Yes in and Remain in stayed with their party, whilst four in ten Yes/Leave voters had switched party (Prosser and Fieldhouse ). Across the UK, polls from early onwards started to show a small majority for Remain.¹ This continued throughout . Once Theresa May had agreed her deal with the EU in November , polls also showed voters strongly preferring Remain to May’s deal but preferring May’s deal to a ‘no deal’ Brexit. However, polls with a majority for Remain over May’s deal also found high ‘don’t know’ responses amongst Leave voters. In Scotland, polls in the second half of tended to show slightly stronger support for Remain than in . One in August (YouGov b) had Scottish Remain support at per cent and one in November found per cent Remain support (Survation ). The Scottish Parliament in autumn also held two symbolic votes—one in support of another EU referendum and one in opposition to May’s deal. By April , two polls suggested the elusive ‘Brexit bounce’ in the form of higher support for independence was perhaps becoming visible. YouGov () found support for independence at per cent to per cent against—up from per cent ‘yes’ in its previous poll in June . Panelbase () found support for independence at per cent to per cent against, but support for independence went up to per cent in the scenario of a ‘no deal’ Brexit. Voters looked less keen, though, in these polls for an early referendum, somewhat fewer wanting a referendum in the next five years than ¹ See, for instance, the YouGov (a) tracker poll which, by December , found per cent Remain to per cent Leave.
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those who wanted one later or not at all. By the end of , support for independence was nudging upwards slightly, as was support for a relatively early referendum.
P P R B V
.................................................................................................................................. The likely choices for the Scottish Government in the face of a UK vote for Brexit were fairly clear even before the vote (Hughes a). Scotland could accept Brexit and leave with the rest of the UK. It could aim to go down the path of a second independence referendum. It could consider whether there was some preferable, differentiated option whereby Scotland stayed closer to the EU than the rest of the UK whilst staying in the UK. Or it could create a general political and constitutional stand-off and see where those dynamics led. In the first two years after the vote, the Scottish Government, in some ways and at different points, pursued all these options. What it put very little emphasis on, however—until autumn —was the strategic policy option to continue to oppose the Brexit process, and argue for the UK to think again in the face of the widespread damage Brexit was likely to cause. That there would be some economic damage was the conclusion of many independent studies, the extent of that damage varying in degree according to the nature of the Brexit deal. Furthermore, negative economic impacts of Brexit, particularly on investment, had begun even prior to the formal exit. The Scottish Government did not simply accept the Brexit process. At various points, it argued strongly for a ‘soft’ Brexit which would involve staying in the EU’s customs union and single market. The Scottish Government referred to this as a compromise and as the least worst form of Brexit. By advocating such an approach, they tended to accept Brexit but demanded it should take a certain form, whilst also mentioning but spending less time on their, in theory, preferred outcome of staying in the EU. This meant the Scottish Government was emphasizing a Brexit compromise over campaigning to halt Brexit until autumn , when its stance shifted. The Scottish Government also proposed, by late , that at least Scotland, even if not the whole of the UK, should stay in the EU’s single market. It argued for independence in the EU—especially in early . And it had a sustained argument with the UK government over the return of EU powers in devolved areas—passing (as the Welsh Assembly did) its own ‘continuity’ bill in place of the EU Withdrawal bill. But as Brexit unfolded amidst considerable uncertainty, in the face of a deeply divided UK government, much of the Scottish Government’s response was rather low key. It was only in autumn that policy changed. Nicola Sturgeon, at the SNP October conference, finally embraced having another EU referendum—a ‘people’s vote’—a shift endorsed by a motion at the conference. The SNP also focused their general election campaign on both independence and on stopping Brexit.
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Theresa May had rapidly set out a range of red lines, after the referendum vote, which became highly problematic in finding a way forward on Brexit. In autumn , May first insisted on the UK leaving the EU’s single market and customs union and not staying under the authority of the Court of Justice of the EU, repeating this broad approach in subsequent speeches in and . These red lines meant the Scottish Government’s ‘least worst’ option of the UK staying in the EU’s single market and customs union looked unlikely. It also made finding a deal with the EU that kept open the Irish border, and did not lead to a hard border elsewhere between the EU and UK, essentially impossible without some softening of the red lines (as finally happened in the final deal, with Northern Ireland having to accept a customs and regulatory border with Great Britain). In the initial few weeks after the EU referendum, the Scottish Government gave the impression of having a strategic plan, and considerable political energy behind it. But even by autumn , this strategic approach seemed to be damped down as the government headed down a more technocratic, cautious route. Certainly, in March , caution was thrown to the wind in Nicola Sturgeon’s call for a second independence referendum, but she was soon on the back foot again as Theresa May first said ‘now is not the time’ on an independence referendum, and then called the general election. May lost her majority at that election, rather than strengthening it as she had hoped, leaving her dependent on the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to stay in power. The SNP lost twenty-one of its fifty-six MPs—and, whilst the SNP had not run its campaign based on independence in the EU, this loss of seats led to much more caution towards timing of a future independence referendum. As a result of these losses, the Conservatives ended up with thirteen seats in Scotland, Labour seven and the Liberal Democrats four, so despite the damaging Conservative results at UK level, they had clawed their way back to some extent in Scotland. In April , Nicola Sturgeon made a renewed call for another independence referendum in a statement to the Scottish Parliament just ahead of the SNP’s spring conference. It was rather more cautious than her March call. She argued for another vote before the Holyrood elections in May , if Brexit did go ahead—but also acknowledged that it would need Westminster’s agreement. By April , too, the SNP was once again doing better in the polls on overall voting intentions compared to the election results. After the SNP’s success in the election, Sturgeon moved onto the front foot, demanding a referendum in . Overall, the Scottish Government and SNP approach to Brexit was cautious until the later stages of Brexit. The shift in October to backing a ‘people’s vote’—whilst also still emphasizing the single market and customs union compromise—gave the Scottish Government and SNP MPs at Westminster a stronger profile in opposing Brexit, not least whilst the Labour party retained a pro-Brexit position with a quite vague position, until autumn , on whether they might at some point support another EU vote. There were, though, differences of view within the SNP over the desirability of strongly backing another referendum or ‘people’s vote’. Some feared that, if such a vote happened, it would set a precedent in the case of an independence referendum, with
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a ‘yes’ vote followed by another vote on whatever deal Scotland and the rest of the UK then agreed. Others wanted an earlier independence referendum. This shift in policy by the SNP had, however, the support of its voters. Indeed, polls showed that, as the Brexit endgame unfolded, there was strong support for Remain and for another referendum across SNP, Labour, Lib Dem, and Green voters in Scotland. This support for another vote crossed the independence/unionist divide. Yet, the Lib Dems were the only pro-union party, in , supporting Remain and a ‘people’s vote’, whilst Labour shifted in autumn to supporting another vote with a Remain option, but not taking a position on Remain or Leave. So, the Scottish Government was more proactive in contesting Brexit both in the early days post-referendum and as the Brexit endgame loomed. In terms of devolution concerns, the SNP’s approach started to change in mid- too as the arguments over devolved powers became more tense, with the SNP MPs walking out of the House of Commons in protest in mid-June. There had been consultations on Brexit between the UK and Scottish governments, through the Joint Ministerial Committee (EU Negotiations) but these were not seen as giving the Scottish Government substantive input into the key lines of the UK government’s Brexit strategy. There are several reasons, considered below, that explain the Scottish Government’s rather passive approach to Brexit for much of the first two years after the vote, given the strong vote of the Scottish public for Remain. Sturgeon’s focus on devolved powers made it look, in some ways and for much of that period, more like a regional government than a party that was both in power in Scotland and the third party at Westminster.
T I R
.................................................................................................................................. In the early days and weeks after the EU referendum vote, there was a strong political dynamic in Scotland that was opposed to Scotland simply being taken out of the EU against its expressed will. A week after the vote, the Scottish Parliament voted – for a motion calling for exploration of ways to keep Scotland in the EU and/or its single market. It was a striking moment of cross-party unity with only the Conservatives abstaining. In the Holyrood elections, held that May, the SNP’s manifesto had said that another independence vote would be justified if there was a ‘significant and material’ change of circumstances such as a vote for the UK to leave the EU with Scotland voting to Remain. But now, this Holyrood vote indicated a perhaps unexpected expression of Scottish cross-party consensus against Brexit (apart from the Conservatives). In the immediate aftermath of the EU vote, the Scottish Government looked like they had done some contingency planning. Nicola Sturgeon went to Brussels within a week of the Brexit vote and met European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. SNP MEP, Alyn Smith, the day before Sturgeon was in Brussels, gave a passionate
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speech in the European Parliament calling for its backing for Scotland given its pro-EU vote—and received a standing ovation. Nicola Sturgeon also moved rapidly to establish a Standing Council on Europe, with a distinguished set of expert advisers on it. Its first meeting was in mid-July . In a sharp contrast to , the mood music in the EU was very sympathetic to Scotland’s invidious position of voting to stay in the EU whilst the UK as a whole voted to leave. In a speech in late July (Sturgeon ), the First Minister set out five red lines for any future Brexit deal—red lines that looked difficult to meet without staying in the EU. Those red lines covered democracy, economic prosperity, social protection, solidarity, and influence. ‘These’, she said ‘are the vital interests that are at stake and we must now seek to safeguard’. So the Scottish Government’s early moves in response to Brexit looked considered and strategic, unlike that at the UK level at that point in time.
D I
.................................................................................................................................. By autumn , the strong dynamism of the early political responses in Scotland to the UK’s Brexit vote had become rather more muted. The Scottish Government started to put the emphasis on a differentiated Brexit for Scotland, keeping Scotland in the EU’s single market, rather than in the EU. Whether this was related to the failure of a sustained ‘Brexit bounce’ for independence to emerge is an open question. Briefly, at the end of June , it had looked like there was such a bounce—with three polls showing a majority for independence. One Survation poll, for example, found ‘yes’ support had jumped to . per cent to ‘no’ on . per cent (Survation ). But by July, opinion had fallen back—a YouGov poll at the end of July found ‘yes’ at per cent and ‘no’ at per cent. Likewise, support for an early independence referendum, on the back of the Brexit vote, was briefly a majority view (in the same Survation poll) but it rapidly became the case that a range of polls showed a fatigue with elections and referendums and even many proindependence supporters did not want a new vote imminently. The Scottish Government’s main proposal on a differentiated Brexit for Scotland was published in December , entitled ‘Scotland’s Place in Europe’ (Scottish Government ). Even before this policy paper came out, the Lib Dems had abandoned the cross-party consensus seen in the Holyrood vote at the end of June, claiming the Scottish Government was simply using arguments about staying in the EU’s single market as a route to independence whilst Scottish Labour, in contrast, continued to support such an approach in votes at Holyrood (Hughes b). Meanwhile, Theresa May in her uncompromising party conference speech that October had insisted: ‘We will leave the EU as one UK. There is no opt-out from Brexit.’ Boris Johnson, once he became prime minister, strongly reiterated this point of view. The differentiation proposal received considerable attention both over its feasibility and over whether it really represented a major step towards independence given the
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major increase in devolved powers it would have required. There were a number of technical challenges that the paper recognized as to how to keep the Scotland/rest of UK border open if Scotland were in the single market and the rest of the UK were not. As the subsequent Brexit debate across the UK showed, not to mention the finally agreed Northern Ireland protocol, there is no simple way to have different regulatory systems and frictionless borders. The paper proposed, however, that the Liechtenstein/ Switzerland model of ‘parallel marketability’ could be used—since that allowed the former to be in the European Economic Area (EEA) whilst Switzerland was outside it. There are several political and technical challenges that can be made here (Hughes ). Scotland would have had to join the EEA via the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), as a sub-state (not allowed for in those organizations), and would have had to also request a derogation from participating in EFTA trade deals (given the proposal was to stay in a customs union with the UK). Overall, it allowed a political debate to be had on these issues but in many ways the discussion also pointed out the challenges an independent Scotland might face whether it were in the EU or EEA once the UK had itself left the EU and its single market. Whilst the Scottish Government surely did not expect the UK government to accept the whole proposal, there were some hopes that Scotland might gain new powers over migration policy. This was seen as a potentially substantial policy ‘win’ but, in the event, the UK government showed no warmth to this idea. The UK government postponed a formal response to the Scottish Government paper until it was at the point of triggering Article on March , when David Davis () wrote a letter saying it was not feasible: ‘Scotland’s businesses could face a confusing mix of regulatory regimes’. This was somewhat ironic given that Brexit would also mean the UK would face potentially a different regulatory regime to its major market of the EU—and in the event, differences between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The political dynamics between the UK and Scottish governments had, though, already moved on by this stage. On March , Nicola Sturgeon called for a second independence referendum given that the UK government had ignored its proposals for a special deal for Scotland. But within three days, Theresa May had responded saying it was not the moment for such a vote: ‘now is not the time’ was a tough response which Sturgeon promised she would fight against (though how was never made clear). Within a month, May had called the general election. Once both the Conservatives and SNP had lost seats in that election (though the Conservatives had gained seats in Scotland), and May her majority, a Scottish Government rethink was called for. The Conservatives gained seats both in the borders and in the North-East (with support for Leave in some coastal fishing communities one likely factor there). The Scottish election debate was notable for the relative low-key presence of Brexit as a campaigning issue. Whilst opposition parties denounced the call for another independence referendum, the SNP clearly did not want to run the election as a dry run on independence—and often emphasized their Brexit differentiation proposal more than independence in the EU. But having lost seats and vote share, another
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independence referendum was then shelved, with Nicola Sturgeon saying she would come back to the question once the Brexit deal was clear in autumn . In the event, independence came much more sharply into prominence a year later, during and after the general election.
‘S’ B S
.................................................................................................................................. As UK talks got under way with the EU after the general election, the Scottish Government started to put more emphasis on the goal of a ‘soft’ Brexit as being the least worst option. Differentiation was not abandoned but it was given less emphasis. Likewise, the SNP retained its policy goal of independence in the EU but this was also not front and centre as the Scottish Government refocused onto domestic policies after its loss of seats in the election. The SNP was also keen not to alienate its proindependence Leave voters—some of whom had clearly not voted for it at the election. In January , the Scottish Government published a new Brexit paper (Scottish Government ). This re-emphasized the goal of the UK staying in the EU customs union and single market and set out estimates of the economic damage that Scotland could face under different types of Brexit. The paper estimated –. per cent lower growth for Scotland in under an EEA-style Brexit to –. per cent lower under a WTO Brexit. The paper also once again referenced the differentiation option. Other papers on more specific Brexit issues were also published in and including, amongst others, on migration, individuals, and justice and home affairs. In December , the EU–UK Joint Report was agreed, including a commitment that the Irish border would remain open, if necessary through a backstop that would keep Northern Ireland effectively in the EU’s customs union and largely in its single market. Scotland’s government then demanded that it, too, should have this option—a request it repeated once the November Withdrawal Agreement and backstop provision were agreed, despite the existence of the all-UK customs union in that agreement. But the UK government had no intention of making such a request for differentiation for Scotland, nor was the EU keen to go beyond a unique potential deal for Northern Ireland (and even less so once the November deal had been struck). And, as the talks over the Irish border showed, keeping it open without an Irish Sea border being created was hard to square given Theresa May’s red lines— until Theresa May shifted on allowing a basic customs union in the backstop. Johnson’s deal gave up a pan-UK customs union and so a border in the Irish Sea became a Brexit reality. The Scottish Government, in theory, wanted differentiation but, just like May’s government, they also wanted an open border with the rest of the UK. But despite their very different positions in the Brexit process, both Scotland and Northern Ireland, as the two Remain-voting constituent parts of the UK, faced both increasing alienation from London and deepening political divisions at home (Hughes and Hayward ).
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At Westminster, SNP MPs worked in and with Liberal Democrat, Green, and Labour rebel MPs who supported a ‘soft’ Brexit. This often looked like a very distinct track on Brexit to the stand-off between Holyrood and Westminster over the EU Withdrawal bill and devolved powers. By mid-, the SNP’s strategy looked to be, perhaps, to focus debate once again more onto independence. The Sustainable Growth Commission () produced its report in May for the SNP setting out an economic prospectus for independence but the EU was more notable by its absence than its presence in that report (Hughes a). Following this, the SNP MPs’ walk out from the House of Commons in June over the ‘power grab’ of devolved powers added to the growing dynamism of the Scottish independence debate. Yet by autumn , with a Brexit deal finally agreed but not put to a vote in Westminster, the independence debate had become quieter again. There was no sustained push on the question at that time—it took until autumn for Nicola Sturgeon to raise the tempo of the debate again. The Scottish Government, after its aborted independence referendum call over Brexit in March , appeared reluctant to make demanding a halt to Brexit the centrepiece of its Brexit strategy; rather, ‘soft’ Brexit was the main aim—and protection of devolved powers. There was a mixture of reasons for this (Hughes b). Partly, there was pessimism over the chances of halting Brexit. There was also a desire to keep the pro-independence Leave voters on board which an emphasis on the single market rather than the EU as such made easier. And there was reluctance to be the voice for ‘Remain’ for the whole UK. There was, too, a reluctance to suggest that an English and Welsh vote in a referendum should be contested, at least until polls clearly shifted, given that in the future the SNP would want a ‘yes’ vote in a Scottish independence referendum to be respected. With Labour accepting Brexit—including its Scottish leader, Richard Leonard (until he shifted in to Remain)—and with the Conservatives pushing Brexit through, Scotland had no strong political voice speaking for its ‘Remain’ views until the shift in stance by the SNP in autumn , followed by Sturgeon’s renewed call for an independence referendum in April , repeated after the December election. Overall, the Scottish Government looked more like a regional government in much of this period than a party that was both in power in Scotland and was the third party at Westminster (Hughes and Salamone ). But it was a regional government that had a weather eye on its independence ambitions.
B T, I, EU
.................................................................................................................................. The draft Withdrawal Agreement in November between the UK and the EU (European Commission b) set out the aim of a transition period to last until the
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end of December , with the possibility of extension to the end of December . The Withdrawal Agreement had also broadened out the initial European Commission proposal of a backstop (European Commission a) to keep the Irish border open, which would apply to Northern Ireland alone, to one where the UK as a whole would stay in a basic customs union, if the backstop were ever triggered. But even in the November deal and version of the backstop, Northern Ireland would also effectively stay in the EU’s single market for goods and agricultural products and adopt the Union customs code, so there would still be some significant differentiation. This was added to in Johnson’s deal, so there would be both a customs and a regulatory border between Britain and Northern Ireland. The prospect of a transition where the UK stayed in both the EU customs union and its single market held out, for the SNP, the possibility that if it did go for a later second independence referendum, it could conceivably still achieve a smooth transition to becoming an independent EU member state if the UK had left the EU but was still in its customs union and single market. This assumed that Scotland—and the rest of the UK—had not diverged yet, or much, from the EU’s acquis at the time of any such independence vote (Hughes c; Hughes and Lock ). This window of opportunity looked vanishingly small, however, if Johnson stuck to his declared aim (which he put into the EU Withdrawal bill) of exiting transition by December . However, the draft Political Declaration (Council of the European Union ), agreed at the EU–UK summit on November , set out the ultimate goal of the future relationship as a deep and ambitious free trade agreement. This was criticized from many sides, including by the SNP, as being a ‘blindfold’ Brexit, since the declaration allowed a range of possibilities for the future relationship. As debate continued, it was certainly clear that the form of Brexit would impact strongly on future independence options. If the UK did leave the EU but stayed in its customs union, then to help ensure as frictionless trade as possible between a future independent Scotland and the rest of the UK, Scotland should surely stay in the EU customs union too. So debates about whether an independent Scotland should be in the EU or EEA, in the light of the Brexit process, had to face up to the implications of the choices made by the UK. If an independent Scotland were in the EU whilst the rest of the UK was in the EU’s single market and customs union, that would keep the England/Scotland border open. But if the UK ended up with a ‘hard’ Brexit of a Canada-style free trade deal, then keeping frictionless borders with an independent Scotland whether in the EU or EEA would be difficult, if not impossible. Equally, if the UK left the EU’s single market but stayed in a customs union with the EU, then it would make little sense for an independent Scotland to be in the EEA and outside the customs union as that would again create a hard border. Nor was it obvious why an independent Scotland might see staying in the EU’s single market and customs union (if the EU were prepared to offer that) as preferable, given the major democratic deficit it entailed, to being a full EU member state with a vote and seat at the table. Independent or not, Scotland cannot escape the impact of Brexit. Brexit may have made independence more desirable for some, but it also made the arguments around
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independence, borders, and markets much harder than when the UK was in the EU. The SNP’s response to this through much of the Brexit process was in many ways to downplay their policy of independence in the EU in favour of emphasizing being in the EU’s single market and so to put their strategic emphasis on a ‘soft’ Brexit rather than on halting Brexit. Yet once the Brexit agreement was made in autumn , and with the SNP decision just before that to shift to back a further EU referendum, the intertwining of the independence and Brexit debates once again got stronger—a trend that continued markedly through .
C
.................................................................................................................................. Scotland voted to stay in the European Union in . The overall UK vote for Brexit— in direct opposition to this—has impacted on Scottish politics, its economy, its society, and the devolution settlement. An initial cross-party consensus in the Scottish Parliament (except for the Conservatives), which sought to explore how to keep Scotland either in the EU or at least in its single market, soon fractured. As the Brexit process became increasingly shambolic in —and increasingly damaging for the economy, with growing political divisions in the UK and inside its government and with a lack of clarity for EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU—UK politics looked more and more dysfunctional. In contrast, Scottish politics—given the almost two-thirds support for Remain—appeared, despite divisions over independence, more normal, and at the same time very separate, and alienated, from UK politics at Westminster. The Brexit vote gave impetus to a possible early re-run of the independence referendum—although this faded after early only for independence dynamics to grow stronger again in mid-, even more so by the end of . But the fact of Brexit also meant that an independent Scotland—whether in the EU or EEA— faced new challenges with the rest of the UK, or at least England and Wales, outside the EU, its single market and its customs union. Border challenges would be just one element of this. In the first half of , the Scottish Government was putting its main emphasis on protecting devolved powers—whilst at Westminster the SNP was pushing for a ‘soft’ Brexit. This emphasis shifted later in to a stronger opposition to Brexit, stronger still in the general election. After the Scottish Government changed its policy stance to support a ‘people’s vote’, its MPs at Westminster were part of intense crossparty moves amongst back-bench MPs from other parties to push for such a vote, and to rule out a ‘no deal’ Brexit, as well as to extend Article . With the Commons voting in early to rule out a ‘no deal’ Brexit, and the EU agreeing with Theresa May a six month extension of Article to the end of October, the SNP’s stronger anti-Brexit stance looked in tune with both Scottish and UK-wide public opinion. Nicola Sturgeon’s April call for a second independence referendum before Scottish Parliament elections in , if Brexit went ahead, also opened up the likelihood of a more intense
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independence debate taking off once again. The outcome of the December election, with its Conservative majority, strongly reinforced this. It shone a spotlight on the deepening division between Scotland and the rest of the UK and brought independence in the EU centre stage once again. However the future UK–EU relationship unfolds, the increasingly separate politics and the contrasting political views on the EU in Scotland compared to England and Wales mean that Scotland’s European future is an open and a contested question. This may play out in different ways. In the face of Brexit, deep divisions opened up within England that are likely to impact on its politics for many years ahead. In contrast, divisions over Europe run less deep in Scotland, given the clear and sustained majority in favour of Remain, but divisions have intensified between Scotland and England. As Brexit moves ahead, it is set to impact strongly on political debates over independence in Scotland and whether Scotland’s future lies within the EU or within the UK. Yet the irony will remain that the UK staying in the EU would have made Scottish independence easier (two neighbouring states both integrated in the European Union) whilst the UK leaving the EU is likely to make independence a more pressing issue and a more popular choice in Scotland.
R BBC. . ‘EU referendum: The result in maps and charts’, BBC, June. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-. Council of the European Union. . Political Declaration Setting out the Framework for the Future Relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom, November, Brussels. Curtice, J. . ‘Why did Scotland vote to Remain?’, October. Available at: http://blog. whatscotlandthinks.org///why-did-scotland-vote-to-remain/. Curtice, J. and Montagu, I. . ‘Scotland: How Brexit has Created a New Divide in the Nationalist Movement’, in British Social Attitudes . The National Centre for Social Research: London. Davis, D. . Letter to Michael Russell, Scottish Minister for UK negotiations on Scotland’s Place in Europe, published on Scottish Parliament website. Available at: http://www. parliament.scot/S_European/General%Documents/CTEER_Minister_M.Russell_. ..pdf. Electoral Commission. . ‘EU referendum results’. Available at: https://www. electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/elections-and-referendums/pastelections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/electorate-and-count-information. European Commission. a. European Commission Draft Withdrawal Agreement on the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community. Position Paper to EU, February, Brussels. European Commission. b. Draft Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community, November, Brussels.
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EU–UK. . EU–UK Joint Report on Phase of Brexit Negotiations, December. Hughes, K. a. ‘Scotland and Brexit: A Path to Independence or Crisis?’, Friends of Europe Policy Paper, January, Brussels. Hughes, K. b. ‘Brexit with the UK, Independence or a Special Deal?’, Friends of Europe Policy Paper, Winter, Brussels. Hughes, K. c. ‘Scotland and Brexit – Outlook Worsens as Options Narrow’, European Futures, October. Available at: http://www.europeanfutures.ed.ac.uk/article-. Hughes, K. . ‘Scotland’s EU Single Market Options: Some challenges from the trade side’, blog for Centre on Constitutional Change. Hughes, K. . ‘Banquo’s Ghost: The Growth Commission, the EU and Scottish Independence’, Scottish Centre on European Relations. Available at: https://www.scer.scot/database/ ident-. Hughes, K. . ‘Scotland and Brexit: Is Damage Limitation a Good Strategy?’, Scottish Centre on European Relations. Available at: https://www.scer.scot/database/ident-. Hughes, K. and Hayward, K. . ‘Brexit, Northern Ireland and Scotland: Comparing Political Dynamics and Prospects in the Two “Remain” Areas’, Scottish Centre on European Relations Policy Paper, April. Hughes, K. and Lock, T. . ‘An Independent Scotland and the EU: What Route to Membership?’, European Futures, February. Available at: https://www.europeanfutures. ed.ac.uk/article-. Hughes, K. and Salamone, A. (eds). . ‘Brexit Roundup: Where are we heading?’, Scottish Centre on European Relations Policy Report, April. Jeffery, C., Henderson, A., Scully, R., and Wyn Jones, R. . ‘England’s Dissatisfactions and the Conservative Dilemma’, Political Studies Review, /: –. Panelbase. . Survey for Sunday Times, Fieldwork September to September. Available at: https://www.drg.global/wp-content/uploads///SundayTimestablesforpublication.pdf. Panelbase. . Survey for Sunday Times, Fieldwork April to April. Available at: https://www.drg.global/our-work/political-polls/sunday-times-poll-th-april-/. Prosser, C. and Fieldhouse, E. . ‘A Tale of Two Referendums—The Election in Scotland’, British Election Study. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Place in Europe. December. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Place in Europe: People, Jobs, Investment. January. Sturgeon, N. . Nicola Sturgeon, Speech on Scotland and Europe, IPPR Scotland, The Scotsman, July. Survation. . Survation on Behalf of the Scottish Daily Mail, June. Survation. . Survation on Behalf of Scotland in Union Poll, November. Sustainable Growth Commission. . ‘Scotland – The New Case For Optimism’, Report, May. YouGov. . ‘YouGov Survey Results’, Fieldwork August to December. Available at: https://ddsfbs.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/bpmbrtkv/Inter nalResults__Scotland.pdf. YouGov. a. ‘EU Tracker Questions (GB)’, December. YouGov. b. ‘YouGov/People’s Vote Campaign Results’, Fieldwork to August. YouGov. . ‘The Times Survey Results’, Fieldwork April to April.
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.................................................................................................................................. I September , voters were asked ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’, a question which on the surface appeared clear-cut. Throughout the campaign, however, it became clear that the meaning of independence was both complex and contested. This was not new—the question of Scottish independence has been present, to varying degrees of salience, in Scottish political life for decades. In , the way in which it would be pursued, the form it would take, and the degree of embeddedness within the international community were all up for debate. This also raised broader questions about the meaning and purpose of independence in the twenty-first century. As the only party consistently advocating independence, the Scottish National Party is central to this discussion. Although a marginal player for much of its first four decades, the SNP’s influence on Scottish political life has been profound—its electoral successes incentivizing action on the part of its Unionist rivals, culminating in two referendums on devolution. Whilst it was joined by the Scottish Greens in campaigning for a Yes vote in , the Scottish National Party is the primary protagonist in the independence debate. This chapter consists of five sections. The first explores the theoretical literature on concepts of self-government and independence. The second places the debate in a historical context, examining the notion of Scottish independence over time and analysing the ways in which independence has been articulated with reference to broader international tendencies and institutions and the structures of the British state. In the third section, we turn to the process by which the referendum came about, examining the SNP’s strategy in the devolved period. In the fourth section, we turn to the party’s proposals to explore meanings of independence. In the concluding section, the potential implications of Brexit on independence are discussed.
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.................................................................................................................................. The issue of the identification and analysis of self-government goals can be difficult. They can be understood broadly as ‘the demand for political reorganization of the existing national power structure’ in favour of some form of self-government (De Winter : ). These goals are advanced by sub-state nationalist and regionalist parties, those parties whose ‘core business is sub-state territorial empowerment, whereby empowerment involves seeking to represent and advance the particular interest of the stateless territory’ (Hepburn : ). Goals are typically presented on a spectrum, representing ‘different degrees of selfgovernment’, from more moderate goals of inclusion and representation at the centre to more radical goals of independence and irredentism (Rudolph and Thompson ; Dandoy : ). At the far end of the spectrum sits independence. Although there are those who consider all sub-state nationalists as, overtly or covertly, in pursuit of independence, the stated goal of independence is quite rare and independence movements in advanced democratic states have not yet found success (Keating : ; Tierney : ). However, the concept of independence and its advancement by a certain subset of substate nationalist parties is theoretically interesting, reflecting the ways in which parties engage with the broader world when articulating their goals. The language of secession or separation, used in the literature but not often by the parties themselves, can suggest a commitment to isolation that is not borne out when we examine goals in detail. The literature suggests that sub-state nationalist parties are actively engaged with the broader world and their goals reflect this. MüllerRommel’s classification includes ‘left-libertarian federalist parties’ who seek radical self-government within existing international structures (Müller-Rommel : –). This is a broad definition, including parties like the SNP who seek independence and Europe, and those who seek more autonomy within the state. These are distinct from separatist parties, who seek independence but also reject EU integration. Rather than shrink from global forces, sub-state nationalist parties increasingly embrace them, with bodies like the European Union reducing barriers to selfgovernment. Sub-state nationalist parties have also seen changes to the role and function of the state, and its ability to accommodate their demands. Parties increasingly foresee continued ties between the state and the sub-state after self-government. Lluch draws a distinction between two types of independence movements—pactists which seek to negotiate continued partnership, and principled independentists, those who propose a ‘complete rupture’ (Lluch : ). Reflecting on the SNP, McEwen describes its proposals as ‘embedded independence’, embedded within the international community and the British Isles (McEwen ).
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Changes to state structures, globalization, and Europeanization can be understood as encouraging creative forms of self-government, yet independence remains an important ambition for some sub-state nationalist parties. In this chapter we will examine the independence question in Scotland, and explore how this question has been answered at various periods in history.
