Up to 80% of suicide victims weren’t seen for a year before they died

My undergraduate module POLU9SP has four coursework requirements: (1) a policy paper, to raise a problem and feasible solution in 1000 words; (2) a blog post to summarise the issues to a lay audience; (3) an oral presentation/ Q&A based on the post; and (4) an essay to explain the policymaking context. I recommend this format, since it gives students the chance to be creative and research an issue that interests them. Our discussions then help them work out how feasible are their plans, and a round of presentations should show us the competing demands on policymaker attention and resources.

I have reproduced, below, a blog post from 4th year student Christopher Gilday, as an example of an excellent attempt to fulfil this task:

“A Study by the ISD suggests that up to 80% of suicide victims in Scotland did not have a psychiatric outpatient appointment for up to 12 months before their death. The study showed that suicide is now a major contributor of death for 15-34 year olds and highlighted a significant correlation between suicide and deprivation in Scotland. It also confirmed that the suicide rate for men is three times that of women, a point that Jane Powell, of the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), has been making vehemently recently.

The ScotSID, which is observed and calculated annually, has consistently found a reoccurring number of deaths by suicide in recent years (around 790) which is concerning as there have been incremental increases in funding for mental health by the Scottish Government. Most concerning was a clear pattern which related the number of suicides to the time that patients had waited for a psychiatric appointment. 184 suicide victims were seen in 30 days of their death whereas 604 suicide victims weren’t seen for twelve months before their deaths. The study also claimed that as many as 80% of suicide victims weren’t seen by therapist in a year before they died.

The current target waiting time for psychiatric waiting times for outpatients, which was set in December 2014, is 18 weeks. This is in contrast to the policy for general outpatient times across the NHS which is set at 12 weeks.

Mental health is a distressing concern for Scotland above other parts of the UK with more people being affected by mental health and the Scottish Government has already acknowledged this by upgrading the legal status of mental health to that of physical health.

For this reason it seems the government should follow through this change in status by setting the outpatient target time of 18 weeks so it is at least akin to the general level of outpatient waiting times of 12 weeks.

However with the pledged £85 million for mental health in the next five years this should be bettered, as 50% of referred patients are already being seen in 8 weeks. The target however stipulates that 90% of referred outpatients must be seen in the target period and only 4 NHS branches actually have met this standard.Suicide in Scotland is an unresolved problem which needs to properly be addressed through mental health support. Too many suicide victims are not seen in time nor at all, and there is clear evidence showing that reducing waiting times reduces the number of suicides.

Using additional funding to employ additional staff, through telephone inquiries or ushers, or spending on alert systems that prevent excessive waiting is essential in reducing waiting times which must now be urgently addressed. Reducing waiting times for psychiatric outpatient appointments will reduce the annual number of suicides”.

Looking ahead: will policy and policymaking change with constitutional change? #POLU9SP

This is the final lecture, and it should take us full circle to the first lecture which began with this statement: ‘A key part of this course is to examine critically the idea that political practices in Scotland are distinctively Scottish’. I provide a brief summary below, but most of the information is in this podcast, which you can download (right click on mp3 or mp4a) or stream here:

Devolution represents a major change in Scottish politics, but it did not produce major change in all aspects of Scottish politics. Instead, some expectations came to fruition while others remain unfulfilled.

Similarly, further devolution or Scottish independence may produce a similar sense of major change in politics and society, but we should not assume that it would produce major change in policy and policymaking.

In that context, let’s revisit the key themes/ questions of the course, ask what has changed in Scottish politics, and use our answer to think about any likely changes in the future:

1. What aspects of Scottish politics and policymaking are ‘territorial’ and ‘universal’?
2. Did devolution produce major political reforms and new forms of democracy?
3. What aspects of the ‘Scottish policy style’ and ‘Scottish approach to policymaking’ are clearly distinctive?
4. Can you meaningfully describe ‘Scottish politics’ when so much policymaking is multi-level?
5. Did devolution prompt major policy change and/ or policy divergence between the Scottish and UK governments?

It is in this context that we can produce an informed discussion of the likely effects of major constitutional change in the future. For example, would Scottish independence:

1. Change the way we study Scottish policymaking?
2. Produce further political reform and democratic practices?
3. Change the Scottish policy style?
4. Have an effect on the multi-level nature of policymaking?
5. Produce further policy change and/ or divergence?

In many, if not most cases, I think the answer is ‘no’.

 

Case studies: early years, compulsory, further, and higher education #POLU9SP

This is the third of three posts which use case studies of cross-cutting and specific policy areas to add more depth to our discussion of Scottish politics and policymaking.

One of the SNP Government’s main aims is to abolish inequalities in education attainment. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon put it in this stark way in a speech in Wester Hailes in August:

‘My aim – to put it bluntly – is to close the attainment gap completely. It will not be done overnight – I accept that. But it must be done. After all, its existence is more than just an economic and social challenge for us all. It is a moral challenge. Indeed, I would argue that it goes to the very heart of who we are and how we see ourselves as a nation’.

This specific aim raises important questions about the likely success of such policies when governments (a) seek to reduce the impact, not existence, of socioeconomic inequalities, (b) recognise the limits of their powers, and (c) make choices which seem to undermine their aims. In other words, we need to compare these high expectations with other statements, expectations, and policies pursued in other parts of education and government.

Sturgeon’s uncompromising language is important for three reasons

First, it implies that governments can have this profound level of influence on socio-economic outcomes. It reminds me of two former ambitions of the post-war UK governments: to maintain ‘full employment’, an aim long abandoned by both UK political parties; and to reduce health inequalities by setting up a National Health Service, an ambition exposed as unfulfilled by almost every major publication since the Black Report in 1980 (see also the previous lecture on health). These days, ministers don’t tend to make such bold statements of their likely success (for good reason).

Second, we should remember the point that normally remains unsaid: the SNP-led Scottish Government, like the UK Government, has no stated ambition to go to the ‘root cause’ of the problem to reduce the socio-economic inequalities through a far more redistributive tax and benefits system. It is not yet possible for the Scottish Government to take an approach, often linked to the idea of ‘Nordic’ social democracy, to combine (a) spending decisions based on an appeal to universal service provision, and (b) redistribution through fiscal policy. Instead, there is great potential for inconsistent UK/ Scottish strategies: the Scottish Government to oversee a spending regime that favours the wealthy and middle classes (on universal free services with no means testing) while the UK Government maintains a tax and benefits policy that many people will perceive to be insufficiently redistributive. Nor has the SNP made a firm commitment to redistribution in the event of Scottish independence in the future.

Instead, in almost all cases, we are talking instead about the use of public service delivery to mitigate their effects: a strategy that relies largely on the idea of ‘prevention’ policies to intervene as early as possible in people’s lives – through interventions such as parenting programmes – to improve their life chances.

Policymakers’ language is normally more realistic

Third, it is a language that stands out from most other Scottish Government discussions of education attainment, which reflect a more careful, or less ambitious, focus on realistic progress and change at the margins (as well as the continuous reminder of the Scottish Government’s limited policymaking powers while it remains part of the UK Government system).

One aspect of the more careful language relates to the limitations of government, and Scottish Government in particular. In February 2015, Sturgeon stated: ‘We must do all we can within the powers and resources we have to narrow the gap and drive up standards at all levels’.

This statement accompanied Sturgeon’s announcement of a £25m per year (over 4 years) scheme to encourage new initiatives and learn from success stories such as the London Challenge, a project driven by a similar ‘moral imperative’, and combining a focus on leadership/ collaboration and the relative performance in schools situated in areas with similar socio-economic backgrounds.

Sturgeon followed up this announcement with a focus on the partial return of testing pupils at key stages in schools. This plan forms part of a National Improvement Framework for Scottish education, which ‘will ensure that we are making progress in closing the gap in attainment between those in our most and least deprived areas’.

These decisions will take time to play out, and will involve some Scotland-specific debates about more uniform testing. Testing in this way is a strategy that was previously rejected in Scotland, and opposed by teaching groups, largely because of its association with a system in England built increasingly on league tables of performance, increased school autonomy (from local authorities), competition, and parent/ consumer choice. In other words, note the symbolic as well as substantive importance of testing. However, it may be necessary to have some kind of testing regime to gather data to allow the Scottish Government to demonstrate progress in attainment at key stages.

Is this new aim consistent with older Scottish Government choices?

Education policy sums up the political limitations to broad strategies such as ‘prevention’. The broad idea of ‘early intervention’, to make an impact on people’s lives as early as possible, to help reduce inequalities and the costs of public services, enjoys magnificent levels of cross-party support. Yet, it competes badly with more specific political commitments with the potential to undermine these broad aims.

In Scotland, the best example is current policy on free tuition fees in Universities which, in the absence of redistributive fiscal policy, and the presence of an attainment gap, reinforces inequalities in education three-fold. The first relates to the reduced likelihood of University attendance in school leavers from a deprived background. Lower educational attainment is linked strongly to poverty, and Scotland exhibits a significant gap in attainment in key areas.

Second, as Riddell et al argue, funding inequalities are often masked by a ‘universal’ approach in which higher education is free to eligible Scottish students. Yet, the absence of tuition fees benefits the middle classes disproportionately, while the debt burden is higher on poorer students. The maintenance of University funding also seems to come at the expense of the college places more likely to be filled by students from lower income backgrounds.

Third, there is a famous description of education spending by James Heckman, who argues that spending on early intervention and pre-school education is far more effective in reducing inequalities than spending on schools and universities (an argument that seems to be accepted by the Scottish Government). So, although the Scottish Government has made a commitment to extend funding on pre-school provision and early intervention programmes, these efforts at ‘transformational’ change compete with resources to maintain University funding.

Is there much money available for attainment and early intervention?

The new agenda on abolishing the attainment gap in schools has the potential to address only one of these issues, and it is potentially undermined by the high financial costs of the commitment to maintain other policies such as free tuition fees. Further, most of the real rise in education spending since devolution – e.g. 46% from 2000-11 – relates primarily to a combination of a new teacher contract and a commitment to a target of 53000 teachers, in part to further related targets such as on reduced primary school class sizes (Cairney and McGarvey, 2013: 229). In the past, when challenged on the value for money of such initiatives (in the early to mid-2000s), the then First Minister Jack McConnell defended the policy as a way to aid industrial relations and overall education attainment without identifying progress on inequalities in attainment (Cairney, 2011: 194). These policies continue (and take up most education resources) at the same time as new initiatives on inequalities.

Overall, I expect that we will look back on this one speech – on the ‘moral challenge’ to ‘close the attainment gap completely’ – as an outlier. It is an aim that sounds impressive as a rhetorical device, but it is not backed up by a coherent set of public policies designed to fulfil that end (at least in my lifetime).

 

 

Case studies: healthcare, public health, mental health #POLU9SP

This is the second of three posts which use case studies of cross-cutting and specific policy areas to add more depth to our discussion of Scottish politics and policymaking.

Most aspects of health policy have been devolved since 1999, and many were devolved before 1999, so we can generate a relatively long term picture of policy change/ divergence in three key areas: healthcare, mental health, and public health. We can then revisit the idea of prevention and inequalities raised in the first lecture.

Healthcare

The NHS has always been a little bit different in Scotland, which enjoyed administrative devolution – through the Scottish Office (a UK Government Department) – before 1999 and maintained its own links with professional groups.

Scotland has traditionally trained a disproportionate number of UK doctors and maintained an unusually high presence of Royal Colleges. This greater medical presence boosted the Scottish Office’s policymaking image as ‘professionalised’, or more likely to pursue policies favoured by the medical profession than the UK’s Department of Health. For example, it appeared to be less supportive of reforms based on the ‘marketisation’ of the NHS.

Devolution turbo boosted this sense of Scottish policy difference (see the Greer and Jarman discussion).

For example, while the UK Labour Government furthered the ‘internal market’ established by its Conservative predecessors, the Labour-led Scottish Government seemed to dismantle it (for example, there are no Foundation hospitals). It also bought (and effectively renationalised) a private hospital, which had a symbolic importance way above its practical effect.

Since 2007, the SNP-led Scottish Government – often supported publicly by UK-wide groups such as the British Medical Association (and nursing and allied health professions) – has gone big on this difference between Scottish and UK Government policies, criticising the marketization of the NHS in England and expressing, at every opportunity, the desire to maintain the sort of NHS portrayed by Danny Boyle at the Olympics opening ceremony.

This broad approach is generally supported, at least implicitly, by the important political parties in Scotland (the SNP is competing with a centre-left Labour Party and the Conservatives are less important). It is also supported by a medical profession and a public that, in practice, tends to be more committed to the NHS (in other words, opinion polls may not always show a stark difference in attitudes, but there is not the same fear in Scotland, as in the South-East of England, that doctors and patients might defect to the private sector if the NHS is not up to scratch).

Public health

Scotland won the race to ban smoking in public places and is currently trying to introduce a minimum unit price for alcohol. It has also placed particular emphasis on the wider determinants of health and made the right noises about the balance between public health and acute care. However, there are also major similarities in Scottish and UK Government approaches. For example, the UK tops the European league table on comprehensive tobacco control (and England/ Wales beat Scotland to ban smoking in cars with children).

Mental health

To some extent, early Scottish Governments developed an international reputation for innovation in some areas relating to wellbeing. It also reformed mental health and capacity legislation in a relatively quick and smooth way – at least compared to the UK Labour Government, which had a major stand-off with virtually all mental health advocacy groups on psychiatric-based reforms. Part of the difference relates to the size of Scotland and its government’s responsibilities which can produce a distinctive policy style; it often has the ability to coordinate cross-cutting policy, in consultation with stakeholders, in a more personal way. However, this is a field in which there tend to be often-similar policies beyond the Sun-style headlines.

