devolution in a ‘stateless nation’: nation-building and social policy in scotland

Devolution in a ‘Stateless Nation’: Nation-building andSocial Policy in Scotlandspol_829 161..177

Alex Law and Gerry Mooney

Abstract

The implications of the 2011 Scottish election and the proposed referendum on Scottish independencefor the future of social policy across the devolved UK are profound but far from certain. It is crucialto understand not only the historical nature of this conjuncture but to develop an adequate conceptualunderstanding of the place of social policy in the dialectic between state and nation in Scotland. Tothis end, we critically examine theories that depict Scotland as an essentially ‘stateless nation’ in thelight of recent developments. In so doing, we examine the implications for social policy of thechanging character of statehood in Scotland, the nature of civil nationalism, and the problem oflegitimacy in Scotland for the UK as a multinational state. As the architecture of statehood isre-negotiated, strong centrifugal pressures are being created for a more distinct divergence of socialpolicy in Scotland from the rest of the UK regardless of the outcome of the independence referendum.Policy-making is ensnared in a series of tensions, not just between Westminster and Holyrood butalso, more broadly, tensions between competing principles of social justice and territorial justice, andcompeting demands between welfare nationalism and competitive nationalism.

Keywords

Scotland; Devolution; Class; Neo-liberalism; State; Nation

Introduction

Supporters of multinational states like the UK find that their narratives ofnationhood are routinely opposed by competing appeals to identity andinterests advanced by sub-state Nationalists. At the heart of the contest of theNationalisms in multinational states stands social policy. Sub-state National-ists are concerned to convince ‘the nation’ that a radically different statearchitecture will improve the prospects for collective solidarity and territorialjustice. A constant effort is made by Nationalist politicians to define thecollective identity of the national community, British and/or Scottish, as

Address for correspondence: Alex Law, Department of Sociology, University of Abertay Dundee DD11HG, Scotland. Email: [email protected]

Social Policy & Administration issn 0144–5596DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9515.2011.00829.xVol. 46, No. 2, April 2012, pp. 161–177

© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ , UK and350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

coinciding with the group interests of the social justice community. In thisrespect, the language of social policy is routinely attached to discourses of ‘thenation’. Insider groups within the nation construct emotive and evidentialappeals that the nation collectively posses more of a certain quality (e.g.egalitarian or entrepreneurial) than other groups positioned outside the nation(Billig 1995). An insider-outsider dialectic is constantly set in motion by theframing of sub-state Nationalism in terms of collective justice as a distinguish-ing and defining attribute of group membership. With some notable excep-tions, devolved policy and academic analyses tend to nationalize class byperceiving social policy and society through the naturalized lens of whatMiller (2010: 104) calls ‘nation-centrism’. Here Scotland is envisioned as aspontaneous collective, an imagined community, or even a sentient beingwhereby ‘Scotland’ does and feels things. In this naturalized vision, it is thereified object ‘Scotland’ that rejects the Conservative Party and is indeliblystamped with social democratic values.

Appeals to social justice may be a defining feature of devolved governmentbut it is not unique to Scotland. Beland’s and Lecours’ (2007, 2008) discussionof nationalism and social policy decentralization in the multinational states ofCanada, the UK and Belgium provides a valuable analysis and comparativeexplanation for the inner logic of the ‘policy and nation’ dialectic. They arguethat sub-state Nationalism represents a powerful force for the decentralizationof social policy in mutually reinforcing ways (Beland and Lecours 2007: 405).Social programmes are more likely than other types of programmes to touchpeople in everyday life and engender territorial solidarity. As a consequence,governments that provide an array of social programmes establish direct,intimate and tangible links with the nation being governed. Social policystimulates nation-building as a collective frame for common sense-makingacross otherwise divided social groups. By framing everyday life in manifoldways, social policy operates as a potent nation-building tool, shaping, regu-lating and directing the meaning and possibilities of collective existence,experienced in national terms as ‘a social justice community’ (Beland andLecours 2008). Discussion around specific social policy alternatives are readilytranslated into a presumed consensus about distinctive core national values,principles and collective identity.