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.................................................................................................................................. The salience of independence specifically, or of Scottish self-government more generally, has risen and fallen over time, closely linked with the electoral fortunes of the SNP. The party has, from its origins, prioritized the pursuit of Scottish selfgovernment. However, there is variation in the way in which that goal was defined, labelled, and pursued, reflecting tendencies and dynamics internal and external to the party. In analysing the party over time, we find that three distinct visions of independence emerge. The first, reflecting the preferences of parties and movements which predated the SNP, saw an ambiguously labelled ‘self-government’ situated within the Empire. The s through s saw the increased salience of the independence issue and a more explicit definition of independence. The third vision of independence, which emerged in the s, retains the structure of independent statehood but increasingly acknowledges and embraces interdependences and co-operation at the international level. Although this has been further developed since it was first articulated in , it formed the foundation of the party’s proposals in .
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.................................................................................................................................. At its founding, the Scottish National Party sought self-government, in the form of the restoration of the Scottish Parliament. However, this vision of self-government was nested within broader British structures, with the party pledging to co-operate and fulfil its roles and responsibilities to the British Empire and later within the Commonwealth. Its language varied over time; the party spoke of self-government, independence, and home rule as well as the more emotive language of freedom. This ambiguity reflects the party’s origins—the merger of the National Party of Scotland, with its more radical goal of independence, seeking to ‘restore the independent National status of Scotland’, and the right-wing Scottish Party, which advocated a more moderate form of home rule, embracing shared rights and responsibilities (Finlay : ; Mitchell : ; Cameron : ). These two different preferences
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were reconciled by a call for ‘self-government for Scotland’, entailing ‘the establishment of a Parliament in Scotland which shall be the final authority on all Scottish affairs’ (SNP ). Scottish self-government was to be achieved within the British Empire, where many Scots had found economic success and influence (Paterson : ; Kennedy ; Robertson ). A self-governing Scotland, according to the party, would retain rights and responsibilities towards the imperial project (SNP ). Writing in , the future leader of the SNP, Andrew Dewar Gibb described the centrality of Scotland in the management and administration of the Empire. ‘True it is that the hegemony of Britain in the Empire is steadily becoming more and more formal and ornamental, but so long as that hegemony endures in the British Empire, it must reside in England and Scotland, never in England alone’ (: ). Although there were tensions about the role of Empire between the NPS and the Scottish Party, the party’s constitution consistently stressed the role a self-governing Scotland would play. It defined its goal as ‘Self-government for Scotland on a basis which will enable Scotland, as a partner in the British Empire with the same status as England, to develop its national life to the fullest advantage’ (SNP ). Co-ordination of imperial affairs would be managed jointly with England whilst a Scottish Parliament would manage all domestic affairs. In the post-war period, the party’s self-government goals were more explicitly defined but rarely described as independence directly. Instead, the party spoke of self-government and the more emotive language of ‘freedom’ for a ‘New Scotland’ (SNP , ). Party president T.H. Gibson spoke directly to the challenges of terminology in a address, asking ‘What do we mean when we use the phrases “Home Rule,” “Self-government”, and “Statehood”?’ In his view, the terminology was less important than the substance. The goal of the party was thus ‘[T]he restoration of Scottish National Sovereignty by the establishment of a democratic Scottish Government freely elected by the Scottish people’ (Gibson ). Even in the context of imperial decline, a close relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom, under the auspices of the Commonwealth and within the British Isles, was proposed. Gibson spoke of a desire for ‘[a] particularly intimate relationship with the other countries of the British Isles’ as well as mechanisms to co-ordinate cooperation on areas of mutual concern (Gibson ). Scotland would become ‘a free and equal nation within the Commonwealth and under the Crown’ (SNP ). On the subject of the nascent European project, the party was less clear, supporting the project in principle but arguing that Scotland’s interest lay elsewhere. A broader conversation was taking place around home rule in the s and s, in the guise of the Scottish Covenant Association founded by John MacCormick (Mitchell : ). The Association sought to mobilize the public in favour of home rule and secure commitments from Unionist party MPs to pursue the issue at Westminster. The Scottish Covenant collected nearly two million signatures but struggled to sustain attention to the issue at Westminster in the s (Levitt : ). As a result, the SNP became the principal actor in pursuit of self-government, albeit for many years a marginal one (Mitchell : ).
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In its first three decades, the party’s minimalist answer to the independence question took the form of the revocation of the Treaty of Union, the return of power to Scotland, and continued co-operation within the British Empire and later the Commonwealth. Given the limited electoral success of the party, these debates over the labelling and form of self-government were largely internal. Over the subsequent years and hand in hand with electoral support, the party developed a more comprehensive definition that reflected the heyday of the nation state in the era of decolonization, the changing role of the United Kingdom on the international stage and the decline of the British Empire, and developments at the European level. As the party passed the threshold of representation and seemed to pose a threat to Conservative and Labour seats, the broader question of self-government for Scotland increased in salience.
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.................................................................................................................................. As support for the SNP increased in the s and s, a more comprehensive definition of self-government was required. The party’s vision of independence during this period reflects broader international tendencies, including the dismantlement of the British Empire and processes of decolonization, the burgeoning European project, as well as domestic forces, including proposals for a more limited form of selfgovernment put forth by rival parties. By the mid-s, the SNP was more consistent in its use of independence, notably in the Draft Constitution for an Independent Scotland, in which its aims were defined as a ‘free, independent, democratic nation’ (SNP ). Its aim was more explicitly defined as ‘The achievement of a democratic, independent government in Scotland . . . ’ with Scotland having ‘political independence with full control of our affairs, and opportunities to take the initiative in the economic interdependence of European and world trade’ (SNP ). The SNP reiterated its founding objectives in the Return to Nationhood and on membership cards, but continued to refer to ‘SelfGovernment for Scotland’ in this instance, seeking ‘the restoration of Scottish National Sovereignty by the establishment of a democratic Scottish Parliament’ (SNP ). The successes of the SNP, notably the by-election victory of Winnie Ewing in , elicited a reaction on behalf of political rivals. Both the Labour and Conservative parties proposed self-government for Scotland in the form of devolution. These proposals triggered internal debates within the SNP on whether these proposals were an appropriate stepping stone to self-government, the view held by gradualists within the party, or whether they were a dangerous distraction, the view held by fundamentalists (Newman : ). George Reid described the Assembly as falling far short of expectations, but representing a significant step forward in transferring powers back to Scotland (HC Deb December vol col –). However, the SNP voted only narrowly to join the referendum campaign and internal divides were reflected in its contributions to the campaign.
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The party also had to consider how it would address international developments, and its articulation of self-government in the s and s acknowledged growing interdependencies and the need for co-operation. The Constitution argued that independence would present ‘opportunities to take the initiative in the economic interdependence of European and world trade’ (SNP ). In Return to Nationhood, the party stressed the role of the Commonwealth as well as participation in international structures, seeking to restore a ‘democratic Scottish Parliament within the Commonwealth, freely elected by the Scottish people, whose authority will be limited only by such agreements as may be freely entered into by it with other nations or states of international organisations’ (SNP ). However, the party continued to stress the importance of national sovereignty, rejecting participation in the then-European Community, which was considered to be a violation of the terms of Union which disallowed the UK to cede sovereignty (Wright : ). Later, the party campaigned against the UK’s accession in , a move which it argued would render Scotland ‘powerless and without a voice or vote’, ceding its sovereignty to another actor (SNP ). Arguments against membership were threefold. First, it was perceived that participation would have negative economic consequences for Scotland, in the form of increased competition and costs. Second, the European Community entailed isolation, prioritizing European neighbours above Commonwealth countries with whom Scotland had important ties (SNP ). Third, it was viewed as another centralizing force, moving authority further from Scotland, from London to Brussels (Wolfe : ). At the same time, there was a strong message of contingency evident in the party’s objections. Campaign posters proclaimed ‘No—On Anyone Else’s Terms’ (Harvie : ). This suggested that if Scotland were independent, and thus able to negotiate its own terms of membership, its position might be different. In the campaign on continued membership, the party campaigned for withdrawal but did so in a halfhearted manner, a result of internal divisions within the party on the matter (Macartney, ; Lynch : ). However, the party’s official position remained opposed until the late s, foreseeing a looser form of affiliation, which would preserve Scotland’s national sovereignty (SNP , ). The events of the late s—the referendum on the UK’s continued membership in the EEC, the failure of the devolution referendum and the electoral rebuke that followed—triggered a period of reflection within the SNP on both the means by which independence was to be achieved and what that independence might look like.
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.................................................................................................................................. At the SNP’s conference, a new vision of independence was adopted, one of ‘independence in Europe’. The party continued to argue for independence, but nested
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this model of self-government within European structures. The shift on European integration was made possible by changes within the party, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. The SNP began to move beyond the question of whether Scotland should be independent to questions about what an independent Scotland might look like. With left-wing leaders coming to the fore, its manifestos set out proposals for increased employment, economic growth, free education, and improved housing, proposals supported by developments in Brussels. The Delors Commission focused on the social dimension to European integration (Harvie : ; Newell : ; Cameron : ). Increasingly, it appeared that Europe could be a partner for an independent Scotland. However, the party was not unreservedly pro-European, preferring to retain an intergovernmentalist approach that stressed the sovereignty of member states. The UK was considered to be increasingly disconnected from the values and preferences of the Scottish people (SNP ). Scotland was therefore faced with a choice—incorporation into Thatcher’s United Kingdom, defined as ‘sterile, out of date and bankrupt’ or integration within an increasingly social democratic Europe (SNP ). Despite this, the SNP did not fully eschew co-operation with the rest of the United Kingdom. Independence would, according to the party, allow for ‘surly tenants’ to become ‘good neighbours’ (Salmond ). Partnership would take place between the rest of the United Kingdom, and an independent Scotland, and the Republic of Ireland (SNP : ). The party had always included a proposal of some form of association—along the lines of the Nordic Council—but it was not until the s that any attention was paid to what this might look like in practice. The SNP also began to soften its stance on devolution proposals, reflecting the engagement of the Labour Party and civil society with the issue of selfgovernment (Mitchell : ; Cameron : ). Although it ultimately withdrew from the Scottish Constitutional Convention over its failure to explore independence as an option, gradualists were coming to the fore. The party was critical of the devolution proposals, describing them as insufficient and ‘fatally flawed’ but participated enthusiastically in the Scotland Forward campaign in favour of devolution (SNP ). The party had adopted a stepping stone approach to independence and would leverage devolution to pursue its self-government goals. Although devolution had, at times, exposed fractures and exacerbated tensions within the SNP, it was crucial for laying the groundwork for the referendum. The Constitutional Convention ensured that there was a broad consensus on Scotland’s right to self-determination, even if there was disagreement on what form selfgovernment might take. The use of a referendum to secure constitutional change was also an important precedent.
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T R R
.................................................................................................................................. Devolution opened up a new forum for the Scottish National Party, transforming the means by which independence was to be achieved. Its independence goals remained broadly consistent in the devolved context—with independence to be situated within the European Union and entailing co-operation with the rest of the United Kingdom. The party defined this as ‘st century independence’, reflecting a post-sovereign vision of self-government which acknowledged the need to share sovereignty and sustain co-operation. The means by which independence was to be pursued changed. Pre-devolution, the party was to interpret its return of a majority of Scottish seats as a mandate to open negotiations for Scottish independence (Mitchell : ; Keating and McEwen : ). From , the party proposed a referendum on independence, to be called by the Scottish Parliament. At its origins, this tactic seemed improbable, given the composition of the Scottish Parliament and a voting system designed to render a majority government unlikely (Kidd and Petrie : ). Holyrood also lacked the necessary competences to hold a binding referendum, with the constitution explicitly reserved to Westminster. However, politically, it allowed the party to decouple a vote for the SNP from a vote for independence (Mitchell : ). Despite becoming the second largest party in , the early years of devolution were a struggle as the party shifted from one of permanent opposition to prospective government (Lynch : ). Following the disappointing results of the election, the party underwent organizational reforms and leadership changes, with the return of Alex Salmond as leader (Cairney ; Mitchell et al. ; McAngus ). The party also changed its constitution in , replacing the word ‘selfgovernment’ with ‘independence’. As a minority government in , the SNP lacked the majority necessary to pass a referendum bill. In some ways this was helpful, allowing it to use its position in government to build support through ‘performance politics’, emphasizing what Scotland could achieve under devolution and highlighting its limitations (Leith and Steven ; Curtice and Ormston ). It also launched the National Conversation, which explored all constitutional options, including the status quo, the proposals of the Calman Commission, devolution max, and independence (Scottish Government ). As the party entered office, according to the Scottish Social Attitudes survey, support for independence was at per cent (Curtice and Ormston ). The party’s independence proposals acquired more detail but remained broadly consistent with that advanced in the s. In the final report of the National Conversation, independence was defined as a scenario in which: Scotland would assume all the responsibilities and rights of a normal European state, including membership of the European Union and other international bodies,
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the ability to determine economic policy, including the currency, and full responsibility for defence and security. (Scottish Government )
EU membership was a central pillar of the party’s ‘independence package’ and the SNP maintained that Scotland would retain EU membership and the opt-outs enjoyed by the UK, a position contested by rivals (Scottish Government ). The party’s position on participation in the EMU also changed over time, reflecting the challenges faced in the Eurozone. The party proposed the use of sterling until economic conditions and Scottish voters, in a referendum, supported a move to the Euro (SNP ; Scottish Government ). Despite these changes, membership in the European Union remained central to the party’s position. It also, crucially, provided an umbrella under which relationships between Scotland and England could take place. This close relationship was hinted in previous iterations of the party’s goals but was developed in further detail as the party looked ahead to independence. This focus on continuity served both ideational purposes, acknowledging the close links felt by many with the rest of the United Kingdom, but was also pragmatic, reducing some of the costs of independence. Publications spoke to common interests and ‘shared history, geography, and trade links’ as well as the affinity that Scotland felt towards its neighbours (Scottish Government ). Independence would allow a resetting of the relationship on more equal footing, leading to a more harmonious relationship (Scottish Government ). This co-operation might be intensive, as Kenny MacAskill suggested in his book Building a Nation. He asked ‘Is there a need for a separate DVLA or even Ordnance Survey? . . . Does a bureaucracy need to be created in Saltcoats as well as Swansea? Can we not simply pay our share as well as our respects? Do we need to reinvent the Civil Aviation Authority or other such institutions as opposed to exercising control from north of the border even if the Institution remains located in the south of it’ (MacAskill : –).
This focus on continuity and shared institutions would become even more pronounced in the referendum campaign. Analysis suggests that the strategy of ‘performance politics’ paid off, at least in terms of perceptions of the party in government (Mitchell et al. ; Dardanelli and Mitchell ). The party’s campaign reflected an attempt to capitalize on this, with the manifesto titled Re-elect a Scottish Government Working for Scotland, stressing competence not constitution (SNP ). Support for the party though was not coupled with an increase in support for independence, with the Social Attitudes survey logging just a small increase (Curtice and Ormston ). However, having secured a majority, the party was committed to passing legislation on a referendum. The parliamentary majority secured by the SNP in provided a political mandate but the ability to hold a constitutional referendum did not fall within Holyrood’s competences. However, there is a general recognition of Scotland’s right to selfdetermination (Keating ). In keeping with this, the UK government accepted that
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‘the future of Scotland’s place within the UK was for the people of Scotland to vote on’ but sought to input on how and when the referendum would occur (Tickell ). Two parallel consultations took place, with the UK government publishing a white paper on ‘Scotland’s Constitutional Future’ and the Scottish Government publishing ‘Your Scotland, Your Referendum’ (Scottish Government ; UK Government ). These set out the two actors’ views on the legality, timing, and franchise of a future referendum as well as the question (Tierney ). Both sides were in accord that a political agreement rather than a legal one should be found (Casanas Adam ). The Edinburgh Agreement, signed in October , had several consequences for the nature and conduct of the referendum, which included: the date, with a stipulation that the vote would be held before the end of ; the franchise, allowing the vote to be extended to and -year-olds; the nature of the question, to be agreed with advice from the Electoral Commission; and the number of questions, restricted to one (Tickell ). The Scottish Government had declared itself open to a multioption referendum (including independence and some sort of extended devolution) but the UK government rejected this, arguing that a clear question was required (Tierney ; McHarg ). Both governments proclaimed the Edinburgh Agreement, and subsequent legislative outputs, to be a victory and the consensus on the referendum enhanced its legitimacy (Casanas Adam ; Mitchell ). For the SNP government, the agreement provided a basis on which a binding referendum could be held whilst the UK government, with an eye to the polls, felt they could decisively win (Keating and McEwen ). This set the stage for September , when voters in Scotland were asked ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’
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.................................................................................................................................. In , voters were asked whether Scotland should be ‘an independent country’ and the purposes, meaning, and form that that independence would take were debated throughout the campaign. The SNP argued that independence was a complex concept, entailing an international legal personality but also compatible with efforts to partner and share sovereignty, both within the British Isles and within Europe. In this section, we will discuss the key themes in the debate as well as their evolution over time. The referendum involved several assumptions, recognized by campaigners both in favour and against independence. First, it was assumed that Scotland was a nation, and second, that as a nation, it had a right to decide its own future (Keating ). There was little discussion of culture or nationalism, and the definition of Scots and Scotland was a broad, open, and inclusive one, defined as those resident in Scotland. As a result, the debate focused on how the policy questions facing Scotland might be answered (McHarg ; Keating and McEwen ). This was evident in the Scottish Government’s framing in Scotland’s Future, which focused on how Scotland as a
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society, with the powers of independence, becomes healthier, more educated, more equal and more prosperous (Scottish Government ). Throughout the campaign, Yes campaigners stressed these themes. Then Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described the case for independence as ‘utilitarian’, focused on issues of the economy, welfare, childcare, and continued membership and positive contributions to the European Union (Sturgeon ). Better Together campaigners put forth counterclaims, stressing uncertainty and the strength and stability of key institutions within the United Kingdom. The debate centred around three key themes—prosperity, sovereignty, and an emphasis on continuity rather than change. The theme of Scottish prosperity was at the heart of the debate, with competing knowledge claims about whether Scotland would be richer or poorer in the United Kingdom or outwith (Goudie ; Scott ; Lecca et al. ). This was consistent with earlier debates on independence and devolution. Early SNP leaders campaigned for self-government in order to address issues of economic underperformance, poor housing and social services, and industrial decline. The party’s most notable successes were those based on economic arguments, claiming Scotland’s oil and the economic prosperity this was to entail (Mitchell ). These claims were countered with references to the welfare state, the NHS, and British industrial performance, the benefits of which were only possible within the Union. The economic situation in the s and cuts made by the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher strengthened the nationalist argument, and austerity enacted under a Conservative– Liberal Democrat coalition from onwards was central to the party’s campaign (SNP ). An independent Scotland, the party asserted, would end punitive policies like the bedroom tax and ensure the maintenance of prized welfare systems and services (Scottish Government ). In contrast, Scotland’s current position in the United Kingdom, Unionist campaigners argued, offered a UK Dividend of £ a year (Lecca et al. ) In their view, the UK offered ‘the best of both worlds’, a high degree of autonomy coupled with the strength and security of the United Kingdom (HM Government ). The restoration of sovereignty remained central to the SNP’s case for selfgovernment, and Scotland’s Future and campaigners repeatedly returned to the theme of the ‘sovereignty of the Scottish people’, particularly in contrast to Scotland’s current situation, at the whims of the sovereignty of Westminster (Scottish Government ). However, its discussions of sovereignty and the meanings of independence continually referred to a modern, nuanced understanding. Stephen Noon, research director at Yes Scotland, argued that independence proposals were not ‘old-fashioned views’ of statehood, but a model which would facilitate partnership and co-operation, currently inhibited by Scotland’s absence of international legal personality (Noon ). As a sovereign state, Scotland would be free to enter into mutually beneficial arrangements, sharing sovereignty when it served its interests. The focus here was on continued membership of the European Union. Scotland, it argued, would be a positive contributor to the European Union and independence in bore many similarities to the ‘independence in Europe’ position adopted by the party nearly three decades earlier. The salience of the EU issue increased with the possibility
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of a referendum on the UK’s membership (Douglas-Scott ). Whilst Unionist campaigners warned that an independent Scotland would be required to reapply to the European Union, the SNP countered that only independence could guarantee Scotland’s membership in the European Union. Finally, the SNP stressed what would remain the same in the event of independence, arguing that in many ways, independence would allow for continuity rather than change. This took two forms—first, it involved the preservation of key institutions like the NHS, which campaigners argued were under threat under the UK government and second, the maintenance of strong economic and social ties with the rest of the United Kingdom. On a practical level, the party suggested that services would be preserved and likely improved but also that people might notice the impact of independence in their everyday lives. Salmond described the continued social union, ‘People will still change jobs and move from Dundee to Dublin, or from Manchester to Glasgow. We will still watch the X-Factor or Eastenders. People in England will still cheer Andy Murray, and people in Scotland will still support the Lions at rugby’ (Salmond ).
People in Scotland and the United Kingdom would continue to travel and trade seamlessly across borders, consume the same media, and work together on areas of common interest (Scottish Government ). The UK government and Unionist parties countered this argument, saying that by voting yes, Scots would be ‘voting to leave its supporting institutions and public bodies’ (HM Government : ). The party’s proposals were broadly consistent with earlier iterations, although with a much greater level of detail. The party argues that integration, even far-reaching, is not incompatible with independence, viewing sovereignty as something important to possess but also something that can be shared. Its vision of independence had always included some degree of integration within international and European structures as well as the maintenance of social, economic, and political ties with the rest of the United Kingdom, whether through the joint management of Empire or under the umbrella of the European Union. However, sovereignty still retains meaning, it can and should be shared but it should be the decision of the nation whether to share it. Ultimately, the SNP’s answer to the independence question was rejected at the polls, although by a much smaller margin than might have been expected given polling at the start of the campaign. The independence debate in Scotland was characterized by a high degree of engagement, but also a high degree of uncertainty—over EU membership, currency, and economic prospects (Liñera et al. ). Rather than settle the issue, the period since the referendum has been characterized by further uncertainty.
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.................................................................................................................................. The Edinburgh Agreement stipulated that the referendum be ‘decisive’ and the SNP argued this was a ‘once in a generation opportunity’ to secure independence.
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However, as the polls closed—a larger constitutional process, both in Scotland and in the United Kingdom as a whole, began to unfold. Throughout the campaign, all three parties backing a No vote had independently proposed further extensions of the devolution settlement but had not done so in a co-ordinated fashion. Faced with tightening polls several weeks before the vote, a vow was made by the Unionist parties to ‘deliver extensive new powers’ to Scotland in the event of a No vote. Recommendations were to be published by St. Andrew’s Day and draft legislation by Burns Night. As a result of ‘the vow’ a No vote was no longer a vote for no change but for a further constitutional process (Mullen ). The proposals of the cross-party commission involved a statement on the permanence of the Scottish Parliament as well as the devolution of additional powers— certain fiscal powers, borrowing, some aspects of social security, onshore oil and gas extraction, and an encouragement of better intergovernmental relations (Smith Commission ). There were also signs that this process would not be restricted to Scotland. On the September, David Cameron spoke to his relief that Scotland had opted to remain within the Union but also to his vision for the rest of the United Kingdom. He proposed a ‘balanced settlement—fair to people in Scotland and importantly to everyone in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as well’ (Cameron ). In doing so, he endorsed proposals to strengthen the Welsh Assembly and introduced a process for ‘English Votes for English Laws’, which would restrict the voting rights of Scottish MPs. These proposals, accompanied by the success of the SNP at the General Election, ensured that the constitution, and Scottish independence, remained a live issue. This was further exacerbated by the issue of Brexit. Scotland’s position on Europe was more clear-cut than that of the rest of the UK, as all of the main parties campaigned in favour of remaining within the EU and the issue of EU membership had little salience in Scottish political debates (McHarg and Mitchell ). In its Holyrood manifesto, the SNP argued that another referendum on independence should be held in the event that ‘there is a significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in , such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will’ (SNP ). Speaking the morning after the vote, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced that the vote fulfilled the criteria set out in the party’s manifesto, suggesting another independence referendum would take place. In several polls immediately after the vote, there appeared to be an increase in support for independence, a Brexit bounce. However, these numbers have quickly stabilized. Following the triggering of Article , the First Minister put forth a motion that would provide the Scottish Government with a mandate to enter into negotiations with the UK government on a new section . This was dismissed by the Prime Minister. At the time of writing, the form that Brexit will take and its implications for the constitutional make-up of the UK are not yet clear. On one hand, the prospect of Brexit places the prospect of a second referendum on independence on the table. On the other, the final deal between the UK and the EU may present significant challenges to the core pillars of the SNP’s independence proposals, which saw EU membership
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as an umbrella under which close social and economic ties with the UK would be maintained. The SNP, its opponents, and voters will likely be faced with the independence question once more and its answer will depend both on internal factors and the broader context in which the question is asked.
R Cairney, P. . Understanding Public Policy: Theories and Issues. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cameron, E. . Impaled Upon a Thistle: Scotland Since . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Cameron, D. . Speech after the Scottish referendum on Independence, September, London. Casanas Adam, E. . Self-determination and the Use of Referendums: The Case of Scotland. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, /: –. Curtice, J. and Ormston, R. . How will Scotland Answer the Referendum Question? Edinburgh: ScotCen. Available at: http://www.scotcen.org.uk/media//-howwill-scotland-answer-the-referendum-question.pdf. Curtice, J. and Ormston, R. . ‘Scottish Independence: The State of the Union: Public Opinion and the Scottish Question’, British Social Attitudes, : –. Dandoy, R. . ‘Ethno-regionalist Parties in Europe: A Typology’, Perspectives on Federalism, /: –. Dardanelli, P. and Mitchell, J. . ‘An Independent Scotland? The Scottish National Party’s bid for independence and its prospects’, The International Spectator, /: –. De Winter, L.. . ‘The Volksunie and the Dilemma between Policy Success and Electoral Survival in Flanders’, in L. De Winter and H. Türsan (eds), Regionalist Parties in Western Europe. London: Routledge. Douglas-Scott, S. . ‘Scotland, Secession, and the European Union’, in A. McHarg, T. Mullen, A. Page and ,N. Walker (eds), The Scottish Independence Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edinburgh Agreement. . Signed by Scottish Government and UK Government, October, Edinburgh. Finlay, R. . ‘ “For or Against?” Scottish Nationalists and the British Empire, –’, The Scottish Historical Review, /–: –. Gibson, T.H. . The Scottish National Party. What It Is and What It Stands For. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. Goudie, A. . Scotland’s Future: The Economics of Constitutional Change. Dundee: Dundee University Press. Harvie, C. . No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Twentieth-century Scotland, Vol. . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hepburn, E. . ‘Introduction: Re-conceptualizing Sub-state Mobilization’, Regional and Federal Studies, /–: –. HM Government. . ‘Scottish people will be £, better off as part of the UK, analysis shows’, May. Available at: http://www.gov.uk/government/news/scottish-people-will-be-better-off-as-part-of-the-uk-analysis-show.
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HM Government. a. Scotland Analysis: EU and International Issues. London: HM Government. Keating, M. . Plurinational Democracy. Stateless Nations in a Post-Sovereignty Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keating, M. . The Independence of Scotland. Self-Government and the Shifting Politics of Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keating, M. and McEwen, N. . ‘The Scottish Independence Debate’, in M. Keating (ed.), Debating Scotland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kennedy, J. . ‘Responding to Empire: Liberal Nationalism and Imperial Decline in Scotland and Québec’, Journal of Historical Sociology, /: –. Kidd, C. and Petrie, M. . ‘The Independence Referendum in Historical and Political Context’, in A. McHarg, T. Mullen, A. Page, and N. Walker (eds), The Scottish Independence Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lecca, P., McGregor, P., and Swales, J.K. . ‘The Economy’, in M. Keating (ed.), Debating Scotland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leith, M.S. and Steven, M. . ‘Party over Policy? Scottish Nationalism and the Politics of Independence’, The Political Quarterly, /: –. Levitt, I. . ‘Britain, the Scottish Covenant Movement and Devolution, –’, Scottish Affairs, /: –. Liñera, R., Henderson, A., and Delaney, L. . ‘Voters’ Response to the Campaign: Evidence from the Survey’, in M. Keating (ed.), Debating Scotland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lluch, J. . Visions of Sovereignty: Nationalism and Accommodation in Multinational Democracies. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lynch, P. . Minority Nationalism and European Integration. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Lynch, P. . ‘From Social Democracy Back to No Ideology? The Scottish National Party and Ideological Change in a Multi-level Electoral Setting’, Regional and Federal Studies, /–: –. Macartney, A. . Independence in Europe, Scottish Government Yearbook. Edinburgh: Unit for the Study of Government in Scotland. MacAskill, K. . Building a Nation: Post Devolution Nationalism in Scotland. Edinburgh: Luath Press. McAngus, C. . ‘Party Elites and the Search for Credibility: Plaid Cymru and the SNP as New Parties of Government’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. McEwen, N. . ‘Embedded Independence: Between Autonomy and Interdependence in the Scottish Constitutional Debate’, Paper presented to a workshop in the University of Konstanz, Konstanz, June. McHarg, A. . ‘The Constitutional Case for Independence’, in A. McHarg, T. Mullen, A. Page, and N. Walker (eds), The Scottish Independence Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McHarg, A. and Mitchell, J. . ‘Brexit and Scotland’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, /: –. Mitchell, J. . Strategies for Self-government: The Campaigns for a Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: Polygon. Mitchell, J. . ‘The Referendum Campaign’, in A. McHarg, T. Mullen, A. Page, and N. Walker (eds), The Scottish Independence Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Mitchell, J., Bennie, L., and Johns, R. . The Scottish National Party: Transition to Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mullen, T. . ‘Introduction’, in A. McHarg, T. Mullen, A. Page, and N. Walker (eds), The Scottish Independence Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Müller-Rommel, F. . Ethnoregionalist Parties in Western Europe: Theoretical Considerations and Framework of Analysis. London: Routledge. Newell, J.L. . ‘The Scottish National Party: Development and Change’, in L. de Winter and H. Türsan (eds), Regionalist Parties in Western Europe. London: Routledge. Newman, S. . ‘The Rise and Decline of the Scottish National Party: Ethnic Politics in a Post-industrial Environment’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, /: –. Noon, S. . ‘Co-operative independence in an interdependent world’, Click on Wales, September. Available at: http://www.iwa.wales/click///co-operative-independencein-an-interdependent-world/, accessed June . Paterson, L. . The Autonomy of Modern Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Robertson, J. . A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rudolph, J.R. and Thompson, R.J. . ‘Ethnoterritorial Movements and the Policy Process: Accommodating Nationalist Demands in the Developed World’, Comparative Politics, /: –. Salmond, A. . ‘Speech, Scotland in the process of independence’, February, London School of Economics. Salmond, A. . ‘Speech, Social Union and the Union of Crowns’, August, Campbeltown Summer Cabinet Public Discussion. Scott, A. . ‘Economics and National Autonomy’, in A. McHarg, T. Mullen, A. Page, and N. Walker (eds), The Scottish Independence Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scottish Government. . Your Scotland, Your Voice: A National Conversation. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Your Scotland—Your Referendum—A Consultation Document. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Government. . Currency Choices for an Independent Scotland: Response to the Fiscal Commission Working Group. Edinburgh: Scottish Government Smith Commission. . Report of the Smith Commission for Further Devolution of Powers to the Scottish Parliament, November. Edinburgh: Smith Commission. SNP (Scottish National Party). . SNP Constitution. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . Scotland’s Present Position. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . Draft Constitution for an Independent Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . The Scotland We Seek. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . The SNP and You. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . The New Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . SNP and You: Aims and Policy of the Scottish National Party. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . Return to Nationhood. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . Choose Scotland: The Challenge of Independence. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . Independence in Europe—Make It Happen Now! Edinburgh: Scottish National Party.