The bigger picture of continuity: a tax funded service

These Scottish-UK differences should be seen in the context of a shared history and some major similarities. Both NHS systems are primarily tax-funded and free at the point of use, with the exception of some charges in England (which should not be exaggerated – for example, 89% of prescriptions in England are tax-funded). Both governments have sought to assure the public in similar ways by, for example, maintaining high profile targets on waiting times. Both systems face similar organisational pressures, such as the balance between a public demand for local hospitals and medical demand for centralised services. Both governments face similar demographic changes which put pressure on services. Both have similarly healthy (or unhealthy) populations.

The bigger picture of prevention and health inequality

Although the Scottish Government pursues an agenda on prevention to reduce service demand and health inequalities, many other policies based on the idea of universal provision have the potential to exacerbate inequalities.

For example, a real rise in spending (cash spending adjusted with the GDP deflator) on health policy of 68% from 2000-11 did not have a major effect on health inequalities (Cairney and McGarvey, 2013: 229). Instead, Scottish Governments tended to use the money in areas such as acute care to, for example, maintain high profile waiting list (non-emergency operations) and waiting times (A&E) targets which did not have a health inequalities component (Cairney, 2011: 177-9). It has also phased out several charges, such on prescriptions and eye tests, which increase spending without decreasing inequalities (particularly since the lowest paid already qualified for exemptions for charges).

It has pursued strongly a public health strategy geared, in part, towards reducing health inequalities, but with the same tendency as in the UK for healthcare to come first. This process includes interesting overlaps in aims and outcomes, such as in tobacco control where smoking is addressed strongly partly because it represents the single biggest element of health inequalities, but most initiatives do not necessarily reduce inequalities in smoking.

Further Reading

I discuss these issues in more depth in Scottish Politics and The Scottish Political System Since Devolution. See also this draft chapter on prevention and health policy by the Scottish and UK Governments

 

Case studies: prevention and early intervention to address austerity and inequality #POLU9SP

This is the first of three posts which use case studies of cross-cutting and specific policy areas to add more depth to our discussion of Scottish politics and policymaking.

We begin with a broad focus on ‘prevention’ policy for 4 reasons:

1. It is a major Scottish Government priority, to use ‘prevention’ and ‘early intervention’ to reduce socioeconomic inequalities and/ or public service costs.
2. It is an integral part of the ‘Scottish approach to policymaking’, with a strong emphasis on the changes to joined-up national government and partnerships in local government.
3. It highlights multi-level policymaking and key overlaps in Scottish and UK Government responsibilities.
4. We can compare the Scottish Government’s initial statement – committing itself to a ‘decisive shit to prevention’ – to actual outcomes.

But what is prevention policy?

Broadly, prevention and ‘preventative spending’ describe a range of policies designed to intervene as early as possible in people’s lives to improve their wellbeing and reduce demand for acute or reactive public services. The argument is that too much government spending is devoted to services to address severe social problems at a late stage. The aim is for governments to address a wide range of longstanding problems – including crime and anti-social behaviour, ill health and unhealthy behaviour, low educational attainment, and unemployment – by addressing them at source, before they become too severe and relatively expensive.

Prevention policy is described periodically as the solution to three major crises in politics.

1. If we don’t make fundamental changes to the way we fund and deliver services they will go bust.

Prevention symbolises the desire to shift from expensive demand-led reactive services – such as acute care hospitals, jails, and police and social work interventions for ‘troubled families’ – towards intervening as early as possible in people’s lives to improve their life chances and reduce their reliance on the state. The classic intervention may be a public health policy to encourage healthy behaviour, or an early intervention programme to improve the life chances of teenage mothers and their children, but prevention is broad enough to include a campaign to reduce falls among older people, aimed at keeping people out of NHS beds.

2. Prevention policies can reduce major inequalities within society.

The broad aim is to address the ‘root causes’ of social problems – such as poverty, social exclusion, and poor accommodation – while specific projects focus on early interventions, such as pre-school provision and parenting programmes, to address major gaps in key indicators, such as education attainment, that can be identified from a young age.

3. Prevention is a solution to modern crises of government.

A prevention philosophy goes hand in hand with a governance philosophy which identifies the failures of top-down centralist government. The general rhetoric is about policy failure when governments try to do things to you, in favour of making policy with you. It comes with a commitment to: ‘holistic’ government in which we foster cooperation between, and secure a common aim for, departments, public bodies and stakeholders; ‘localism’, or fostering the capacity of local communities to tailor national policies to their areas;  tailoring public services to their users, encouraging a focus on the ‘assets’ of individuals, and inviting users to participate and ‘co-produce’ their services; a shift from simplistic short term targets and performance management towards meaningful long term outcomes-based measures of policy success and population wellbeing; as well as some reliance on ‘evidence based policy making’ to identify which interventions produce the most benefit and deserve investment.

How does prevention relate to the ‘Scottish approach’?

In other words, prevention policies generally combine specific ‘interventions’ with the broad governance principles, including ‘localism’ and the inclusion of users in the design of public services, that we discussed in relation to the ‘Scottish approach’ (but which is also pursued, in different ways, by the UK government). For example, the Scottish Government pursues prevention policies primarily via Community Planning Partnerships and the Single Outcome Agreements produced largely by local authorities.

Have a look again at the descriptions of the Scottish approach by Elvidge and Housden (including Elvidge’s belief that ‘traditional policy and operational solutions’ based on a ‘target driven approach’ would not produce the major changes in policy and policymaking required to address major problems such as inequalities).

What aspects of ‘prevention’ does the Scottish Government control?

The UK government controls monetary and fiscal policies, largely determining the budget used by the Scottish Government to spend and invest, and limiting its ability to redistribute income to address economic inequalities. It controls most aspects of social security, including the ability to address inequalities through direct payments, and determine the rules relating to benefits and unemployment.

Therefore, although the Scottish Government has primary responsibility for most areas of delivery relevant to prevention – such as health, education, housing, local government, and criminal justice – as well as some aspects of economic regeneration and employability, it does not have the responsibility to ‘join up’ taxation, social security, and the delivery of public services. For example, its ability to address health and education inequalities by using taxation policies to address income inequalities is very limited (even after proposed changes in the Scotland Acts of 2012 and 2016). It could not reform the benefits system to supplement its powers to influence ‘employability’ policy, or emulate the UK Government’s attempts to pass on social security savings to the local authorities implementing its ‘troubled families’ programme.

How does it fit in with the bigger picture of policy change since devolution?

Although the Scottish Government referred rarely to ‘prevention’ before 2010, it identified several ways to address inequalities. From 1999, it began to address ‘social inclusion’, which ‘become a shorthand label to refer to individuals alienated from economic, political, and social processes due to circumstances such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor neighbourhoods, bad health and lack of access to childcare’ (McGarvey and Cairney, 2008: 211). The most direct responses, to encourage employability or provide social security benefits, were UK responsibilities, and the Scottish Government relied on UK Government’s policies such as ‘welfare to work, the minimum wage and the Working Families Tax Credit’ (2008: 211).

The Scottish Government’s main response was to address disadvantages by focusing on economic regeneration in specific geographical areas, and reducing ‘unequal access to services such as education, health and housing’ (2008: 210). Its approach to governance reflected a developing ‘Scottish approach’, with an emphasis on social inclusion as a cross-departmental theme and the development of ‘Social Inclusion Partnerships’ (SIPs) which resembled CPPs (2008: 211).

Yet, overall, Scottish social inclusion policy did not differ markedly from the UK Government’s ‘social exclusion’ initiatives, and both governments have continued to promote concepts such as community and individual resilience rather than push for redistributive policies to address exclusion.

Further, the Scottish Government shared with the UK Government a tendency to focus on high profile issues or policies designed to improve outcomes overall without necessarily reducing inequalities of outcome (see the next two lectures/ posts on health and education).

Is there an implementation gap? Or, how do outcomes relate to initial expectations?

Until policymakers make sense of prevention, and turn it into a series of specific policies, it remains little more than an idiom – ‘prevention is better than cure’ – with little effect on government policy.

Although it is probably too early to detect an implementation gap associated with the ‘decisive shift’ in 2011, we can identify the great potential for unfulfilled expectations  based on the lack of progress associated with previous efforts. For example, the Christie Commission, which set the Scottish Government’s new prevention agenda in 2011, stated that:

on most key measures social and economic inequalities have remained unchanged or become more pronounced … This country is a paradoxical tapestry of rich resources, inventive humanity, gross inequalities, and persistent levels of poor health and deprivation … In education, the gap between the bottom 20 per cent and the average in learning outcomes has not changed at all since devolution. At the same time, the gap in healthy life expectancy between the 20 per cent most deprived and the 20 per cent least deprived areas has increased from 8 to 13.5 years and the percentage of life lived with poor health has increased from 12 to 15 per cent since devolution. The link between deprivation and the likelihood of being a victim of crime has also become stronger.

However, note the ‘bottom up’ element to this new agenda: does it make sense to identify the top-down idea of an implementation gap, when the Scottish Government is so keen to set a broad strategy and delegate policymaking responsibility? For me, this is a fascinating dilemma for governments: how to they ‘let go’ of policymaking and make sure that their broad aims are met in a meaningful way?

We can explore these issues in more depth in the next two posts which focus on two of the most devolved policy areas: health and education.

See also: Can the Scottish Government pursue ‘prevention policy’ without independence?

 

The implementation of policy in Scotland #POLU9SP

There are two classic ways to describe and try to explain policy implementation: top-down and bottom-up (see also the policy cycle).

We can focus on these descriptions of policy implementation to make two points relevant to our discussion so far:

1. You might think that the ‘Scottish policy style’ and ‘Scottish approach’ produce fewer problems of implementation, but they produce different problems.
2. An ‘implementation gap’ reinforces our sense (in the previous lecture) that there hasn’t been that much policy divergence in Scotland since devolution.

Implementation and the Scottish policy style

Based on our discussions so far, you might think that the Scottish Government would suffer fewer problems of implementation than the UK government because:

1. Its public sector landscape often appears to be less fragmented.
2. It is less likely to oversee a ‘top-down’ policy style with unintended consequences (note the potential confusion over the meaning of top-down).
3. Its greater willingness to consult helps it gather information and secure ‘ownership’.

Yet, I found that it (generally) had different, not fewer, problems. For example, you do not guarantee implementation success by relying on local authorities rather than private or third sector bodies. Further, the Scottish Government may have more ‘external conditions’ to take into account, since its policies often overlap with those of the UK government and it often does not control the success of its own policies.

Or, high levels of consultation can help produce unrealistic strategies and inflated expectations when a government gives the impression that: a policy choice represents radical change; it is the key actor (rather than one of many players in a multi-level system); and, it plans to enforce not delegate and negotiate policy delivery.

The Scottish Approach and bottom-up implementation

Indeed, isn’t the newest incarnation of the ‘Scottish approach’ more of a bottom-up than top-down strategy? In other words, it sets a broad framework based on policy outcomes and asks local authorities and community planning partnerships to produce their own strategies to achieve those outcomes.

Consequently, it may not make sense to try to explain an ‘implementation gap’ because some of the top-down conditions for success do not seem to apply, including: there are no clear/ consistent objectives (at least according to my interpretation of that condition), and there is no requirement for compliant officials.

Policy divergence and the implementation gap

Yet, many Scottish Government policies can be analysed usefully through the lens of an ‘implementation gap’, including:

• ‘Free personal care’ for older people. This is an important one, because FPC used to symbolise policy divergence after devolution. Yet, it translated into a less-than-expected reduction in care home costs and, for many people (it is hard to know the number) a replacement of one way of securing free care with another (you should make sure you understand how this happened – see Scottish Politics for more detail). There have also been problems with waiting lists for care, and debate about what counts/ doesn’t count as personal care.
• Housing and homelessness. Over the years, the Scottish Government has promised higher housing standards and lower levels of homelessness but struggled to translate ambitious aims into outcomes (and, it has produced essentially the same strategy on homelessness twice since devolution).
• Fox hunting. You can still hunt foxes if you want (anyway, would there be many people there to stop you if you tried?) and the unintended consequence of policy is that you might now catch the wrong ones.

If we have the time, we might also discuss modern examples such as the Curriculum for Excellence. We might also wonder why some policies seem to have been implemented successfully (can you think of examples?).

In many of these cases, the promise of policy divergence mixes with implementation problems to produce less divergence than we might have expected if we focused simply on the initial choices. This conclusion reinforces the idea that constitutional change in Scotland does not tend to produce radical policy change or major divergence from UK government policy.

Policy change, convergence and divergence since Scottish devolution #POLU9SP

Policy change is already difficult to measure and explain, but in Scottish politics there is an added dimension. It is common to gauge policy change according to the extent to which Scottish Government policy diverges from UK Government policy. This comparison can only take us so far, so I will begin with a discussion of divergence then take us back to Scottish policy change in its own right.

What might cause convergence and divergence?