The political landscape within which devolved UK social policy is formu-lated and implemented appears very different following the 2010 generalelection and 2011 Scottish elections. At the general election, the ConservativeParty managed to hold a solitary Scottish seat, attracting a mere 16 per centof the national vote, while the Labour Party appeared unassailable, winning41 seats and 42 per cent of votes. Twelve months later, the peculiarities ofScottish politics became even more pronounced, producing an unforeseenScottish National Party (SNP) landslide victory, winning 45 per cent and 44per cent in the constituency and regional votes respectively. Meanwhile,Labour, a party that has dominated Scottish politics for the past 50 years,suffered a resounding defeat with 32 per cent and 26 per cent respectively.The UK coalition government partners received a derisory share of thepopular vote between them. This outcome represents a major achievementfor any party in a voting system conspicuously designed to prevent majority

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government, not least a Nationalist government committed to dissolving theUK state.

Few foresaw that the first majority government in Scotland would beclothed in Nationalist colours committed to an independent Scotland state,however that might be understood (Scottish Government 2009). For Union-ists, the threat to the constitutional integrity of the UK state was tempered bythe belief that the narrow SNP victory in 2007 was an aberration, a fluke thatwould be corrected once the electorate had been exposed to an incompetentNationalist administration dogmatically obsessed with pursuing the other-worldly goal of independent statehood. The implications of the 2011 Scottishelection and the proposed referendum on independent statehood for thefuture of social policy are profound but far from certain. Already the fault linesof state, nation and welfare across the devolved UK are being re-drawn. Inthis article we examine Scotland as a distinctive ‘case study’ to assess theconceptual adequacy of the concept ‘stateless nation’. The fissures opening uparound territorial justice and social justice, and the fraught relationshipbetween nationalism, statehood and social policy-making have a resonancewell beyond Scotland.

In the context of the pluri- or multinational UK state, devolution hasclearly entered upon a new phase of development. Yet conceptual under-standing of the critical role of social policy in mediating between the form ofthe state and the self-images of the Scottish nation is not well developed. It iscrucial to understand not only the historical nature of this conjuncture but todevelop an adequate conceptual understanding of state and nation in Scot-land. At the heart of recent developments has been the ways in which ‘Scot-tishness’ as a collective identity has been imprinted by social policy andwelfare considerations (McEwen 2006). Across education, criminal justice,social care, medicine, council services and related fields, a distinctively Scot-tish ethos of social solidarity and egalitarianism is thought to pervade welfarereform. Many of the key devolved powers concern social policy, which accen-tuates the perception, if not always the reality, of policy distinctiveness. Policypronouncements about a ‘New Scotland’ are routinely prefaced as providing‘Scottish solutions to Scottish problems’ (Mooney and Scott 2005). Forinstance, the most recent Scottish Social Attitude survey demonstrates thatmost people (62 per cent) feel that while the Scottish Parliament ought toexercise more powers over the form and distribution of welfare benefits,roughly similar to attitudes about already devolved powers over health (66 percent) and schools (62 per cent), public attitudes to social policy are moreambiguous, dynamic and changeable than this would suggest, often tendingtowards UK-wide policy convergence (Curtice and Ormston 2011). A ma-jority of those surveyed replied that taxes and benefits should be similar acrossthe UK: pensions (63 per cent), taxes (58 per cent), unemployment benefit (55per cent), and even tuition fees (50 per cent). As the report authors conclude,‘It would seem, therefore, that while the Scottish Parliament is widelyregarded as the place where decisions for Scotland should be made, this doesnot mean that people are ready to accept that taxes and benefits mightactually be different on either side of the border’ (Curtice and Ormiston2011: 4).


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In the light of such developments, we critically examine theories that depictScotland as an essentially ‘stateless nation’. In so doing, we examine theimplications for social policy of the changing character of statehood in Scot-land, the nature of civil nationalism, and the problem of legitimacy in Scot-land for the UK as a multinational state. To do this means going beyond thesnapshot data of attitude surveys to locate an underlying logic to devolution.As the architecture of statehood is re-negotiated, and despite survey findings,strong centrifugal pressures are being created for the enactment of distinctivesocial policies in Scotland regardless of the outcome of the independencereferendum. Policy-making is ensnared in a series of tensions, not just betweenWestminster and Holyrood but also, more broadly, tensions between com-peting principles of social justice and territorial justice, and competingdemands between welfare nationalism and competitive nationalism.