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SNP. . Yes We Can. Win the Best for Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . Re-Elect a Scottish Government Working for Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. SNP. . Re-Elect Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Scottish National Party. Sturgeon, N. . ‘The Constitutional Future of an Independent Scotland’, Conference address, June, Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law, Edinburgh. Tickell, A. . ‘The Technical Jekyll and the Political Hyde: The Constitutional Law and Politics of Scotland’s Independence “Neverendum” ’, in A. McHarg, T. Mullen, A. Page, and N. Walker (eds), The Scottish Independence Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tierney, S. . ‘Reframing Sovereignty? Sub-State National Societies and Contemporary Challenges to the Nation-State’. International and Comparative Law Quarterly, /: –. Tierney, S. . ‘Legal Issues Surrounding the Referendum on Independence for Scotland’, European Constitutional Law Review, /: –. UK Government. . Scotland’s Constitutional Future: Responses to the Consultation. London: UK Government. Wolfe, B. . Scotland Lives. Edinburgh: Reprographia. Wright, A. . Who Governs Scotland? London: Routledge.
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Issues and Outcome ......................................................................................................................
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.................................................................................................................................. O September , Scotland held a referendum on the question: Should Scotland be an independent country? This is a most unusual event in modern politics.¹ In the late nineteenth century, Europe witnessed an ‘awakening of the nations’ as national movements emerged across the continent, challenging the consolidating states and the great empires. Following the First World War, the collapse of the Ottoman, German, Russian, and Habsburg empires gave birth to many new states. Even the British Empire lost the greater part of Ireland. Since the Second World War, many former colonies have gained independence. At the end of the twentieth century, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia produced yet more small states. None of these, however, quite compares with the case of Scotland, which belongs to a different group of cases: mature, democratic states (rather than empires), in which there is no manifest oppression. Other examples are found in Catalonia, Quebec, Flanders and, perhaps, Northern Italy. These cases have long puzzled political scientists, who tended to regard national integration as a one-way process and secessionist movements as a sign of delayed modernization, or of real or imagined oppression. The only one of these that had staged a formal independence referendum prior to is Quebec, which did so in and , the latter being only narrowly defeated; but in that case the Canadian Government, whilst participating in the campaign, did ¹ An earlier version of this chapter was published as ‘The Scottish Independence Debate’ in Michael Keating (ed.), Debating Scotland. Issues of Independence and Union in the Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, .
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not accept the referendum as binding. In , the Catalan government, unable for constitutional reasons to hold an official referendum, staged an unofficial ‘consultation’ but this was suppressed by the Spanish Government and the leaders jailed. Scotland, then, stands out as a unique case of an agreed referendum on an agreed question and a long period of intensive debate. Not surprisingly, it has attracted a lot of international interest as a way of debating the future of a nation and of resolving a self-determination claim in a peaceful and democratic manner. One explanation for why there was a referendum in Scotland is down to short-term political tactics and happenstance. In , the Scottish National Party (SNP) won a plurality of seats at the third elections to the Scottish Parliament. The minority SNP government was perceived to have managed the country well and was re-elected with an absolute majority in . This was not because of their policy of independence, since support for independence was actually falling slightly in and hardly up in (see Figure .). Having promised a referendum, they were obliged to deliver, hoping against the odds to win. Their unionist opponents, having opposed a referendum to that point, changed tack in the belief that they could call the nationalists’ bluff, score an easy victory, and see off the idea of independence for a long time. Such an explanation, however, is superficial and ignores longer-term trends in Scottish politics. A rival explanation is the ‘slippery slope’ argument, frequently deployed in the debates about Scottish devolution from the s onwards. This holds that, by granting Scotland its own parliament, the United Kingdom was unwittingly promoting its own disintegration since such a parliament would never be content with mere devolution. The institutional dynamics would inevitably propel it towards full independence, and Scottish nationalists would always claim that more 80
Percentage
60
40
20
0
2000
2002 Independence
2004
2006
Devolution
2008
2010
No Scottish Parliament
2012
2014
Don’t Know
. How Should Scotland be Governed (Five Response Categories Collapsed to Three)
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powers were needed and would blame Westminster for policy failures. There is evidence for such a dynamic in the case of Belgium, where successive state reforms empower institutions, which in turn demand more; but it has never been demonstrated as a general rule. Devolution in other instances has been stabilizing, reinforcing the legitimacy of the state. There is evidence that this happened in Scotland after . The (almost) annual Scottish Social Attitudes Surveys (–) revealed that devolution failed to generate increased popular support for independence. Although being Scottish remained their primary attachment, Scots became more, rather than less, inclined to see themselves as British as well (see Figure .). We see the Scottish case, rather, as an instance of something more profound: the transformation of statehood itself in a changing domestic and international context. The twentieth-century nation state represented an aspiration to construct a form of sovereign political order within fixed territorial boundaries. Within these boundaries, there would be a national society, a national economy, a system of authoritative government, a system of popular representation and a sense of social solidarity. The nation would provide legitimacy for political order and affective solidarity. The state would provide the institutions for public policy. In what was known as the ‘Keynesian welfare state’, governments would undertake macroeconomic management and secure growth and full employment whilst providing social security through public services and welfare programmes. As well as a space for affective solidarity, the nation state would furnish a space for a mutually beneficial social compromise between capital and labour.
40
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2002
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2010
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2014
Scottish not British
More Scottish than British
Equally Scottish and British
More British than Scottish
British not Scottish
Other description
. ‘Moreno’ National Identity
None of these
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Of course, this was never more than an ideal-type and many states contained fault lines inherited from the past (Rokkan ), but it did provide a strong rationale for national unity and centralization in the post-war period. Since the s, however, the formula has come under a lot of strain. International free trade and capital mobility have reduced the capacity of states in macroeconomic management. Welfare compromises have been undermined as capital is more mobile than labour and can opt out by relocating. Social change has altered family and household structures and, along with job insecurity, posed new social risks, challenging the old welfare model. The rise of free-market ideology has questioned the desirability of government intervention in economic and welfare matters. In a process of spatial rescaling, some functions have migrated to the supranational level whilst others have relocated to the local or the regional (Keating ). For example, economic change is now seen as a matter of global and European trends on the one hand and local conditions on the other. Social problems are redefined to take into account the local and regional context. Identities are reconfiguring as local identities are rediscovered (or created). Government is being restructured as new levels emerge above, below, and across the existing states. The most dramatic example is that of the European Union, which has in some ways helped the nation state to survive (Milward ) but in other respects has reduced its autonomy. This has transformed understandings of statehood and independence. If states no longer command the levers of economic and social policy, then self-government may not be simply a matter of statehood but of governing capacity in a complex and interdependent world. The focus of debate might shift away from legal and constitutional issues towards substantive policy questions and how they can best be addressed. The new, interdependent world, and particularly the evolution of the European Union, may favour small states, which can sustain self-government whilst still retaining access to a large market. The cost of independence is thus lowered. On the other hand, small states are vulnerable and need to surrender some of their independence to enjoy the shelter of supranational bodies (Baldersheim and Keating ). Many scholars have argued that sovereignty itself has been transformed so as no longer to be unitary and attached only to nation states. In a post-sovereign order, there may be multiple sources of sovereignty and different sovereign orders co-existing (MacCormick ; Keating ; Tierney ). These understandings themselves may resonate with historic traditions in those societies where the principle of sovereignty was never definitively resolved; these include Scotland, where the meaning of the union settlement of has remained contested (MacCormick ). Scotland in the early twenty-first century became a focus of all of these processes. Since the late nineteenth century, it has had three political traditions with regard to the national question. The winning one, until the end of the twentieth century, has been unionism. Unlike its continental counterparts, British unionism has never been assimilationist (Kidd ). On the contrary, it has accepted and even celebrated national diversity, including symbolic recognition of the home nations; but has sought to empty it of constitutional or political implications. Indeed, unionists like A.V. Dicey (; Dicey and Rait ) argued that home rule should not be extended to Ireland or
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Scotland precisely because they are nations and doing so would run the risk that their institutions would inevitably make claims to sovereignty; municipal self-government was another matter. During the twentieth century, another element was added in the form of ‘welfare unionism’ associated with the Labour Party, which argued that social solidarity should be state-wide and based on sharing (McEwen ). The second tradition is that of home rule or devolution. First formulated with regard to Ireland by the Liberal Party of W.E. Gladstone, home rule aimed to transform the United Kingdom into a family of self-governing nations combining local parliaments with an overarching one at Westminster. This has long been the preferred option in Scottish public opinion but for over a hundred years was resisted by unionists in both Conservative and Labour parties (although both did contain home rule wings). Only at the very end of the twentieth century did the Gladstonian vision prevail, albeit without England. The third tradition is that of independence, which did not become a serious option until the s. It did, however, always remain a presence in the background of Scottish politics and reminded unionists of the contingency of the union settlement and the need to work continually to renew it. In the last thirty years, independence has become a major issue and recently even the main fault line in Scottish politics. The boundaries between these three options have always been rather fluid. Unionists might change their tune if they felt that Scottish interests were not being served. Home rule proposals in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were usually placed in the context of the Empire or Commonwealth and, since the s, have been accompanied by support for European integration, avoiding the connotations of ‘separatism’. Devolution to Scotland in appeared to have simplified matters since, overnight, nearly all unionists accepted the new dispensation. Nationalists, previously divided between ‘gradualists’ (who wanted incremental change) and ‘fundamentalists’ (who wanted immediate independence) united on the next stage of the journey. Home rulers, defending reformed union, even started describing themselves as ‘unionists’. It was not long, however, before the middle option re-emerged in the form of calls for further home rule or ‘devo max’. This term is notoriously imprecise but most versions include three key items. The first is a post-sovereigntist conception of authority, in which Westminster supremacy is challenged. Second is control of most taxation powers. Third is Scottish control over large areas of welfare policy. In the most advanced version, Westminster would retain control of defence and foreign policy, and Holyrood would control everything else, but in a modern state the lines between foreign and domestic policy are difficult to draw, especially where the European Union is concerned. It is tempting to attribute the rise of nationalism in Scotland to some underlying divergence in social structures or attitudes, but that would be highly misleading. We have noted that identities have not suddenly shifted in the new century. Scotland’s social and economic structures have become more like those in the rest of the United Kingdom (Paterson et al. ), whilst GDP per capita has converged. Scottish social attitudes do not differ markedly from those in England and, on matters of social
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liberalism, seem to have converged (Rosie and Bond ). There is a slight but persistent tendency for Scotland to be to the left on issues of social equality and redistribution, but even in these matters the outliers may not be the Scots but people in the south of England (whose numbers weight the British averages) (Rosie and Bond ). Rising support for independence in Scotland is thus an example of what Dion (), in the Quebec context, called de Tocqueville’s paradox, where political divergence coincides with cultural convergence. Scotland has been reconstituted as a political community, the frame of reference for appraisal of political issues and political competition. It is, in fact, common for modern nationalisms to base their appeal not on particularism but on universal values, with the nation as the appropriate place to realize them.
T R
.................................................................................................................................. Recent decades, then, have witnessed, not a radical shift from a unitary conception of the United Kingdom towards a separatist agenda, but, rather, a realignment of the three linked fields. Support for independence, when it was first measured in the late s and s, usually ran at around per cent (Brand ; MacCartney ). There was a step change during the late s and s, as Scotland was for eighteen years governed by a party, the Conservatives, with only minority and steadily declining support in Scotland until its defeat in , when it lost all its remaining Scottish seats. Over the same period, support for independence increased to around per cent, and sometimes a little more. Devolution in was partly intended to contain rising support for independence, and independence support did seem to stagnate. Surveys measuring constitutional preferences amongst the options of independence, devolution, or no Scottish Parliament, found that independence support ranged from to per cent between and , with the lowest level of support recorded at the time of the SNP’s first election victory in (What Scotland Thinks ). However, the setting up of a Scottish parliament and a Scottish government created a platform and an opportunity for the pro-independence party to advance its goals, and provided a more realistic pathway to independence than had been thinkable when the SNP was confined to the political margins. On the other hand, the success of the nationalist party in governing Scotland under devolution suggested that Scottish aspirations to selfgovernment could be met without independence. The surprise success of the SNP in gaining an absolute majority of seats at the Scottish Parliament elections of pushed the issue to the fore. Until , the historic policy of the SNP had been that winning a majority of the Scottish seats at Westminster would constitute a mandate for independence. They then changed tack to support a referendum whenever they could muster a majority in the Scottish Parliament to hold one. Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal Democrats insisted, after the SNP had formed a minority government in , that there was no demand for a
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referendum and that it would be unconstitutional. The events, however, forced their hand and they accepted the referendum challenge. In Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond signed the Edinburgh Agreement, permitting the Scottish Parliament to hold a one-off independence referendum before the end of . This in itself was a historic move, since it gave official recognition to what had long been accepted, even by Margaret Thatcher () and John Major (), that Scotland could, if it really wanted, secede (although Thatcher said this in the context of insisting that it could not have devolution). This stands in marked contrast to Spanish governments, which have insisted that independence referendums cannot take place under any circumstances. The issue of constitutionality was dealt with briskly in the UK by passing a ‘Section ’ order temporarily giving the Scottish Parliament the right to stage a referendum. The Edinburgh Agreement, however, explicitly ruled out a ‘third way’ or ‘devo max’ option by stipulating that there should only be one question and that it should be about independence. The unionist parties were insistent on this point, anticipating an easy win. Nationalists were more inclined to accept a second question, calculating that it would make them look more reasonable and give them a second prize should the independence option fail, but they did not insist on it (Salmond ). Since the ‘devo max’ option was never elaborated into a real proposal, it is not possible to judge how much support it would have gained. It might just be that, faced with a binary choice, people will seek a middle ground, which by definition always exists. On the other hand, there is evidence that many voters favoured something like full domestic autonomy, especially control over taxes and welfare, but were not interested in the traditional trappings of sovereignty or in Scottish control of foreign and defence policy. Both sides in the referendum campaign were aware of this and sought to position themselves close to this middle ground. So the SNP presented a rather attenuated form of independence, described by some as ‘independence-lite’, which it set out in the Scottish Government’s () ‘white paper’, published in November . For their part, the unionist parties all had commissions working on more powers for Scotland.
T R
.................................................................................................................................. Both Scottish and UK governments agreed that the referendum rules would be based on the principles of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (PPERA). The Edinburgh Agreement set the broad parameters, but otherwise ceded to the Scottish Government and Parliament the precise wording of the referendum question, the details of the franchise (which extended the vote to - and -year-olds), the precise date of the referendum and the rules and limits on campaign financing. These were subject to the regulatory oversight of the UK Electoral Commission (specifically its Scottish arm). Responsibility for the conduct of the referendum,
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including vote counting and the declaration of results, was given to the Electoral Management Board, a body set up in to co-ordinate the administration of Scottish local government elections. A key role of the Electoral Commission was to rule on the intelligibility of the referendum question, which was originally formulated as: Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country? YES/NO. This was tested for clarity and impartiality alongside three other formulations with very minor modifications to the initial framing of the question, including the eventual question which substituted ‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?’ with ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’.² The most contested aspect of the question—what it means to be ‘an independent country’—was not challenged. Indeed, the Electoral Commission (: ) noted that participants in its research demonstrated an unusually high and consistent understanding of what they were being asked, noting ‘Almost everyone had a clear understanding that “independent country” meant Scotland being separate from the rest of the UK’. The terminology of ‘separation’ is politically loaded in the Scottish context and only ever used in debate by opponents of independence. Much of the debate nonetheless centred around contested meanings of independence and union, and the Electoral Commission itself acknowledged that ‘the precise definition of the word “independent” in the proposed question will not be known before the referendum takes place’ (Electoral Commission : ).
T P
.................................................................................................................................. The regulations followed PPERA in requiring that lead organizations be designated for each side. Yes Scotland included the SNP and the Greens, whilst Better Together united the Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal Democrats. During the regulated referendum period ( May to September ), the designated Yes and No campaigns each had a spending limit of £.m. Political parties could spend within limits based on their share of the popular vote in the Scottish elections. Other bodies spending in the campaign were obliged to register with the Electoral Commission. In total, forty-two campaigners or campaigning organizations officially registered with the commission— twenty-one for Yes and twenty-one for No. As Table . shows, spending was fairly evenly split between Yes and No campaigners. In the absence of public funding for campaigners and political parties, both sides had to rely on donations. Just under per cent of all donations made to non-party campaigners were in support of No, including a £ million donation to Better Together from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. But for a fortuitous lottery jackpot in , which saw an Ayrshire couple win € million from the EuroMillions lottery, the ² The two other formulations tested by the Electoral Commission were: ‘Do you want Scotland to be an independent country? YES/NO’ and ‘Should Scotland become an independent country? YES/NO’.
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Table 35.1 Referendum Campaign Spending Campaign group Better Together (designated lead NO campaign) Yes Scotland (designated lead YES campaign) Scottish National Party Labour Party Conservative & Unionist Party Liberal Democrats Scottish Green Party Other registered campaigners
Spending limit
Actual spend
£1,500,000 £1,500,000 £1,344,000 £831,000 £399,000 £204,000 £150,000 £150,000
£1,422,602 £1,420,800 £1,298,567 £732,482 £356,191 £187,585 £13,734 £64,896
Source: Adapted from Electoral Commission (2015: 12).
balance of spending may have been tilted more heavily towards No. The lucky winners donated £ million to Yes Scotland and over £ million to the Scottish National Party, which in turn was, by far, Yes Scotland’s biggest organizational donor. Resources go beyond money. Each campaign had the institutional support of government. The Scottish Government set out in a series of policy documents and on its website what independence would entail. The centrepiece was the ‘White Paper’, Scotland’s Future (Scottish Government ), which set out what it claimed would be an eighteen-month transition to independence, what the accession to independence would mean for the powers and responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament and government, and what an SNP-led government would prioritize if it were to win the first post-independence election. A summary was sent to every household, with copies of all pages available on request and online. The UK government, for its part, led a Scotland Analysis programme, publishing a series of papers proclaiming to provide an evidence base to inform the debate, though all accentuated the risks of independence. The role of the civil service proved controversial. Before the SNP first came into office in , some questions had been posed as to how far civil servants in Scotland— who remain part of the UK home civil service—could carry out a policy which could lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. In the event, the convention held that civil servants carry out the policy of the government of the day. There was further criticism of their role in drawing up the independence White Paper, although once again this work conformed to the normal practice of implementing the government’s programme. A more precise criticism was that the White Paper contained substantive policy commitments for an independent SNP government, and so could be seen as analogous to a manifesto. The engagement of the UK civil service appears to have been more direct and politically focused (Pike ) than that of their Scottish counterparts, which was easier to do as the issue was not contested within Whitehall or between the main Westminster parties. In a controversial intervention and breach of normal protocol, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Nicholas McPherson, published his advice to the UK government that a currency union should not be countenanced.
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In a later speech at King’s College, London, McPherson revealed that his stance was not limited to the technical issue of the Pound Sterling, but that he and his officials saw their role as being to support the unionist cause generally: ‘Her Majesty’s Treasury is by its nature a unionist institution. The clue is in the name’ (www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/policyinstitute/news/newsrecords//macpherson.asp). A subsequent inquiry by the House of Commons Public Administration select committee was critical of what it regarded as breaches of civil service impartiality on both sides during the referendum campaign (House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee ).³ The political parties channelled their support through the official campaigns. The Scottish National Party and the Scottish Green Party worked together within Yes Scotland, the latter helping to nurture the impression that the campaign was bigger and broader than the SNP. Whilst these two parties provided most of the staff of Yes Scotland, its chief executive, Blair Jenkins, a former Head of News and Current Affairs at both Scottish Television and BBC Scotland, was at pains to stress his independence from party politics. The campaign’s chairman, Dennis Canavan, was a former Labour MP and independent MSP. Yes Scotland set out to spawn a grass-roots campaign, nurturing local networks and generating a coalition of political, cultural, community, and sectoral groups in support of a Yes vote. The most prominent of these, including the Radical Independence Campaign, Women for Independence, and National Collective, were themselves keen to stress their independence from both the SNP and the formal Yes Scotland campaign, which they achieved without creating any significant tension or division. Many of these groups have continued since the referendum and are a sign of one of its consequences—the creation of a civil society movement in favour of Scottish independence. The Scottish Labour Party made what would become a fateful decision to join forces with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, then partners in the UK government, under the banner of Better Together. Labour provided Better Together with many of its key staff members, amongst them Alistair Darling, a Labour MP and a minister in the Labour governments throughout the party’s three consecutive terms, latterly as Chancellor of the Exchequer for three years. Blair McDougall, a long-time Labour staffer and activist, became Better Together’s Chief Executive. The Labour Party also tried to run its own campaign, United with Labour, but this lacked a strong figurehead and was heavily overshadowed by Better Together. The dominant role played by the Conservative-led UK government in steering and supporting that campaign made it difficult for the Labour Party to champion a distinctive and positive case for Union. The party’s electoral fate since the referendum, which included losing forty out of the forty-one Westminster constituency seats it had held comfortably for many years, is, in part at least, the price it paid (Chapter in this Handbook). Notable for their relative absence from either campaign were the trade unions. The Scottish Trades Union Congress and several of the larger trade unions (UNISON, ³ There was a hidden agenda here as some members were keen to head off moves to involve Treasury officials in a future referendum on the European Union.
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T&G) had played a key role in the campaign for a Scottish Parliament, including through membership of, or affiliation to, the Scottish Constitutional Convention. The STUC had been one of the architects of the Claim of Right for Scotland, a declaration of Scottish popular sovereignty in the face of the then Conservative government’s refusal to concede devolution. They shared in the prevalent vision of Scottish home rule as key to Scotland’s social and economic well-being, and a tool to resist unwelcome policies of Conservative governments. In the independence referendum, and despite the affiliation that most unions maintain with the Labour Party, the trade unions and the STUC mainly held a formal neutral position, with a few exceptions on either side. The shopworkers union USDAW, the general union GMB, the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Community, the train drivers union ASLEF, and the National Union of Mineworkers signed a joint statement supporting a No vote (though some CWU branches came out for Yes). The National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers (RMT) declared its support for the Yes campaign after a ballot of its members, along with several branches of the CWU and the Prison Officers Association. Individual leading trade unionists, including the General Secretary of the STUC, appeared to express more sympathy for the Yes campaign (Daily Record, February ), whilst less formal groupings of trade unionists emerged mainly as part of the grass-roots Yes campaign. The business community were overwhelmingly against independence (Bell and McGoldrick ; Mackay ), but their organizations tended to stay out of the debate. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) caused itself considerable embarrassment by seeking to register as a No supporter, before realizing that it contained members like the BBC and universities, which are politically neutral. The situation (but not the CBI’s reputation) was saved only when it was discovered that it had not registered properly in any case. The Institute of Directors, by contrast, remained neutral because its members were not united. At the very end of the campaign, a group of leading businesses, under pressure from the UK government and No campaign, did come out decisively for No. On the Yes side, Business for Scotland represented a smaller sector of the business community. The referendum dominated the news agenda for the two years leading to September . Amongst the print media, only the Sunday Herald openly supported independence. The remainder were openly in support of the Union or tried to remain neutral. Amid declining newspaper readership, social media played a key role, and here the numbers stacked firmly in favour of the Yes campaign. The neutral #indyref hashtag was used by . million tweets in the year prior to the referendum, with . million of those in the last days of the campaign, many helping to motivate and mobilize the grass-roots Yes campaign. That same -day period saw around , uses of the hashtags #bettertogether and #nothanks, whilst more than three times as many used #YesScotland or #VoteYes (Cellan-Jones ). The biggest reach, however, remains with broadcast media, with both the BBC and Scottish Television staging debates featuring leading figures in both campaigns. Sixty per cent of respondents to one poll claimed to have watched one or more of the leaders’ debates during the campaign,
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whilst per cent watched a TV programme about the referendum, not including the news (TNS-BRMB ). In spite of being bound by rules of impartiality, the broadcasters faced accusations of biased reporting, especially from Yes supporters. No complaints of partiality were upheld by the BBC Trust, but the Audience Council Scotland, which advises the Trust, reported concerns that BBC network (UK-wide) broadcasts came too late in the campaign and were less well-informed than BBC Scotland (BBC Trust ).
E E
.................................................................................................................................. As explained below, the two sides supported essentially the same values and visions of society, but each insisted that its own constitutional formula would realize them better. This opened the way for a strong focus on evidence, which accumulated massively by the end of the campaign. The UK government produced a series of sixteen Scotland Analysis papers, covering issues from economic policy and currency to welfare, energy, and international and constitutional issues. University academics⁴ produced analyses across a wide range of issues. Think tanks intervened, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies being prominent. The ESRC Future of the UK and Scotland Programme, the David Hume Institute, and the Hunter Foundation combined to produce an online book (Jeffery and Perman ) with academics’ responses to sixteen questions, which was downloaded some , times. It does appear that, by the end of the campaign, people felt somewhat better informed although there was still a great deal of misunderstanding. On the other hand, serious questions must be asked about the nature of this evidence. First, there was an unclear line between analysis and political advocacy. The UK government’s analyses were clearly intended to find evidence in support of a No vote and indeed they did not find a single argument for independence. The Scottish Government produced much less analysis due to its limited resources, but this tended to dismiss objections to independence and argue that all would be well. Second, the debate was about what might happen in the future under either independence or union, and this is inherently unknowable. Social scientists can construct scenarios and produce models of what any given policy changes might lead to. These, however, are often based on the ceteris paribus principle, seeking to explore the effect of a change on the assumption that other matters remain constant. The more changes that are taking place, the more variables are introduced into the analysis and the greater the difficulties of prediction. Independence would have been a big change, with multiple effects, many of which are unknowable and dependent on behaviour that
⁴ Including our own ESRC Centre on Constitutional Change, and the broader ESRC Future of the UK and Scotland programme.
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is impossible to predict. The difficulties of prediction were amplified by the lack of other real cases of a comparable country transitioning to independence. Third, notwithstanding the important work of academics, much of the evidence used in campaigns was commissioned by the two sides or explicitly intended to support one campaign or another. As a result, there was a failure to explore the counterfactuals or realistic alternative scenarios. So, estimates about the resources of an independent Scotland for public expenditure were often compared with those of continuing the present funding formula (Barnett), which was itself under strain. Independence supporters often assumed that, after independence, other things would stay the same and actors would behave according to rational self-interest to help stabilize the new state. They also made some bold assumptions about oil prices and the ability of an independent Scotland to increase its economic growth rate. The Institute for Fiscal Studies analyses were generally seen as being impartial but they were based upon assumptions about future economic and expenditure trends without always acknowledging their inherent uncertainty. Finally, it was sometimes difficult to see at whom the evidence was aimed. The Treasury-led analyses tended to be very long, rather technical, and not easily readable. The papers did not have the status of impartial scientific analysis, given the brief the civil servants had, but nor were they digestible by the general public. The Scottish Government’s () paper, by contrast, was intended for public consumption, in spite of its pages, much to the frustration of those looking for the technical and detailed analysis.
T I
.................................................................................................................................. A striking feature of the long referendum campaign is that it did not, by and large, pitch radically different visions of Scotland’s future against each other. It was, rather, a competition over what political scientists call valence issues, in which the goal is largely agreed but parties compete on how best to get there. We have already noted that Scots are only slightly to the left of England on most policy issues; they are also internally divided. On the other hand, four of the five parties represented in the Scottish Parliament belonged within the social democratic spectrum whilst the centre-right was represented only by a shrunken Conservative Party. There were a few voices on the right, such as Michael Fry’s Wealthy Nation (www.wealthynation.org) calling for a radical downsizing of the state and a neo-liberal vision of independence. The Radical Independence Campaign came from the opposite side of the spectrum. Labour and the SNP were, however, almost indistinguishable on most economic and social policies, divided clearly only on the constitution. Referendum debates were thus dominated by how best to secure the post-war welfare settlement. Even on the constitutional issue, both sides sought to occupy the middle ground, with some
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similarities between the SNP’s diluted form of independence with a maximalist form of home rule within the Union. Where valence issues are at stake, parties will usually seek to claim ownership of them and to define them on their own terms. This was a central feature of the referendum campaign, where each camp strove to define the agenda for the debate, on its own terms, emphasizing themes on which it had the advantage and framing the issues in its own way.
I: S, B, U
.................................................................................................................................. Independence movements are often seen as concerned with identity, the idea being that identification with the state or with the stateless nation will drive voting behaviour. There is evidence of this in the Scottish case, but the issue is very complicated. It is widely accepted by social scientists that identities are socially constructed and malleable (Chapter in this Handbook; Reicher and Hopkins ; McCrone and Bechhofer ). Rather than being an independent factor or variable, identity is often the dependent variable, the product rather than the cause of political mobilization. In some societies, identity has been constructed on an exclusive basis, so that citizens are under pressure to identify with one pole or another, especially at times of tension. Scottish identity, however, is something that is available both to unionists and to nationalists. There is an association between feeling strongly Scottish and voting for independence, but it has always been rather loose (Bechhofer and McCrone, ). Most Scots feel both Scottish and British, even if the Scottish identity appeared to grow from the s. According to the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, however, the number of people identifying themselves as exclusively Scottish had fallen since the advent of devolution in ⁵ (see Figure .). It appears that a sense of alienation from Britain had peaked under the Conservative governments of the s and s. Nor does Scottish identity correspond to a social divide within Scotland, in the way that happens in Northern Ireland. This does not mean that identity was irrelevant in the campaign but that it was available to both sides, to reconstruct and press into the service of union or independence. The Yes side drew on long-standing myths of Scottish egalitarianism often summed up in the legend of the ‘lad o’pairts’.⁶ This had been an important trope for Radical and Labour home rulers from the late nineteenth century and was linked with
⁵ Based on the Linz-Moreno question, which asks people if they feel only Scottish; more Scottish than British; equally Scottish and British; more British than Scottish; only British. ⁶ The ordinary youth who rises in the world due to free education and opportunity.
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the Presbyterian ethos and Scotland’s early lead in mass education. Scotland’s historic hostility to the Conservative Party, except for a period in the mid-twentieth century, was another element. In response to the rise of Scottish nationalism (as well as multicultural challenges), successive UK governments have sought to promote a culture of ‘Britishness’. The idea has been that, whilst Scottish, Welsh, or English identities are legitimate forms of expression, they are partial and subordinate to a higher and shared sense of belonging. For Conservatives, Britishness is rooted in a historical narrative, whether the glories of empire or the Whig story of progress. For Labour, the emphasis is on shared welfare and solidarity. Both parties stress the qualities of freedom, democracy, and fair play. These are universal values and Labour in particular has often promoted them against nationalism, but in practice they are being used to promote a specifically British national identity. There is something ironic in the new Britishness agenda since in the past it has consisted precisely in not having an explicit national ideology. Britishness, rather, has been construed differently in different parts of the state; this is the genius of traditional unionism. The effort to construct it as a single thing, over and above the constituent parts, always risks destroying its roots. Modern Scottish nationalists like Alex Salmond, moreover, have not sought to deny the British component of Scotland’s social make-up but to say that it is not inconsistent with voting for independence. This, combined with their programme of attenuated independence, even allowed the nationalists to appropriate the very language of union. Salmond famously declared that Scotland currently belonged to six unions: the political; the monarchical; the monetary; the defence; the European; and the social. After independence, it would leave the political union but retain the other five. This was disputed by the No side, who insisted that monetary union was out of the question and membership of the European Union and the defence union (NATO) would be very difficult. There was a lack of clarity about what ‘social union’ meant, since it could cover anything from continuing family ties to common policies for welfare, but it was a reassuring phrase. Identity appeals in the Scottish campaign did not, therefore, take the form of a stark division between ‘us and them’ as in some other cases. It was more a matter of each side seeking to reconstruct the nation of Scotland or Britain with substantive social values, where the relevant values were largely the same in both camps. It is for this reason that so much attention was focused on social and economic policy and the likely effects on each constitutional option.