Here is a list of possible causes, which we can discuss at more depth in the lecture (and can you think of others?):

Reasons for policy divergence (or difference):

• Different social attitudes
• Different parties in government
• Ministers trying to make a difference
• The larger role of public sector professionals in Scotland
• Different policy conditions
• A different policy process or style

Reasons for convergence (or similarity):

• Public expenditure and borrowing limits
• Overlaps between reserved and devolved policies
• A ‘single market’ in the UK and the need to avoid unintended consequences
• The same party of government
• A similar role for key professions
• Incrementalism, inertia, wicked problems and other reasons to limit policy change
• Similar problems and ways of thinking (and learning)

Policy divergence: ‘Scottish solutions to Scottish problems’

We sometimes describe policy divergence in Scotland as ‘evolution, not revolution’ (although evolution is not the opposite of revolution). In other words, devolution did not produce a radical departure from the past, in the way that we might associate with former Soviet countries. Rather, there is a mix of high profile ‘flagship’ policies mixed with a lot of fairly innocuous updating of the statute book. The big ones from 1999-2007 include:

• ‘free’ personal care for older people
• the reduction of higher education tuition fees
• the abolition of the healthcare internal market
• mental health legislative reforms
• the introduction of the single transferable vote in local elections
• the ‘smoking ban’ (does this example count?)

Then the big SNP government polices included:

• the abolition of higher education tuition fees (and prescription charges)
• the minimum unit price on alcohol
• the reform of criminal justice sentencing
• the pursuit of renewable energy projects and rejection of new nuclear energy stations
• the pursuit of new ways to fund capital projects (e.g. schools and hospitals)

So, we have three images of the much-talked-about-before-devolution phrase ‘Scottish solutions to Scottish problems’

The first relates to the idea that Westminster had insufficient time for Scottish legislation, and so devolution would present a new opportunity for policy innovation and new ideas. Yet, perhaps after a honeymoon period, public policy did not appear to change dramatically or mark dramatic policy divergence from the past or the rest of the UK.

The second relates to devolution as a way to avoid policy innovation: to step off the train associated with the constant top-down reform agenda of the UK government. This second image is often a better guide, and we can link it to (a) the idea that devolution in 1979 represented a missed opportunity to cushion the blow of Thatcherism, and (b) current debates on the extent to which devolution can actually protect Scotland from the worst excesses of UK policy (I am paraphrasing the arguments of other people here).

The third relates more to policymaking than policy: ‘Scottish solutions to Scottish problems’ may relate to how Scottish institutions process policy than the actual policy outputs and outcomes (the ‘Scottish policy style’ or ‘Scottish approach’). As we have discussed in several lectures, this is not necessarily a small difference (particularly if you focus on Greer/ Jarman’s account of the differences in the use of ‘policy tools’).

Don’t forget existing differences

We miss a lot if we just focus on divergence, because much Scottish policy reinforces or maintains existing policy differences, such as when the Scottish Government reformed its curriculum and addressed teacher-local authority relations. Can you think of other examples?

Don’t forget policy change

We miss a lot of policy change if we only focus on divergence from UK government policy. For example, maybe the governments innovate and emulate each other (they don’t though – see box 9.2).

Or, they do very similar things or don’t quite manage to do different things:

• Housing stock transfer and (until recently) the ‘right to buy’
• Policies to address so called ‘anti-social behaviour’
• Attempts by the Scottish and UK Governments (often in vain) to address ‘wicked problems’ such as social inclusion/ exclusion and socio-economic inequalities
• Public health reforms such as tobacco control
• Agricultural and fisheries policies (although can you identify key differences?)
• Land taxation
• Policies in development, such as an expansion of pre-school care and the very long gestation of local income tax

In the next lecture, we can also go into more depth on the idea of policy change, to identify a difference between (for example) policy divergence as a set of policy choices and their actual effect.

The effect of constitutional change on politics and policymaking #POLU9SP

This is one of two opportunities in the course to consider the role of further constitutional change. In this lecture, we can explore the changes associated with Scotland Bills (and their causes). In the final lecture, we can take a step back and consider how much the territorial nature of the constitution/ political system compares with ‘universal’ aspects of the policy process.

The Scotland Act 1998 set up the modern Scottish Parliament, outlining its new institutions (including the electoral system) and policy responsibilities. Although I have tried to qualify-to-death the idea that Scottish devolution changed policymaking in Scotland, this was the big one. At the heart of our discussions of the ‘Scottish policy style’ is the knowledge that the Scottish Government has significant policymaking responsibilities and it uses its powers in often-distinctive ways.

The Act also represents the initial ‘settlement’ arising from a decades-long push for political devolution in Scotland. However, it did not prove to be the final settlement. Instead, the UK Government and ‘unionist’ political parties have sought ways to extend devolution enough to maintain Scottish support for the union.

Note the role and endurance of the ‘democratic deficit’ argument

In the 1990s, devolution was often described as a way to solve the ‘democratic deficit’. The charge was that people in Scotland voted for one party in a UK general election (Labour) but received another (Conservative) on many occasions.

This problem was exacerbated by a long spell of Thatcher-led government (1979-1990). A frequent argument is that devolution (made possible by a vote in 1979) could have ‘defended Scotland from Thatcherism’, and allowed the maintenance of Scottish traditions of participative democracy and social democracy. In that context, the new Scottish Parliament represented the idea that Scottish devolution would cushion the blow of any future UK Conservative government.

Yet, as we saw during the independence debate, devolution was often described by Yes supporters as a poor solution to the democratic deficit because the UK Government still makes decisions – particularly on the reform of the welfare state – which have a profound effect on Scotland, with little scope for the Scottish Government to produce an alternative.

The Scotland Acts of 2012 and 2016

The Scotland Act 2012 amended the Scottish Parliament’s and Scottish Government’s responsibilities. It represents the second major attempt at a devolved settlement, following the election of an SNP (minority) government in 2007 and the rise of an independence agenda. The prospect of independence has prompted Scotland’s other main parties (Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat – all of which are part of British parties) and the UK Government to consider further devolution; to try to produce a devolved solution that will settle the matter once and for all.

The Calman Commission recommended further devolution in 2009. It prompted the Scotland Act 2012, to introduce further tax devolution (part of income, land and landfill taxes), the ability of the Scottish Government to borrow to invest in capital projects, and new powers in areas such as Scottish Parliament elections, air weapons, driving and drug treatment. The Scotland Act 2012 was designed to be implemented after the referendum, giving opposition parties the opportunity to guarantee further devolution after a No vote.

Yet, this promise of further devolution proved to be insufficient and, during the referendum period, each party produced separate plans to extend devolution further. The parties then came together, in the lead up to the referendum to make what is now called ‘The Vow’ of ‘extensive new powers’ (and a retained Barnett formula) for a devolved Scotland. The Smith Commission was set up to take this agenda forward. It reported on the 27^th November 2014, and its recommendations include to:

• make the Scottish Parliament ‘permanent’.
• devolve some fiscal powers, including the power to: set income tax rates and bands (higher earnings are taxed at a higher rate) but not the ‘personal allowance’ (the amount to be earned before income tax applies); set air passenger duty; and to receive a share of sales tax (VAT).
• increase the Scottish Government’s borrowing powers.
• devolve some aspects of social security, including those which relate to disability, personal care, housing and ‘council tax’ benefits (council tax is a property tax charged by local authorities to home owners/ renters and based on the value of homes).
• devolve policies designed to encourage a return to employment.
• devolve the ability to license onshore oil and gas extraction (which includes hydraulic fracturing, ‘fracking’, for shale gas).
• control the contract to run the Scottish rail network.
• encourage greater intergovernmental relations and a more formal Scottish Government role in aspects of UK policymaking.

In response, the UK Government has produced a new draft Scotland Bill.

To a large extent, the proposals reflect the plans of the three main British parties, rather than the SNP (which requested ‘devo max’), although they go further than those parties would have proposed in the absence of the referendum agenda. Again, they are designed to represent a devolved ‘settlement’, reinforced by the knowledge that 55% voted against Scottish independence in 2014 (the turnout was 84.6%).

Yet, this sense of a ‘settled will’ is not yet apparent. Indeed, it seems just as likely that the proposals will merely postpone a second referendum (although it is difficult to predict how long it will take the SNP to think it will win).

What will happen until then?

In the meantime, we can discuss how further devolution might affect the discussions we have had so far. For example, some things don’t seem destined to change much, such as the lack of ‘new politics’ or participatory democracy, the pervasiveness of networks, the development of the ‘Scottish approach’, or the importance of central-local relations. Others might see some significant developments:

• The Scottish Parliament. If you think it is peripheral to the policy process now, think what will happen when the Scottish Government gets new responsibilities but the Parliament has the same paltry resources for scrutiny (see also McEwen, Petersohn and Swan).
• MLG and IGR. Nicola McEwen and Bettina Petersohn know more about this than me, and they go into (by drawing on relevant international comparisons) the kinds of issues that the UK and Scottish Governments will face when they develop a shared powers model. The biggest issue is that that there will be far more overlaps in policy responsibilities than before. Under the original settlement, their respective responsibilities were fairly clear. Now, they are expected to cooperate on issues such as taxation, social security, and the energy mix. There is also a weird-looking requirement for the actions of one government to have ‘no detriment’ on another, the effects of which we do not yet know.
• The Barnett formula. David Bell knows more about this than me, and he thinks that the new arrangements will place a great strain on the formula, partly because the new taxation arrangements give the Scottish Government more power to set its own budget (at least notionally) than rely on a block grant from the Treasury.
• It’s more difficult to work out the effect of its new responsibilities on tax and social security, but I predict that little will change (albeit in the knowledge that I am not known for my good predictions). Kirstein Rummery knows more about this subject than me. See her commentary on the Scottish Government’s budget and the longer term potential for major change.

See also: Special issue of Political Quarterly (introduced here) and regular CCC blog posts.

The role of HM Treasury and the ‘Barnett formula’ #POLU9SP

Q: why has the ‘Barnett formula’ endured for decades as a political solution despite being so heavily criticized?

A: it suits both governments because it turns potentially controversial funding negotiations into a routine and humdrum process that normally takes place out of the public spotlight.

Think back to our previous lecture which explained why IGR is so smooth and informal:

• the arrangements suit both governments even though one is more powerful (and even when headed by different parties)
• key actors, sometimes political parties but always civil servants, help smooth relations
• there are well-established routines to solve overlaps in responsibilities and ward off potential disputes

The ‘Barnett formula’ is one of the best examples: the Treasury is the more powerful actor, but it has long accepted the use of a formula which appears to entrench Scotland’s advantageous funding settlement within the UK. It has the power to change the way in which it distributes territorial funding, but no alternative policy offers enough of an economic or political benefit to make up for the fallout from the opposition in Scotland to a major reduction of Scottish Government funding.

But what is the Barnett formula?

Here is a quick description. There is a longer description (and a list of further reading) in Scottish Politics.

The Scottish budget, transferred by the UK Treasury, comprises two elements:

1. an initial block settlement based on historic spends, and
2. the Barnett formula to adjust spending in Scotland to reflect changing levels of spending in England.

The formula only relates to changes in the level of spending. It is based on an estimate of populations within the UK. Initially this was a 10–5–85 split for Scotland, Wales and England which suggested that Scotland would receive 10/85 of any increase in comparable spending for England by UK Government departments (or lose the same amount if spending fell). This comparability varies according to department. While some are almost fully devolved (e.g. Health, Education), others are partly devolved (e.g. Transport) and only the comparable spending will be applied to Scotland.

So, ‘Barnett consequentials’ (how much does the relevant Scottish Government budget change when spending for England changes?) are based on three estimates:

1. Scotland’s share of the UK population
2. The change in levels of spending of UK Government departments
3. The level of comparability in specific programmes.

However, note that a change in spending on, say, health in England does not mean a direct change in health spending in Scotland. Instead, the change is made to the overall Scottish Government budget, and the Scottish Government decides if it will follow the UK lead or not.

This final point is at the heart of a lot of futile debate on the extent to which Scottish Government spending on salient areas – such as the NHS – can/ does/ should rise at the same rate as spending rises in England because:

If the Barnett formula is working as allegedly intended it should not be possible for the Scottish Government to keep up (with a proportionate real rise in spending) without finding money from elsewhere.

What is the Barnett Formula allegedly supposed to do?

I say ‘allegedly’ because people have been piecing together the history of Barnett, and not everyone agrees on its primary function.

What we can say for sure is that – ‘all other things remaining equal’ (ceteris paribus) – the consequence of extra spending in England is extra spending in Scotland according to its estimated share of the population rather than its traditionally higher share of UK public expenditure (the latter is sometimes estimated at 20% per head higher than in England).

The latter is proportionally greater because Scotland’s initial block settlement produced much larger per capita spending than in England (‘per capita’ spend is the budget divided by the population). So, there should be significant convergence between spending in England and Scotland: the more spending there is, the smaller the gap in per capita spending.

Yet, the ‘Barnett squeeze’ didn’t happen as much or as quickly as we might expect because:

• The estimates are not accurate (England’s population is rising more quickly than Scotland’s)
• Spending doesn’t always go up
• The UK Government sometimes gives ad hoc funding to the Scottish Government without using the formula (‘formula bypass’)

Further, Scotland’s higher per capita spending is often maintained by UK Government spending that is not covered by the formula, in areas such as social security and agriculture.

Why has Barnett not been replaced by something more sensible?