Social Policy in a Stateless Nation

With the rise of Nationalism as a political force in the 1970s, the unitaryrelationship between the UK state and its component nations could no longerbe assumed. In the 1980s, British nationalism began to lose its lustre inScotland and the UK state began to be framed in terms of the insider-outsiderdialectic. Successive Conservative governments wielded centralized statepower to advance neo-liberal reforms that were widely perceived as anathemato ‘Scottish collective values’ as a shared frame of reference (Davidson et al.2010; Bechhofer and McCrone 2009). Nationalism in Scotland is often definedin terms of the relative autonomy of its ‘civil’ and welfare institutions in binaryopposition to the ‘ethnic’ and militarist colour of British national identity(Paterson 1994). In such accounts the longevity of nationalism in Scotland isexplained as an expression of the continuous institutional autonomy of Scot-tish civil society, principally: law, religion and education, and – since the 19thcentury – the policy network centred on the Scottish Office. The post-war UKwelfare state forged an accommodation with the professional classes of Scot-tish civil society. In this way, the traditional role of civil society to mediatebetween state and nation was reproduced by a semi-autonomous institutional‘negotiated order’ (Moore and Booth 1989). What emerged from the policy-nation dialectic was a distinctive form of ‘welfare nationalism’, described byPaterson (1994: 181) as ‘a world of dense Scottishness which creates a feelingof natural allegiance in nearly everyone who has been brought up here, orwho has lived here for any appreciable length of time’. Under the classicalwelfare state, professionals played a crucial intermediary role between stateand nation. They appeared to personify national values of social solidarity.Like the mutually reinforcing policy and nation dialectic of other sub-statenationalisms, the ‘world of dense Scottishness’ was sustained less by the merepresence of the institutions of civil society, than through everyday interactionswith welfare professionals, teachers, social workers, doctors, nurses, housingofficers and so on.

The relative autonomy of intermediary, welfare-based associations led pre-devolution Scotland to be characterized as a ‘stateless nation’. DavidMcCrone foregrounded the term in his pioneering study, Understanding Scot-



land: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation (1992), and it continues to be used todescribe Scotland today (see Davidson et al. 2010). Before devolution, Scotlandwas ‘an awkward, ill-fitting case’ for scholarly analysis, argued McCrone(1992: 1), because it lacked a nation-state of its own. Scotland was simplyincapable of being conceived as a distinct society worthy of serious sociologicalstudy. By the early 1990s, Scotland as a ‘stateless nation’ stood at ‘the centreof the discipline’s post-modern dilemma’, McCrone contended. At the time,this was an audacious claim. Then fashionable postmodernist theory aimed toundermine received ideas about ‘the centre’, such as the unitary British state,that had long consigned other subjects, like Scotland, to the margins ofscholarly interest.

McCrone’s focus was on the changed nature of the real, empirical world ofpolitical, economic and social change rather than simply a change in theory,although he also recognized that theories would need to change to in order tokeep up with developments in a rapidly changing universe. By the 1990s, itwas widely claimed that the state no longer occupied the foreground ofanalysis, as it had since the 19th century:

Because Scotland is a nation which is not a state, conventional socio-logical models – premised on a fusion of nation and state – are of limitedutility. Nevertheless, as the nation-state loses its raison d’etre in a worldeconomy, polity and culture, so Scotland seems to provide a glimpse intothe future rather than the past. (McCrone 1992: 33)

For McCrone and others, Scotland had become more typical of wider globaldevelopments than those societies defined by large nation-states. Being ‘state-less’ was no longer something anachronistic but pointed to the future directionof social development as states lost their purpose in a globalizing world.Nationalism would also begin to lose its exclusionary features of ethnicity andgenealogy and take on looser cultural, consumerist and civil associations oflightly-worn, playful postmodern identities.