T E
.................................................................................................................................. The Scottish case can be seen neither as a ‘revolt of the poor’—a reaction to relative underdevelopment, nor a ‘revolt of the rich’—found in wealthy territories complaining about having to support their poorer compatriots. Scottish economic output per capita
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is close to the UK average. Yet, the economic question was prominent during the campaign. The SNP had long presented the small independent states of northern Europe as exemplars, at one time calling them the ‘arc of prosperity’. After the collapse of Ireland and Iceland, the comparison was reduced to the continental Nordic states. They drew on a strand of literature purporting to show that small states in the modern world are more successful economically (Skilling ) although the evidence is actually mixed (Keating and Harvey ). There was less detailed analysis of exactly which small states did well and why, or of the internal changes that Scotland would need to undertake to match the Nordic model. The No side insisted on the benefits of being in a large state and the Treasury analysis papers stressed the costs of independence, including the ‘border effect’, transition costs, and the high cost of borrowing. Part of the SNP’s (and thereby Scottish Government’s) strategy was to cut corporation tax in order to attract investment, which looked to be at odds with its commitment to higher levels of welfare and was repudiated by other elements on the Yes side, including the Greens and left-wing social movements. The Yes side insisted that Scotland could pay for its own services, as it had long been a net contributor to UK public finances. The No side, supported by much academic opinion and think tanks like the Institute for Fiscal Studies, disputed the figures and argued that an independent Scotland would depend on fluctuating oil revenues, which were declining in the long term. The unionist parties then promised that, in the event of a No vote, the Barnett Formula would safeguard public spending levels in Scotland. This helped promote a backlash in England and Wales, as it seemed to prove their complaint that Scotland gets more than its fair share. The Scottish Labour Party () even claimed, erroneously, that Barnett distributes expenditure across the UK on the basis of need, underwriting the social union. The flurry of claims and statistics on both sides created a great deal of confusion but the issue tended to work to the benefit of No, if only because it raised levels of risk and uncertainty. On the other hand, a strong emphasis on the dire economic consequences of independence could come across as threatening and unduly negative, implicitly suggesting that Scots were incapable of managing their own affairs. It also risked identifying No with big business, an association reinforced at the end of the campaign when, faced with polls showing Yes to be ahead, there was an orchestrated intervention by big firms, banks, and even some supermarkets warning of calamitous consequences should there be a Yes vote.
W
.................................................................................................................................. Welfare is one of the themes around which Scottish political identity had been reconstructed since the s, as a contrast to what was seen as a neo-liberal Westminster. The theme recurred in response to the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition’s welfare reforms after . The SNP contains numerous strands, including a
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social democratic and a pro-business one, but since the s, the former has tended to dominate. The emphasis on welfare has allowed the pro-independence coalition to extend itself towards the left, taking in many social movements and some minor parties who are much more radical than the SNP, without necessarily fracturing the coalition itself. The narrative of Scotland as a caring country has allowed nationalism to penetrate lower-income groups whilst at the same time avoiding anti-English rhetoric since Yes supporters were also able to pose as opponents of austerity across the UK and Europe more generally. This strategy was pursued with great vigour during the subsequent General Election campaign. The No side’s response to this was necessarily led by the Labour Party, which played on the theme of the ‘sharing union’, based on the notion of solidarity as a component of Britishness and on the UK’s greater resource pool. The argument was articulated most forcefully by Gordon Brown whose book was one of the major intellectual contributions to unionism (Brown ). On the other hand, Labour was constantly at risk of over-reaching itself by insisting that public services like health and education should be provided on the same basis everywhere, when, since devolution, they have been devolved and are organized in a distinct way in Scotland, with much less emphasis on marketization and contracting out. The Yes side, and particularly the SNP, were under pressure to explain how they would pay for a higher level of welfare and how this squared with the SNP’s promise to cut corporation taxes and air passenger duties. This issue was pursued by the No side, but it was a more natural fit for the Conservatives and risked portraying Labour as opposed to the social democratic project as a whole. It added to Labour’s embarrassment by its association with the Conservatives in the Better Together campaign, which looked as though it was defending the Westminster government.
T E D
.................................................................................................................................. Small, independent states in the modern world require an external support system to provide security, access to markets and protection against unilateral behaviour by larger powers. The European Union is critical here and the SNP have been in favour of membership since the late s. By the time of the independence referendum, this was a central plank of the independence platform. As the No campaign was also largely pro-European, Europe itself was not an issue; the debate rather concentrated on whether and how Scotland could become a member of the EU and on what terms. Since there is no precedent, nor any provision within the EU Treaties, there was no legal answer, but this issue was used to suggest either assurance or risk, from the two sides respectively. Membership of NATO and defence policy were more difficult. Until , the SNP had been opposed to NATO membership, reflecting pacifist traditions in the party and
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strong opposition to nuclear weapons. The change in policy was highly controversial, passed only narrowly at the party conference, and resulted in the defection of two MSPs, the most serious breach in party unity since the SNP had arrived in government. At the same time, the SNP reaffirmed its opposition to the stationing of the UK nuclear deterrent in Scotland and promised to remove it after independence. The No side argued that this was not compatible with NATO membership, whilst the SNP pointed to other NATO states which did not host nuclear weapons. Leftist independence supporters continued to oppose both NATO and nuclear weapons. Overall, however, defence and foreign affairs did not feature strongly in the campaign.
R U
.................................................................................................................................. Since the proposal for independence was unprecedented and the evidence so contested, there was a great deal of uncertainty about the likely outcome of either a Yes or a No vote. This gave the No side an inbuilt advantage, as it did not need to prove that independence would be damaging, just to suggest that it was a risky proposition. They identified this as a potential asset at a very early stage (Pike ) and pressed it at every opportunity. The Yes side sought to counter this by pointing to the risks inherent in continuing union, including being dragged out of the European Union, continued Conservative rule at Westminster, and further austerity. This had some traction but was less effective since it was rather speculative. The No side heightened perceptions of risk by refusing, as they put it, to ‘pre-negotiate’. Having accepted in the Edinburgh Agreement that they would respect a Yes vote, the unionist parties thus declined to give any detail on how they would react and what the terms of independence might be. The one exception concerned the Pound, where they made a joint statement that a currency union would not be on offer. Yes, for its part, insisted that self-interest would force the UK government, as well as international actors such as other states, the EU and NATO, to behave rationally and to co-operate in Scotland’s transition to independence. Again, this was less convincing. The desire to minimize the risk and uncertainty of their own respective options explains the conservative tone of many of the arguments on both sides. One might expect independence supporters to promote a very different vision of Scotland and, whilst groups like the Radical Independence Campaign and Common Weal did so, Yes Scotland and the SNP were more inclined to offer reassurance. There was a reluctance to talk about taxation or what resisting austerity might entail. Assurance was offered on keeping the Pound, although this would seriously curtail the effective independence of Scotland, and alternatives to sterling were kept off the agenda, to the frustration of the Greens. The ‘Nordic model’ of social democracy was mentioned regularly but never spelled out. So the independence prospectus at times appeared to offer a continuation of the status quo, only in an independent state.
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Modern understandings of social and economic behaviour emphasize that people do not generally weigh up evidence on both sides of an argument and decide on the basis of long-term implications. Rather, they take cognitive shortcuts (Kahneman ). They may reduce complex issues to familiar choices; they think in the short term; and they are more sensitive to possible losses than to potential gains. They also judge messages according to how far they already trust the messenger. Both campaigns were aware of this and sought to move the debate onto familiar terrain of their choosing. This explains the No side’s emphasis on potential economic losses, even though this made them look negative. It also explains why, in the latter stages, the Yes side chose to focus on threats to the NHS, even though this is already fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament.
D C M?
.................................................................................................................................. The referendum campaign saw a massive mobilization of activists and a huge interest on the part of voters. It galvanized electors in a way that is unusual in modern politics. The turnout, at per cent, with per cent of eligible voters registering, was the highest on record. As a democratic experiment, it can be judged a success, irrespective of one’s views on the merits of the main question. The result was a clear win for No, at . per cent to . per cent. On the other hand, the Yes side has narrowed the gap considerably over the campaign; in polls generally put support for independence between and per cent (http:// whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/should-scotland-be-an-independent-country#table). In referendums, as in elections, vote choice is influenced to varying degrees by a mix of enduring sociological factors, party and territorial identification, and perceptions of the costs and benefits of the alternative outcomes. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore fully the reasons why people voted yes or no, but the analysis by Liñeira et al. does help to identify some patterns in referendum voting, and in particular the effects of the referendum campaign. In general, support for independence was strongest amongst men, younger and middle-aged voters, and those born in Scotland. National identity appears to be a strong influence, but is itself a complicated matter. Traditionally, SNP voters, independence supporters, and those identifying as Scottish were three groups, which overlapped but were not identical (Bond ). The largest group of independence supporters was sometimes to be found amongst Labour voters (since, prior to , there were many more of these). Whilst Scottish identity has not intensified, it has become more politicized; there is now closer correlation between those identifying as strongly Scottish, those supporting independence, and those voting for the SNP. The campaign did appear to make a difference, with a notable drift across most groups from No to Yes. This suggests that, in some respects at least, the Yes campaign’s
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framing of the issues resonated more with the electorate than the core messages of their opponents. In the wake of the campaign, the surveys suggested that more were persuaded that an independent Scotland would be able to retain the Pound and arrange a system of defence co-operation than believed so at an earlier period in the campaign, whilst in other matters such as the continued absence of border controls, and continued access to the BBC, most were already more closely aligned with the Yes than with the No side, and remained so even after the period of intense campaigning. Conversely, the dominant themes of risk and uncertainty that permeated the discourse of the No side also struck a chord with the electorate, especially those who were already more inclined to be risk averse (Liñeira et al. ). Any referendum which includes only two opposing options is likely to become polarized, especially one on as emotive an issue as political independence. That was certainly the case in the Scottish independence campaign with respect to the main protagonists in either camp. But the evidence from surveys suggests strongly that the Scottish electorate is far less polarized than political debate and commentary would suggest. Electors appear to crowd into the middle ground, where the distinctions between a maximalist version of devolution within the Union and a soft version of independence become very fine indeed. Both campaigns were acutely aware of this need to appeal to the median voter, influencing both the strategy, content, and perhaps especially the presentation of their respective constitutional offers. The term ‘independence-lite’ was never used by its protagonists, but the independence vision proffered by leading forces within the Yes movement was intended to appeal to those who favoured continued associations with the rest of the UK. The promise of ‘nothing less than a modern form of Scottish Home Rule’, as Gordon Brown put it ten days before the vote, had similar intentions of appealing to the middle ground.
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.................................................................................................................................. Further confusion was introduced by the ‘vow’ made by the three UK party leaders two days prior to the referendum vote, following publication of an opinion poll suggesting a majority might vote Yes. Published on the front page of a Labour-supporting tabloid newspaper on mock parchment, the vow promised a ‘permanent’ Scottish Parliament with ‘extensive new powers’, continuity of the Barnett Formula, and ‘faster, safer, better change than separation’ (Daily Record, September ). In the run-up to the referendum, all three main UK parties had conducted internal inquiries resulting in the offer of further devolution, focused principally on varying degrees of fiscal autonomy. Because of the wording of the referendum question, however, none of the proposals were subject to scrutiny in the campaign—the original intention was for them to become manifesto commitments ahead of the UK election. Instead, the Smith Commission, a closed cross-party brokering process initiated by the Prime Minister on the morning after the referendum, was instructed to produce
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proposals for further devolution by St. Andrew’s Day ( November) with a commitment to draft legislative clauses by Burns Day ( January). Although both Yes and No parties (SNP, Green, Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Democrat) were represented, there was scarce time for a considered review of devolution and the haste of the process attracted considerable criticism. Draft clauses were indeed produced before the General Election and a Scotland Bill was the first piece of legislation introduced to the new parliament. The new devolution settlement (Scotland Act, ) heralds a significant transfer of new constitutional competences from Westminster to the Scottish Parliament, most notably in tax and welfare. Many of the uncertainties which surrounded debates on tax, welfare, and the economy in the referendum campaign remain relevant to the context of reforming devolution. Devolution of income tax has raised issues about fiscal sustainability and the allocation of spending across the UK (Chapter in this Handbook). The interdependence between entitlements to reserved benefits and those to be devolved heightens the prospect of policy decisions at one level having spillover effects at the other. The Scottish Government has power to introduce new benefits, top-up reserved benefits, and shape the newly-devolved welfare benefits. This increases the overlap between devolved and reserved competences and complicates intergovernmental relations (Chapter in this Handbook).
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.................................................................................................................................. The Scottish independence referendum was never only about winning or losing. There was always the prospect that both sides could win—the No side securing its majority but the Yes side securing a sufficient level of support to bring pressure to bear on the UK government and the UK parties to make further concessions to Scottish selfgovernment. Understood in this way, it helps to explain why the SNP government embarked on an independence referendum gamble despite there being no obvious increase in support for independence amongst the electorate. Of course, they aimed to win the vote when it was held, by convincing a majority of Scots that independence offered the best prospects for their country. In the process, they initiated a campaign which gave birth to a movement that spread beyond the confines of the Scottish National Party and achieved a level of support for independence which reached an historic high. That the referendum was a victory of sorts for the Yes campaign and the SNP in particular is evident in the party’s success in the year that followed. At the time of the referendum, the party had just over , members—by some distance the largest of Scotland’s political parties. Within six months, membership figures were in excess of ,. Its popularity was evident in the UK General Election, where the SNP gained all but three of the seats in Scotland, and per cent of the popular vote. The party
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increased its share of the vote by percentage points, gaining fifty seats compared to its previous General Election performance. The referendum, then, produced more than one winner. More surprising, perhaps, is the extent to which the parties on the winning side failed to capitalize on their victory. For some parties within Better Together, the referendum victory appeared to come at a cost. The Conservatives, already unpopular in Scotland, suffered their worst electoral performance in a UK election in Scotland. The Scottish Liberal Democrats had already paid an electoral price in the Scottish parliamentary election for the UK party’s governing alliance with the Conservatives. It was reduced to just five (out of ) MSPs in , and sunk to similar depths in the UK election. The Labour Party suffered the most dramatic decline. Long the dominant force in Scottish politics, the party’s representation in the House of Commons was reduced to a single seat in and its share of the vote collapsed. Its failure in Scotland confirms the unprecedented fragmentation of UK party politics and representation. In effect, there is no longer a British party system but a differentiated pattern of party competition, in which Scottish politics may become more self-referential and British⁷ parties find it difficult to assemble majorities across the country.
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.................................................................................................................................. The European issue did not play a big part in the referendum campaign and largely focused on the question of whether an independent Scotland could become a member. Yet the European question was now intrinsically linked to the internal constitutional question in the United Kingdom, as its component parts adjusted in different ways to EU membership (Chapter in this Handbook). The referendum on UK membership of the European Union again demonstrated the gap between Scottish and UK politics. Whilst the UK as a whole voted by per cent to leave the EU, Scotland voted by per cent to remain. This was immediately interpreted by the SNP as a mandate for a new independence referendum but in practice this posed a series of problems (Chapter in this Handbook). Most difficult for the SNP were the facts that an independent Scotland within the EU would face a hard border with the rest of the UK outside it; and that almost a third of SNP and Yes voters had opted for Leave (Prosser and Fieldhouse ). The snap General Election saw the SNP lose most of its Remain voters to the Conservatives, who staged a remarkable revival (Chapter in this Handbook; Montagu ). The idea of a fresh referendum was abandoned for the time being, but the issue remained unresolved. If the campaign was a pyrrhic victory for the unionists, the outcome of the vote was equally indecisive. The General Election of saw the SNP recover much of its lost ground, winning
⁷ We say British because the party system in Northern Ireland has always been distinct.
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forty-five per cent of the vote and forty-seven seats on a platform committed to both independence and remaining in the EU. Meanwhile, the SNP had made an effort to resolve some of the difficult issues raised in the campaign by appointing a commission under former MSP Andrew Wilson. The report (Sustainable Growth Commission ), which largely ignored the Nordic social democratic model and advocated continuing use of the Pound sterling at least in the initial phase of independence, disappointed the left of the coalition of , promising that the issues raised in the campaign are unlikely to go away.
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Jeffery, C. and Perman, R. (eds). . Scotland’s Decision. Questions to think about before the Referendum on September. Edinburgh: Birlinn. Kahneman, D. . Thinking Fast and Slow. London: Penguin. Keating, M. . Plurinational Democracy. Stateless Nations in a Post-Sovereignty Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keating, M. . Rescaling the European State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keating, M., and Harvey, M. . Small Nations in a Big World. What Scotland Can Learn. Edinburgh: Luath. Kidd, C. . Union and Unionisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liñeira, R., Henderson, A. and Delaney, L. . ‘Voters’ Response to the Campaign. Evidence from the Survey’, in M. Keating (ed.), Debating Scotland. Issues of Independence and Union in the Referendum. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MacCartney, A. . ‘Summary of Opinion Polls Relating to Voting Intention and Constitutional Change’, in H. Drucker and N. Drucker (eds), Scottish Government Yearbook. Edinburgh: Paul Harris. MacCormick, N. . Questioning Sovereignty. Law, State and Nation in the European Commonwealth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mackay, B. . Business Decision-making in Conditions of Constitutional and Political Uncertainty in the UK and Scotland. Edinburgh: Centre on Constitutional Change. Major, J. . ‘Foreword by the Prime Minister’, in Secretary of State for Scotland, Scotland and the Union. Edinburgh: HMSO. McCrone, D. and Bechhofer, F. . Understanding National Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McEwen, N. . Nationalism and the State: Welfare and Identity in Scotland and Quebec. Regionalism and Federalism Book Series. Brussels: Presses interuniversitaires europennes/ Peter Lang. Milward, A. . The European Rescue of the Nation-State, nd edition. London: Routledge. Montagu, I. . ‘Is Brexit a Springboard or a Balancing Act for Nicola Sturgeon’, What Scotland Thinks. Available at: http://blog.whatscotlandthinks.org///is-brexit-aspringboard-or-a-balancing-act-for-nicola-sturgeon/. Paterson, L., Bechhofer, F., and McCrone, D. . Living in Scotland. Social and Economic Change since . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pike, J. . Project Fear. How an Unlikely Alliance Left a Kingdom United but a Country Divided. London: Biteback. Prosser, C. and Fieldhouse, E. . ‘A Tale of Two Referendums—The Election in Scotland’, British Election Study. Available at: http://www.britishelectionstudy.com/besfindings/a-tale-of-two-referendums-the--election-in-scotland/#. WeoCaDbO.M. Reicher, S. and Hopkins, N. . Self and Nation. London: Sage. Rokkan, S. . State Formation, Nation-Building and Mass Politics in Europe. The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Edited by P. Flora, S. Kuhnle, and D. Urwin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosie, M. and Bond, R. . ‘Social Democratic Scotland?’, in M. Keating (ed.), Scottish Social Democracy. Brussels: Presses interuniversitaires européennes/Peter Lang. Salmond, A. . The Dream Shall Never Die. Days that Changed Scotland for Ever. London: Collins. Scottish Government. . Scotland’s Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish Government. Scottish Labour Party. . Powers for a Purpose. Glasgow: Scottish Labour Party.
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Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (SSAS). –. Scottish Social Attitudes Survey. Edinburgh: Scottish Centre for Social Research. Skilling, D. . In Uncertain Seas: Positioning Small Countries to Succeed in a Changing World. Singapore: Landfall Strategy Group. Sustainable Growth Commission. . Scotland. The New Case for Optimism. Available at: https://www.sustainablegrowthcommission.scot. Thatcher, M. . The Downing Street Years. London: HarperCollins. Tierney, S. . Constitutional Law and National Pluralism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. TNS-BRMB. . Poll on Scottish Politics. Available at: http://www.tns-bmrb.co.uk/ news/referendum-effect-set-to-increase-political-activity-but-trust-in-main-part. What Scotland Thinks. . How Should Scotland be Governed? Available at: http:// whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/how-should-scotland-be-governed-five-responsecategories-collapsed-to-three#table.
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F the last few years, the politics of the United Kingdom have been hobbled, and at the parliamentary level frequently paralysed, by the long disputes over Brexit—the aftermath of the referendum on British membership of the European Union. It is hardly surprising that bewildered politicians and commentators have often contrasted the chaos of indecision and party disorder at Westminster with the condition of Scotland. The devolved Scottish governments in Edinburgh are imagined, not always accurately, as steady and progressive administrations, coherent about their intentions and— although the SNP Government maintains its constitutional commitment to full independence—still adding to a record of social, legal, and educational reforms which are envied by many activists south of the Border. Some of that envy is fair. To take a negative example, Scotland’s decision to avoid the ‘internal market’ experiments which damaged and discredited the National Health Service in England has been well justified. On the positive side, Scotland’s new and comprehensive management of domestic abuse, typical of the ‘joined-up’ Scottish approach to social and legal problems, is thought to be the best in the world. And yet a closer look at the present governance of Scotland, political, local, or administrative, soon modifies that first impression of solidity. Wherever you look, there is scaffolding—a sense of incompleteness, of the serviceable but temporary, of fine new buildings whose roof is still only tarpaulin flapping in the wind. The contractor’s crew keep themselves busy fitting window frames, whilst waiting for the architect to bring the next blueprint. There are some easy but eventually misleading explanations. Opposition parties at Holyrood will declare that this sense of incompleteness has nothing to do with the devolution settlement itself. Instead, they blame exclusively the SNP governments since which they accuse of concentrating obsessively on the single question of independence, to the neglect of ‘domestic’ policies such as education and health. Whilst it is clear that the prospect of more referendum campaigns and the uncertainties attendant on the prospect of independence have discouraged some long-term planning, in recent
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years it has been the Labour and Conservative parties rather than SNP politicians who have insisted on making independence the central issue of contention in the Scottish Parliament. Another set of explanations rests on teleology. At its crudest, this interpretation sees Scotland as inexorably destined for independence, carried along through everwidening degrees of autonomy even during the ‘interval’ (usually estimated in a few decades) whilst a majority of its voters still prefer to remain in the United Kingdom. According to this view, it is not surprising that institutions which have developed since , when the devolved Scottish Parliament began to sit, can seem unfinished; it is only in the confident context of independence that they can assume their final shape, be adequately financed, and find their place in the total framework of a free nation state. But that, of course, is a strongly nationalist interpretation. Nothing proves that Scottish independence is ‘inexorable’, even though history suggests that nationalist movements that are as electorally successful and long-sustained as the Scottish one usually get what they want in the end. Decisive for the future, perhaps, is the substantial minority which does not particularly want independence, or not yet, but predicts to pollsters that it is probably going to happen anyway. There is nothing predestined about Scotland’s future, yet many of the contributions in this Handbook identify a dynamic of change which is continuing to transform the social and political landscape. For some, this dynamic dates from , the passage under a Labour government at Westminster of the Scotland Act which established a Scottish Parliament with far-reaching domestic powers. In British terms, and given British reluctance to fiddle with constitutional tradition, this was a startling event. Nothing so bold had been seen since Gladstone’s Home Rule offers to Ireland in the s. A longer view suggests that the dynamic began to operate well before . The emergence in the s of the SNP as a serious political challenger, threatening Labour’s capacity to win British majorities in future general elections, provoked the Callaghan government’s unsuccessful devolution bills in the s. But two very suggestive chapters in this Handbook—Iain McLean’s ‘Understanding the Union’ (Chapter ) and Alvin Jackson’s ‘The Scottish Union in Historic Perspective’ (Chapter )—dig even deeper into the past, giving new contemporary meaning to the Treaty itself. It was called an ‘incorporating Union’. So it was. Self-deceiving talk about equality or partnership could be heard on the Scottish side but not from English politicians. The reality was that the English Parliament admitted a small number of Scottish MPs and peers, renamed itself ‘British’ and proceeded routinely to ignore them. Scotland retained its established Kirk, law, and education; otherwise, the new settlement’s supreme authority resided in London. To say this is not to recall an ancient grievance. The point is that the Union had to be authoritarian or nothing. The sheer imbalance in population, wealth, and strength between England and the rest of the United Kingdom (including Ireland after ) meant from the start that genuine power-sharing could only be an illusion. As the centuries passed, this constituting asymmetry grew starker until today England
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contains per cent of the UK’s population, rendering ideas of effective federalism painfully unrealistic. It followed that a centralized political authority—exercised with moderation—was going to be the only system which could evade this disparity and maintain the Union. Any attempt to loosen the system into a more democratic ‘partnership’ of nations would at once bring its gigantic asymmetry into play, setting off an incessant competition for favours and resources which England was bound to dominate, and occasionally to resent. More often, England’s excessive weight in this contest was certain to rouse disaffection in the losers, the smaller members of the United Kingdom. As Ansari writes (Chapter in this Handbook), ‘(D)evolution only served to exacerbate a constitutional issue that made little sense in the context of an incorporating union’. Seen in that light, it is arguable that the Anglo–Scottish Union of is now over. It is over, not because of any of the constant violations of the Treaty’s articles, but because the devolution settlement clearly and decisively ended the autocratic relationship between Scotland and the British state, proposing to put it on a new basis of quasi-federal distributed authority within the United Kingdom. But quasi-federalism or devolution is a relationship in which relative size—almost irrelevant in a highly centralized power structure—suddenly comes to matter. The elephant in the room, hitherto politely concealed behind a screen, now bursts out and becomes all too visible. It’s a tableau which is unlikely to be sustainable. To install any new system of governance is to plant new institutions amongst older ones, many of which will resent their displacement. This was true of Scottish devolution in several ways. One has been well described by the political writer Alex Bell, who identified several blocks of largely unaccountable power inherited from the past which had to be opened to the influence and policies of the new Scottish Executive (later Government). Amongst these were the Convention of Scottish Local authorities (COSLA), the Faculty of Advocates and the mighty Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS). Their sense of immunity and entitlement, like that of the Kirk itself, derived from the three centuries without a legislature when such bodies or their predecessors acted as a sort of unofficial civil society executive in their own fields. In the late twentieth century, the leadership of both COSLA and the EIS had become effectively areas of Labour Party patronage, so that adaptation to the needs of the first two Scottish Executives after , both Labour-led coalitions, was relatively easy. COSLA has begun to lose coherence in recent years, mostly as a consequence of the introduction of proportional voting in local authority elections, which ended Labour’s nearmonopoly of control in Scotland’s most populous regions. But the EIS and the Faculty remain formidably independent bodies, much more than just a schoolteachers’ trade union or a professional association of lawyers. A second reaction against change is at once more general and harder to treat. This is the phenomenon named in Kenny and Mackay’s (Chapter in this Handbook) contribution here as ‘the Westminster Drag’. New institutions are ‘nested’ into pre-existing arrangements, which limit and define their development, and may subtly impose their
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own culture before the newcomers have had time to construct their own. Another way of defining the ‘Drag’ is to suggest that if these newborn structures lose creative momentum and cease to find their own solutions to Scottish circumstances, they will revert towards Westminster models—the conventions and practices of the United Kingdom. The Scottish Parliament itself has not proved immune to ‘Drag’. Bold and enthusiastic, the inter-party Constitutional Convention (–) set a modern legislature at the very heart of its design for a devolved Scotland. The Convention and the subsequent Consultative Steering Group (CSG) set out quite deliberately to plan an assembly which would be a complete contrast to the ‘archaic’ Westminster parliament. Elected by the semi-proportional ‘additional member system’ (AMS), the Scottish members would sit in a debating chamber designed as a hemicycle, symbolizing and encouraging a new, ‘grown-up’ politics of co-operation rather than confrontation. Legislation would be evolved in a series of powerful subject committees, thought of as Holyrood’s basic institution, rather than in plenary sessions. And in drawing up detailed proposals for the Scottish Parliament, the CSG laid down four ‘principles’ which—for some years, at least—were invoked almost as if they were the preamble to a written constitution. These were: () that power was shared between three sources of authority: the Parliament, the executive, and the people of Scotland; () that the executive/government would be accountable to the Parliament, and both accountable to the people of Scotland; () that the Parliament should be accessible, open, responsive, and develop procedures making possible a ‘participative approach’ to the drafting and scrutiny of policy and legislation; and () that the Parliament should promote equal opportunities for all. More than twenty years later, some but not all of these aspirations have been honoured. Holyrood has an informality and efficiency in its procedures—from voting mechanisms to family-friendly hours—which Westminster can only envy. On gender balance, massive organized pressure from women encouraged the SNP, the Greens, and especially Labour to work hard on the CSG’s fourth principle, so that in , . per cent of the MSPs were women. That proportion has fallen slightly since then and representation of ethnic minorities at Holyrood is still inadequate (Chapters and in this Handbook). But there has been backsliding. The Scottish media were mercilessly critical of the first two devolved parliaments. They insisted on imitating London journalism by reporting only the plenary sessions and almost completely ignoring the committee sessions where most of the important work was being done. The result has been to turn plenaries (First Minister’s Questions, above all) into adversarial and often meaningless cockfights on the Westminster model. The committees themselves, intended to be impartial, have gradually fallen under party-political control, mostly brought about in the last ten years by the sheer numerical predominance of the SNP in the Chamber. The original idea that drafts of legislation should emanate from the Committees rather than from private party conclaves has not been effectively realized. In this area, if in no other, the Holyrood system has been outstripped by Westminster, where in the last few
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years the select committees have taken on a much more aggressive and inquisitorial ‘hearings’ role and attracted enthusiastic media publicity. The third CSG principle, the duty of the Parliament to be open and approachable, and to encourage public participation, was at once taken very seriously—especially by the parliamentary staff. Even before the Parliament opened, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, Jim (now Lord) Wallace, had declared that it should be ‘the engine of an IT revolution and the blueprint for a new style of computerized democracy, by harnessing digital power and the Internet to put voters and MSPs in permanent instant contact’. The outcome of his vision was a panoply of electronic and communications media designed to connect Parliament and people in multiple ways—aiming towards an ‘e-democracy’ in which citizens could not only comment on Parliamentary business but actually participate in discussions as new legislation was initiated. Much was done, and for a time the Scottish Parliament could claim to have the most elaborate e-democracy array in Europe. But within five or six years the Parliament’s original ICT array—based on publicly accessible computer screens across the country—was being overtaken by the explosion of mobile phone and iPad ownership and above all, by the arrival and spread of twenty-first century social media. The ambition to build a more responsive, more participatory democracy extended well beyond the Holyrood legislature. Should there, for instance, be a separate Scottish Civil Service? This has not yet seemed necessary, and defenders of a unified ‘British’ civil service can point out that officials in Scottish departments found themselves able to work on projects connected with an independent Scotland without losing their impartiality. Can governance adopt a distinct ‘Scottish Approach to Plan-Making’, departing from Westminster models in its methods of consultation, its accountability and its measurements of policy delivery? Here again, the impression of buildings left half-completed, of ‘This is as far as we can go for the moment’, is strong. The Christie Report on the future delivery of public services, rather than leading on to any comprehensive reform, raised questions which remain unanswered (Chapter in this Handbook). A common line of criticism of successive Scottish governments has been that they never fully exploit the wide powers allotted to them by the devolution settlement. But the record of the last decade can suggest the opposite: that ambitious plans for reform and innovation have begun to run painfully against the limits of what that settlement and British macroeconomic policies allow. As Richard Parry (Chapter in this Handbook) observes, ‘in many of their actions [the civil servants] are projecting a level of control over policy and resources that does not fully exist’. Austerity has been inflicted through macroeconomic powers which were not devolved. Again, local government seems to be a state of uneasy transition. The independence referendum campaign, as it mobilized public opinion, brought to the surface a widespread demand for much greater decentralization of power, and the transfer of real financial resources and choices to the community level. The latest sweeping local government reorganization in abolished the ‘regional’ tier, but left ghostly regional structures still in charge of health and policing. Meanwhile, successive Scottish
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governments have wavered between an emotional commitment to returning power and responsibility to the people ‘at the base’ and a sharp instinct to centralize. The creation of a single Scottish Water authority has been a success, but the amalgamation of regional police forces into Police Scotland has not been popular. It is to some extent unfair that the Scottish Government’s continuous cuts in local authority budgets are perceived as part of the SNP’s alleged Edinburgh ‘control freakery’, when a major reason for the cuts is the long-sustained ‘austerity’ policies of the UK government. But as Paul Cairney writes (Chapter in this Handbook), the Scottish Government maintains ‘a local government system that is highly centralised by European standards, with a small number of local authorities . . . which depend on the Scottish Government for (effectively) over per cent of their funding’. Lord MacConnell, himself a former (Labour) first minister, has said that local government is ‘a shadow of its former self ’ and that ‘much of the energy has been sucked out of Scotland by the Parliament’ (Herald, May ). The drift of public opinion in Scotland is clearly towards a far wider, more ‘European’ distribution of fiscal and administrative authority to the communities which make up society. But ‘subsidiarity’ (the doctrine of popular sovereignty which requires power to flow upwards from its base in communities, delegating to superior levels of governance only those competences which the inferior level cannot exercise for itself) is utterly alien to the Anglo–British constitutional tradition. This remains essentially monarchical, a structure in which authority and rights reside at the apex of the political pyramid and are permitted to trickle downwards in a rather arbitrary fashion. It follows that, to achieve formal subsidiarity, the whole British power structure would have to be up-ended. So far, there is no appetite in Scotland for anything so revolutionary. And yet the advent of devolution has revived distinctive ‘European’ and Enlightenment features in Scottish constitutional thinking, which become more important as political relations between London and Edinburgh grow less consensual. As several contributors to this book remark, activists pushing for devolution and the return of a Scottish legislature constantly invoked ‘the sovereignty of the Scottish people’ as expressed through successive ‘Claims of Right’. This is plainly incompatible with the archaic English doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, an inconsistency which hardly mattered until devolution brought the two ideas into potential conflict. On the one hand, the Westminster parliament considers that it has in theory the right to revoke the Scotland Acts and close the Scottish Parliament without the consent of Holyrood (although in practice it is inconceivable that it would do so.) On the other, Lord Cooper’s famous judgment in observed that the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty had no place in Scots law—implying, to at least some of his hearers, that the power-principle of Scotland was popular sovereignty. Whatever Lord Cooper may have meant, successive SNP cabinets in Edinburgh conduct increasingly fractious negotiations with Westminster on the basis that they are accountable only to the will of the Scottish people. The immense confusion brought on by the Brexit controversy, revealing amongst other things that the United Kingdom has no law of state locating its ultimate authority, brought the doctrine of parliamentary
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sovereignty into—at least temporary—discredit. In that situation, the more ‘European’ constitutionalism of Scotland can seem at once more transparent and more ‘modern’. This was one of the latent differences between Scotland and the rest of the UK which devolution has made patent. Other divergences are less easy to attribute to that settlement, now twenty years old. It was in the late s that visitors from the South began to find Scotland harder to read, and its institutions less familiar. Not only the rise of the SNP but new economic priorities—North Sea oil, the deindustrialization of the Thatcher years—coupled with a general urge to investigate and anatomize ‘the Scottish condition’—soon concealed Scotland behind a crop of new political institutions, acronyms, and references not shared by the rest of the UK. Bitter disagreements about the very project of devolution split both Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservatives, up to the opening of the Scottish Parliament in . Most opposition rested on the well-grounded fear that ‘home rule’ would not satisfy but would encourage the appetite for full self-government and independence. Labour critics, especially, foresaw that devolution would complete the legitimation of the SNP as ‘Scotland’s party’ and would threaten Labour’s twenty-year hegemony over Scottish politics at national and local level. Much harder to measure has been the quiet sundering of ‘Britishness’ in civil society, which is still continuing. To construct an example, some London-based scientific association may find that its Scottish branch, having gradually become autonomous, has gone on to change its name and status to emerge as a purely Scottish institution. It is a development which is discreet and which attracts little attention—not least, because the metamorphosis is often steered by people with no conscious political intent at all. But to speak of divergence—in political parties, in policy preferences, institutions, civil society, and culture—is to describe only half the picture. Keating and McEwen (Chapter in this Handbook) mention ‘de Tocquveille’s Paradox’—the observation that political divergence can coincide with cultural convergence. Poll research shows that Scottish–British differences of public opinion on, for instance, immigration and race or—come to that—European membership, are much slighter than the opposing platforms of Scottish political parties would suggest. Slighter, indeed, than many Scots would want to believe. The assumption that Scotland is more left-wing than England is true, but not overwhelmingly true. It has constantly been remarked that since the SNP’s leftward shift at the end of the twentietch century, the domestic policies of Scottish Labour and the SNP are almost indistinguishable—divided only by the single issue of independence. Both are moderate social-democratic parties, hostile to neo-liberalism and still placing faith in the role of the state as the provider of welfare and the regulator of capitalism. With a spark of irony, it can even be argued that the SNP has actually been the most consistently ‘British’ party in the United Kingdom. It has for many years stood for the preservation and extension in Scotland of the post- welfare settlement, and for its defence against privatization and marketization through years when the UK-wide parties all agreed on reducing the social role of the state. It is the all-British achievement which Gordon Brown once defined as the proper focus for a ‘British’ patriotism, a
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socio-political order which was eventually undermined by New Labour as well as by Conservative governments, but which the SNP seems determined to entrench in Scotland. And not only in terms of welfare provision. Richard Parry (Chapter in this Handbook), writing on civil service reform, suggests that ‘Scotland, not England, is now the repository of traditional UK structures’. He is referring to policies for the public sector, but he adds—significant evidence of that ‘temporary’ impression which Scottish institutions can now leave—that ‘the two limitations of incomplete powers and reliance on imported institutional categories hamper the Scottish system’s capacity for “design thinking” about new ways of producing public policies’. Immigration policy is an intriguing example of how Scottish Government action confirmed and intensified a pre-existing image of divergence: the popular assumption that Scotland was a more welcoming and less xenophobic society than England. Actual survey data suggest that such a difference exists, but only marginally. However, in the Labour-led Scottish Executive (the second Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition since devolution) launched its ‘Fresh Talent’ initiative, allowing overseas graduates from Scottish universities visas to remain and seek work in Scotland for two years after graduation. At the same time ( was the year when a row of post-Communist states joined the European Union), Jack McConnell as First Minister began a vigorous campaign to recruit immigrants, especially from Poland. The idea was at once to counter Scotland’s falling and ageing population drift, and to import young entrepreneurial talent. The new policy required a special Home Office dispensation: immigration was not amongst the powers devolved to Holyrood. But with a Labour administration under Tony Blair in London, permission was granted. The results were spectacular: within a few years, there were some , Poles, most of them young and energetic, working across Scotland in service jobs and small businesses. There were three main outcomes from ‘Fresh Talent’ and this opening to European immigration. The first was the clear statement that in external matters as well as internal affairs, Scotland’s needs could diverge radically from the rest of the United Kingdom and ought to be accommodated in the general devolution settlement. But the second was radically to reinforce Scotland’s hopeful self-image as a society more hospitable, more welcoming to strangers and refugees, than England; a reinforcement which hardened a vague popular attribute into an accepted item of national description. So much so, that when Conservative government returned to the United Kingdom in , its drive to reduce and discourage immigration (the ‘hostile environment’ policy) was widely seen north of the Border, not only as a blow to Scotland’s vital interests but as an insult to Scottish ethical identity. Persisting over the next few years, this protective emotion about (particularly) European incomers contributed to the element of moral outrage which was one component behind Scotland’s heavy Remain vote, in the referendum on British membership of the European Union. How ‘European’ is modern Scotland? The broad ‘nationalist project’ of the past fifty years (which has been confined neither to the SNP nor even to supporters of Scottish independence) has set out to ‘join the world’ rather than to take refuge from it.