The Barnett formula has stood the test of time despite repeated calls for its replacement. We can talk about two key explanations:

1. Agenda setting and incrementalism/ inertia. Imagine that both governments privately like the political advantages of the formula (although elected members often say something different in public) because (a) it reduces the need for heated negotiations by introducing a semi-autonomic routine, and (b) it might suit both audiences: you can tell an audience in Scotland that it helps maintain its financial position in the short term; you can tell an audience in England that it reduces Scottish advantage in the long term. There is little incentive for them to shift radically from a previously-negotiated settlement, or at least one that only attracts periodic attention.
2. The alternative is not easy. If you are going to change the system, it will produce winners and losers (and the losers may be more vocal). Ideally, you want to be sure that your alternative is demonstrably better. Maybe you even want to find a calculation that looks similarly technical and objective, so that it doesn’t look like you are making political choices to redistribute funding. Yet, no such objective calculation exists. Maybe the closest thing is a ‘needs assessment’ formula, but it suffers from three problems: a lack of agreement on the concept of need, or the criteria to use (let’s discuss some examples – free tuition fees, catholic schools), a lack of good information, and a lack of political will to go for the big change (or, a concern that the big change will tip the balance in favour of a Yes vote?)

What does this experience tell us about bigger issues of power and IGR?

Barnett is a good example of an effective IGR mechanism in the often-distinctive UK tradition: it helps maintain smooth governmental relations by using a routine measure to make big decisions. The Treasury has the power to change it, and to give the Scottish Government a smaller settlement, but it chooses to stick with a formula that suits both governments in important ways.

We can see a similar mix of power and flexibility in a broader discussion of their relationship:

• The Treasury still controls the size of the Scottish Government: how much is raised in taxation then passed on to the Scottish Government, and the extent to which the Scottish Government can borrow to invest.
• However, the Scottish Government has considerable power over how to spend its budget (particularly when compared with territorial governments in other countries).

When you put those statements together, you find some uncertainty about Scottish Government discretion:

• it has the power to spend, but most of it is effectively tied-up in existing spending decisions (although this would be true regardless of its power to raise money);
• it comes under partisan pressure to match Treasury decisions, particularly on higher NHS spending.

Further, the UK Government still makes the big decisions on how to deal with ‘austerity’ and, for example, how to reform social security spending.

In the next lecture, we can discuss how forthcoming constitutional changes may affect this relationship.

 

Intergovernmental relations and shared policymaking #POLU9SP

In the previous lecture we discussed multi-level governance and a tendency for policy responsibilities to overlap, even when they look separate on paper. In this lecture, we discuss how governments deal with the overlaps. The ‘take home’ message is that UK-Scottish Government relations have been generally informal and remarkably smooth, largely because they resolve potential disputes behind closed doors and have found a way to turn potentially controversial funding and legislative issues into dull routines.

To make sense of intergovernmental relations (IGR) in the UK, it helps to compare them with IGR in other countries. This comparative literature prompts us to ask the following questions:

Is the UK a unitary or union state?

Devolved territories have subordinate status, but the terms of the union protect (to some extent) some Scottish institutions (which ones?).

Can it be meaningfully compared with federal or quasi-federal states?

We can identify: the distribution of some legal, executive and fiscal powers to allow devolved territories a level of autonomy; ‘umpires’ to rule in disputes between levels of government (examples?); and territorial representation at the national level (examples?). However, UK devolution is asymmetric (in what three ways?) and it lacks a supreme constitution to protect subnational bodies.

What is the role of key organisations/ institutions?

Until 2007, UK and Scottish Labour party links were important (an issue that we can revisit when discussing ‘policy convergence’). Also note that the coordinating role of the executives is far more important in the UK than the role of parliaments or the courts.

How are issues generally resolved, and how often do governments resort to formal dispute resolution?

The short answers are ‘quietly’ and ‘not’.

The UK-Scottish Government has been remarkably smooth, when measured with reference to the number of high profile disputes:

• Guiding documents, such as the Memorandum of Understanding between the governments, and individual concordats between departments, reinforce a sense of IGR resolution through convention/ cultural practices.
• Formal mechanisms for dispute resolution, such as Joint Ministerial Committees, are used rarely and Scottish bills are not opposed by the UK Government (compare with the process in Wales).
• Instead, both governments have preferred to use ‘bilateral’ and less formal links.
• When policy overlaps involve legislation, the governments relied heavily on ‘Sewel motions’ or ‘legislative consent motions’ (LCMs), passed by the Scottish Parliament to allow Westminster to legislate on its behalf. Scottish ministers would identify expediency, heavily entangled responsibilities, the need to avoid loopholes, and the need to set up UK-wide public bodies, as reasons to pass LCMs. Or, the legislation would devolve more responsibilities to Scottish ministers.

What happens when each government is headed by a different party?

From 1999-2007, very few issues arose in public between the UK Labour government and Labour-led Scottish Government. A small number of exceptions, such as on free personal care, were perhaps linked to policy divergences promoted by the Liberal Democrats.

There were differences when each government has headed by a different party, such as when the SNP headed the Scottish Government from 2007, but not as many as you might associate with this image or my description of early expectations (p234):

Why were UK-Scottish Governmental relations so smooth from 1999-2007?

One reason is that the arrangements suited both governments: Labour Party links allowed them to keep issues in-house; civil servants were able to conduct negotiations out of public spotlight; and, the ‘Barnett formula’ (next lecture) and Sewel convention allowed them to deal with financial and legal issues routinely.

Another explanation is that the UK government is more powerful: the Scottish Executive struggled to get the UK to engage, and was reluctant to challenge UK authority. Although a focus on power generally dramatizes these innocuous IGR arrangements, their relationship on EU matters is instructive: the UK government saw EU affairs as reserved UK responsibilities, ‘rebuffed’ former First Minister Henry McLeish when he sought a stronger Scottish Government role (p134), and often ignored Scottish Government concerns (p100).

Why was there no ‘boom and bust up’ from 2007?

A lot of the same explanations still applied under SNP government. My article suggests that we can draw on ‘British policy style’ discussions to explain a ‘logic of negotiation’: imposition is costly for the UK and the SNP often adopts an ‘insider strategy’ (generally making reasonable demands, negotiating quietly, and accepting the imbalance of power). The SNP also supported the use of ‘Barnett’ implicitly (it argues for reform in public) and the Sewel convention explicitly:

Further, during minority SNP government, the more contentious issues between opposing parties – including the Scottish Government’s budget settlement, and the implications of a local income tax – played out in the Scottish Parliament, while the biggest bone of contention – a referendum on Scottish independence – had been delayed by opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament, not the UK Government.

Did Conservative-led UK Government make a difference?

A Tory government might be handy for the SNP’s electoral ambitions, and its favoured story on the need for independence, but Conservative ministers did not make it easy to portray them as aloof or top-down minded. Instead, David Cameron pursued a ‘respect’ agenda and gave his support to more regular formal meetings between UK and Scottish ministers via the JMC process. The SNP government has also been generally non-confrontational. Indeed, can you give me any examples of public disputes between the two governments?

Independence is the exception?

We might point to Scottish independence as the biggest and longest-running bone of contention between the SNP and Conservative or Labour governments. However, if you look at the way the referendum was designed and run, it has the hallmarks of negotiation and respect that we can identify in most other areas, including: Conservative government respect for the SNP’s mandate to hold a referendum, UK support to ensure the legality of the referendum and allow the Scottish Government to coordinate much of the process, and UK and Scottish Government negotiations on the wording and timing of the question.

Indeed, the UK/ Scottish process may become an international standard, or model for similar countries to follow.

In the next lecture, we will delve further into the Barnett formula, as one of the things that keeps IGR smooth, and then consider the likely effect of further constitutional change on these practices.

 

Scottish policymaking in the context of multi-level governance #POLU9SP

This is the first of two lectures in which we consider MLG, as the diffusion of power from central government to other governments and non-government actors, and IGR, as the ways in which those governments share power and cooperate. These concepts can represent two different ways to study the same thing: MLG often describes fluid and unpredictable policy processes, while IGR often focuses on formal powers, the role of institutions, and the resolution of disputes. Referring to MLG and IGR, the subsequent two lectures examine Scottish public expenditure (and the ‘Barnett formula’) and the likely effect of the new Scotland Act.

When I describe multi-level governance (MLG) in the UK, I contrast it with the ‘Westminster model’. The comparison allows us to identify a diffusion of power in two ways:

1. Vertically – at supranational, national, regional and local levels (hence multi-level).
2. Horizontally – shared between ministers/ government departments and many non-governmental and quasi-non-governmental organisations (hence governance rather than government).

An initial focus on the UK allows us to challenge (again) the idea that its policy process is ‘majoritarian’, in which power is concentrated at the centre, and governments tend to make policy in a ‘top down’ and uncompromising way. Our previous discussions of policy networks/ communities/ styles already helped us question this image and the idea that its political system contrasts with Scotland’s alleged ‘consensus democracy’. A focus on MLG reinforces this argument, by identifying a tendency of many governments to share power and policymaking responsibility with other actors in and out of government.

MLG also helps us understand the wider context of Scottish policymaking. We have already discussed the idea of ‘horizontal’ power diffusion by identifying the role of interest groups in territorial policy communities, and one aspect of ‘vertical’ diffusion by identifying:

• the links between a ‘Scottish approach to policymaking’ and new forms of governance and accountability, based on the Scottish Government sharing power with local public bodies and encouraging them to form new strategies with their stakeholders
• complexity theory and the idea of ‘emergence’ from local level activity.

So, imagine MLG as the formation of policy networks that span more than one level of government, and the ‘emergence’ of policies and practices from multi-level activity. It is important to identify which actors are responsible for those outcomes in theory, to inform discussions of accountability, but difficult to know who to blame in practice when there are blurry boundaries between the actors who make or influence policy.

As we discuss next week, this problem may be exacerbated by further constitutional change, which is built on a level of shared responsibility, between the UK and Scottish Government, not envisaged in the original devolution ‘settlement’.

Multi-level policymaking: the division of responsibilities

For now, let’s start with the original settlement, set out in the Scotland Act 1998, which stated which policy areas would remain reserved to the UK Government (why does it matter if the legislation sets out reserved or devolved responsibilities?). Reserved areas are in the left hand column, which allows us to work out the main responsibilities of the Scottish Government (which it inherited largely from the old Scottish Office – devolution did not prompt a major review of its responsibilities). In the middle are some examples of UK/ Scotland overlaps, followed by examples of policy issues that are devolved and ‘Europeanised’.

If we simply compare the left/ right columns, the divisions seem fairly clear. Indeed, compared to many other systems – in which, for example, national and regional governments might share control over healthcare or education – they are.

The ‘Europeanisation’ of policy

Yet, many policy areas were becoming controlled or influenced increasingly by the European Union as they were being devolved. Further, the UK Government is the Member State, with three main implications:

1. It is responsible for the implementation of EU directives across the UK, which gives it a monitoring role on Scottish policy in devolved areas.
2. It tends to treat the EU as an extension of foreign affairs/ international relations – a reserved issue – rather than a collection of policy areas which can be reserved or devolved.
3. It is difficult to consider constitutional change without taking into account key EU rules, in areas such as corporation tax and renewable energy obligations (next week).

Outside of the obvious areas, such as EU rules on free trade and the free movement of people, the most Europeanised and devolved areas tend to be in:

• Agriculture and fishing. The Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy are negotiated and set at the EU level, often with minimal Scottish Government involvement but with some discretion during implementation.
• Environmental regulation. Similarly, Scotland’s environmental policies begin with the need to be consistent with EU rules in areas such as water quality and environmental protection.

Then, there is a miscellany of EU advice and regulations with the potential to have a major impact on otherwise devolved policies. For example, the ‘working time directive’ (do you know the details?) has an impact on doctors’ working conditions, while the habitat directive impacts on planning processes. This is on top of a more general sense that EU rules on trade and the free movement of people have a major impact on any policy area.

The blurry boundaries between reserved and devolved issues

There are many examples of areas in which at least two levels of government are involved. In some cases, this potential for multi-level involvement produced uncertainty about how to act:

• In the very early years, Scottish ministers expressed uncertainty about their role in issues such as industrial policy and a register of sex offenders.
• The ‘smoking ban’ raised interesting issues about the ‘purpose test’ to determine who is primarily responsible for key policies. It is part of a larger set of tobacco control policy instruments produced by Scottish, UK, and EU policymakers.
• Scottish Parliament legislation to introduce a minimum unit price for alcohol has been delayed by court action (it is currently being considered by the ECJ).

In some cases, there were tensions about the overlaps of responsibilities:

• The Scottish Government’s policy on ‘free personal care’ for older people reduced many people’s entitlement to UK government social security payments. It faced similar issues when proposing a local income tax.
• The UK’s Home Office policy on ‘dawn raids’ on unsuccessful asylum seekers was carried out in Scotland by a devolved police force.

In others, an overlap of responsibilities seems inevitable, since many policy areas are ‘cross-cutting’; they involve many policy instruments and government departments:

• Fuel and child poverty are addressed with a mix of taxes, benefits, and public services.
• Cross-cutting UK initiatives – such as the New Deal and Sure Start – require a degree of cooperation with devolved public services.
• The Scottish Government’s ‘Fresh Talent’ initiative required Home Office approval.

In other words, overlaps are inevitable when any government tries to combine devolved discretion with national control. In the next lecture we can discuss how the UK and Scottish Governments dealt with these overlaps.

 

 

Localism, partnerships and new forms of governance beyond the centre #POLU9SP

Local government in Scotland is important. It employs 45% of the Scottish public sector workforce, (245,700 of the total 545,600), spends a similar proportion of the Scottish budget, is the main delivery body for key devolved policy areas (including education, social work, housing, leisure, planning, roads, and social inclusion/ justice), and is an often-influential partner in other areas, such as police, fire, mental health, and public health services.

Consequently, we often talk of an interdependent relationship between central and local government: local authorities enhance the legitimacy of Scottish Government policies by providing important policy advice, tailoring delivery to local areas, and supplying an additional electoral mandate; and, the Scottish Government largely determines the levels of legal, financial and political autonomy that they enjoy.

Sometimes, we also highlight a tense relationship regarding the levels of autonomy afforded to local authorities, measured in terms of the extent to which they are subject to (a) detailed legislation and regulation, and (b) limits to their ability to raise revenue and decide how their budget is spent.

Two images of central-local government relations in Scotland

The first, summed up in the phrase ‘Scottish approach’, discussed in the previous lecture, suggests that the Scottish Government devolves a meaningful level of authority to local authorities, which increasingly make policy in cooperation with their public sector partners and non-governmental stakeholders.

The second suggests that Scottish local authorities are subject to Scottish Government control, through financial and legal instruments.

You can see these images play out below, in a discussion and qualification of the devolution effect on central-local relations.

A key part of the first story is that things are better than they once were, either after 1999 or after 2007. To reinforce this image, we can refer to:

Post-1999 developments

Devolved central-local relations are often compared to the period of UK Conservative government (1979-97), in which central-local tensions arose following many central government reforms, including a broad challenge to the primacy attached to public sector delivery, and specific measures, including: the introduction of the ‘poll tax’ to limit local authority spending, ‘compulsory competitive tendering’ (the delivery of public services), the enforced sale of/ ‘right to buy’ (council housing), public/ private partnerships (e.g. to build schools); and, the reform of local government boundaries and functions (e.g. the 1996 reform which introduced 32 unitary Scottish local authorities).

In that context, there is some evidence of:

• a better central-local relationship in Scotland (than in the UK) before devolution, based on closer personal networks and a sense that some ‘wet’ Scottish Office ministers often tried to reduce the impact of reforms;
• a sense of common purpose, during the campaign for Scottish devolution between the leaders of local authorities and the parties which were to form the first Scottish Government (‘Scottish Executive’)

Both factors may have contributed to a ‘honeymoon period’ in which devolution enhanced or replaced previous relationships, the Scottish Government became more open and consultative, local authorities and COSLA became more involved in policy formulation, and this relationship helped produce reforms – such as the replacement of compulsory competitive tendering with ‘Best Value’, and the development of local government community planning powers – that suited local authorities.

However, many policies associated with the Thatcher government were maintained or extended under Labour (such as the ‘right to buy’ and PPP), the Scottish Government maintained control over most sources of local authority income and, although the Scottish Government used performance management in a less punitive way than the UK government, it still held local authorities to many short term targets (what about the introduction of STV in local elections – is it relevant to this discussion?). Opinions on the central-local relationship were mixed, and the idea of a partnership was often ‘aspirational’.

Post-2007 developments

Some accounts use the latter argument to suggest that most of the big changes only happened when the SNP entered government in May 2007, highlighting:

• The Scottish Government’s Concordat with COSLA in 2007, which suggests that the former will not seek to micromanage local authorities or use regulations, performance management, and funding to produce compliance with short term, specific proxy targets.
• A proposed reduction in 2007 – from 22% to 10% – of ‘ring-fenced’/’hypothecated’ funding (the proportion of local authority budgets which they have to spend in accordance with specific Scottish Government requirements).
• Alex Salmond signalling a ‘culture change in the relationship between central and local government in Scotland. The days of top-down diktats are over’ (p130).
• Former COSLA President Pat Watters talking in 2007 about local government now having greater responsibility and ‘the freedom and flexibility to respond effectively to local priorities’ (p130).
• The development of the ‘Scottish approach’

However, many of the same caveats apply: the Scottish Government still provides about 80% of local government budgets, it still has a major influence on the rate of local authority council tax (to ensure its ‘freeze’ since 2007), and its proposed local income tax would have increased its budgetary control.

Further, have a look at how some people in local government describe the new relationship:

• Current COSLA President David O’Neill in 2014, as chair of the Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy: ‘Over the decades, we’ve seen a culture in which more and more services and decisions been taken away from local communities and put into the hands of distant bureaucracies’
• The Improvement Service’s Mark McAteer: ‘Scotland continues to operate a largely centralised, top-down and de-localised local government system’. McAteer’s paper identifies an unusually low number of local authorities per head of population and high Scottish Government control over its budget, and suggests that low electoral turnout reflects low levels of local government power.

So, local government is important, and the Scottish Government tells an important story about its crucial role, as part of the ‘Scottish approach to policymaking’, while others tell a story of continued Scottish Government control and limited local government subsidiarity. We can discuss in the lecture which story seems most convincing.

Further reading: to combine our discussions of complexity theory and the limits to local government/ public sector discretion, see The language of complexity does not mix well with the language of Westminster-style accountability

 

 

The Scottish Government and the ‘Scottish approach’ to policymaking’ #POLU9SP

A ‘Scottish approach’ to policymaking can refer to two things. The first is an academic description of the ‘Scottish policy style’, in a lot of the academic literature, which describes the Scottish Government’s reputation for two practices:

1. A consultation style which is relatively inclusive and consensual (see previous lecture).
2. A ‘governance’ style which places unusually high levels of trust in public bodies such as local authorities.

The second is called the ‘Scottish Approach to Policymaking’ (SATP) by the Scottish Government. It largely describes its approach to ‘governance’, which developed from 1999 but appeared to change markedly in 2007 and 2013.

See Greer and Jarman for an interesting account of the period from 1999-2007, which I summarize here:

My summary of the post-2007 developments draws on accounts by the former and current Permanent Secretary (the most senior civil servant) of the Scottish Government: John Elvidge’s Northern Exposure and Peter Housden’s ‘This is us’.

The ‘Scottish Approach to Policymaking’

An early version of the ‘Scottish approach’ developed before 2007. Elvidge (2011: 31-5) describes a ‘Scottish model of government’, linked to the potential to exploit its relatively small size, and central position in a dense network of public sector and third sector bodies, to pursue ‘holistic’ government, in which ministers – and their equivalents in the civil service – had briefs which spanned traditional departmental divides and came together regularly to coordinate national strategies.

Elvidge (2011: 31) describes ‘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 target driven approach which characterised the conduct of the UK Government’ would not produce the major changes in policy and policymaking required to address major problems such as health and educational inequalities and low economic growth. Instead, they required:

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 (2011: 32).

Elvidge (2011: 32) suggests that this approach took off under the SNP-led Scottish Government, elected in May 2007, partly because his ideas on joined up government complemented the SNP’s:

manifesto commitments to: i) 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; ii) a reduced size of Cabinet, which was an expression of a commitment to an approach to Ministerial responsibilities that emphasised the collective pursuit of shared objectives over a focus on individual portfolios with disaggregated objectives.

By 2007, the ‘Scottish approach’ combined the pursuit of joined up government with the SNP’s ‘outcomes based approach to delivering the objectives of government’, a ‘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’ (2011: 34).

The Scottish Government introduced a government-wide policy framework, the National Performance Framework (NPF), based on a single ‘ten year vision’ and a shift towards measuring success in terms of often-long term outcomes. 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 in two main ways.

First, 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’:

1. Wealthier and Fairer – Enabling businesses and people to increase their wealth and more people to share fairly in that wealth.
2. Healthier – Helping people to sustain and improve their health, especially in disadvantaged communities, ensuring better, local and faster access to health care.
3. Safer and Stronger – Helping communities to flourish, becoming stronger, safer places to live, offering improved opportunities and a better quality of life.
4. Smarter. Expanding opportunities to succeed from nurture through to lifelong learning ensuring higher and more widely shared achievements.
5. Greener. Improving Scotland’s natural and built environment and the sustainable use and enjoyment of it.

These objectives are mapped onto sixteen ‘National Outcomes’ and fifty ‘National Indicators’.

Second, it works in partnership with the public sector to align organisational objectives with the NPF. In some cases, this involves public sector reform and/or some attempts at centralisation: it obliged non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs, or ‘quangos’) to align their objectives with the NPF, after reducing their number, and it created a single police force and single fire service.

In the case of local authorities, its approach was different. It required them to produce ‘Single Outcomes Agreements’ (SOAs), in partnership with their stakeholders (and public sector partners), but with local government discretion to determine the balance between a range of priorities as long as their outcomes were consistent with the NPF’s vision.

The Scottish Government reinforced this sense of discretion by signing a Concordat with COSLA which contained a package of Scottish Government aims, but also its agreement to halve the amount of ‘ring fenced’ budgets (from 22% to 11%) and reject a tendency to ‘micromanage’ local government – albeit within the context of a system in which the Scottish Government controls almost all of local authorities’ total budgets (we can discuss this in the next lecture).

Since 2013, the Scottish Government has sought to reinforce the ‘Scottish approach’ with reference to three broad principles:

1. Improvement. The pursuit of ‘improvement’ in public services, to help it deliver on its holistic government agenda, in partnership with stakeholders. For example, it has overseen the development of the ‘Early Years Collaborative’, in which the Scottish Government identifies promising policy interventions and asks practitioners to experiment with their own projects in their local areas. This approach is designed partly to address the idea that local policymakers are more likely to adopt interventions if they are developed locally and/ or tailored to local circumstances.
2. Assets. A focus on people’s ‘assets’ rather than their ‘deficits’. Housden (2014: 67-8) suggests that, ‘we look always to build on and strengthen the assets and resilience of individuals, families and communities. Community grant schemes and devolved budgets can build assets and stimulate local action and decision-making. Recovery programmes for those seeking to exit drug use look to draw on the resources and potential of those in recovery themselves to assist others on the journey’.
3. Co-production. Housden (2014: 67) suggests that, ‘we put a real premium on the idea of co-production, with services designed and delivered with service users and organisations. This ranges from self-directed care for elderly people and those managing chronic conditions or disabilities, to the networks of support for children with learning difficulties with parents and voluntary organisations at their heart’.

Overall, the ‘Scottish approach’:

• began as a broad idea about how to govern by consensus in a new era of devolved politics
• developed into a way to pursue: holistic government, an outcomes-based measure of policy success, greater local authority discretion in the delivery of national objectives, and several governance principles built primarily on localism and the further inclusion of service users in the design of public policy.

According to Elvidge and Housden, this approach contrasts markedly with UK policymaking and, in particular, the UK Labour Government’s approach from 1997 (as described by Greer and Jarman, above).

In the lecture, I will try to describe these developments and principles, and we can discuss the extent to which they are specific enough (in other words, not too vague, and specific to Scottish policymaking) to describe a distinctively ‘Scottish approach’. For example, don’t other bodies care about coproduction?

 

Pluralist democracy and the ‘Scottish policy style’: the role of ‘pressure participants’ such as interest groups #POLU9SP

A key theme of the course is that we can explain policymaking, in most political systems, with reference to ‘universal’ concepts such as policy networks. These concepts help us identify: (a) the policy processes shared by most systems, before we examine (b) how to best understand those processes in specific systems. For example, we can link closely, but recognize key differences in, descriptions of subsystems in the US and networks in the UK.

In Scottish politics, that kind of comparison tends to be with UK policymaking: can we identify the same basic processes, or did devolution prompt a ‘Scottish policy style’ that differs significantly from the ‘British style’?

While Box 8.1 highlights a ‘logic’ of policy communities that is common to Scottish and UK government, it does not suggest that their processes are identical. Rather, much of the literature recounts an important story, told by participants and policymakers in Scotland, that their ‘territorial policy communities’ have distinctive features. Some participants describe ‘cultural’ differences in consultation, which can relate to our discussions of ‘new politics’ and ‘consensus democracy’, or more practical factors such as Scotland’s size, the scale of the Scottish Government’s responsibilities, and its resources to make and fund policy. This takes place in a multi-level system in which it is often difficult – particularly for pressure participants*– to identify a Scottish process of policymaking, separate from developments at EU, UK, and local levels.

Devolution and new policy networks

Keating et al (2009: 54) use the term ‘territorial policy communities’ to describe the development of new networks in Scotland, prompted by the devolution of new responsibilities to the Scottish Government and significant levels of UK interest group devolution (or the proliferation of new Scottish groups). These new arrangements were characterised initially by:

• a period of adjustment, in which ministers and civil servants adapted to their new policymaking role and groups sought new opportunities or felt obliged to lobby Scottish political institutions
• ‘cognitive change’, in which policy problems became defined increasingly from a territorial perspective
• a new group-government dynamic, in which groups formed new relationships with their allies (and competitors).

Perhaps more importantly, groups increasingly follow a devolved policy agenda. Gone are the days of the old (pre-1999) Scottish Office, responsible primarily for policy implementation, and the tendency of groups to form coalitions to oppose or modify UK Conservative government policies at the margins. Now, groups respond to Scottish Government demands for new policy ideas, and often compete as well as cooperate with each other to draw the attention of that captive audience.   The evidence suggests that some groups addressed that task more quickly than others: some groups improved on links that were already partly established (in which areas?), some reinforced the links that they developed with the Labour government from 1997 (which ones?), some maintained dual UK and Scottish links, to reflect limited devolution in their areas (which groups?), and others took time to get over their opposition to devolution and find a clear role (which ones?). Devolution perhaps gave all groups more opportunities to engage, but this did not diminish a tendency to consult with ‘the usual suspects’.

Distinctive elements of the ‘Scottish policy style’: a new policymaking culture?