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The isolating creed of victimology (‘Culloden! The Clearances!’) has been overthrown (with some difficulty) by Scottish historiography in recent decades. This has liberated Scots to understand their significance in wider global history, by recognizing the Scot not only as grievance-holder but as simultaneous ‘perpetrator’—in imperial conquest, slavery, and even colonial massacre. Momentously, the last twenty years have seen Scotland slowly revalue itself as a country which is not an eternal emigrant donor, a place whose ambitious natives want to leave it, but a destination where others choose to work and settle. Scots are not strongly ‘Europhile’ about the EU, appreciative of its financial contributions but wary of its restrictions on state action and its ‘undemocratic’ authority. Nevertheless, the ‘Scotland in Europe’ idea is fairly widely accepted. Nearly half the members of the existing EU are roughly Scotland-sized, with populations of seven million or less. Those who seek full independence would mostly agree with Keating and McEwen (Chapter in this Handbook) that ‘small, independent states in the modern world require an external support system to provide security, access to markets and protection against unilateral behaviour by larger powers’. The ‘Brexit years’, the long and chaotic struggle by a British government to cope with the referendum result, have carried immense implications for Scotland. In the first place, the prospect of ‘Scotland being torn out of Europe against its will’ did not produce the expected spike in the independence preference, although it increased scepticism about the ‘partnership’ in the UK promised by London politicians in the aftermath of the independence referendum. Second, the independence camp now faced a new problem: how to prevent the erection of a hard border between Scotland as a member of the EU and the rest of the UK which had abandoned membership. Third and most immediate, how might Brexit affect the devolution settlement? In retrospect, it is clear that the devolutions to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland could only have taken place in the context of British membership of the EU. The United Kingdom of had already submitted many of its powers to the authority of Brussels. Now, under the various Acts of that year, the devolved parliaments and assemblies did the same. In other words, accountability for policies was widely distributed across Europe: there was no way, in practice, for mighty Westminster unilaterally to force its will on the ‘junior’ legislatures in Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast. ‘Brexit’ would change all that. It was not quite that devolution outwith the EU no longer made sense. It did indeed make sense—but a very different and, for Scotland and Wales, a much less welcome sense. There was talk in London of ‘strengthening the Union’. But its implication was that a British government, freed of Brussels restraints, might now choose to resume and centralize some important devolved functions, imposing uniformity for the sake of ‘efficiency’. Stripped of their European framework, in other words, the successive Scotland Acts lost their air of inviolable entrenchment. The same sense of insecurity arose in , when the Supreme Court ruled that a British government could legislate on a devolved subject without the consent of the Scottish Parliament. The dogma of Westminster’s parliamentary sovereignty was
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reasserted. So was Enoch Powell’s contemptuous comment on pretences that the dogma could be bypassed: ‘Power devolved is power retained’. But, incomplete as many of Scotland’s arrangements may seem, any serious Westminster attempt at the reduction or repossession of the powers distributed under the Scotland Acts is hard to imagine. Matters have gone too far, and any gross mutilation of the devolved powers would meet resistance. The young generation now starting work or entering university have never known a Scotland without its own Parliament. The public at large, apparently grudging about Holyrood’s performance, have occasionally revealed how deep its roots have now reached: most clearly, as Jack McConnell has suggested, when the Scots accepted the highly unpopular public-smoking ban in the confidence that their Parliament could be trusted. The first of the First Ministers, the late Donald Dewar, was very concerned that the new Parliament and the devolution settlement should be ‘bedding down’. It was a phrase resented by those who felt that Scotland should be striding forward to much more radical constitutional and social change rather than anchoring itself to the present. But the innovation, even daring, of the Scottish Executives and later governments in the last twenty years remains striking. The Labour–Liberal Democrat coalitions between and introduced—amongst other things—free university tuition, free home care for the elderly and an effective proportional representation system for local government elections. As the years pass and memory fades, there is a vague assumption that these major reformimg breakaways from ‘British’ orthodoxy must have been achieved by the SNP administrations since (an assumption the SNP has not tried too hard to dispel). But all three, in fact, originated with the Scottish Liberal Democrats who forced them onto their Labour partners as the price of coalition. Donald Dewar’s ‘bedding-down’ has at least taken place in the sense that nobody can now imagine Scotland without its Parliament. Whether devolution has bedded down to the same extent in Westminster and Whitehall is another matter. Much will depend on how Britain emerges from the interminable Brexit paralysis. If there are more ‘hung Parliaments’ at Westminster, as seems not unlikely, a strengthened SNP may well find itself holding the balance of power in the House of Commons. The future not only of Scotland but of the United Kingdom would then be decided—following the precedent of the Irish Home Rule party—by what concessions they choose to demand in return for parliamentary support. Will Scotland’s representatives be able to wrench open the devolution settlement sufficiently to gain, for example, control over immigration into Scotland or the right of participation—not just consultation—in major foreign policy and trade decisions? During Poland’s century of partition, patriots who planned to restore the nation’s independence debated the method: armed uprising, or a constitutional compromise with the Tsar, or perhaps a build-up of economic strength. But they also asked one another a more fundamental question: ‘Poland, yes! But what sort of Poland?’ In Scotland’s referendum on devolution, which restored a Parliament to Scotland, people asked: ‘What should the Parliament do for us?’ But in the independence
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referendum, the question was different and more Polish. Campaigners and audiences asked each other: ‘Scotland, yes! But what sort of Scotland?’ At one level, the answers seemed to be: ‘More of the same!’ More powers to local government, more social justice, more security for immigrants and refugees, more support for community initiatives—in short, more of that social-democratic ‘British’ order which Scottish governments were already defending and seeking to expand. And yet these demands had a libertarian, experimental, and outward-looking air, suggesting that Scottish values had moved on from those of the old Labour cadres described here by Hassan and Shaw (Chapter in this Handbook) as the ‘cadre of councillors, local notables, members of tenant associations and trade union officials who were wellconnected, much-respected, and had deep roots in their communities’. It remains to be seen whether a consensus around a modernized version of social democracy can survive, in a post-industrial society. Scotland is still adapting to the rapid, almost complete collapse of the manufacturing and mining which, for nearly two centuries, provided a sort of identity to the Scottish working class. This is not the first uprooting of traditional society: the successive Lowland and Highland Clearances had swept rural populations off the land and into either urban employment or emigration. But the decline of industry, the disappearance of the huge workforces (which amongst other things institutionalized sectarian discrimination) and the shrinking of the community leadership provided by the trade unions have combined to produce a much less predictable electorate. Instead of voting for sectional advantage or out of sheer family tradition, choices seem to be made on much broader, more individual, and sophisticated grounds—often ideological, ethical, or environmental. Politicians often invoke ‘the settled will’ of the Scottish people in matters of selfgovernment, usually to demonstrate that devolution had indeed ‘bedded down’. But this is misleading. The state of Scotland today is unsettled. The new ‘city on the hill’ stands there, but many of its buildings are unfinished and there is no clear plan— political or financial—for their completion. If there was a lowest common multiple in the referendum campaign, it was that the largest single block of opinion seemed to prefer ‘devo max’—something close to full independence within the United Kingdom framework—to either sovereign statehood or the status quo. But that option was not on offer. Perhaps it could never have been fitted into the UK’s constitutional architecture. Instead, a major consequence of was the advance of the idea of independence from a romantic fantasy to one of several sober, practical possibilities for Scotland’s future. Donald Dewar, First Minister in the early years of the restored Scottish Parliament, said on several occasions that ‘devolution was a process’. This was not, on the whole, a popular view in London where it was hopefully assumed that once in place, the new institutions would not change—an approach at once unhistorical and typical of the short-termism of British politics in recent decades. Dewar’s words were thought to be faintly subversive, but the last twenty years have confirmed their wisdom. Devolution as process has led to constant, if not very coherent, extensions of the Scottish Parliament’s powers. But it has also established a dynamic in which—as the
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contributions to this Handbook show—the new institutions are running out of space to grow, their future plans increasingly reliant on degrees of authority and sources of finance which in fact they do not have. There are several possible outcomes. One is ‘organic’—that self-government is accepted as a natural process, and that Scotland gradually acquires so much control (over external as well as internal policy) that it reaches a condition of de facto confederal independence which renders a formally separate ‘sovereignty’ meaningless. But that sequence is perhaps too rational and bloodless to have staying power, and it is easy to imagine political leaders losing patience in its final stages and dashing for the full-flavour of a new-born Scottish state. A third outcome, in theory, is that the electorate, tired of referenda and humiliated by Brexit, will turn away from constitutional solutions and concentrate on dealing with Scotland’s social and economic problems, which are fairly certain to grow sharply worse. This would require a massive revival of the unionist political parties whose allegiance is to Westminster, and there is little sign of that. The fourth possibility is that persisting frustration and alienation from the whole British political system, especially if austerity policies continue, will slowly erode remaining resistance to the nationalist project, and a second referendum will—without great drama—produce a Yes majority. Independence, in short, remains a serious option. It is which the voters in chose not to select. But it is probable that they will be offered that choice again, in the notdistant future, in different circumstances. There can be no going back from devolution. But going forward from it could make the United Kingdom unrecognizable and project the old ‘British’ nations—England included—into a more modern and flexible relationship.
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.................................................................................................................................. I would be hard to dispute the reality that the British state—and its Constitution—are being ‘stress-tested’ to a degree that is unprecedented in recent memory, and that the peculiarity of our own situation is that the pressures are principally internal and selfinflicted.¹ There have been existential threats to the British state before but, for all its flaws and inadequacies it has tended to rise to the challenge with a confidence in itself that has been largely—though rarely uncritically—reinforced by its ability to ultimately surmount those challenges. Today, however, the challenge is to the very idea of Britain, not simply as a functioning state, but as a liberal idea—or perhaps more accurately, a whig idea, forged in the Enlightenment as a means by which the competing nationalisms of these islands could be directed and harnessed for the welfare of all their peoples. That collective endeavour, which sought to end centuries of rivalry and conflict, was in no small part a product of Stuart ambitions and Scottish political creativity. The path to union was rarely smooth but likewise, few political marriages have proved quite so successful, the only other possible contender being the United States. But this ‘liberal’ or ‘whig’ union is now under concerted threat. On the one hand from the apparent incongruities of its constitutional settlement, unwritten, fluid, and contested, which now has to contend with devolution from both above and below in
¹ Ali Ansari is Professor of Modern History with reference to Iran at the University of St Andrews. He has research interests in nationalism and historiography and contributes this piece from the ‘margins’ as an interested citizen. I am grateful to Colin Kidd, Kevin Hague, Sam Taylor, Tom Holland, David Morgan, Craig McAngus and the editor, Michael Keating and for having read and commented on an earlier draft. Needless to say, any remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone.
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the form of the devolved assemblies from within and the European Union (EU) from without, which have proved far more disruptive to the constitutional settlement that many might have appreciated; and from the very ‘nationalisms’ it was constructed to contain and suppress. Whilst the constitutional challenge may be considered both legal and rational, it is informed by resurgent nationalism that is, by its very nature, emotional and intensely ideological. This nationalist challenge is also twofold, from both within and without: the challenge posed by the nationalisms of the constituent parts of both Britain and the United Kingdom, but also and perhaps more intriguingly by the new ‘transnational’ nationalism posed by the EU (Orwell : ²). Crucially in all these cases, British ‘liberalism’ has been acquired, appropriated and ruthlessly turned against its old master (Robinson, forthcoming: ). The British idea and the ideals it has historically espoused have been appropriated by its rivals, not least the Scottish nationalist but perhaps most strikingly by the EU. That may be attributed to a measure of British success: imitation is after all the sincerest form of flattery, though it is in some cases little more than a pale imitation (Simms : –).³ But it is also a reflection of complacency and political misjudgement both of which will have to be addressed if the idea of Britain is not only to survive but be renewed for the twenty-first century.
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.................................................................................................................................. The people of these islands have long been inured to the whig narrative of progress, which despite the assault of professional historians—most notably Herbert Butterfield () in his forensic critique of the whig interpretation of history—has become identified with the development of the British state. The whig narrative is, of course, most closely associated with English history but since the eighteenth century Scottish ‘whig’ historians have been enthusiastic adopters of the narrative with later gradual attempts to provide a distinct Scottish timeline which subsequently merges, as might two rivers, into the narrative of the British state (Kidd ). So socially institutionalized has this narrative become that it may be described as the foundation myth and metanarrative of the British state, such that, as Kidd has forcefully argued, it underpins a sense of ‘banal unionism’ (Kidd : –⁴). This whig interpretation of history, as Butterfield so succinctly deconstructed, suggests a narrative of ‘natural’ progress which over time takes on the air of inevitability, ultimately imbuing its proponents with a dangerous complacency.
² Orwell does not specifically categorize such supra-national loyalties, using a variety of descriptors. ³ This imitation is reflected in both structures (a union) and values (liberalism). ⁴ Kidd draws this idea from Billig ().
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The notion that in periodic political crises, things will work out all right ‘in the end’ tends to colour political judgement and decision-making and since the narrative remains as Butterfield pointed out, an abridgement, the narrative tends to disguise the intricacies, nuances and tensions implicit in any political development. Challenges to the narrative are therefore airbrushed out of a story that is unremittingly progressive with a matching belief in political competence that extends far beyond these shores. The popular durability of this myth has proved remarkable and may be witnessed in the conflicting reactions to the consequences of Brexit, with a breezy optimism matched by a disbelief at the political incompetence borne of complacency on display. There are to be sure, truths implicit in the myth,⁵ no narrative is wholly invented, and the resilience of this narrative suggests that events over the last two centuries have tended to reinforce it. It has provided much needed political capital upon which the state has been able to draw in times of need, generally cognizant of the fact that one must periodically reinvest in one’s political ‘infrastructure’ in order to ensure that this particular vital resource is never exhausted. As an example, the terrible strains placed on the British political system as a result of fighting two world wars could not be compensated for simply by having emerged as a victor in those conflicts. By the end of the Second World War it was important to have a renewed vision of a progressive Britain around the idea of a welfare system most forcefully identified with a National Health Service. Nevertheless, one of the ironies of the development of the welfare state has been the gradual shift in emphasis away from political towards economic infrastructure, taking the former for granted whilst focusing on the economic sustainability of the entire project. Unsurprisingly as the latter has faltered and strained under the burden of everincreasing costs, the political consequences have not been fully appreciated and the concomitant depreciation in political capital has not been adequately addressed, allowing others including the Scottish National Party to step into the vacuum created and seize the mantle of ‘progressive’ leadership.
D I B
.................................................................................................................................. One of the features of our current predicament is that complacency and an overemphasis on economic as opposed to political capital has facilitated a depreciation of the value of the idea of Britain. This complacency has allowed certain ideas commonly associated with Britain to be appropriated by others to exceptionally good effect. The idea of Britain as a political, as opposed to a literary, construct has of course faced challenges since its inception and only the simplest of historical narratives would suggest the smooth accession of an idea which met fierce resistance from politicians ⁵ ‘Myth’ here is understood as a narrative grounded in truths, not in the more popular sense of falsehood.
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and statesmen in both Scotland and England. It took the better part of a century for the ambitions of James VI and I to translate his dynastic union into the Kingdom of Great Britain, to finally bear fruit, and even then, the Union of faced serious opposition. These challenges, some of which might be considered existential, served to refine and renew the idea, all the more so because the eighteenth century proved by and large a remarkably successful period in terms of political and economic consolidation. For all the apparent confidence of a ‘polite and commercial’ people, there were those who maintained that the Union was an aberration that would soon fall to its own internal contradictions (a theme that would be picked up by Marxists a century later), but even the debacle of the loss of the American colonies proved surmountable as the new United Kingdom (now including the Kingdom of Ireland) emerged from the Napoleonic Wars further reinforced and renewed. None of this was either smooth or easy, but the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland entered the nineteenth century with its core union—that between Scotland and England—more secure than it had ever been, any fragility having been off-loaded to the Irish question. It would be more than a century before this core union would come under question once again, and even then, it took a tremendous amount of political complacency compounded by errors of judgement for it to pose a serious threat. In this case there were two parallel developments which effectively informed and reinforced each other. The first can be broadly termed the process of ‘decolonization’ after the war in which extended far beyond the practical consequences of the end of empire to become a driving intellectual and ideological motif, in which the British state became equated with the British Empire. As one went, so too, went the logic, must the other. Decolonization effectively came home as the wickedness of the British Empire translated seamlessly into the wickedness of the British state. As Orwell (: ) pointedly argued, ‘Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory’. Once Ireland defined itself as the first ‘British’ colony, so too less plausibly did other constituent nations become determined to exercise their ‘self-determination’. Thus a contentious and legally contested concept, born of the trauma of the Great War, came home to roost, with re-emergent nationalists from both Scotland and England—the founding members of Great Britain, to which both had invested considerable ‘blood, sweat and tears’—vying to outdo each other in their enthusiasm to ‘break free’. English nationalists have directed their anger towards the European Union, but the means, methods, and ambitions are curiously similar. The historical and political incongruity of this situation should be immediately apparent, though ideologies—and for the avoidance of doubt, nationalism is an ideology—are rarely rational and rely much more on their emotive power than any logical assessment of the facts. At the same time these ideologies received succour from a succession of political shocks that were to reinforce a narrative of incompetence and ineffectiveness. These were in turn: the invasion and occupation of Iraq in , pursued against the grain of wider liberal opinion and justified on the basis of eliminating weapons of mass
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destruction that did not in the event exist; the financial crisis of which inaugurated a period of protracted austerity and undermined the faith in the broader ‘neoliberal’ economic system; and last but by no means least, the two referendums on the constitutional future of the United Kingdom, a double political blow which exposed and exacerbated the underlying tensions, polarizing society in a manner which simply served to further expose the alienation of the political class. Taken on their own, each of these would have been sufficient to generate substantial tension. Taken together they ‘stress-tested’ the British state to an extent that had not been experienced in recent memory. Britain’s broader political class, seemingly divested of any strategic perspective and preoccupied (like their American cousins) with electoral rather than national politics, found themselves dangerously haemorrhaging credibility to opponents whose strategic vision—and determination—made them keen, and indeed avaricious absorbers of the political capital being so wantonly wasted by the British state.
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.................................................................................................................................. Scottish nationalism has its roots as a fringe movement of both the left and the right. That sections of the movement associated with right-wing politics and indeed flirted with fascism in the s, are not generally well known, they were nonetheless no secret and if Hugh MacDiarmid could lament during the war, that more German bombs had not fallen on London, his poetic exuberance was treated as both an eccentricity and daresay, an excess of enthusiasm, that put him generally beyond the pale of acceptable discourse (Kidd ). It says much of Britain and its self-assurance at this critical period that it viewed MacDiarmid’s reflections as little more than a mild irritation. Pride in a distinct Scottish identity had never disappeared but few at this stage considered such pride as antithetical or contradictory to a British identity which was arguably being reinforced by the collective struggle against Nazi Germany. Victory in and the establishment of the welfare state seemed only to confirm this direction of travel. Scottish history flowed inexorably into British history such that even the various Jacobite rebellions (a struggle for the British rather than Scottish crown) had been absorbed into the grand narrative of Britain as a romantic interlude shorn of political relevance. In sum, Scottish identity was a romance that all the peoples of these islands might legitimately buy into. Sir Walter Scott had effectively made it part of the collective inheritance. This began to change in the s as the Scottish nationalists leaned increasingly leftwards in the ideological inclination to take advantage of the peculiar weakness of a British state in the full throes of decolonization, and deindustrialization, with all the economic stresses this resulted in, and the acute lack of self-confidence this engendered. Decolonization abroad rebounded home to the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland
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and a deep unease about the direction of travel. The British state, as noted above, became increasingly identified with empire such that the cleansing process had to be thorough and decisive. One indication of the possibilities of this process was the decision to join the European Economic Community in , effectively shifting Britain’s direction of travel away from the Empire and Commonwealth and towards European partners who also wanted to shake off the shackles of the past and start afresh. One of the major determinants in influencing this leftward shift was the decidedly rightward shift of the British state under Thatcher from , a move which on the one hand accelerated the process of de-industrialization, but which crucially re-energized the idea of Britain under a Prime Minister who had little appetite for compromise. It was ironically the success of this process, most evident in the aftermath of the Falklands War, which forced a radical reassessment on the left of the political spectrum. Scottish nationalists, like the modernizers of New Labour, sought to fill the vacuum vacated by one nation conservatism though for years they struggled in the margins of a resurgent Labour Party. That said, they took advantage of their apparent political irrelevancy to refine and develop their message outside the glare of media scrutiny. The political marginality of Scottish nationalism meant that it could grow and develop in the full embrace of a liberal state that regarded it as a duty to protect and nurture ‘minority’ opinions. The complacency of ‘banal unionism’ suffering from an ‘embarrassment’ of power—a consequence of post-imperial guilt— paradoxically ensured that the very idea which had been created in order to suppress nationalism was now its handmaiden. It became an inadvertent incubator for nationalist ideology. None of this particularly mattered whilst public opinion failed to shift, and even the emergent politics of grievance around the ownership of North Sea Oil, failed to enrage majority opinion north of the border. A perceived lack of democratic representation, however, did begin to gain traction, not least because its initial proponents were the Labour Party, who prepared the ground for the nationalists by arguing through the s that the Conservative Party had no mandate to govern in Scotland (The Guardian ; Torrance ). Quite apart from redefining the state and its political constituencies in staunchly nationalistic terms—Scotland v England—this debate gave a contemporary twist and relevance to the nationalist supposition that Scotland was, and is in fact, a colony of England, subject to its whims and unable to make itself heard. That this argument relied entirely on a territorially defined electoral understanding of ‘democracy’, ignoring the many ‘Scots’ that lived and worked in non-Scottish constituencies and served in the highest offices of the British state, did little to deflect from its immediate potency. Only the triumph of New Labour, and its preponderance of Scottish MPs deferred the consequences of a seemingly self-inflicted problem. Nevertheless, Labour’s solution, devolution, simply served to reinforce the narrative of a constitutional—and democratic—deficit. Devolution only served to exacerbate a constitutional issue that made little sense in the context of an incorporating union. If the Act and Treaty of Union (/) had resulted in a federal union with the constituent ‘nations’ as currently understood contributing to the centre, then
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devolution might serve to restore balance to a ‘federation’ that was clearly weighted in favour of England. But the Union of resulted in the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain including in our current vernacular, the imposition of a single market, customs, and currency union as well as free movement of people (Brown ).⁶ Indeed, in many ways, and as some proponents of the European Union remind us, the ideological and political precursor to their own project is the Union of ; an argument that is double-edged in its implications. The immediate consequence of this in terms of the United Kingdom is that demographic flows over the last three hundred years rendered any territorial delimitation and definition of the nation meaningless, a reality emphasized by the nationalists themselves (in stark contradiction to their preferred electoral franchise) when they insisted on distinguishing their own brand of identity politics around the people as opposed to geographic territory.⁷ Moreover, as Tam Dalyell also reminded us, such meddling had the potential to disrupt the ‘organic’ constitutional settlement which relied on convention as much as law and which included transfers, not least fiscal, which were not accounted for in the devolutionary settlement. There is a clear logic to the fiscal transfer in an incorporating union in which freedom of movement has ensured extensive demographic exchanges but principally the flow of population southwards. The language of subsidy only gains traction if you define the Union in terms of political distinct constituent ‘nations’. Indeed, fiscal transfers are a matter of economic redistribution in unitary states but become heavily politicized, as the EU has discovered, when we begin to talk of distinct countries.⁸ Although Dalyell warned of the consequences of the ‘West Lothian Question’, it was striking that few people south of the border made any comment on the preponderance of Scots in the Labour government elected in and Scots have arguably had little difficulty in being elected for ‘English’ constituencies. Similarly, a ‘union of equals’ makes more sense in terms of the incorporating union of Great Britain where all Scots and English were treated as one people, than when we talk of distinct polities. The Union of Crowns from – was never a union of equals. The hornet’s nest of English nationalism had yet to be stirred. For the moment, however, the strategic imperative for the nationalists lay elsewhere. Devolution had intended to take the wind out of nationalists’ sails and some in the Labour Government were unusually optimistic about the consequences of constitutional tinkering. Devolution had been delivered by a Labour government and it expected to reap the rewards. The nationalists were initially wary of the move but ⁶ Brown argues that the Anglo-Scottish Union has of course created far more than this, a covenant and moral community. The term is also used widely in the House of Lords Brexit report of (House of Lords, EU Committee ). ⁷ There is a clear tension between the civic nationalism espoused and the cultivation of diaspora Scots, especially in the United States. ⁸ The heterogeneity of the British incorporating union is needless to say complicated by the fact that Scotland not only retained its own legal, religious, and education distinctiveness but was further identified as a distinct unit by the establishment of the Scottish Office in .