Box 8.3 describes interest group perceptions of policymaking in the early years of devolution. They describe their shift of attention to Scottish institutions, and a sense that they generally enjoyed regular and meaningful access to policymakers in the Scottish Government and politicians in the Scottish Parliament (although, do their links to MSPs matter much if the Scottish Parliament is often peripheral to policymaking?). Many groups also describe this process as better than the UK equivalent. This is the sort of statement that we should be wary of: how might we explain it, beyond simply saying that they are right? Some possibilities include:

• Many groups, which supported devolution, ‘would say that, wouldn’t they?’
• Many describe UK processes of which they have limited experience.
• Many describe their experiences of consultation, not influence.
• Some describe their greater ability to compete with other groups in Scotland, compared to their experiences in the UK.
• Some conflate their experiences with their attitudes to a Conservative UK government, which they opposed, and Labour-led Scottish Government, which they supported.
• Not all groups reported positive experiences.

Still, we should not ignore completely the general feeling that something has changed, for the better.

Explanations for the Scottish policy style: new politics or pragmatism?

The most immediate and obvious explanation for these developments is ‘new politics’: devolution went hand in hand with the expectation that politicians and policymakers would open their doors, and their minds to new ideas. Politics would be more participative and deliberative, and policymaking would be more open and based on more regular and meaningful consultation.

However, consider three practical reasons for Scottish Government policymaking to differ from its UK counterpart:

1. Scotland’s size, and the scale of Scottish Government responsibilities, allows closer personal relationships to develop between key actors. You can get all the key players in one room.
2. The Scottish Government has limited resources, prompting civil servants to rely more – for information, advice, and support – on experts outside of government and the actors who will become responsible for policy implementation.
3. Devolution went hand in hand with a significant increase in Scottish public expenditure.   It is easier to generate goodwill or consensus on policy innovation and greater investment than on how to cut public services.

Further, we can discuss another possibility next week, in relation to the ‘Scottish Approach’: if the Scottish Government was relatively keen to delegate policymaking responsibility to local public bodies, maybe it moved the trickier decisions to other policymaking venues. Maybe everyone gets together at the national level to support a vague strategy, only to struggle to influence or secure agreement on its delivery.

How do groups try to influence Scottish policymaking in a multi-level system?

In weeks 6-7, we can discuss the extent to which the idea of a ‘Scottish policy style’ makes sense when so many policies affecting Scotland take place at other levels of government. This complication provides a major dilemma for interest groups seeking influence but recognizing the need to maintain multiple channels of access. How do they do it?

• Some groups only have the resources to lobby the Scottish Government, and rely on their networks with other groups to lobby UK and EU bodies. Others are regional branches of UK organizations.
• Much depends on the policy issue or area. For example, major banks, businesses, and unions maintain Scottish links but focus their attention largely on issues – such as macroeconomic policy, export regulations, and employment laws – reserved to the UK Government and/ or influenced by EU bodies. Groups seeking influence over environmental or agricultural policy recognise that they are heavily ‘Europeanised’. This leaves key examples of devolved areas, such as education, health, local government, and housing, in which groups are most likely to direct their attention primarily to the Scottish Government.

In some cases, such as tobacco and alcohol control, policy consists of a series of measures produced by Scottish, UK, and EU bodies:

Finally, next week we can consider the effect of the ‘Scottish Approach’ on interest groups. What will they do if the face the need to shift their attention from 1 Scottish Government to 32 local authorities and their partners?

*Note: ‘Pressure participants’ is a term used by Jordan et al (2004) partly to show us that terms such as ‘pressure groups’ or ‘interest groups’ can be misleading because: (a) they conjure up a particular image of a pressure group which may not be accurate (we may think of unions or membership groups like Greenpeace); and (b) the organisations most likely to lobby governments are businesses, public sector organisations such as universities and other types of government.

New politics: a central or peripheral role for the Scottish Parliament? #POLU9SP

In many ways, the Scottish Parliament became the alternative to ‘old Westminster’ described initially by the Scottish Constitutional Convention. Its electoral system is more proportional, it contains a larger proportion of women, it has a more ‘family friendly’ and constituency friendly design, and it has no House of Lords.

In other ways, Holyrood became part of the ‘Westminster family’ (to reflect the UK Government’s influence on its design). The executive resides in the legislature, it produces and amends the vast majority of legislation, and it generally controls parliamentary business with a combination of a coalition (1999-2007) or single party (2011-16) majority and a strong party ‘whip’. Scottish parliamentary committees have performed a similar scrutiny function to Westminster. Holyrood is a hub for participatory and deliberative democracy, but more in theory than practice. The Scottish Parliament enjoyed minority government from 2007-11, but this made far less of a difference than you might expect.

Overall, it is a body with unusually strong powers in relation to comparable legislatures such as Westminster, not the Scottish Government. It is often peripheral to the policy process. Further, two aspects of devolution may diminish its role in the near future: further devolution from the UK to Scotland, and from the Scottish Government to local public bodies.

Distinctive elements of the Scottish Parliament

The Scottish Parliament’s electoral system, mixed member proportional, combines 73 constituency seats elected by a plurality of the vote, plus 56 regional seats elected using the D’Hondt divisor:

You can see its more-but-not-completely proportional effect in Scottish Parliament electoral results since 1999. Since there are more constituency than regional seats, the system still exaggerates the size of the party which dominates the plurality vote: Scottish Labour in 1999, 2003, and 2007, and the SNP in 2011.

Still, from 1999-2011, the system had the desired effect. In 1999 and 2003, Labour was the largest party but it required support from the Scottish Liberal Democrats to form a coalition majority government. In 2007, the SNP was the largest party by one seat, and it formed a minority government. Only in 2011 did we see a single party SNP majority built on approximately 45% of the vote. This is likely to rise in 2016.

The representation of women

There was a clear devolution effect on the election of women in the Scottish Parliament. At its peak in 2003, 40% of MSPs were women (35% from 2011) while 18% of MPs were women (29% from 2015). This level relied heavily on Scottish Labour which, in 2003, had 50 seats, of which 28 (56%) were women.

Family and constituency friendly working

The Scottish Parliament has restricted working hours, with committee and plenary business restricted largely to business hours Tuesday to Thursday, which provides more opportunity for MSPs to (for example) combine work commitments with caring responsibilities than MPs in Westminster, which conducts business on more days and longer days. Holyrood was also designed to allow MSPs to spend a meaningful amount of time in their constituencies. We can discuss in the lecture how you think MSPs actually use their time.

A unicameral Scottish Parliament with significant powers

The SCC’s rejection of an unelected House of Lords did not come with a desire for an elected second chamber. Instead, the Scottish Parliament’s unicameral system is designed to make up for the lack of a ‘revising chamber’ by ‘front loading’ legislative scrutiny: specific committees consider the principles of a bill before it is approved, in principle, in plenary (stage 1); and, they amend a bill (stage 2) before the final amendments in plenary (stage 3).

Many of these specialist committees are permanent (such as the audit committee). All committees combine the functions of two different kinds of Westminster committee – Standing (to scrutinise legislation) and Select (to monitor government departments, including, for example, the ability to oblige ministers to report to them). They also have the ability to hold agenda setting inquiries, monitor the quality of Scottish Government consultation before they present bills to Parliament, and initiate legislation (the process for MSPs to propose bills is also simpler).

The idea is that committees become specialist and business-like (leave your party membership at the door) and their members become experts, able to hold the government to account in a meaningful way, and provide alternative ideas or legislation if dissatisfied with the government’s response.

Part of the Westminster family

Yet, the operation of the Scottish Parliament is similar to Westminster in key respects. It is set up to allow the Scottish Government to govern and for the Parliament to scrutinise its policies. It does not have the resources to act routinely as an alternative source of legislation or to routinely set the agenda with inquiries. When engaged in scrutiny, it relies heavily on the Scottish Government for information, has few resources to monitor the details of public sector delivery, and tends to focus on, for example, broad strategies and principles. Turnover is high among MSPs, who struggle to generate subject-based expertise. The party whip is strong, and a government with a majority of MSPs tends to dominate both committee and plenary proceedings.

This imbalance of resources between government and parliament is reflected in key measures of activity: the government tends to produce and amend the vast majority of legislation. Committees had a clear influence on some bills (can you give me some examples?), and MSPs have passed some of their own (what were the most important?), but we might say something similar about Westminster.

Did coalition, minority, and single party government make a difference?

The Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition operated, from 1999-2007, in a way that you might associate with a majority party in Westminster. It dominated the parliamentary arithmetic, produced and amended most legislation, and won almost all votes. Both parties signed up to a ‘partnership agreement’ that set a 4-year policy agenda each term, and the whip was remarkably strong (more so than in Westminster). There were many examples of cooperative working between government and parliament, bills produced by MSPs, and agenda setting inquiries – particularly during the initial ‘honeymoon’ period – but these cases should be seen in the overall context of a fairly traditional relationship.

Minority government changed things, often significantly, but not as much as you might expect. Crucially, it was unable to gain support for a bill to hold a referendum on independence (doesn’t that seem like such a long time ago?). It also had insufficient support for its legislative plans to reform local taxation and introduce a minimum unit price on alcohol (what has happened in these areas since then?). It lost more parliamentary votes, albeit mostly in relation to ‘non binding’ motions (although it responded in a major way to the motion to fund the Edinburgh trams project), and had to think harder about how to gain the support of at least one other party.

On the other hand, it continued to produce and amend the bulk of legislation. It was also able to pursue many of its aims without legislation or significant parliamentary consent (such as capital finance and public service reforms). The Scottish Parliament did not pursue a new role: it produced few memorable inquiries and very few bills.

So, the notable effect of single party majority government should be seen in this context. Clearly, the SNP has the ability to influence parliamentary proceedings in a way not enjoyed by any other single party in the Scottish Parliament’s history. However, there was not a fundamental shift of approach or relationship following the shift from minority to majority government. The government continues to govern, and the parliament maintains a traditional scrutiny role with limited resources and minimal willingness to do things differently (we can explore this point in more depth in the lecture).

Future developments: will greater devolution diminish the Scottish Parliament’s role?

In a Political Quarterly article, I identify two aspects of devolution that may diminish the Scottish Parliament’s role in the near future:

1. further devolution from the UK to Scotland will see the Scottish Parliament scrutinise more issues with the same paltry resources
2. further devolution from the Scottish Government to local public bodies will see the Scottish Parliament less able to gather enough information to perform effective scrutiny.

Both issues highlight the further potential for the Scottish Parliament, heralded as a body to ‘share power’ with the government and ‘the people’, to play a peripheral role in the policy process. To all intents and purposes, the new Scotland Act will devolve more responsibilities to Scottish ministers, without a proportionate increase in parliamentary resources to keep tabs on what ministers do with those powers.

Perhaps more importantly, the Scottish Parliament can only really keep tabs on broad Scottish Government strategies. What happens when it devolves more policymaking powers to local public bodies, such as the health boards that give limited information to committees and the local authorities that claim their own electoral mandate? Who or what will the Scottish Parliament hold to account on behalf of the public?

Further reading: this final point about the tensions between traditional notions of democratic accountability and new forms of public service delivery are not unique to Scotland.

New forms of politics and policymaking in Scotland: participatory and deliberative democracy resurgent? #POLU9SP

When Neil McGarvey and I wrote the first edition of Scottish Politics, we devoted a full chapter (11) to definitions of democracy and post-1999 developments in Scottish democracy. In the second edition, we removed that chapter because there was nothing new to say.

Although the principles behind phrases such as ‘deliberative’ and ‘participative’ democracy are important, I felt that they often represented empty rhetoric in Scotland. In Scotland, we talked a lot about doing things differently, but produced political practices that would not seem out of place in Westminster.

Then came the debate on Scottish independence: the 85% turnout to vote Yes or No, the sense that Scotland was now – or again? – a hub for deliberation and high participation, and a new Scottish Government agenda on translating that participation into something longer term, to produce examples of participatory policymaking.

So, maybe we will have a chapter on participation in the 3^rd edition. I doubt it. I reckon Scottish politics will soon revert to its old self.

I base this expectation on a logical argument about the relationship between representation and other forms of democracy, the previously too-high expectations for new Scottish politics, and a sense of unfulfilled expectations in the Scottish experience since devolution.

What can compete with representative (and pluralist) democracy?

In Scottish Politics (pp220-4), we argue that ‘new politics’ involves reforms to four kinds of democracy:

Representative democracy

This will remain the most important democratic mechanism because ‘direct democracy at a national level would involve too many participants with too little time to devote to politics, and insufficient knowledge to apply to the wide range of responsibilities of the modern state. The main alternative is representative or indirect democracy in which popular sovereignty is expressed through regular elections of representatives acting on their behalf’.

We lose sight of its importance when thinking about other forms of democracy as somehow replacing representative. Instead, we should treat any other activity as a bonus, and consider how it fits in to the bigger picture.

In this category, the most important developments relate to:

(1) the more proportional electoral system – mixed member proportional (MMP) – for the Scottish Parliament (previous lecture)

(2) successful attempts by some parties to make sure that MSPs better represent the social background of the population than their MP counterparts. I say ‘some parties’ but note from Scottish Politics – and these articles by Keating & Cairney, and Cairney, Keating & Wilson – that only Scottish Labour achieved gender parity among their MSPs (these issues are explored in greater depth by scholars such as Kenny and MacKay). In other ways, the experience is more mixed. The Scottish Parliament is often no better at ‘microcosmic’ representation in other key categories – such as ethnicity, disability, and sexuality – and it has its own version of a ‘political class’ divorced from the ‘real world’ outside of politics.

Pluralist Democracy

This category is the most relevant to the course, since it relates to the pervasiveness of ‘policy communities’ or networks in policymaking. Elections produce mass participation every 4 or 5 years, while policymaking and delivery happens all the time. Policymakers and ‘pressure participants’ such as interest groups form relationships, build up trust, and engage regularly with each other. They discuss the principles and details of policies in a way that few actors can do without the specialist knowledge and time to engage.