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soon came to love devolution for the opportunities it offered, not least because the mainstream parties, including Labour, appeared to regard the prospect of a career in Holyrood as a political dead-end. Scottish politics was seen as somewhat parochial and second tier with the immediate consequence that a move intended to empower Scotland simply served to remind everyone just how marginal to ‘real’ politics Scotland was. Scottish politics became the province of the proverbial B teams, as serious politicians with ambitions stood for Parliament at Westminster, where real power could be wielded. This establishment of two distinct political tracks became all the more problematic as there was no mechanism for crossing from one into the other and far from helping to bind the nation (in this case Britain) it served to further divide the political class. What Holyrood ultimately offered the nationalists was the opportunity to put their ideas to practical use. Nationalist mythologies that contested historical narratives and bemoaned the oppression of the English through the British state were all well and good for devotees of the movement—they added emotional lustre to the cause—but they were not sufficient to turn the tide of public opinion, which as more sober nationalist politicians noted, remained socially and politically conservative. The key now was to move onto territory that was traditionally regarded as the sine qua non of the British state, to say nothing of the idea of Britain itself, that of political competency and liberalism. This was going to be a delicate process which would require party discipline on a scale hitherto only witnessed in the New Labour project—on which we might add, the SNP effectively modelled itself. An insurgent, even revolutionary movement which had captivated its grass roots through an emotional appeal to nationalist mythology, now had to turn its hand to the mundane activity of management, and above all to showing that it could manage the system it so detested, better than anyone else. The SNP were able to suggest that any inadequacies resulted from failures of the system, rather than their own mismanagement, but in this of course, as noted above, they were ably assisted by a real failure in statecraft from a British political class that neither took the SNP insurgency nor Holyrood seriously, whilst at the same time committing errors of judgement that brought their own credibility for political management into question. Britain, whether by accident or design had acquired a powerful myth of political competency. It now proceeded by the same process to cede this myth to rivals only too eager to acquire it for themselves. The trigger and foundational moment for this process was the crisis of authority that emerged from the decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq in , with consequences that would lead to a haemorrhaging of ‘middle class’ support. This was to be followed in with a further crisis of confidence which would affect broader swathes of the population who understood the banking crisis as a systemic failure, and the way in which austerity was imposed as an unfair distribution of the burden of responsibility. The SNP were able to acquire credibility from a British state that seemed unusually clumsy, plodding from crisis to crisis in clay feet of its own design. Matters were made considerably worse in the two referendums held within touching distance of each other
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and in which the British political establishment seemed quite oblivious of the lessons of the one for the management of the other. Indeed, the referendum on Scottish independence seemed for many south of the border to be little more than an aperitif to the main event in on membership of the EU. Yet the management of both events exposed a political machinery that appeared to eschew planning in favour of a shortterm punt on the country’s future. It exposed a deep-seated complacency at the heart of the political establishment that had clearly come to believe the myth of its own competence. It was compounded by a crisis of confidence that made it more reactive than proactive. Rather than develop a strategy in pursuit of its own well-defined goals, the British state was by contrast accommodating and apologetic, to the point that it appeared to even its keenest supporters to be affecting ‘ineffectuality’. The danger was even more acute because its opponents in both cases were disciplined and strategic in pursuit of their goals. There were, of course, three interrelated competing forces gnawing at the myth of the British state: the Scottish nationalists; the EU (supra) ‘nationalists’; and last but by no means least, the English nationalists, who had wrapped themselves in the flag of Brexit. Of these three, it was the unleashing of English nationalism that has proved the most problematic and will likely be the most difficult to tame. It was arguably English nationalism that the British state in its modern rendition, was invented to channel and harness, and it was this particular benefit that justified the pursuit of a union to its Scottish proponents (Kidd : ). It was English nationalism that could prove the most disruptive force to the delicate balance of authority and power which enabled and empowered the current constitutional settlement, reliant as it was on convention as much as law and on maintaining a studied English disinterest in some of the incongruities that might become apparent.⁹
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.................................................................................................................................. What is perhaps most remarkable about the current predicament within which we find ourselves, is that the British state and its leadership have almost wilfully—by accident or design—ceded the main attributes and moral attractions to those most eager to see its demise. Local nationalism, most effectively in this case the Scottish nationalists, as well as transnational nationalists—represented by the European Union—have successfully appropriated the narrative of progress, the myth of political competence, and perhaps most strikingly the myth of compassion and moral rectitude, from a British state suffering from what we might term, an ‘embarrassment of power’. Self-deprecation has become so dominant that it has led in recent years to self-emasculation, resulting ⁹ David Cameron’s decision to declare the pursuit of English votes for English laws on the morning after the Scottish referendum was rightly viewed as injudicious and provocative and evidenced the dominance of the politician over the statesman.
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in part in a populist reaction that has rarely been pretty. Nonetheless, the confidence that used to characterize the British ideal, and which is rightly scrutinized and critiqued, has been transferred almost wholesale to its rivals, such that proponents of the EU project and Scottish independence talk of the inevitability of their goals. Indeed, the Scottish nationalists have so absorbed the characteristics of the British state, that they have become quite ‘whiggish’ in their conviction of inevitable independence and the dissolution of the Union. As with the British state, such convictions, unquestionably held, should serve as a warning; that all may not be as it seems, and that the idea of Britain may not yet have run its course. This is not to suggest a continuation of the status quo but rather that the debate has yet to run its course and that alternatives to impending dissolution exist. The weakest aspect of the case for separation remains economic though nationalism has never relied on sober or rational analyses of material well-being and has tended on the contrary to thrive on the romance of struggle. There is in sum no gain without pain, and paradoxically, the greater the pain the more vital the struggle and the ultimate gains to be secured.¹⁰ Indeed, with its Growth Commission report the SNP have sought to turn what is undeniably the most unattractive aspect of separation into a virtue by at least suggesting that contrary to previous assertions the SNP now understand the task ahead of them and are preparing for it. The underlying theme however is that sovereign independence will be worth it. So much so that an independent Scotland would effectively forgo the fiscal transfer represented (in popular discourse) by the ‘Barnett formula’ and continue to happily pay an ‘Annual Solidarity Payment’ to the rest of the UK as part of its inherited liabilities. The assumption of course is that the pain will be eased through being part of the European Union which, initially of course, was predicated on the fact that the rest of the UK would likewise be a member and thus many of the frictions of independence would be ameliorated through continued membership of the single market and customs union. As more astute SNP politicians have noted, this position has clearly been undermined by Brexit and there are issues that need to be reassessed and reflected upon.¹¹ This has, curiously, yet to be done and the overwhelming public assumption is that an independent Scotland would segue seamlessly into membership of the EU. Quite apart from the reality that not all Scottish nationalists are keen on re-joining the EU, it is not at all clear how an independent Scotland without its own currency and central bank would be eligible for EU membership, certainly not in the immediate term.¹²
¹⁰ The similarities to hardline Brexiteers should be immediately apparent. ¹¹ See Alun Smyth’s comments, ‘Sturgeon’s plans for independence DESTROYED by own MEP—‘Don’t see any good news!’, Daily Express, November . Available at: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/ /Brexit-news-Sturgeon-Scotland-independence-Alyn-Smith-UK-EU-withdrawal-SNP-latest. ¹² The accession criteria (https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/policy/glossary/terms/ accession-criteria_en) require ‘a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competition and market forces’, and given some elasticity in interpretation, the EU could conceivably not require these from an independent Scotland in the interests of speedy accession. However, it would involve immediate adoption of the Euro on an unprecedented basis that would effectively surrender Scotland’s
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Moreover, Brexit has provided for some less than flattering comparisons to be made with Brexiteers, with people rightly questioning why leaving a -year-old union is better than leaving a -year-old one. The argument of course devolves onto questions of competency and moral rectitude and it is here that the debate will be most intense. If Britain and the idea of Britain can no longer offer political competency and a moral reference point, is it no longer, to coin a phrase, ‘fit for purpose’, and should it be, as its opponents have argued for some time, relegated to the dustbin of history, a relic of times past, unlamented and unwanted? The question of competency is in part a matter of historical interpretation, and it is as much a part of the (moral) idea of Britain, as it is a reflection of political realities. But for our immediate purposes let us distinguish the two and consider them separately. The narrative of competency, like all myths (Ricoeur ), is an abridgement and simplification of the historical process, but for better or worse over the last three hundred years Britain has acquired a reputation for political management which has been the envy of others. None of this has been easy and none of this has been smooth, and there have been major errors of judgement along the way. But on balance a reputation has been constructed and political capital accrued, on which successive, perhaps less able politicians have drawn. The question now arises whether, as a result of the triad of misjudgements noted above (Iraq War, financial crisis, referendums), along with the decision to devolve power (and authority) downwards and abroad, the ‘organic’ constitutional settlement, the uncodified if not unwritten Constitution of the United Kingdom, requires some long overdue attention. One of the great myths, of course, of the British Constitution is that it is historic and unchanging. Chancellor Merkel once remarked with some bewilderment that parliamentary debates were referring to eighteenth-century laws, ostensibly to indicate how archaic everything had become. This reflected the nature of legal interpretation and the traditions of common law, but it is a palpable absurdity to suggest that nothing ever changes. The longevity of the British system is the result of continuous incremental changes—evolution rather than revolution (notwithstanding the wars of the seventeenth century), and the British Constitution today is as different from its seventeenthcentury predecessor as the French Fifth Republic is to the First. The difference between the French and the British systems however is a willingness to adapt to new realities and a flexibility born of being ‘unwritten’. In a Burkean sense we may conclude that the genius of the British political settlement is to know what to conserve in order to know what to change, but the crucial thing to acknowledge is that change is an integral part of conservation. There is no merit in fetishizing the Constitution and considerable advantage in periodic reviews, not least because in presenting the new we may better evaluate the ‘independence’ to the ECB. It is also worth noting here that the Sustainable Growth Commission (SGC) has talked of EU membership as aspirational, which is less emphatic than the rhetoric emanating from the SNP leadership.
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present. Only by positing and debating new arrangements can a sound assessment be made of the current situation and a cost–benefit analysis provided of the merits of a new settlement. Few people today seem content with the current constitutional settlement from the manner in which we are governed, the electoral system we employ, to the continued existence of an unelected higher chamber in which, through a bizarre and thoroughly British quirk of fate, the only elected members are the hereditary peers. So why not embrace the possibility of change, and here devolution may offer some suggestions. If the electoral system is regarded as deficient to modern needs and sensibilities why not adapt the Scottish system to Westminster with a mixture of constituency and list MPs, thus retaining the constituency link whilst restoring some balance to the composition of the House of Commons such that it better reflects the balance of votes. If the House of Lords is regarded as an anachronism, then why not complete the reforms, and impose term limits and make it wholly elected with a relationship to the Commons not dissimilar to what it enjoyed in the nineteenth century? That is a restoration of a truly bicameral parliament the function of whose upper house would still be to review rather than initiate legislation, but which would enjoy some genuine authority in the process. Such a body might be an attractive destination to politicians who otherwise retire to make their fortunes depriving the country of any institutional political memory. One might even consider going further and applying the creative prognostications of the Constitutional Reform Group (CRG ) in replacing the entire constitutional settlement with a federal structure in which the four constituent nations pool their sovereignty, drawn from and centred in their own distinct parliaments. In practice, many aspects of the United Kingdom would remain, but the principle would be established of sovereign nations choosing to pool and share for the better welfare of all with the provision that any of the constituent nations could in fact leave should their people choose to do so (Constitutional Reform Group ). Such a settlement would go some way in satisfying the demands of the federalists amongst Scottish nationalists, those whose principal objection to the incorporating union of is the absence of a distinct Scottish sovereign authority and the power to ultimately exercise that authority. That they may choose to pool that sovereignty in an intimate political relationship with England is of secondary importance to the ability to make the choice. There are, needless to say, downsides to this option (and we should be aware that this remains a work in progress), not least in terms of the fiscal transfer that currently exists—though most are of the view that the Barnett formula as it is currently structured is increasingly unsustainable (not least because of the attention which has been drawn to it by the continuing debate over separation) but also in the imbalance of power that will inevitably exist between England and the other three parts of the UK. An England reborn as a sovereign state with its own parliament will remain the elephant in the room of the newly defined United Kingdom, and the other constituent nations will have to refamiliarize themselves swiftly with the conundrum that plagued their forebears—how to avoid being dominated by England.
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The solution that the Scottish theorists of the Union came up with was, of course, to invent a new political construct—Great Britain. It may be that our own generation having looked once again at the alternatives may settle on the less than perfect solution of our forebears, but we might do so with more enthusiasm if we were to revisit the moral case. This has of course taken a battering, not least because of the historical revisionism that has taken place most obviously in relation to the Empire, but also because of the political complacency and misjudgements that have characterized our era. Orwell famously remarked that ‘England’, by which he implied Britain, ‘is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality’ (Orwell : ¹³). Our intellectuals have arguably found refuge in Europe, but nationalists of all hues have torn into ‘Britain’ as if it existed beyond themselves, an oppressive other they had little to do with. This is such bewildering historical nonsense it is difficult to know where to start and a simple review of the historical record will reveal that for good or ill, Scots were deeply involved in the expansion and management of the Empire. The debate on Britain’s historical role and the Empire in particular is unlikely to subside, nor should it. What we need is an engaged public, conversant in its history, warts and all, that can approach political problems fully informed of its achievements and failures. A historically aware public is an engaged public and whilst the level of historical and political awareness and knowledge may have tended towards the popular and shallow in recent years, the fact remains that Britain’s universities are buoyant, and its literary culture is thriving. For all the problems related to social media, and ‘fake news’ (not quite the novelty that some seem to believe), we have an educated public which is curious about its past and willing to engage. As politics becomes more tense and contentious, this curiosity is likely to grow. As for the politics itself, few would view the last few years with undiluted pride. But is the experience unprecedented? Or have we become so habituated to the mundane and morose in political life that even the most modest passion inflames an anxiety wholly out of proportion with the events that have transpired. There is little doubt that both referendums have ignited ideological contests on these islands that have not been experienced in some time, and the experience has disorientated many. It has indeed been a much more unpleasant experience than many anticipated, especially where social media is concerned. But for all the constitutional contention that it has unleashed, the passions have been largely contained within our political institutions. They have not, like much of continental Europe, spilled out onto the streets, our police have neither the need nor the inclination to exercise the sort of violence their French counterparts seem willing to inflict on French citizens. But then our protestors tend to protest according to rules and if they break them, they are rarely condoned by the wider society that has a healthy contempt for excesses of enthusiasm. Similarly, for all the abrasiveness of politics and the bureaucratic stupidities of ‘hostile environments’, the ¹³ Orwell prefaced his remarks with a discussion of the nomenclature of these islands noting that people had yet to settle on one term and that England had regularly been used as a shorthand, albeit to the irritation of others.
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record will note that Britain continues to be welcoming to migrants and that England is by far the most cosmopolitan and ethnically diverse part of the United Kingdom; that, in contrast to Spain, the British state conceded and administered a referendum on its own dissolution. If we are living in revolutionary times, then we must concede that this is a very British revolution. And so, to Scotland. Scottish nationalism is first and foremost a single issue ideological movement that pretends to be a political party. It is a broad church that encompasses a wide variety of views that above all requires progress and momentum to keep moving towards its destination and keep a measure of unity amongst its followers. It has in many ways adopted and appropriated the whiggish-ness of the British state and the British idea to its own purposes, helped by the fact that the British state has effectively disowned its own inheritance and raison d’etre, wilfully transferring these attributes to local nationalists and perhaps more surprisingly, the European Union, an idea and aspiration so abstract, that to ascribe such values to it is meaningless in the cold light of day (Robinson, forthcoming: –). Yet both ideas are strategic and determined to forge ahead, both identify themselves with civic politics and a ‘nationalism’ stripped of its ethnic and racial connotations, and both claim a higher moral purpose. So high in fact that it tends to transcend the very real economic difficulties each project faces. Since Scottish nationalism has now increasingly tied itself to the European project—independence in Europe—it is worth investigating some of these claims before moving back to Scotland. The mantra adopted by the SNP was, of course, originally intended to allow for a form of ‘soft’ independence since many of the objections to independence could be easily assuaged by pointing to the common membership of the EU, obviating the need for borders, customs checks, and other attributes of sovereignty. With the prospect of the UK leaving the EU, that argument has become more problematic, if the manner of Britain’s ostensible departure has provided for other opportunities. Nonetheless the economics of independence become more problematic not least around the issue of currency. Despite assertions to the contrary, the EU requires all new members to commit to join the Euro. This may be more aspirational than realistic, but it must at the very least be aspirational and measures must be taken to move in this direction. Scotland will need a currency, a central bank and in all likelihood impose drastic austerity in order to reduce its deficit. The last of these is at least hinted towards in the SNP’s much heralded ‘Sustainable Growth Commission’ () report, even if its author and SNP sponsors have rather unconvincingly tried to claim that the Commission’s recommendations would avoid austerity (Hague ; Wilson ; Taylor ).¹⁴ The pain is worth it because the ideal of Europe is sufficiently noble. Yet on all three levels: economic, constitutional, and moral, the EU is far from the stable polity it claims to be. At some stage the decision will need to be taken on fiscal harmonization in order to stabilize the eurozone and ensure a better distribution of wealth. A failure to move in this direction, ¹⁴ The challenge of how to create a currency and central bank is kicked into the long grass; six tests are proposed, but no attempt is made to suggest how and when these tests would ever be met, particularly test , ‘sufficiency of foreign exchange and financial reserves’.
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in emulation ironically enough of the United Kingdom, will ensure the continued disparity in wealth and economic performance between the core and the periphery of the eurozone and retain the very real prospect of a further eurozone crisis, perhaps initiated in this case by Italy. These tensions will exacerbate the constitutional tensions that continue to exist (the democratic deficit), and which have given a boost to populist parties around the EU, in turn denting the image of a ‘civic’ union, morally at ease with itself. Indeed, it is increasingly apparent that the EU contains three distinct ‘Europes’, the ‘productive’ north, the ‘spendthrift’ south, and the ‘illiberal’ east. From our current political perspective in , the EU may seem an attractive destination, but few would realistically conclude that the future of the EU is without its problems. Indeed, a sober analysis would have to conclude that Brexit itself is a symptom and not a cause of the wider malaise affecting the EU. Be that as it may, we should also recognize that the Scottish nationalist love affair with the EU is a means to an end, not an end in itself and this is reflected in the reality that a substantial contingent of nationalists bow to the party line not out of any enthusiasm for the EU but because of the opportunities Brexit affords. Whilst the SNP basks in the undoubted glory of being the only effective centrist (and rational) party in the UK drawing to it all the disgruntled ‘Remainers’ from England, those Remainers who have become impromptu converts to Scottish independence might usefully ponder whether the SNP would shelve their ambitions in the absence of Brexit? Indeed, the SNP have usefully exploited both the narrow English nationalism that seems persistently and woefully ignorant of the realities of life beyond (middle) England, and the inclusive ‘British nationalists’ who see their own ideals as having been betrayed by Brexit, and see no contradiction in now supporting a nationalism which seeks to dismantle their country. It is a paradox that Orwell would have relished but a contradiction that is thoroughly British in its origins and reflective of its liberal (or whiggish) tradition for dissident politics. That the particular Act of Union of may have passed its sell by date, should not preclude us from exploring a new act of union, which eschews incorporation for a form of federation in which each constituent nation is sovereign and enjoys rights—the watchword of all nationalist movements—that it chooses to pool and share in a common endeavour for the welfare of all the peoples of these islands. For this renewal to take place it is needless to say not sufficient to simply alter the constitutional framework or to invest in the economic and material infrastructure of the state—much needed as this might be. There is much to be done in rebuilding the links between our diverse communities and in particular the networks that physically bind us. Yet of equal if not more importance is investment in the political infrastructure of the state, reinvesting in the political capital successive generations have so wantonly drawn down. This requires a reacquaintance with the core myths that have defined us, a renewal of a whig covenant,¹⁵ a civic community, at once radical, progressive, aspirational, and appreciative of the traditional bonds that bind us. None of this will ¹⁵ Perhaps best reflected in the four freedoms enunciated by FDR in : freedom of conscience, speech and from want, and fear.
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be unfamiliar; they form the basis of the project appropriated by others, but few states have deployed it as effectively as the British state and for all the follies that have undoubtedly been committed in the past, the fact that others have sought to appropriate and imitate these ideals is the clearest indication that not all that transpired was without merit. If the configuration of the British state must change it does so in full acknowledgement that we are greater than the sum of our parts. And if in this new union the point of origin would be different with sovereignty pooled and power decentralized, we may yet find the destination familiar, and the Union not only renewed but strengthened—a ‘moral convenant’, reconciled to its past, secure in its present, and more than ready to face the challenges of the future.
R Billig, M. . Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publications. Brown, G. . My Scotland, Our Britain. London: Simon and Schuster. Butterfield, H. . The Whig Interpretation of History. London: W.W. Norton & Company (first published in ). Constitutional Reform Group (CRG). . ‘Towards a New Act of Union’, Discussion Paper. Daily Express. . ‘Sturgeon’s plans for independence DESTROYED by own MEP – “Don’t see any good news!” ’, November. Available at: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/ /Brexit-news-Sturgeon-Scotland-independence-Alyn-Smith-UK-EU-withdrawalSNP-latest. Hague, K. . ‘Growth Commission response’, These Islands. Available at: https://www.theseislands.co.uk/publications/i/growth_commission_response.aspx. House of Lords, EU Committee. . ‘Brexit: Devolution’, th Report of Session –, published July. Kidd, C. . Subverting Scotland’s Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of AngloBritish Identity, –c.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kidd, C. . Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Orwell, G. . ‘Notes on Nationalism’, in G. Orwell, Essays, Everyman Library. London: Penguin Random House. Orwell, G. . ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’, Why I Write. London: Penguin. Ricoeur, P. . ‘Myth as the Bearer of Possible Worlds’, in M.J. Valdes (ed.), A Ricoeur Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Robinson, J. ‘Natural and Necessary Unions: The Scottish Question in British Geopolitics’, forthcoming. Simms, B. . Britain’s Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation. London: Penguin. Taylor, S. . ‘Choose your poison: the SNP’s Currency Headache’, These Islands, April. The Guardian. . ‘Scotland—Bruised Labour MPs Push for Home Rule’, The Guardian, April. Torrance, D. (ed.). . Whatever Happened to Tory Scotland? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Sustainable Growth Commission. . Scotland. The New Case for Optimism. Available at: https://www.sustainablegrowthcommission.scot.
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Note: Footnote numbers are indicated by ‘n.’ after the page number.
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Ahern, B. Ahmed-Sheikh, T. Alexander, D. , Alexander, W. , , Allan, J. Allan, M. Allison, J. Ancram, M. , Anderson, B. , –, Anne, Queen of Great Britain , , , Ansari, A. Arne, T. Arnott, M. Arshad, R. – Ascherson, N. Asquith, H. , – Aughey, A.
B
Baillie, J. Baker, K. Balls, E. , Barnett, J. , Barr, J. Bechhofer, F. , – Bell, A. Bell, D. , Bennie, L. Billig, M. , , , Bingham, Lord Birrell, S. Birt, J. Blair, T. , , , , , , Iraq war
Blondel, J. Bochel, H. Bogdanor, V. , Bold, A. , Bomberg, E. Bonney, N. Boyack, S. Boyle, J. Bradbury, J. – Braithwaite, W.J. Brand, J. , Brooke, B. Brown, A. Brown, G. , , , , , , , n. Independence Referendum , ‘British’ patriotism – federalism Browne, D. Brubaker, R. Bruce, S. Buchanan, G. – Buchanan, J. Buchanan, M. Buchanan-Smith, A. Bulmer, W.E. Burke, B. Burns, R. , –, , , Butterfield, H. –
C
Callaghan, J. , , Cameron, D. , , , , , Edinburgh Agreement , EVEL –, , n. Campbell, J.
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Campbell, M. Canavan, D. , , Carman, C. – Carmichael, A. , Carson, R. Carstares, W. , , Castlereagh, Viscount Cavanagh, M. Chadwick, E. Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland , Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland Christie, A. Christie, C. , – Clark, A. , , , , , Clarke, K. Clerk, J., Sir , –, , , Coburn, D. – Cohen, A. Colley, L. , , , Connolly, B. , Connolly, J. , Convery, A. , , , Cook, R. Cooper, F. Cooper, T., Lord , –, , Copus, C. Corbyn, J. , , , , , Brexit Costello, R. Craig, C. , , –, , Craig, T., Sir Crockett, A. Cromwell, O. , Cunningham, R. –, Curtice, J. ,
D
Dalai Lama Dalrymple, J. Dalyell, T. –, Darling, A. , , n., , Davidson, I. Davidson, R. , , , , devolution , , as Scottish Conservative Party leader –
Davidson, S. Davies, R. Davis, D. Deacon, S. , Defoe, D. , , , , –, Dekavalla, M. , , Denver, D. Deutsch, K.W. – Devine, T. , , , Dewar, D. , , , , , devolution –, Dicey, A.V. , Dentists Act , , n. Diceyan unionism , –, home rule – parliamentary sovereignty –, , , , Dickinson, S. Diekhoff, A. n. Dion, S. Dixon, K. Dollan, P. Douglas, J. Douglas-Home, A. Downs, A. Dryzek, J.S. Dudley Edwards, O. Dugdale, K. , , , , , Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Dundas, H. , Dunion, K. Dunlop, A. , – Durkheim, É.
E
Eiser, D. n. Elder, M. Eldersveld, S. Elizabeth, Queen Mother Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom , Elliott, J., Sir Elliott, W. Elvidge, J., Sir , , , – Emejulu, A. Eriksen, T.
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Evans, L. , Ewing, W. , , , , ,
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Fahmy, E. Farage, N. , Farrell, D. Fellows, K. Fenton, S. Ferguson, W. , Finer, S. Finlay, R. –, , Fischer, S.L. – Fletcher, A. , , , – Forsyth, M. , , , Foulkes, G. Fox, J.E. Fraser, M. – Freeman, R. Fry, M. Fung, A.
G
Gellner, E. , , Gibb, A.D. –, , Gibson, T.H. Gladstone, W.E. , Home Rule proposals for Ireland , , , , , Goldie, A. , Goschen, G. –, Gove, M. , Gover, D. Gramsci, A. n. Gray, A. , Grigor, B. Grigor, M. Grimond, J.
H
Habermas, J. Hague, W. Hallwood, C. Halpin, D. , , , Hamilton, fourth Duke of , , Hankivsky, O.
Hardie, K. , , Hardin, G. Harper, R. , Harris, R. Harvie, C. , Harvie, P. , Hassan, G. Hazell, R. Heald, D. , Heath, E. –, Hechter, M. Henderson, A. – Henrisoun, J. Herdman, J. , , Hill, D. Hilson, G. Hinde, D. Hobsbawm, E. –, Hooghe, L. – Hope, Lord , – Hopkin, J. – Hopkins, N. Horne, R. Housden, P., Sir , Howlett, M. , Hume, D. , Hussain, A. , , Hutchison, D. Hutchison, I.G.C. Hyslop, F.
I
Innes, J.
J
Jackson, A. , James VI and I, King of Scotland and King of England and Ireland , , , Jamieson, B. Jenkins, B. Jenkins, R. Johns, R. , , – Johnson, B. , , , Johnston, T. Jordan, A.G. ,
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Kane, L. Keating, M. , , , , , , , interest groups –, ‘territorial policy communities’ , Kefford, G. Kellas, J. , , , , , – cultural nationalism nationhood – Kelly, J. Kelman, J. Kendrick, S. , , Kenealy, D. Kenis, P. Kennedy, C. , Kenny, M. Keohane, N.O. Kerevan, G. –, , Kerley, R. , Kidd, C. –, , ‘banal unionism’ , , Kiely, R. King, A. King, D. n. Kinnock, N. , Kymlicka, W.
L
Laffin, M. Lafont, R. n. Lamont, J. , , , Lang, I. , , Law, A. Law, A.B. Leonard, R. , , –, , Leonard, T. Liddell, H. , Limond, B. Lindsay, C. – Lindsay, I. Liñeira, R. Livingstone, D. Livingstone, K. Lloyd George, D. , , Lluch, J. Lochhead, L.
Loughborough, Lord , Louis XIV, King of France Lynch, P. , , ,
M
MacAskill, K. McCollum, D. – McConnell, A. , , , – McConnell, J. , , , , , , China, visit to culture policy First Minister , , , immigration policy international development – Iraq war local government – paradiplomacy sectarianism tartan tax MacCormick, J., Lord , , MacCormick, N. , , McCrone, D. , , , , nationhood – Scotland as nation Scotland’s statehood Scottish-English differences – McDermid, V. MacDiarmid, H. , , , MacDonald, M. MacDonald, R. MacDonald, Ramsay , , McDougall, B. McEwen, N. , , , , McGrath, J. – McIlvanney, W. Macinnes, J. Macintosh, K. , McIntosh, N., Sir Mackay, D. McKay, W., Sir , McKenna, K. McKenzie, R.T. Mackillop, A. McKinstry, L. Mackintosh, John McLachlan, D.