In this category, the most important developments relate to:

(1) a vague sentiment, expressed by the SCC, to avoid speaking to the ‘usual suspects’ and, instead, to broaden consultation to many participants (an aim explored in the literature on the ‘Scottish policy style’). This sentiment was re-stated by the SNP government in 2007 as an attempt to consult beyond the ‘establishment’. In both cases, it is a soundbite that ignores the logic of consulting with the most interested, expert, and active groups (a point explored well by Jordan and Stevenson, which Neil and I discuss in chapter 11).

(2) A role for Scottish Parliament committees to oversee the quality of Scottish Government consultation, and take action – in relation to draft legislation – if it is not satisfied. I think that 2 committees have used this power in 16 years, but what does this statistic signify: that committees don’t have many powers in practice, or that the Scottish Government consults so well that the power only needs to be used rarely?

Participatory and deliberative democracy

For me, initiatives to increase participatory and deliberative democracy should be seen in this initial context of representative and pluralist democracy. Why start with a focus on initially exciting, but ultimately disappointing, new forms of participation without first stating that most participation is through elections and most deliberation in networks?

The SCC got the ball-of-hype rolling by declaring that Scotland has, ‘consistently declared through the ballot box the wish for an approach to public policy which accords more closely with its collective and community traditions’. We can talk in the lecture about how well substantiated such claims are.

Perhaps more importantly, the SCC did not design the details of devolution. So, while we may wonder what it might have come up with, we can say with greater certainty that the most important developments relate to:

(1) A Scottish Civic Forum to act as a new forum for participation and deliberation among a self-selecting public. It ran from 1999-2006. Well-established interest groups described it as a ‘talking shop’ and did not use it (they had their own access to government), but some community groups and individuals did. Yet, it was difficult to get many people involved (particularly in regional events) and even more difficult to feed its reports into government and parliamentary processes.

(2) A petitions process coordinated by the Scottish Parliament. See Chris Carman’s report and journal article on this. My take is that, although the petitions process gives people a way to engage in politics and, in a very small number of cases, set the parliament’s or government’s agenda on one or two issues, it is peripheral to the policy process.

(3) A wider sense that a powerful Scottish Parliament would become the hub for such initiatives and, through regular debate, become the main arena for public deliberation (see next lecture, but don’t get your hopes up).

Did we revisit those expectations during the debate on Scottish independence?

No, not really. Instead, we saw some interesting attempts to generate interest in participatory and deliberative forms of democracy beyond government and parliament – see ERS Scotland’s Democracy Max, and my take on it – but without meaningful ‘ownership’ of those initiatives by government or parliament. For example, have a look at the Scottish Government’s White Paper on Scottish independence and see what you can spot.

For me, the most telling part of this limited debate was the reference, by advocates of reform, to phrases like ‘politics is broken’ in 2014 when the same phrases were used to push forward political reforms in Scotland from 1999. This sense of déjà vu gives you an indicator of how far the ‘new Scottish politics’ has changed practices in Scotland.

What are the prospects for new forms of participation?

For me, deliberative and participatory politics represents the personal equivalent of things that I would like to do if I had the time. I have a list of colleagues that I’d like to work with more, and I have a vague desire to play a round of golf before I die. At the same time, in most cases, I know that I will never have the time. Indeed, when you care about something enough, you make the time.

To put it another way, when you don’t have the time or enthusiasm for something, it might be better just to stop pretending that a vague aim might pan out one day. It just gets in the way of a more meaningful discussion of what’s actually happening while we pretend that loads of people are participating in new ways of doing politics in Scotland.

Other opinions are available

There are people who know more about these things than me, or are younger and more optimistic about life. For example, Oliver Escobar is doing work on this topic as part of What Works Scotland, and his PhD is here. You might also bump into Peter Matthews or Vikki McCall on the other side of campus and ask them what they are up to.

Devolution and ‘new politics’ in Scotland: the implications for policymaking #POLU9SP

The phrases ‘new Scottish politics’ or ‘new politics’ should be understood with reference to ‘old Westminster’. They represented important reference points for the ‘architects of devolution’, or the reformers keen to present devolution as a way to transfer policymaking responsibilities and reform political practices.

These aims can be associated with two documents specific to Scotland. The first is the Scottish Constitutional Convention’s (1995) Scotland’s Parliament: Scotland’s Right, which made a general case for political reform:

the coming of a Scottish Parliament will usher in a way of politics that is radically different from the rituals of Westminster: more participative, more creative, less needlessly confrontational.

The second is the Consultative Steering Group’s (1998) Shaping Scotland’s Parliament, which designed the operation of the Scottish Parliament with regard to four key principles: ‘power sharing’, ‘accountability’, ‘equal opportunities’, and ‘openness and participation’.

However, I’ll show you that the debate links to a broader distinction between ‘majoritarian’ and ‘consensus’ democracy.

This focus on new political behaviour was an important reference point for politicians and commentators in the early years of devolution. Now, you don’t hear it so much. Yet, it gives us a reference point, to highlight limited progress towards ‘new politics’ and identify continuities in politics and policymaking despite these expectations for novelty.

In particular, I’ll show you, in a series of lectures, that Scottish devolution came with a set of measures combining new and ‘old Westminster’ elements, and it soon became a political system that would not look out of place in the ‘Westminster family’. Then, we can note that the slow or limited progress of new politics did not feature prominently in the debate on Scottish independence. Although the previous debate on constitutional change gave advocates a major opportunity to pursue political reforms, the independence debate did not. Finally, we can discuss the overall implications for policymaking: did the new politics agenda change how people make policy in Scotland?

From a ‘majoritarian’ to a ‘consensus’ democracy?

When you read some of the literature describing new Scottish politics as an alternative to old Westminster politics, note how similar it sounds to Lijphart’s discussion of majoritarian and consensus democracies. Neil McGarvey and I summarise Lijphart’s argument in Scottish Politics (see also my co-authored comparisons with the UK, Sweden, and Switzerland):

(click on them to make them bigger)

These discussions suggest that, for many commentators, ‘Westminster’ represents an archetypal centralised political system with an adversarial and top-down political culture. This is an image that we should examine critically throughout the course rather than take for granted.

For now, note the link between the formalised rules to govern behaviour, such as on the style of election or the division of powers between organisations, and the informal rules or ‘cultures’ that they are alleged to promote. In particular, note that we might hesitate to expect that a shift in the voting system, from plurality to proportional, will necessarily prompt a major shift in political culture.

Scottish politics: combining new and ‘old Westminster’ elements

‘New politics’ is a meaningless phrase without a clear definition or reference to specific objectives. In Scottish politics, you can take your pick from quite a long list of ‘old Westminster’s’ alleged failings (the next section is in pages 12 and 13 of the 1st ed of Scottish Politics):

‘Electoral system – the first-past-the-post system exaggerates majorities and excludes small parties. It tends to result in a majority which, combined with a strong party system, ensures that one party dominates proceedings.

Executive dominance – this ‘top-down’ system, in which power is concentrated within government, is not appropriate for a Scottish system with a tradition of civic democracy and the diffusion of power. In Westminster, the centre not only has the ability for force legislation through (and ignore wider demands), but also to dominate the resources devoted to policy. Parliament does not possess the resources to hold the executive to account.

Adversarial style – most discussions in Westminster take place in plenary sessions (the whole House sits together) with a charged partisan atmosphere. There is insufficient scope for detailed and specialist scrutiny in an atmosphere conducive to consensual working practices. This extends to committees – the partisan nature of politics undermines real scrutiny and there are limited resources to investigate or monitor departments. Given the distinction between select and standing committees, there may be a problem of coordination and a lack of potential for long-term consensual styles to emerge.

Too much power is vested in the House of Lords – an unelected and unrepresentative second chamber.

Although the government may consult with interest groups, this tends to be with the ‘usual suspects’. This reliance on the most powerful and well resourced groups (such as big business) reinforces the concentration of power in a ruling class.

Since power is concentrated at the centre there are limited links between state and civic society. Outside of the voting process, there are limited means for ‘the people’ to influence government.

Parliamentary overload – Parliament is too focused on scrutinizing government legislation. This leaves MPs with too little time to devote to their constituencies.

Parliament as a whole does not reflect the people that elect it in terms of microcosmic representation. There is a particular lack of women in Parliament as well as a tendency for MPs to be drawn from a ruling class’.

These deficiencies would therefore be addressed with a number of aims:

A proportional electoral system with a strong likelihood of coalition and bargaining between parties.

A consensual style of politics with a reduced role for party conflict.

Power-sharing rather than executive dominance.

A strong role for committees to initiate legislation, scrutinize the activity of the executive and conduct inquiries

Fostering closer links between state and civic society through parliament (e.g. with a focus on the right to petition parliament and the committee role in obliging the executive to consult widely)

Ensuring that MSPs have enough time for constituency work by restricting business in the Scottish Parliament to three days per week.

Fostering equality in the selection of candidates and making the Scottish Parliament equally attractive to men and women’.

Why did so few people discuss ‘new politics’ during the independence referendum?

In this lecture, I’m going to ask what you think of this list: how many of these aims do you think have been fulfilled? For example, is the Scottish Parliament more representative in terms of social background?

We can discuss briefly why you think that an evaluation of devolution, and a discussion of further political reform, did not seem to be a central feature of the independence referendum debate. Did most people assume that a Yes vote was – yet again – a rejection of ‘Westminster politics’ without thinking about the extent to which it was different from Holyrood politics? Or, if it didn’t come up much, what were people talking about instead?

We can then go into some detail on participation, the role of the Scottish Parliament, and ‘pluralist democracy’ in subsequent lectures.

What can we conclude about the distinctiveness of Scottish policymaking?

Finally, we will come back to the main theme or guiding question of the course: what difference do these things make to policymaking in Scotland?

In particular, let’s see what you think of these two arguments:

1. The argument specific to Scotland. Despite these hopes for greater ‘power sharing’ between the government, parliament, and ‘the people’, Scottish government largely operates in the same way as UK government. Most policy is processed by governments who consult with ‘pressure participants’ such as interest groups.
2. The more general argument. There is a ‘universal’ logic to this kind of policymaking in majoritarian and consensus democracies. Although they look different, they engage in very similar policy processes.

How to present policy analysis to many audiences #POLU9SP

This is the only week in which I will encourage you to find advice on policy analysis by using a search engine like Google. However, you need to do it with a critical eye. You will find two kinds of advice, only one of which is useful in a straightforward way:

1. Most of the advice will tell you to be concise, to keep it short for a busy audience, readable, to minimise jargon, and up-to-date, to give the impression of comprehensive research. This advice is sound.
2. Some will get you to organise the advice as if the policy process were ordered into a series of discrete stages, akin to a policy cycle. This advice can be problematic.

A key message of this course is that policy processes are more like complex systems than ordered cycles. Therefore, good policy analysis should reflect on policymaking as much as policy. There is no point in coming up with a well-researched analysis of a problem and a brilliant solution if, for example, you recommend it to someone without the willingness or ability to pay attention to it or use it.

We can reinforce this point with reference to the previous lecture’s focus on 5 key concepts common to policy theories:

1. There are many actors involved in policymaking, at multiple levels. Therefore, you shouldn’t assume that you can make a recommendation effectively by only speaking to one policymaker or organisation, or only seeing the problem through their eyes.
2. Many ‘institutions’ have their own ‘standard operating procedures’ or rules which take time to understand and influence.
3. Many policymakers or departments have a well-established or powerful clientele which you should take into account.
4. Your analysis might be a quick response to major social change or a key event, not a process in which you have years to plan.
5. Your analysis may be more persuasive if couched in a language that tends to dominate discussion or with reference to the entrenched beliefs of policymakers or key participants.

Or, we can make the point with reference to the implications of complexity theory, discussed in the last lecture:

• In complex systems, it is unwise to expect ‘law-like behaviour’; a policy that was successful in one context may not have the same effect in another.
• Policymaking systems are difficult to control and analysts should be prepared for the possibility that their policy interventions do not have the desired effect. Governments may be learning that they cannot simply make a policy and expect successful implementation by using a top-down, centrally driven policy strategy.
• Policymaking systems or their environments change quickly. Therefore, organisations must learn and adapt quickly.

Complexity, the Scottish approach, and policy analysis

The advice that tends to come from complexity studies is generally consistent with the ‘Scottish approach’ that we have begun to discuss: rely less on short term and rigid targets, in favour of giving local organisations more freedom to learn from their experience and adapt to their rapidly-changing environment; encourage trial-and-error projects that can provide lessons, or be adopted or rejected, relatively quickly; and, set broad or realistic parameters for success and failure. However, policymakers are also under pressure to act to solve emerging problems and take responsibility for national strategies.

This context makes policy analysis tricky: you want to recognise the ways in which governments understand their policymaking task, and seek to operate for the long term, but also the pressures they are under to act quickly and take control.

Bardach’s 8 steps

One text which tries to combine policy analysis with a recognition of policymaking context is Eugene Bardach’s A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis. His steps to policy analysis provide one (but not the only) way to structure your coursework in a way that combines empirical analysis and political awareness:

1. ‘Define the problem’ involves the selective use of information (and eye-catching statistics), ideology, and persuasion, to help your problem compete with others.
2. ‘Assemble some evidence’ involves ‘hustling’ relevant data in an efficient way.
3. ‘Construct the alternatives’ involves generating politically feasible policy solutions.
4. ‘Select the criteria’ involves recognising the political nature of policy evaluation, which is influenced by the measures you choose to determine success.
5. ‘Project the outcomes’ involves predicting only relevant outcomes; the ones that key actors care about (such as cost savings or value for money).
6. ‘Confront the trade-offs’ can involve working out how much of a bad service policymakers will accept to cut costs.
7. ‘Decide’ involves looking at your case to see if it is persuasive.
8. ‘Tell your story’ involves tailoring your case to the biases of your audience. A policy analysis is not for everyone. It is a case made to a specific audience, or several stories for different audiences.