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McLaverty, P. , Maclay, J. Maclean, D. McLean, I. , n., McLeish, H. , , , – devolution paradiplomacy sectarianism Sutherland Royal Commission – Maclennan, B. McLeod, A. MacLeod, I. , , McLetchie, D. , , McMillan, A. MacMillan, James , McMillan, Joyce McNeill, B. McPherson, N., Sir – McVicar, M. Macwhirter, I. , , Mair, C. Mair, P. , , , Major, J. , , Malley, R. – Mandela, N. Marsh, I. Marshall, H.E. Martin, M. Marwick, W.H. Mary, Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland , Massie, A. Mathieson, W.L. , Maxton, J. Maxwell, S. May, E. – May, T. , , Brexit , , , , , Meadows, D. Meer, N. , , , Al Megrahi, A. – Melding, D. Merkel, A. Midwinter, A. , , , Miles, R. , – Miller, D. Miller, W. , ,
Miller-Idriss, C. Milne, D., Sir Mirrlees, J. , Mitchell, J. , , –, , , , , –, , Mitchell, M. Montagu, I. Mooney, G. , Moore, S. Morgan, R. , – Morton, G. Müller-Rommel, F. Mundell, D. , Murphy, J. , Murray, I. Muscatelli, A. , , Musgrave, R. , Mycock, A.
N
Nairn, T. , , –, Neill, A. Newbold, W. Noon, S.
O
O’Donnell, G., Sir O’Neill, D. Orwell, G. n., , , Osborne, S. Ó Siochrú, Michéal Ozga, J.
P
Parry, R. , , , , , Pastori, G. Paterson, L. , , Paxman, J. Peace, T. , , , Pedersen, M.N. , Pentland, G. Petersoo, P. , Phillips, D. Pitt, W. , Plant, R. Poole, L. Powell, E. ,
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Preston, P. Provan, K.G. Pyper, R. ,
Q
Qureshi, K. Qvortrup, J. –
R
Ramsden, J. Ranger, T. – Reed, Lord , Reicher, S. Reid, G. Reid, J. , Reif, K. Richards, D. Richardson, J. , Rifkind, M. , , , – Ritch, E. Robertson, A. Robertson, James Robertson, John , – Robison, S. Rochon, T.R. , Rodger, A. Rosebery, Lord , Rosie, M. , , – Rowling, J.K. Roxburgh, Earl of , , , , , Russell, M. ,
S
Sabatier, P.A. –, , Saeed, A. Salisbury, R.H. , Salmond, A. , , , , , Edinburgh Agreement , broadcasting policy China, visit to civic nationalism First Minister , five unions , , Independence Referendum campaign , , Scottish Government sexual harassment
Sartori, G. , , Sarwar, A. , , , , Saunders, C. Scandrett, E. Schmitt, H. Schulman, S. Schumacher, E.F. Scott, T. , , Scott, W. –, Seafield, Earl of Seawright, D. , , Sewel, J.B., Lord n., –, , Seyd, P. Sheridan, T. , , Shinwell, E. Sillars, J. , Simpkins, F. Sinclair, A., Sir Slaughter, A. Smith, Adam , , Smith, Alyn – Smith, Anthony Smith, G. Smith, J. , , , Smith, M.J. Smith, R., Lord , , , Smith, T.B. Smout, C. Souter, B. Steel, D. , Stephan, H. Stephen, N. Stevenson, R.L. Strathclyde, Lord , Sturgeon, Nicola , , , : quota representation , Independence Referendum Brexit Referendum Brexit , , China, visit to civil service equality discourse feminism First Minister , , , gender equality Independence Referendum campaign second independence referendum , , , –, , ,
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Swinburne, J. Swinney, J. , , , Swinson, J. ,
T
Tavares, R. Taylor, T. Thatcher, M. , , –, , , , , , , , devolution – rightward shift of the British state Thompson, L. Thomson, G.M. Thomson, J. Thomson, K. Thomson, R. Thorpe, J. Tiebout, C.M. Tomkins, A. Torrance, D. – Trevor-Roper, H. Truman, D.B. Turner, J.
V
Van der Zwet, A. Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Voas, D.
W
Wagner, M. , – Walker, R. Wallace, J. , , , Wallace, W. , Warner, G. Wasoff, F. – Watt, J. Watters, P. Webb, K. Welsh, I. Wheatley, J. Wheelhouse, Paul White, S. Whiteley, P. Wilde, O. William III, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland , , , , Williams, C. Willow, C. Wilson, A. Winning, T., Cardinal , , Wishart, P. Wolfe, W. , Wood, G. Woodburn, A.
Y
Yousaf, H. Yusuf, H.
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Note: Page numbers in bold refer to tables; page numbers in italics refer to figures; ‘n.’ after a page number indicates the footnote number.
A
abortion , Abortion Act accountability Barnett Formula civil service , , CSG devolution period , fiscal accountability , local government , new politics policymaking – Scottish Government Scottish Parliament , , Westminster-style democratic accountability , , –, , , see also Audit Scotland Acts of Union , , , , , , , n., Union with Scotland Act, Article XXV – Acts of Union/Dentists Act comparison , , , n. judiciary system Treaty of Union/Acts of Union distinction Advocate General –, , Africa , , AMS (Additional Member System) , , advantages Scottish Constitutional Convention –, Scottish Parliament , , , –, , , small parties , , , see also electoral systems
AOH (Ancient Order of Hibernians) Arbuthnott Commission asymmetry , asymmetrical fiscal decentralization , , asymmetric devolution – civil service , constitutional asymmetry , – constitutional asymmetry and public finances , , , federalism intergovernmental relations , Audit Scotland , , , austerity financial crisis , Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition Conservative Party CPPs gender issues and UK austerity regime , , public finances , –, public services , , , SNP and state-size reduction and Sustainable Growth Commission report Australia , , , , autonomy (Scotland) , , , , civil service , local government , Scottish fiscal autonomy , –, , Scottish Office , Scottish Parliament, legislative autonomy , –, , – AXA General Insurance Limited v The Lord Advocate , , ,
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B
Barnardo’s Scotland , Barnett Formula , –, , , , n., , , Independence Referendum campaign , , accountability ‘Barnett plus’ n., , , ‘Barnett squeeze’ , criticism , –, , demise of impact of , intergovernmental relations –, , , lack of ownership – longevity of –, , misunderstandings of , , see also public finances; taxation Basque Country , , , Bill of Rights Act : BME/BAME (black and minority ethnic/ Black, Asian and minority ethnic) –, as MSPs – political participation , , , see also ethnic issues Borders Party Brexit , , EU Withdrawal Bill/Act , , –, –, , , – Article , Treaty on European Union , , , , , , , civil service – Conservative Party (UK) damages caused by , , devolution and , –, , differentiated Brexit for Scotland –, dysfunctional/incompetent politics , , , green politics and –, ‘hard’ Brexit , n. intergovernmental relations , , , , –, Johnson’s deal , Labour Party’s vague position , , May, Teresa , , , , ,
Memorandum on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill . . . Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union case –, , , –, – ‘no deal’ Brexit , Northern Ireland , , ‘people’s vote’ , , , , Remain stance Reserved Powers Model Scotland , , –, , Scottish borders , , Scottish cross-party consensus against Brexit , , , Scottish Government Scottish independence and , , , , , , –, , – Scottish opposition to , –, , Scottish Parliament and , , , –, , , , , second independence referendum , , , , , , –, , –, , –, , Sewel Convention , , , , , – SNP –, , , , ‘soft’ Brexit , , –, Standing Council on Europe transition period – Wales , see also Brexit Referendum Brexit Party Brexit Referendum () , –, , –, age of voting , Conservative Party (Scotland), Leave vote , Conservative Party (Scotland), Remain vote Conservative Party (UK) education , England, Leave vote , , – England and Wales , gender Gibraltar intergovernmental relations , – Leave vote , , , –, ,
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Brexit Referendum () (cont.) London national identity , , –, Northern Ireland , religion Remain vote , , , , results –, , Scotland , Scotland’s Leave vote , , , Scotland’s Remain–Leave divide and Independence yes–no divide , –, , , , , , Scotland’s Remain vote , , , , , , , , –, SNP , –, , , –, turnout UKIP , women’s representation see also Brexit Britain, idea of , , , , building political capital, reinvesting in political infrastructure –, deconstruction of – political capital political capital vs economic capital re-imagining Britain – threats to –, –, – see also UK British constitution , , , , , devolution as principle of parliamentary sovereignty as key principle of , rule of law as key principle of uncodified/unwritten constitution , , , , British Election Study British Empire , , –, , British state and , decline of , Scotland international connectedness and Scottish Union and , , , Britishness , , British identification amongst minorities , imperial definition of Labour Party (UK) , media , , ,
Scottish Britishness Scottish patriotism/popular Protestantism relation war as foundation of broadcasting/PSB (public service broadcasting) , –, –, – BBC , – passim, , , BBC, nationalist hostility to BBC Scotland , , , , , , , , , , BBC Trust , broadcasting policy – DAB (digital audio broadcasting) devolution period Glasgow , – London-based broadcasting , national frame of reference and – online streaming SBC (Scottish Broadcasting Commission) – SBS (Scottish Broadcasting Service) STV Group plc –, , , , trust in see also media
C
Caledonian Antisyzygy , Calman Commission (Commission on Scottish Devolution) , , , , , , , Calvinism , Canada , Canada-style free trade deal model international relations , , , , – see also Quebec Catalonia , , , , , , independence referendum , national identity non-legally binding consultative ballots regionalization of group systems Catholicism , Independence Referendum anti-Catholic sentiment , , , , , , , , Catholic schools , , , , Catholic Social Teaching
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Catholic vote , , , CPO (Catholic Parliamentary Office, Scotland) , ‘cultural Catholics’ devolution disengagement/secularization as ethnic cleavage family and sexual attitudes Highlands and North East international relations , Irish population in Scotland , , , , , Irish Union and , Labour Party (Scotland) , , –, , , Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund , Scottish national identity Scottish Union and SNP and , –, , welfarist view Catholic Relief Act () CBI (Confederation of British Industry) , Chapman (magazine) , children Children’s Parliament gender-based violence and , poverty UNCRC (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) – see also young people Children st , , , Children in Scotland , , China , –, Church of Scotland see Kirk citizenship electoral systems , multicultural citizenship national identity as nationalism and as nationality see also ethnic minorities and political citizenship civil service , , –, , , , UK Modernising Government Constitutional Reform and Governance Act
Independence Referendum – Independence Referendum campaign – accountability , , asymmetry , autonomy , Brexit – civil service/other public services ‘single employment structure’ deep state derived framework , – devolution period – distinctiveness from local government expenditure context and central-local framework – gender equality Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition leaders and leadership styles – local government – meritocracy , , , minister/civil service relations –, – non-partisan service , , , Northern Ireland , public bureaucracy , , reservation of civil service management to the UK salary – ‘Scottish model’ – SCS (Senior Civil Service) –, – service delivery choices in key policy areas – shared UK civil service , SNP , , stabilization functions and high politics – structure of Scottish government at civil service level – UK’s Home Civil Service Wales ‘Westminster model’ , , , –, , women in , civil society , , devolution and – feminist civil society – women’s representation – Claim of Right Act : , –,
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Claim of Right Act : A Claim of Right for Scotland report , class class politics of industrial society – class structure party competition and voting (UK) voting behaviour and , see also political class; working class coalitions Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition , , , , , , Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition , , , , , , , , , , , local elections , , small parties , Commissioner for Children and Young People in Scotland Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services (Christie Commission) , –, , , , , prevention agenda , , see also public services reform: leadership and management Communist Party , Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act : , , , , , criticism Company of Scotland , , , see also Darien Scheme Conservative Party (Scotland) , , , , , –, UK general elections UK general elections , s , , UK general elections , , , Independence Referendum , , , , , UK general elections , , Brexit Referendum , , Scottish Parliament elections , UK general elections , –, autonomy within the British Conservative Party , British Conservative Party and
Davidson’s leadership and revival of , –, decline of , , – decolonization devolution , –, , , , EU membership – ideology , , – leadership n. Kirk/Scottish Toryism links national identity , NHS , origins and development – political class –, –, , Protestantism and –, , – public finances – Scottish Assembly , , Scottishness , , , , Scottish Parliament , –, social housing Thatcherism , UK general elections, performance at UK Parliament unionism , , – women’s representation , , Conservative Party (UK) , , Independence Referendum campaign , , UK general elections Brexit Referendum UK general elections , austerity Brexit Britishness decline devolution EU membership immigration policy political class , public finances , Scotland at UK Parliament – Unionist Party and , , , voting behaviour , , see also EVEL constitution White Paper on constitutional reform constitutional crisis , ,
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constitutional preferences , , , –, constitutional reform , –, constitutional statutes –, non-federal constitution see also British constitution; English constitution; Scottish constitution Constitutional Reform Group COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) , , , , , , , , , , cosmopolitanism , , , , The Courier (newspaper) , , CPPs (Community Planning Partnerships) , –, , , , , , austerity see also SATP Creative Scotland , , , CSG (Consultative Steering Group) , –, –, accountability Scottish Parliament institutional blueprint –, –, –, , Shaping Scotland’s Parliament young people –, , cultural nationalism –, , Hamilton by-election , The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil , devolution referendum , ‘Scotch Myths’ exhibition cultural devolution , , , , cultural difference, primacy of –, – cultural identity , , , , , cultural/political nationalism relationship , , , –, , –, – culture and politics today – devolution and culture – Internet media Nairn and the ‘Great Scottish Dream’ – national consciousness , , , , periodicals/magazines –
popular culture radical cultural neo-populism re-framing Scotland and ‘experience of the state’ – Scottishness , , , ‘Scottish voice’ –, , SNP , –, , subjective/objective nationality – see also nationalism/nationalists culture Celtic Connections music festival cultural policy , , Edinburgh Festival , , European City of Culture international relations and , , , , media and national identity and politics and
D
Daily Record (newspaper) , , , Darien Scheme , , –, Declaration of Perth – decolonization , , , – deindustrialization , , , democracy democratic deficit , , , , , , , , Scottish local democracy , – territorial-electoral understanding of see also social democracy demographics Catholicism decline of population , , , , ethnicity –, , , , multiculturalism, demographic perspective , –, , Polish population in Scotland – see also Irish population in Scotland; multiculturalism Dentists Act : , , , n. descriptive representation ethnic minorities – Scottish Parliament , –, women , , , ,
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de Tocqueville’s paradox , development economic development , , , , , , , international relations and , – Scottish Council Development and Industry see also international development devolution –, – asymmetric devolution – decentralization England – governing model London , Northern Ireland , –, –, , , as process , –, , – Wales , –, , , , , , , see also devolution (Scotland); devolution period (Scotland); EVEL devolution (Scotland) , , , , , , devolution referendum , , , , , s Labour Government –, , devolution referendum , , , , , , Brexit and , –, , British constitution and civic society and – Conservative Party (Scotland) , –, , , , Conservative Party (UK) cultural devolution , , , , culture and – devolved elections , , , , , , , , devolution vs independence , –, , – ‘devo max’ , , , EU membership institutional dynamics – institutional structure of devolved government – judicial system , – Labour Party (Scotland) , , –, , , –, ,
nationalism – opposition to , , , Protestantism relevance , , , Scottish constitution and – Scottish Parliament powers –, , , –, , , , , , – Scottish Union and , , ‘slippery slope’ argument – SNP , , , –, , , taxation , , , , , , , –, –, , , , , , , , , welfare White Paper on see also Home Rule; new politics; Reserved Powers Model devolution period (Scotland) accountability , broadcasting civil service – ethnic minorities and political citizenship gender-based violence –, gendered perspective , green politics –, –, interest groups , –, , , intergovernmental relations –, , – international relations , , local government , – media , , , , – women’s representation , , diaspora international relations and diasporarelationships , , – Scottish diaspora , , , , n. disabilities, people with , , DUP (Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Ireland) ,
E ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) , , , , , economic issues – agricultural disaster and famine
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crisis s, s economic downturns Independence Referendum campaign – decoupling of London and South-East from the rest of the UK economy economic development , , , , , , , , , , free-market ideology international relations and , –, –, Scottish independence and , , , Scottish performance , Scottish Union , –, , , , , , , –, –, see also Darien Scheme; financial crisis ; public finances; taxation; trade Edinburgh Edinburgh Festival , , Scottish Office Edinburgh Agreement () , , , , –, , education , , , , , Education Act , , Brexit Referendum and , Catholic schools , , , Catholic Social Teaching citizenship/civics education , , education policy – Education Scotland , , international relations and , , , , legislation prohibiting the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in schools , , political class –, , political participation and , , private education Saltire Programme Scottish Parliament universal education Educational Institute of Scotland egalitarianism , , , , electoral campaigns , – campaign spending , election polls –,
media national/local campaign distinction electoral commissions Boundary Commission for Scotland Electoral Commission , , –, , , – EMB (Electoral Management Board) LGBCS (Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland) , see also electoral systems electoral systems , , –, Scotland Act PPERA (Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act) Fixed Term Parliaments Act Scotland Act Scottish Parliament Islands Act – ballots , citizenship , community councils , devolved elections , , , , , , , , electoral fraud , electoral reform , , , , , , , , electoral registration , electoral timing , , , , , , electoral wards , eligibility of members of the House of Lords free and fair elections House of Commons , , multi-level electoral landscape –, , purdah period Scottish Constitutional Convention , women and , – see also AMS; electoral campaigns; electoral commissions; European Parliament elections; FPTP; local elections; proportional system; Scottish Parliament elections; STV; turnout; UK general elections; voters; voting
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England – England/Britain distinction multiculturalism , , , , national identity –, Parliament, demise , English constitution –, , , , Englishness , – environmental issues see green issues Equal Opportunities Committee , ‘Equivalent’ (compensation mechanism) , , , ERS (Electoral Reform Society) , ethnic issues ‘Asian’ minority , , , , Catholicism as ethnic cleavage ethnic nationalism , , – ethnic plurality , ethnic structure of populations –, , , , national identity , , – political class right-wing politics, anti-minority sentiments socio-economic disadvantages among minorities – voting behaviour and minority groups – see also BME/BAME; ethnic minorities and political citizenship; multiculturalism; Pakistanis ethnic minorities and political citizenship Independence Referendum , Scottish Elections (Franchise and Representation) Bill aspirational pluralism , –, , – barriers to politics –, – British Empire , candidature – devolution period Equal Representation in Politics Toolkit – local government, ethnic minorities in –, , multinationalism , , multinationalism/multiculturalism tension
Parliament (UK), ethnic minorities in quotas/shortlisting –, Race Equality Action Plan racial discrimination , right to vote for EU and non-EU nationals resident in Scotland Scottish Government, ethnic minorities in , –, , Scottish Government initiatives – Scottish nationhood and ethnic minorities , –, Scottish Parliament, ethnic minorities in , , , , , under-representation , , –, , women (ethnic minorities) , –, , , EU (European Union) UK’s accession , , eurozone crisis international relations and , nationalism and , Scotland/EU relationship , , , , , – Scotland’s pro-EU stance , , , , SNP’s pro-EU stance , –, , , , , , ‘transnational’ nationalism , see also Brexit; Brexit Referendum; EU membership; European Parliament elections EU membership referendum , , , Independence Referendum , –, Independence Referendum campaign , –, , , Conservative Party (Scotland) – Conservative Party (UK) devolution and Scottish nationalism and , , second independence referendum SNP, Scottish independence and , –, –, , , , Europeanization ,
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European Parliament elections , – proportional system , , turnout women in Euroscepticism , EVEL (English Votes for English Laws) –, , – Cameron, David –, , n. criticism of , n. exceptionalism , , EYC (Early Years Collaborative) –,
F
Fabian Society federalism , , , , , , – asymmetry and ‘coercive’ federalism competitive federalism co-operative federalism dual federalism , , , federalism and pooled sovereignty as future settlement for UK , – fiscal federalism ‘group federalism’ ‘Home Rule All Round’ interest groups , quasi-federalism UK , feminism , , , feminist civil society – feminist constitutional activism feminist institutionalism see also gender issues; women financial crisis : , –, n., , austerity , Financial Issues Advisory Group , Fiscal Framework Agreement , , Fishing Party Flanders , , , FNP (Family Nurse Partnership) , FPTP (first-past-the-post system) , –, , Labour Party (Scotland) , , , , Liberal Democrats small parties , ,
SNP , UK general elections , , –, , see also electoral systems France , , , Friends of the Earth Friends of the Earth Scotland
G
gender-based violence –, , , Protection from Abuse (Scotland) Act Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act devolution period –, Equally Safe strategy National Strategy to Address Domestic Abuse in Scotland – see also gender issues gender equality , , –, civil service equality rhetoric, promotion, guarantees , gender inequality , Labour Party (Scotland) , , – new politics –, political class –, Scottish Constitutional Convention , Scottish Parliament , –, UK Parliament , see also women’s representation gender issues – Brexit Referendum austerity regime and , , gender justice parties and , – religious affiliation and gender Scottish Government – see also gender-based violence; gender equality; LGBT Glasgow broadcasting , – ethnic diversity , European City of Culture housing Labour Party (Scotland) , , , , Pollokshields East –, Scottish Office tobacco trade
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Glasgow Unionist Association Glasgow University , , Global Scots , , Goschen Formula –, , n., governance multilevel governance , , network governance , –, –, reactions against change in – Scotland government see coalitions; local government; Scottish Government; UK Government Green parties , establishment of Green Party, England independence of Scotland – women’s representation , see also green politics; Scottish Green Party Greenpeace green politics , –, Climate Change (Scotland) Act actors , – Brexit and –, climate change , , –, Climate Justice Fund devolution period –, –, energy , environmental policy , , , , –, – fracking international relations and –, , , land use , limitations in Scottish green politics – national identity and , –, – nuclear energy , , plastic waste , , , , renewable energy , , , in Scotland –, Scotland, out-performing the rest of the UK , Scottish Government , –, Scottish Green Party , , Scottish Parliament , see also Green parties The Guardian (newspaper) ,
H
Hamilton: by-election , , , , , Hanoverian dynasty , , , , health policy , , smoking ban , , , see also NHS The Herald (newspaper) , , , , HMNB (HM Naval Base) – Holyrood see Scottish Parliament Home Rule (Scotland) , –, , , , , , Conservative Party (Scotland) independence of Scotland and Labour Party (Scotland) , landlordism opposition to origins of – religion and party politics see also devolution; independence (Scotland); self-government homogenization thesis –, – housing , , , , , council housing , Housing Benefit Human Rights Act : , , ,
I identity Independence Referendum campaign – collective identity , –, cultural identity , , , , , identity/political behaviour relationship markers of , , media consumption and , see also Britishness; Englishness; Scottishness identity politics , , –, identity politics/material politics distinction religion and SNP ideology Conservative Party (Scotland) , , – free-market ideology
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Labour Party (Scotland) , – nationalism , Scottish Green Party Scottish Socialist Party SNP –, IHI (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Boston) ILP (Independent Labour Party) , , –, , immigration Conservative Party (UK), immigration policy England/Wales/Scotland’s views comparison international relations and , , , intra-UK migrants , , , JPIT (Joint Public Issues Team) multiculturalism and , –, Poles political framing of popular attitudes to – right-wing politics, anti-immigrant sentiments Scotland: migration viewed as opportunity , SNP , voting behaviour and independence –, , independence (Scotland) , , , , ‘Brexit bounce’ for , , Brexit and independence debate , , , , –, – devolution vs independence , –, , – disadvantages of economic issues , , , Green parties n., –, head/heart divisions Home Rule and Kirk – Labour Party (Scotland) national identity/constitutional preferences relationship , –, , opposition to Scottish Socialist Party
support for , see also Independence Referendum; second independence referendum; selfgovernment; SNP and independence of Scotland Independence Referendum (Scotland, ) , –, –, Catholicism Conservative Party (Scotland) , , , , , ‘dualist’/‘nationalist’ blocs – ethnic minorities , EU membership , –, Labour Party (Scotland) –, , national identity , , –, –, , –, ‘No’ vote , , , , , , , , , political engagement port-referendum , political interest before and after referendum populism Protestantism , religion and party politics – road to –, – results , Scotland’s Remain–Leave divide and Independence yes–no divide , –, , , , , , SNP , –, , –, , , , , –, , , , , , , , , turnout , , uncertainty , –, voting behaviour and , –, , , winners and losers – women’s representation , – ‘Yes’ vote , , , , , , , Youth Parliament young people –, see also independence (Scotland); Independence Referendum: organization and terms; Independence Referendum campaign; second independence referendum
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Independence Referendum: organization and terms PPERA (Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act) , , Edinburgh Agreement , , , , , , binding referendum , civil service – referendum question , , , , referendum rules – Scottish Government , , Scottish Parliament , UK Electoral Commission – vote counting see also Independence Referendum Independence Referendum campaign , , , Better Together campaign , , , , , , , , , , business community civil service – Conservative Party , , debates by politicians experts and evidence – fairness and impartiality –, , financing/spending , –, Labour Party (Scotland) , , , Liberal Democrats , media –, – No campaign , , , , pro-independence websites protagonists – public sphere, impact on , Scotland Analysis papers , , Scottish Government Scottish Green Party , , social media – SNP –, –, , –, , , trade unions – UK Government , , –, ‘The Vow’ , , , , , , Yes campaign/‘Indyref ’ , , , , , , , , –, Yes Scotland , , , –, , –, , , see also
Independence Referendum campaign: issues; Scotland’s Future Independence Referendum campaign: issues –, –, – Barnett Formula , , economy – EU membership , –, , , identity – ‘independence-lite’ vs ‘devo-max’ , NATO , – revival of Scottish democracy sovereignty welfare – see also Independence Referendum campaign Independent Press Standards Organisation interest groups , active participants across Parliamentary committees –, –, , before devolution: –, , devolution period , –, , , executive/legislative arenas overlapping federalism , government/civil servants and new politics , , , policymaking –, regionalization of interest in Scotland –, regionalization/territorialization – Scottish Government , Scottish Office , , , Scottish Parliament , , , Scottish Parliamentary committees –, ‘social partnerships’ stakeholder groups/steering groups – ‘usual suspects’ –, –, –, venue shopping –, –, Westminster and –, Westminster/Scotland comparison , , – Interfaith Scotland intergovernmental relations (Scotland/UK Governments) , , , , ,
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Edinburgh Agreement Brexit Referendum , – ambiguous relation – asymmetric relation , Barnett Formula –, , , bilateral relations , , , Brexit , , , , –, Calman Commission , – civil service: shared UK civil service , competition , , –, constitutional change , –, contested relation , , co-operation , –, , –, , –, devolution period –, , – dual federalism , , , joint ministerial committees , –, , multilateralism , , , , path dependence , , , Scottish Government/Treasury relationship , , – second independence referendum Sewel Convention , , , , , , Smith Commission , – SNP , , –, territorial finance and –, – UK Supreme Court Union – intergovernmental relations: British-Irish Council , , international development , , , – Humanitarian Aid Fund International Development Fund NIDOS (Network of International Development Organisations in Scotland) a reserved power Scotland’s International Development Alliance Scottish Development International , , international relations (Scotland) , , Smart, Successful Scotland ,
– Fresh Talent: Working in Scotland Scheme , , – Global Scotland: Trade and Investment Strategy Africa , , Australia , , , before Union Canada , , , , – Catholic Church , China , –, councils/cities international partnerships culture , , , , development , – devolution period , , diaspora-relationships , , – domestic activism in international issues economic issues , –, –, education , , , , EU , Global Scots , , green politics and –, , , immigration/emigration , , , Kirk –, Malawi , , – Muslim Council of Scotland paradiplomacy , , Scottish Episcopal Church Scottish Government , , – passim Scottish Parliament , SNP , sporting events –, , tourism , , , , , trade , , , , , , USA , –, see also international development Internet , digital media , –, , , Ireland Gladstone’s Home Rule proposals , , , , Government of Ireland Act Anglo-Irish treaty
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Ireland (cont.) leaving the UK , Dublin Castle Home Rule , , , , Parliament, demise Privy Council Irish Free State , Irish population in Scotland Catholicism , , , , , Protestantism religious pluralism of Irish migration as significant minority , Irish Republican Brotherhood Irish Union () , – Great Famine , , end of incompleteness of the Union Irish Church/Catholicism , Irish institutions – as ‘reactionary’ enterprise Scots/Irish unions interconnections –, , , , , , taxation – Islam , MCS (Muslim Council of Scotland) Muslim Council of Scotland Pakistani Muslims , welfarist view Islamophobia ,
J
Jacobite revolts , , , , Judaism: ScoJeC (Scottish Council of Jewish Communities) judicial system (Scotland) Court of Session , , , –, , , devolution , – High Court of Justiciary –, judicial appointments UK Supreme Court and
K
Kerley Commission , Kilbrandon Commission (Royal Commission on the Constitution) , , ,
Kirk (Church of Scotland) , Act for the Security of the Protestant Religion , , Disruption of the Church of Scotland , , , Church of Scotland Act , , Church–State relationship decline of , , , – Established Kirk , Free Kirk , General Assembly of the Church of Scotland , , independence of Scotland – international relations and –, Kirk/Scottish Toryism links Presbyterianism religious attendance , Scottish Union and –, , , , , United Free Church United Presbyterian Church World Mission Council see also Presbyterianism
L Labour Party (Scotland) Independence Referendum –, , Independence Referendum campaign , , , Aberdeen , autonomy within/relationship with UK Labour Party , , –, –, , Catholicism , , –, , , decline of –, –, – devolution , , –, , , –, , future prospects and choices – gender balance , , – Glasgow , , , , Home Rule , ideology , – independence of Scotland leadership , , –, – LRC (Labour Representation Committee)
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membership , – national identity – New Labour and , , –, new politics NHS , origins and development –, patronage , , policy , , –, , political class –, , Scottish Constitutional Convention , Scottish Parliament , , – Scottish Union – self-government SNP and , , –, , , , , –, , , , territorial politics of – third party status trade unions , , , voting gap between Scotland and England women’s representation , , , , – working class –, see also the entries below for Labour Party (Scotland); Labour Party (UK) Labour Party (Scotland): elections , –, Scottish Parliament elections Scottish Parliament elections , , UK general elections , , Scottish Parliament elections FPTP , , , , see also Labour Party (Scotland) Labour Party (Scotland): organization –, – Scottish Conference , , , Scottish Policy Forum SEC (Scottish Executive Committee) , , , , stratarchical pattern of power –, , weakness , see also Labour Party (Scotland)
Labour Party (UK) , , , , Brexit, vague position on , , Britishness , CFS (Campaign for Socialism) – Momentum political class , public finances , , , quota reforms Scotland at UK Parliament – voting behaviour –, , women’s representation see also Labour Party (Scotland); New Labour land issues , , Land and Buildings Transaction Tax , language regionalization of group interests working-class language LCM (Legislative Consent Motion) –, , see also Sewel Convention left-wing politics , devolution England/Scotland comparison UK’s accession to EU as leftward shift LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) attitudes within faith communities –, –, legislation prohibiting the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in schools , , as MSPs same-sex marriage – Liberal Democrats Independence Referendum campaign , UK general elections Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition , , , , , , electoral reform , , FPTP Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition , , , , , , , , , , , Scotland at UK Parliament Scottish Constitutional Convention see also Scottish Liberal Democrats liberalism ‘liberal’/‘whig’ union –
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Liberal Party , , , , , , split schism merger with SDP Scotland at UK Parliament –, , lobbying , local elections , local elections , , , , coalition formation , , STV , , , , , , –, , , , –, see also local government local government , , , –, , Local Government Acts s reorganization – – reorganization –, Local Government in Scotland Act , accountability , ALEOs (arm’s-length external organizations) , , autonomy , centralization –, , , –, , , – civil service – council tax , , , , , , de-politicization in – devolution period , – ethnic minorities in –, , features of , financial dependence , , , , , negligible importance of –, , political leadership – political parties and local councils –, , pre-devolution structure and legacy , –, professionalism culture , role of , , –, – Scottish Government/local governments relationship –, Scottish local democracy , – Scottish Parliament and service delivery role , , , , – passim SNP , –
welfare state and , –, – Whitehall model , , , , women’s representation , young people see also COSLA; local elections Lord Advocate , Lord Gray’s Motion
M
McCormick Commission MacCormick v. Lord Advocate () , , Macgregor v Lord Advocate – Malawi , , – media , –, Union Scotland Act Independence Referendum campaign –, – Scotland Act ‘alternative media’/political websites Britishness , , , culture and ‘deixis’ devolution period , , , , – digital media , –, , , fairness and impartiality – focus on England only , institutional racism and right-wing media London-based press , –, , , , media consumption and devolution , – national frame of reference and – satellite, cable, internet Scotland, current challenges , –, Scotland, indigenous press decline , –, , Scotland’s press –, , , SNP see also broadcasting/PSB; public sphere and media; radio; social media Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union case –, , , –, –
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Mirrlees Review , Monklands controversy , , multiculturalism , country of birth and –, , , –, demographic perspective , –, , England , , , , ethnic diversity –, , , , , everyday multiculturalism , migration and , –, minority groups –, , , –, – multicultural nationalism , multinationalism/multiculturalism tension national identity and – political perspective , – popular attitudes to migration and minorities – racial discrimination , , racism –, Scotland, non-racialization of politics , –, Scotland as multicultural place , , , –, , , Scottish ‘oppressed affinity’ , SNP sociological perspective , – see also ethnic issues; race, racism Muscatelli Expert Group , , My Home Life (Scotland) – myths –,
N
Named Person policy , nation –, , cultural institutions and defining features Deutschian ‘social communications’ approach – national symbols nation-building , , , nation/state distinction , , Scotland as nation –, see also nationhood
The National (newspaper) national identity , Scottish Parliament elections –, Independence Referendum , , –, –, , –, Brexit Referendum , , –, citizenship and Conservative Party (Scotland) , as construct , cultural view of definition –, England –, England/Scotland comparison –, , , , ethnic minorities , , – green politics and , –, – importance of – independence of Scotland support and , –, , key features – Labour Party (Scotland) – Linz/Moreno national identity scale , , , , measuring national identity , , , – multiculturalism and – multicultural nationalism , multi-national state –, , national identity/constitutional preferences relationship , –, , as political statement Presbyterianism provenance of – religion and , , Scottish politics and –, –, , – SNP , –, , territory and trends in – vote and –, see also Britishness; Englishness; Scottishness National Insurance , , , , nationalism/nationalists , , , , , –, banal nationalism , , , citizenship and civic nationalism , , –, –, , n.