Examples in Scotland

You should think about possible examples as soon as possible, and we can discuss your ideas in lectures this week and tutorials in week 3. Possible examples include:

• Why and how would you introduce more class testing in compulsory education? In this case, you could identify the relevance of the Scottish system of education, the moves in the 1990s to reject testing, and the role and influence of education unions or the teaching profession, and weigh these factors against the need to be seen to be responding to things like a perceived decline in pupil attainment and major inequalities in attainment.
• Can you make a case for private sector delivery in the Scottish NHS? The NHS was a key feature of the independence debate. Would it be feasible for any party to propose more private sector delivery? If only the Conservatives would try, how would you recommend they do it?
• How would you structure your advice on fracking to the current SNP-led Scottish Government?

The coursework

It will be difficult for you to reflect on all of these factors in each piece of coursework, particularly since the blog needs to be eye-catching and the policy analysis needs to be short. However, you will have more space to explain your reasoning in the oral presentation and explore the politics of policymaking, and explain policy change, in the longer essay. This combination of exercises will, I hope, give you the chance to communicate similar information to different audiences, and reflect on how you do it.

Key theories in policymaking: how to explain what is going on in Scotland #POLU9SP

This is quite a long read and I will likely spread the discussion over more than one lecture. In this post I provide the ‘universal’ concepts to consider, and we can discuss in the lecture how they apply specifically to Scottish policymaking.

In week 1, we discussed the concept of ‘bounded rationality’ and theories which explore its implications. What happens when policymakers do not have the ability to gather all relevant information and make policy in an orderly way? They focus on a small number of issues and ignore or delegate the rest, their attention lurches from issue to issue, they make quick and often emotional decisions, and they are susceptible to persuasion and simple stories which exploit their emotions and biases and reinforce their beliefs.

We then discussed the ‘universal’ and territorial aspects of such theories: all policymakers face these limitations, but a Scottish frame of reference influences the kinds of issues which receive most attention and the stories that gain most traction.

So far, our conceptual focus has been on the role of key individuals: the policymakers in charge, and the actors who seek influence. This week, we extend the analysis to the ‘environments’ or ‘systems’ in which they operate. Most theories combine this dual focus on:

1. the cognitive limits of policymakers and the ways in which they think, and
2. the conditions under which they make choices, including: the rules they follow, the networks in which they participate, the socioeconomic context in which they operate, and their deeply held beliefs.

There are too many relevant concepts and theories to cover in one lecture, and I wouldn’t expect you to become familiar with all of them by the end of the year (in fact, it would be better to have an inside-out knowledge of one).

Instead, as an introduction to the study of policymaking, we can discuss the concepts that most theories have in common, and look at one example of a theory – complexity theory – which can be used to consolidate several discussions.

Key questions in policy theory

These concepts can be turned into the questions we should ask when we try to understand and explain the environment in which ‘boundedly rational’ policymakers make choices:

• Actors. Which actors are involved in policymaking, and at what level of government do they operate?

This is not an easy question to answer if we accept the need to focus on more than just the elected people in ministerial posts. There may be thousands of actors involved in policymaking, and ‘actors’ is a very broad term which includes individuals or organisations, including private companies, interest groups and governments bodies.

A common argument in policy theory is that we have witnessed a shift since the early post-war period, characterised by centralized and exclusive policymaking, towards a fragmented multi-level system involving a much larger number of actors.

• Institutions. What rules or ‘standard operating procedures’ have developed within policymaking organisations and how do they influence the development of policy?

The term ‘institution’ is often used loosely to describe important organisations such as governments or legislatures. Really, it refers to the rules, ‘norms’, and other practices that influence policymaking behaviour.  Some rules are visible or widely understood, such as constitutions or the ‘standing orders’ of parliaments. Others are less visible – the ‘rules of the game’ in politics, or organisational ‘cultures’ – and may only be understood following in-depth study of particular organisations.

These rules develop in different ways in many parts of government, prompting us to consider what happens when many different actors develop different expectations of politics and policymaking.  For example, it might help explain a gap between policies made in one organisation and implemented by another. It might cause government policy to be contradictory, when many different organisations produce their own policies without coordinating with others. Or, governments may contribute to a convoluted statute book by adding to laws and regulations without thinking how they all fit together. Such problems may be magnified when policymaking is multi-level.

• Networks or ‘subsystems’. What is the balance of power between ‘pressure participants’ such as interest groups?

In week 1, we linked the formation of policy networks to bounded rationality: ministers and senior civil servants delegate, and more junior civil servants form relationships with the actors giving them information and advice. In some cases, we can identify close relationships based, for example, on a shared understanding of the policy problem and an adherence to unwritten ‘rules of the game’. In others, these networks are large, there are many actors involved, there is less incentive to follow the same rules (such as to keep discussions relatively quiet), and there is more competition to ‘frame’ the problem to be solved.

• Context and events. How does the socio-economic and political context influence policy? Which events have prompted or undermined policy development?

‘Context’ describes the policy conditions that policymakers take into account when identifying problems, such as a country’s geography, demographic profile, economy, and social attitudes. This wider context is in addition to the ‘institutional’ context, when governments inherit the laws and organisations of their predecessors.

Important ‘game changing’ events can be routine, such as when elections produce new governments with new ideas, or unanticipated, such as when crises or major technological changes prompt policymakers to reconsider existing policies.

In each case, we should consider the extent to which policymaking is in the control of policymakers. In some cases, the role of context seems irresistible – examples include major demographic change (such as an ageing population), the role of technology in driving healthcare demand, climate change, extreme events, and ‘globalisation’. Yet, governments often show that they can ignore such issues for long periods of time or, at least, decide how and why they are important.

• Ideas.  What is the role of beliefs, knowledge, evidence and learning in shaping the way that policymakers understand and seek to solve problems?

‘Ideas’ is a quite-vague term to describe beliefs, or ways of thinking, and the extent to which they are shared within groups, organisations, networks and political systems. There are three kinds of inter-related ideas to discuss. First, an idea can be a policy solution: ‘I have an idea’ to solve a policy problem. Second, ideas relate to persuasion as a resource in the policy process. Actors can use money and other sources of power to influence policy, but also argument and manipulation. Third, ideas refer to shared beliefs or a shared language used by policy participants: the ‘core beliefs’, ‘paradigms’, ‘hegemonic’ ideas, or ‘monopolies’ of ideas that are often so important because people take them for granted.

The latter provides the context in which people use arguments and persuasion and within which certain policy solutions are conceivable. So, not everyone has the same opportunity to raise attention to problems and propose their favoured solutions. Some can exploit a dominant understanding of the policy problem, while others have to work harder to challenge existing beliefs. A focus on ideas is a focus on power: to persuade the public, media and/ or government that there is a reason to make policy; and, to keep some issues on the agenda at the expense of others.

Using theory to bring these concepts together

Any one of these elements could be used to explain why the policy process is ‘complex’ and so difficult to understand and predict. Or, many theories try to explain how the policy process works by describing the interaction between all of those elements: https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/1000-words/

One example is complexity theory, which discusses the properties of complex policymaking systems:

1. The same amount of activity can have no effect or a huge effect. For example, someone presenting the same information may be ignored by policymakers or receive disproportionate attention.
2. Decisions made in the past can produce a long term momentum or ‘path dependence’. For example, the current ‘welfare state’ or national health service can be traced at least as far back as the 1940s.
3. Policymaking involves long periods of organizational inactivity followed by bursts of activity in some areas. Policy can remain the same for decades, only to change dramatically and quickly.
4. ‘Systemic’ behaviour results from the interaction between actors who share information and follow particular rules. Policymaking behaviour often seems to ‘emerge’ from local interaction and despite the efforts of central governments to control it.

Complexity theory is a good example to consider because it helps us think about the ways in which you might present policy advice when you have to take into account the vagaries of policymaking. We can discuss this link between theory and advice in the next lecture.

Key concepts in policymaking: some issues are territorial, some are universal #POLU9SP

In the course, we maintain a basic distinction between policy and policymaking: policy refers largely to the choices that governments make, while policymaking refers to the way in which they make those choices. This helps us consider the Scottishness of policy and policymaking and the relationship between the two:

• Governments in different regions or eras face different problems and may produce different policies. Or, they may have different priorities and ideas. Even so, they might make policy in the same way each time.
• Some governments try to make policy in a distinctive way. This might have an impact on the policies they select, but it is possible for two different governments to make policy in different ways but choose the same things. This possibility prompts us to ask ourselves why it matters if they engage in different processes (or, I’ll ask you why it matters).

In the first part of the course we focus on policymaking. We examine critically the idea that there is a Scottish way to make policy, focusing on three aspects: all governments face ‘universal’ policymaking constraints such as ‘bounded rationality’; the Scottish and UK governments make similar trade-offs when considering issues such as centralism and localism; and, we need to consider why the Scottish Government might develop a reputation for certain kinds of policymaking.

Universal policymaking issues: the example of bounded rationality’

The phrase that we will keep coming back to is ‘bounded rationality’ since it is central to the development of most policy theories. It contrasts with an ‘ideal-type’ – ‘comprehensive rationality’ – in which a policymaker has a perfect ability to translate her values and aims into policy following a comprehensive study of all choices and their effects. Instead, policymakers have limited resources: the time to devote to research, the information to inform decisions, the knowledge to understand the policy context, and the ability to pay attention to issues.

Consequently, they cannot process issues comprehensively. By necessity, they have to make decisions in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity. Uncertainty relates to the amount of information we have to inform policy and policymaking. Ambiguity relates to the way in which we understand policy problems. The policy process is therefore about (1) the short cuts that policymakers use to gather information and understand complex issues, and (2) the ways in which policy participants compete to determine which information is used and how policymakers understand problems.

This process is described in several ways by policy theories, including:

Punctuated equilibrium theory. Policymakers do not have the ability to pay attention to all of the issues for which they are responsible. So, they ignore most issues and promote a small number to the top of their agenda.

Networks theories. Policymakers delegate responsibility to civil servants who, in turn, rely on specialist organisations for information and advice. Those organisations trade information for access to government. This process often becomes routine: civil servants begin to trust and rely on certain organisations and they form meaningful relationships. If so, most public policy is conducted primarily through small and specialist ‘policy communities’ that process issues at a level of government not particularly visible to the public, and with minimal senior policymaker involvement. Network theories tend to consider the key implications, including a tendency for governments to contain ‘silos’ and struggle to ‘join up’ government when policy is made in so many different places.

Social construction theory. To make decisions quickly, policymakers use shortcuts to gather information, partly by relying on a small number of sources, and partly by using emotional, gut-level and habitual short cuts to decisions.

Narrative policy framework. To influence policymakers, participants design simple stories (with a setting, characters, plot, and moral) to manipulate the ways in which they understand complex problems.

These theories present examples of ‘universal’ aspects of policymaking. All policymakers deal with ‘bounded rationality’ by using shortcuts. The territorial aspect refers to the specific shortcuts and frames of reference that policymakers in Scotland use: the nature of policy communities; the types of issues likely to gain attention; the kinds of emotional biases exhibited in Scotland; and, the stories most likely to be told Scotland (what stories might get the most traction in Scotland?).

Similar trade-offs: centralism and localism

Central governments face the same basic trade-off between national and local policymaking. They produce a national strategy which can include reference to uniform standards to avoid a ‘postcode lottery’. At the same time, central governments encourage local discretion and policy flexibility, to recognise the legitimacy of local policymaking and/or encourage community or service user participation in the design and delivery of public services. So, governments may set very broad aims and build an expectation of variation into the design of policy.

The question for us is: how does the Scottish Government address this trade-off (and how does it differ from, for example, the UK Government)? Does it always encourage local flexibility (or, can you think of cases in which it seeks to impose policies or centralise policymaking)?

This potential for local discretion may also prompt us to consider what ‘Scottish policy’ means. Does it suggest that all public bodies in Scotland (and perhaps their stakeholders) are working towards the same national aims (can you think of examples of national aims or Scottish policies)? Or, for example, how do central governments use evidence to encourage but not oblige local authorities to learn from ‘best practice’?

Does the Scottish Government deserve its policymaking reputation?

In the course, we will explore two key questions about the Scottish Government’s reputation for policymaking:

1. Does it actually live up to its reputation, or can we identify important similarities between Scottish and (for example) UK Government policymaking styles?
2. If there is a distinctly Scottish style, how can we best explain it?

The most obvious explanation is that the Scottish Government has chosen to foster a particularly consensual style to reflect the ‘new politics’ agenda in the run up to devolution. An alternative explanation is that Scotland’s style of policymaking results largely from the size of the Scottish Government and public sector: the government is relatively small, and relies on (a) widespread consultation to boost its research capacity, and (b) goodwill from the public sector to implement policy; and, it is possible for ministers to maintain personal relationships with chief executives of public bodies.

Overall, we consider the extent to which (a) all governments face the same issues when making policy, and (b) can deal with these issues in a distinctive way. Maybe there is a ‘Scottish approach’ to policy and policymaking, but let’s use good scholarship to identify it, not just assume it is there.