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nationalism/nationalists (cont.) devolution – English nationalism , , ethnic nationalism , , – EU , ideology , inclusive features local nationalism multicultural nationalism , nationalism/unionism juxtaposition – nationalist unionism –, , –, sub-state nationalist parties , – ‘transnational’ nationalism , ‘unionist nationalism’ , , see also cultural nationalism; political nationalism; Scottish nationalism nationality , the national question –, , , National Theatre of Scotland , , n. nationhood criteria for – ‘everyday nationhood’ , Scottish nationhood and ethnic minorities , –, subjective/objective qualities NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) , , – SNP and , , , – neo-liberalism , , , New Edinburgh Review (magazine) , New Labour –, , , ‘control freakery’ Labour Party (Scotland) and , , –, leadership supremacy style NHS policy Scotland at UK Parliament , see also Labour Party (UK) new politics , , , Labour government (Scotland) gender equality –, interest groups , , , Scottish Parliament , –, –, – women’s representation , – see also devolution (Scotland)
New Zealand , , , , NHS (National Health Service) , , , , Conservative Party (Scotland) , Health and Social Care Delivery Plan Labour Party (Scotland) , New Labour NHS Boards , , NHS in Scotland –, , performance challenges Northern Ireland n., , , Government of Ireland Act Sunningdale Agreement referendum on EU membership Good Friday Agreement , , Northern Ireland Act Northern Ireland Act (St Andrews Agreement) Brexit Referendum , ‘Barnett plus’ n., , , Brexit , , civil service , devolution , –, –, , , Hillsborough Castle Agreement nationality n. Northern Ireland Assembly , – Parliament of Northern Ireland/Stormont Parliament , , peace settlement , Privy Council public services Reserved Powers Model – STV ‘Troubles’ , North Sea oil , , , , , , , NPF (National Performance Framework) , , , , –, , , , , , NPG (New Public Governance) NPM (New Public Management) , nuclear weapons –, , –, , , – Trident nuclear missile programme , , , ,
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O
Orange Order , ,
P
Pakistanis , , , Pakistani Muslims , Scottish-Pakistanis SNP PAMCo (Published Audience Measurement Company) Panelbase , , Parliament see Parliament of Great Britain; Scottish Parliament; UK Parliament; UK Parliament, Scotland at Parliamentary Constituencies Act : parliamentary sovereignty –, , , Scotland Act – Scotland Act , –, as ‘continuing’ rather than ‘selfembracing’ discredit of – dismissal for Scottish case , , as key principle of British constitution , Scottish Parliament –, –, , UK Parliament , , , , , , – Parliament of Great Britain , , , , see also UK Parliament parties definition gender issues , – local councils and –, , multi-party politics party discipline , , party system fractionalization , populist parties , racial discrimination , Scottish party system as large-party system – see also the entries below related to parties; religion and party politics; small parties party competition , , , pluralism , small parties , –
two-party system , , , , , , , , see also electoral systems party leaders/leadership Labour Party (Scotland) , , –, – managerialism New Labour Scottish Liberal Democrats n., SNP , – sources of power – women , , party membership Labour Party (Scotland) , – Scottish Green Party , Scottish Liberal Democrats SNP , –, path dependency , , intergovernmental relations , , , patriotism ‘British’ patriotism – Scottish Union , Scottish patriotism/popular Protestantism relation – patronage Patronage Act : , –, PFI (Private Finance Initiative) Police Scotland , , , policy cultural policy , , environmental policy , , , , –, – Labour Party (Scotland) , , –, , policy success/failure – religion and –, Scottish Government Scottish Liberal Democrats Scottish Parliament , , Scottish Socialist Party SNP , , ‘territorial policy communities’ see also education; housing; immigration; public services reform: leadership and management; taxation policymaking see SATP
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political class , , class and occupation , –, , Conservative Party (Scotland) –, –, , Conservative Party (UK) , education –, , ethnic minorities gender balance –, Green parties Labour Party (Scotland) –, , Labour Party (UK) , middle class , , political apprenticeship political career – ‘politics-facilitating’ jobs , – professional politician , Scotland/UK differences –, –, Scottish political class – self-reproducing feature of SNP , working class –, political nationalism Hamilton by-election , cultural/political nationalism relationship , , , –, , –, – electoral timeline see also cultural nationalism political participation , , Consultative Steering Group decline in , education and , , working class politics – see also ethnic minorities and political citizenship; young people political parties see parties politics culture and housing and UK dysfunctional/incompetent politics , , , , see also identity politics; religion and party politics; Scottish politics populism , Independence Referendum populist parties ,
radical cultural neo-populism see also UKIP PPERA (Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act) , , Presbyterianism , , , , Patronage Act Presbyterian confederation , religion and party politics schismatic nature of Scotland’s Presbyterianism Scottish national identity see also Kirk The Press and Journal (newspaper) –, Privy Council (Scotland) , professional politician , proportional system , , , European Parliament , , Scottish Parliament , , , , , , , small parties women’s representation , – see also electoral systems Protestantism Act for the Security of the Protestant Religion , , Independence Referendum , Conservative Party (Scotland) –, , – Conservative Party (UK) decline of devolution Episcopalians , , , family and sexual attitudes Irish population in Scotland JPIT (Joint Public Issues Team) – Reformation Scotland – Scottish patriotism/popular Protestantism relation – Scottish Union SCPO (Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office) , UK , working-class Protestants , Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act ,
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public finances , – asymmetrical fiscal decentralization , , austerity , –, BGA (Block Grant Adjustment) , , Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition Conservative Party (Scotland) – Conservative Party/Government , constitutional asymmetry , , , fiscal accountability , fiscal decentralization –, , fiscal equalization , fiscal transfers , , , , , , , Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland intergovernmental relations and territorial finance –, – Labour Party/Government , , , local government, financial dependence , , , , public expenditure, Scotland –, , , Scottish fiscal autonomy , –, , Scottish Fiscal Framework , n. Scottish net fiscal balance –, , SNP , , , SNP–Scottish Greens , , state size and fiscal decentralization – territorial equalization , , – see also Barnett Formula; taxation public services austerity , , , budget civil service/other public services ‘single employment structure’ local government, service delivery role , , , , – passim Northern Ireland privatization public services reform Scotland ,
territorial equity universal public services Wales –, see also NPG; NPM; public services reform: leadership and management public services reform: leadership and management Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act challenges for effective public value leadership – context, opportunities and challenges – improvement, suggestions for – network governance , ‘policy distraction’ , , , Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act , public service leadership, empowerment approach , , public value leadership , , , , public value leadership, missed opportunities for , public value leadership and network governance –, –, SATP: models of evidence-based service improvement –, , SNP’s proposals see also Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services; Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act ; NPF public sphere , public sphere and media , , , Independence Referendum campaign , Deutschian ‘social communications’ approach to ‘nation’ – dual public sphere , , , expansion of the mediated public sphere PSB (public service broadcasting) see also media
Q
Quebec (Canada) , , , , , de Tocqueville’s paradox independence referenda –
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Quebec (Canada) (cont.) regionalization of group systems , , voting behaviour
R race CRT (Critical Race Theory) Race Equality Action Plan racialization of politics Scotland, non-racialization of politics , –, racism –, indirect discrimination institutional racism , political parties racial discrimination , , , –, , , ‘racial microaggressions’ Scotland, absence of racism , ‘street-level’ racism , see also multiculturalism Radical Independence Campaign , , , , Radical Scotland (magazine) –, , radio , , –, –, BBC Gaelic radio BBC Radio Scotland , , , see also media Red Clydeside legend , Red Clydeside MPs –, referenda referendum on EU membership , , , devolution referendum , , , , , devolution referendum , , , , , , Wales referendum Catalonia, independence referendum , non-legally binding consultative ballots Quebec, independence referenda – see also Brexit Referendum; Independence Referendum religion , , Brexit Referendum age and religious affiliation , , ,
decline in church membership and attendance , , – family and sexual attitudes –, gender and religious affiliation as key cleavage in Scottish politics multi-faith society , national identity and , , no faith/no religion society , –, , , , pluralism , –, policy and –, religious attendance , , Scottish Union and , , , , , social justice, views on , , , welfare, views on , , –, , , see also Calvinism; Catholicism; Islam; Judaism; Kirk; Presbyterianism; Protestantism; religion and party politics; secularization religion and party politics , , , Independence Referendum – Catholics/Catholic vote , , , Conservative Party/Unionists and Protestants –, , –, devolution and ‘Indyref ’ – Home Rule Kirk Labour Party and Catholics , , –, , , Muslim vote Presbyterianism Protestant identity and political preference – religious sectarianism , –, secularization , , –, – SNP and Catholics , –, , see also religion Renewing Local Democracy—The Next Steps (White Paper) Reserved Powers Model , , –, , , Scotland Act , , Brexit Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism , , revisionism , ,
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right-wing politics anti-immigrant and anti-minority sentiments institutional racism and right-wing media populist parties Scottish nationalism sectarianism RISE: Scotland’s Left Alliance , , Royal Commission on the Poor Law () Runnymede Trust ,
S SATP (‘Scottish Approach’ to policymaking) , –, accountability – centralist British style and , , – contradictory aims , interest groups –, performance management systems prevention policy , –, – Scotland/UK comparison , –, ‘Scottish model of government’ , – Scottish policymaking, historical and international context – Scottish policymaking style –, , , SNP Westminster-style democratic accountability , , –, , , see also CPPs; NPF; SATP: models of evidence-based service improvement; SOAs SATP: models of evidence-based service improvement , –, implementation science approach , –, , , , implications for public service leadership and reform –, , improvement approach , , –, –, , storytelling approach , , , , –, Save the Children , ,
Scotland colonized by England governance in head/heart divisions , incompleteness, sense of –, , institutional dynamics – as nation –, as part of the UK , political agenda and political traditions – as society – statehood , , , as ‘stateless nation’ , , union perspective – in the world – Scotland Act Scotland Act , , , amendment by Scottish Parliament – amendment by UK Parliament cultural policy electoral systems judicial review – parliamentary sovereignty – public participation – Reserved Powers Model , , s.() , Scottish constitution , – Scottish Government , Scottish Parliament –, –, , supremacy – taxation Scotland Act , , expanded powers of the Scottish Parliament , , taxation Scotland Act , , Brexit and s.() electoral systems entrenchment of Scottish Parliament expanded powers of the Scottish Parliament , media parliamentary sovereignty , –, permanence of the Scottish Parliament –, , Reserved Powers Model
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Scotland Act (cont.) social security powers taxation , , Scotland’s Future (independence White Paper) , , , , , , –, criticism , The Scotsman (newspaper) , , , , Scottish Assembly Campaign for a Scottish Assembly , , , , –, Conservative Party (Scotland) , , Scottish Civic Forum , Scottish constitution Scotland Act as Scottish constitution , – constitutional arrangements before devolution – devolution settlement – institutional structure of devolved government – ‘interim constitution’ – second independence referendum a small-c constitution , – statutes, judicial decisions, constitutional conventions, soft-law instruments – subnational constitution uncodified constitution Scottish Constitutional Convention , , , , , , , , Scotland’s Parliament, Scotland’s Right – AMS –, electoral systems , gender balance in representation , Labour Party (Scotland) , Scottish Liberal Democrats SNP , , Scottish Covenant Association Scottish Environment LINK Scottish Executive re-named as Scottish Government , , , , see also Scottish Government
Scottish Government (Scottish Executive) , , , , Scotland Act , Independence Referendum , , Independence Referendum campaign accountability Brexit centralism , , , , devolved powers , ethnic minorities in , –, , female Ministers , First Minister , , , , –, funding gender equality – Government and Expenditure and Revenue Scotland green politics , –, interest groups and , international relations , , – passim legislative agenda local governments/Scottish Government relationship –, Ministers , offshore revenue and net fiscal balance , permanence of – policy agenda public services Scottish Government/Treasury relationship , , – structure of –, –, ‘Westminster model’ , see also civil service; intergovernmental relations; Scottish Executive Scottish Green Party , , –, , Scottish Parliament elections Independence Referendum campaign , , green issues , , ideology independence of Scotland n., membership ,
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public finances , , Scottish Parliament elections –, second independence referendum , – SNP and , –, , , see also Green parties Scottish Home Rule Association Scottish Independence Act Scottish Independence Bill , Scottish International (periodical) , , Scottish Liberal Democrats –, , , , devolution leadership n., membership policy Scottish Parliament elections , as small party , see also Liberal Democrats Scottish nationalism , , , civic nationalism environmentalism and EU and , , from romance to respectability – right-wing politics self-government as single issue ideological movement SNP , , , –, , see also cultural nationalism; nationalism/ nationalists Scottish Natural Heritage , , Scottishness , accent , as complementary rather than antithetical to being British Conservative Party (Scotland) , , , , cultural nationalism , , , national identity/constitutional preferences relationship Scottish identity , , , , , , , –, , Scottish identity, politicization of , –, Scottish identity and SNP
Scottish identity and Unionism Scottish Union Scottish Office , , , , n. autonomy , competences Edinburgh Glasgow interest groups and , , , legal and education systems origins , policymaking capacity public services in Scotland re-named as Scottish Executive , Scottish Parliament (Holyrood) , –, , , , – demise , , , devolution referendum , Scotland Act –, –, , establishment of , , , , Scotland Act , , Independence Referendum , Scotland Act –, , , , EU Withdrawal Act , , – abolition of , , , Brexit , , , –, , , , , Conservative Party (Scotland) , –, CSG –, –, –, , ethnic minorities in , , , , , green politics , interest groups and , , , international relations , Labour Party (Scotland) and , , – legislative consent motions , LGBT in local governments and public finances setting up of – SNP , , –, , , , , Standing Orders , , , , ‘The Vow’ , , , , , Westminster/Holyrood overlapping Westminster model , , , , women in , , , , , , , , –, ,
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Scottish Parliament (Holyrood) (cont.) young people –, see also the entries below for Scottish Parliament Scottish Parliament: attributes and principles , , access and participation –, , , –, , accountability , , budget process –, – challenges and shortcomings –, , –, , consensus-building , , , , , – descriptive representation , –, entrenchment of , , , , , , , , equal opportunities , –, , ‘family-friendly’ policies , , , gender equality , –, horseshoe-shaped design of the chamber , , ICT , legislative autonomy , –, , – legislative process –, a maturing institution – new politics –, –, – parliamentary sovereignty –, –, , permanence of –, , policy agenda , , powers –, , , , –, , , , , , – power-sharing –, , , Presiding Officer , , , , , , , Scottish Parliament/UK Parliament differences , , , , , Scottish Parliament/UK Parliament similarities second chamber , tax-raising powers , , , , see also parliamentary sovereignty; Scottish Parliament Scottish Parliament: committees and groups , BPRG (Budget Process Review Group)
Children’s Parliament committee system , , , –, , , , , , – CPR (Commission on Parliamentary Reform) – Cross-Party Groups , , Education, Culture, and Sport Committee , Finance Committee , interest groups and –, –, –, , new politics and Public Petitions Committee , –, young people, committee work – see also Scottish Parliament; Youth Parliament Scottish Parliament elections , , election election , election , –, , , , , election –, , , , , , , , , , , – election –, , , , , , , AMS , , , –, , , coalition or minority government – Conservative Party (Scotland) , Labour Party (Scotland) , , , national identity –, proportional system , , , , , , , Scottish Green Party –, , Scottish Liberal Democrats , as second-order elections –, , SNP , , –, , , , , , – spending rules timing turnout , , voting behaviour , , see also Scottish Parliament Scottish politics , gender issues head/heart divisions
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multiculturalism, political perspective , – national identity and –, –, , – religion as key cleavage in Scottish Renaissance , Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party Scottish Social Attitudes surveys , , , , –, –, , , –, Scottish Socialist Party , , , , –, ideology independence of Scotland policy Scottish Union () –, , –, –, , , architecture of –, autonomy or incorporation? – British Empire and , , , corruption , – devolution , , earlier prefigurations – economy and trade , –, , , , , , , –, –, end of incompleteness of incorporation of Scottish legislature within Great Britain’s legislature – Kirk/Church of Scotland –, , , , , Labour Party (Scotland) – motives for –, , nationalist unionism –, , –, national pride opposition to –, , , , , , , patriotism , as ‘reactionary’ enterprise religion , , , , , Scots/Irish unions interconnections –, , , , , , Scottishness secularization – social union , –, –, , , , as spiritual and material partnership – success of –
taxation , , wars and military concerns , , –, , , see also Acts of Union; Treaty of Union Scottish Water , , , Scottish Women’s Budget Group secession/separatism second independence referendum , Brexit , , , , , , –, , –, , –, , EU membership intergovernmental relations Scottish constitution Scottish Green Party , – SNP , , , , , , , , Sturgeon, Nicola , , , –, , , see also Independence Referendum Secretary of State for Scotland , , , , sectarianism –, , , Advisory Group on Tackling Sectarianism , religion and party politics , –, ‘Scotland’s Shame’ – secularization –, age and religion and party politics , , –, – Scottish Union – self-determination , , , , , self-government –, , Labour Party (Scotland) Scottish nationalism SNP , , , –, , , see also devolution; Home Rule; independence (Scotland) self-rule , , SEPA (Scottish Environmental Protection Agency) , SES (Scottish Election Study) , , Sewel Convention –, , , , – Brexit , , , , , – intergovernmental relations , , , , , ,
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Sewel Convention (cont.) not-binding mechanism , , , withholding consent sexual issues –, , attitudes within faith communities – gender-based violence sexual moralities Sinn Féin (Northern Ireland) Skilled Workers, Skilled Citizens initiative SML (Scottish Militant Labour) small parties –, AMS , , , challenger parties , coalitions , FPTP , , independent candidatures , , , lifecycle of mobilizing parties , niche parties –, ‘Others’ category , , – party competition , – proportional electoral systems reasons for rise and success of , in Scotland – Scottish system and – single issue parties STV , vote share Smith Commission , , , , , , – EU Withdrawal Act fiscal decentralization intergovernmental relations , – SNP (Scottish Socialist Party) , , –, , Brexit Referendum , –, , , –, austerity Brexit –, , , , ‘British’ patriotism – a ‘catch-all’ party , –, , , Catholicism , –, , civil service , , cultural nationalism , –, , EU/pro-EU stance , –, , , , , ,
ideology –, immigration policy , interdependence , , intergovernmental relations , , –, international relations , Labour Party (Scotland) and , , –, , , , , –, , , , leadership , – local government , – membership , –, movement politics and – multiculturalism national identity , –, , nationalism , , , –, , NATO , , , – organization origins and development , –, , , Pakistanis and policy , , political class , as professional and governing party – public finances , , , , , Scottish Green Party and , –, , , Scottish identity and Scottish Parliament , , –, , , , , social democracy , , , , , , taxation , , , as ‘third party’ at UK Parliament , at UK Parliament , –, vote base –, voting behaviour –, –, , , women’s representation –, , see also the entries below for SNP SNP: elections , –, , , , Hamilton by-election , , , , , UK general elections , Scottish Parliament elections –,
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Scottish Parliament elections , , , , , , , – UK general elections , , , – Scottish Parliament elections UK general elections , , , , , UK general elections , FPTP , see also SNP SNP and independence of Scotland , , , , –, –, , , –, , , , s–s , – referendum on EU membership Party Conference , – st century independence Scottish Parliament elections , , , , , – Independence Referendum , –, , –, , , , , –, , , , , , , , Independence Referendum campaign –, –, , –, , , British Empire, ‘self-government’ within – devolution , , , –, , , Draft Constitution for an Independent Scotland economic issues , , , embedded independence EU membership , –, –, , , , fundamentalism, gradualism, pragmatism National Conversation , , – ‘performance politics’ , Return to Nationhood , Scottish Constitutional Convention , , second independence referendum , , , , , , , , self-government , , , –, , , see also independence (Scotland); SNP
SOAs (Single Outcomes Agreements) , , , , see also SATP social attitudes conservatism –, England/Scotland comparison , – religious affiliation and social justice , , , social communication , Deutschian ‘social communications’ approach to ‘nation’ – see also media; public sphere and media social democracy , , ‘Nordic model’ of , SNP , , , , , , Social Democratic Federation Social Democratic Party social media , Independence Referendum campaign – see also media social policy , , see also welfare social sciences –, , social security , , , devolved powers to Scotland , , , , , , , , DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) – Scottish Social Security Agency Universal Credit , , see also welfare Solemn League and Covenant () , , sovereignty , federalism and pooled sovereignty as settlement for UK , – popular sovereignty , , sovereignty of the Scottish people , , , subsidiarity , , state Church–State relationship deep state Keynesian welfare state nation/state distinction , , plurinational/multi-national state –, , retreat of the British state , Scotland as ‘stateless nation’ , ,
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state (cont.) Scotland’s statehood , , , statehood , , , Strathclyde Commission , Stuart dynasty , , , –, STUC (Scottish Trades Union Congress) , , STV (Single Transferable Vote) local government , , , , , , –, , , , –, small parties , see also electoral systems subsidiarity , , Sunday Herald (newspaper) , Sustainable Growth Commission , , , n., Sutherland Royal Commission () –
T
Tartan Monster , tartanry , , , Tartan Day/Week , , tartan tax/Scottish Variable Rate of Income Tax n., , , tartan Tories , ‘tartan tsunami’ taxation Scotland Act Scotland Act Scotland Act , , Air Passenger Duty/Air Departure Tax –, avoidance and evasion council tax , , , , , , devolved and assigned taxes – devolved taxation , , , , , , –, –, , , , , , , , devolved taxation as fiscal trap , HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) , , , Irish Union – Land and Buildings Transaction Tax , lower/higher Scottish income tax paid –, National Insurance Contributions , –, , ,
neutrality policy , path dependency ‘pay as you drive’ tax , Personal Allowance , –, , n., , poll tax , , , , , , redistribution through tax system Revenue Scotland Scottish income tax compared to rest of UK , – Scottish Parliament, tax-raising powers , , , , Scottish Rate of Income Tax Act , Scottish Union , , SNP , , , tartan tax/Scottish Variable Rate of Income Tax n., , , tax policy , , , , , ‘The Vow’ , , , , , , see also Barnett Formula; public finances territory/territorial politics , , , communication and cultural communities systems democracy intergovernmental relations and territorial finance –, – Labour Party (Scotland) – national identity and territory territorial constitution , , , , , territorial fiscal equalization , , – territorial fiscal politics ‘territorial policy communities’ welfare state territorialization Thatcherism , , , , tourism , , , , , trade English Navigation Act – Staple Act – colonial markets Glasgow tobacco trade international relations , , , , , , Nine Years War/War of the Grand Alliance Scots trading empire
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Scottish Union , , –, –, see also Company of Scotland; Darien Scheme trade unions , , , – Independence Referendum campaign – Labour Party (Scotland) , , , Treaty of Union () , , , , , , Article IV Kirk Treaty of Union/Acts of Union distinction turnout , , Independence Referendum , , Brexit Referendum UK general elections drivers of – European Parliament local electoral turnout Scottish Parliament elections , , UK general elections young people , , see also voting
U UK (United Kingdom) creation of a de facto decentralized polity a de jure unitary state dysfunctional/incompetent politics , , , , federalism , federalism and pooled sovereignty as future settlement , – integration Protestantism , single market, customs, currency union, free movement of people as union state see also Britain, idea of UK general elections election Hamilton by-election , , , , , election ,
election , election , , , election , , Conservative Party (Scotland) electoral system , FPTP , , –, , SNP , , turnout voting behaviour , , , –, , see also electoral systems; UK general elections ; UK general elections UK general elections : , , , , , , , , Conservative Party (Scotland) , , Conservative Party (UK) Labour Party (Scotland) , , Liberal Democrats SNP , , , – see also UK general elections UK general elections : , , Conservative Party (Scotland) , –, Conservative Party (UK) , DUP SNP , , , , , turnout voting behaviour , , see also UK general elections UK Government Independence Referendum campaign , , –, devolution , Prime Minister Scottish MPs in social protection Transitional Standing Orders see also intergovernmental relations UKIP (UK Independence Party) , – Brexit Referendum , anti-European populism , UK Parliament , , dual remit ethnic minorities in gender equality , interest groups –, Irish representation at
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UK Parliament (cont.) parliamentary sovereignty , , , , , , – partisanship Scottish Parliament/UK Parliament differences , , , , , Scottish Parliament/UK Parliament similarities sitting times Speaker of the House of Commons , , , , women in , see also parliamentary sovereignty; UK general elections; UK Parliament, Scotland at UK Parliament, Scotland at , amendments to bills , Conservative Party (UK) – departmental questions , – Labour Party (UK) – Liberal Democrats Liberal Party –, , New Labour , Opposition Days , Prime Ministers from Scottish constituencies , , Prime Ministers Questions , , Queen’s Speech , Scottish Affairs Committee , –, Scottish Grand Committee , –, , Scottish MPs , , , , , , , –, , Scottish MPs and Peers within the party system –, SNP , –, SNP as ‘third party’ , Unionist Party – West Lothian Question –, see also EVEL; UK Parliament UK Supreme Court , , –, , Brexit , , , – see also individual cases UK Treasury , –, , , Scottish Government/Treasury relationship , , – Treasury’s statement of funding policy
UN (United Nations) UN Conference on the Human Environment UNCRC (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) – UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women UN Sustainable Development Goals , union definition demise of unions economy and nobility and notion of unions as processes see also Irish Union; Scottish Union unionism/unionists , , , ‘banal unionism’ , , , Conservative Party (Scotland) , , – nationalism/unionism juxtaposition – nationalist unionism –, , – social union/unionism , –, –, , , , trade and security union/unionism , , –, –, ‘unionist nationalism’ , , ‘welfare unionism’ Unionist Party , – Conservative Party and , , , Universal Credit , , University of Edinburgh , USA (United States of America) , –, ,
V voters age of voting , , –, , , , SNP vote base –, voting Scottish Elections (Franchise and Representation) Bill as civic duty – postal and proxy voting – religion and right to vote for EU and non-EU nationals resident in Scotland
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vote counting , , , voting gap between Scotland and England voting in person see also electoral systems; turnout; voters; voting behaviour voting behaviour , –, – Independence Referendum , –, , , balance theory , class , Conservative Party , , electoral cycles, importance of , ethnic minorities – first- and second-order election theory –, , , , – identity/political behaviour relationship identity with the polity Labour Party –, , in multilevel context , national identity and –, policy preferences and political interest across election positional voting , Scottish elections as second-order elections –, , Scottish issues , , Scottish Parliament elections , , SNP –, –, , , spatial voting , split-level citizenship , UK general elections , , , –, , valence voting –, , vote choice, drivers of – see also religion and party politics; turnout; voters; voting
W
Wales devolution referendum , Government of Wales Act , , Government of Wales Act referendum
‘Barnett plus’ n., , , Brexit , civil service devolution , –, , , , , , , National Assembly for Wales –, , , , , , Prime Ministers from Welsh constituencies public services –, Reserved Powers Model wars Afghanistan war Britishness, war as foundation of Iraq war , , , , , , Nine Years War/War of the Grand Alliance Scottish Union and , , –, , , Seven Years’ War War of the Spanish Succession – welfare Independence Referendum campaign – attitudes within faith communities , , –, , , devolution Keynesian welfare state local government and , –, – post- establishment of , , –, shift from political to economic infrastructure , social protection –, unemployment benefits , –, , welfare state territorialization ‘welfare unionism’ see also social security West Lothian Question , –, Westminster see UK Parliament Whig , ‘liberal’/‘whig’ union – whig covenant whig narrative of progress , – women in civil service ,
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women (cont.) civil society – ethnic minorities , –, , , female ministers , political leadership see also feminism; women’s representation Women for Independence , , , Women’s Aid , , women’s representation : quota , , , , Independence Referendum , – Brexit Referendum AMS , Conservative Party (Scotland) , , descriptive representation , , , , devolution period , , European Parliament grass-roots activism , , Green parties , Labour Party (Scotland) , , , , – Labour Party (UK) local government , as MSPs , , , , , , , , , –, , National Assembly for Wales, women in , new politics , – as party leaders , , proportional electoral system , – quota measures , , , , , SNP –, , substantive representation , , , –, –, trends in recruitment and representation –, – UK Parliament , under-representation see also women; gender issues
working class , , Labour Party (Scotland) –, working-class language working class politics – working-class Protestants , World War I , , , World War II , , ,
X
xenophobia ,
Y
YouGov , , young people Independence Referendum –, citizenship/civic education , , CSG –, , direct participation/vicarious participation , , familialization/adultism –, in local government political, legal, and social arguments for participation – political participation –, –, – ‘Q&A’ consultation – Scottish Parliament –, Scottish Parliament, committee work – Scottish Parliament, public petitions , – turnout , , voting age , , –, youth engagement following enfranchisement – see also children Young People’s Forum Youthlink Scotland , Youth Parliament (Scottish Youth Parliament—SYP) , –, ,