Yet, soon after devolution McCrone dropped the concept of ‘statelessnation’ from the second edition of his book, now re-titled Understanding Scotland:The Sociology of a Nation. As he explained, ‘Recovering its parliament, albeit adevolved one, after almost 300 years of union means that Scotland is no longerstateless’ (McCrone 2001: 1). But a few pages later, McCrone seemed lesscertain that the ‘stateless nation’ concept had become inadequate:

There is of course no denying that Scotland has a degree of statehood(a devolved parliament, a governing bureaucracy), but it is still bestdescribed as a stateless nation, an imagined community with considerableinstitutional autonomy, and, at least as yet, no sovereign parliament.(McCrone 2001: 6, emphasis added)

This definitional ambiguity in characterizing the devolved state was accom-panied by the pragmatic shelving by McCrone of postmodernism as a theoryand post-modernity as empirical reality (Thomson 2004). By the turn of thenew Christian millennium, it had become a realistic possibility that devolved



Scotland might evolve into an independent sovereign state, a model dismissedin the early 1990s as fundamentally ‘problematic’ and out of date (McCrone1992: 1) but one that was now coming onto the horizon.

A deeper problem with the ‘stateless nation’ concept, however, is that itarbitrarily accepts a common sense Nationalist definition of the situation. Forinstance, in the Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations, James Minahan (2002)selected 350 candidates from potentially 9,000 stateless ‘peoples’ across theworld on the basis of three simple criteria: self-identity as a distinctive group;possession of national symbols (especially a flag); and a political organizationdemanding self-determination. This last criterion alone specifies the ‘stateless’part of the concept: nations are defined as ‘stateless’ only if a Nationalistpolitical organization exists to demand a sovereign state on the basis thatnational identity and self-determination ought to correspond more closely toeach other. Nationalist politicians in Scotland frame formal independentstatehood as ‘the responsibilities and rights of a normal European state’ (Scot-tish Government 2009, emphasis added), implying that any other constitu-tional arrangement is that of an abnormal ‘stateless nation’.

Uncritically adopting the concept of a stateless nation surrenders to aNationalist definition of the world the need for social science to construct itsown concepts and models of reality. In Scotland, the naturalization of nation-alism by the borrowed concepts of social science obscures the fact that thepeople of Scotland are not in any legal or political sense ‘stateless’. Whiledisplaced Palestinians can be categorized as a stateless nation, legally secureScots in no way fall under the same concept. Political forms of Nationalismcommand the support of a (sizable) minority of the national population. It isone thing to characterize nations according to the self-definition of a wholegroup – in the classical definition people constitute a nation because theysubjectively demand to be recognized as such (Anderson 1991). It is somethingelse to characterize a nation as ‘stateless’ solely on the basis of a demand forstatehood by an organized political minority within the nation. Almost theentire population of Scotland recognizes itself as a nation but only a smallfraction demand that it become a sovereign state in its own right (Keating2007). As a nation, most Scots, thus far, have made no mass bid to form a stateseparate from the UK and have, thus far, rested content with some model ofdevolution as the political expression of national distinctiveness and territorialjustice.

Severe analytical distortions result whenever the concept of ‘statelessnation’ is applied to the state-nation dialectic in devolved Scotland. A moreadequate conceptualization of the relationship between the devolved state andthe Scottish nation is needed. A start can be made by separating the functionsof the state in Scotland from the form of political rule. Much social policyanalysis concentrates, understandably, on detailing the functions of the state,its policy architecture, policy processes and outcomes. Too often, the sourcesof political authority in the nation are simply taken for granted as part of thestable backdrop for more detailed analysis of shifts in social policy. Devolvedsocial policy can be better understood by developing an approach to consti-tutional rule in Scotland that overcomes the limitations found in the assump-tions of the stateless nation concept. Here it is important to recognize that



changes in formal institutional structures also change the nature of politicalsubjectivity as well as the horizon of social policy-making. The stress test ofconstitutional change constantly and forcefully problematises the unitarycharacter of the state and its relationship to the nation.

There are few recent examples of so-called stateless nations seceding froman economically advanced nation-state. Instead, ruling groups within smallnations like Scotland (as for Quebec and Catalonia among others) seem toprefer to secure greater autonomy within a larger state rather than riskoutright independence. In this sense, Scottish devolution, as Greer (2007: 38)argues, represents ‘the formalization of pre-existing but threatened eliteautonomy’. Classical forms of nation-state sovereignty appear to be perma-nently suspended for a small nation like Scotland. Instead, its ruling groupsdemand increased autonomy to negotiate the turbulent waters of the worldsystem from within the protective shell of the larger institutional framework ofthe UK state and avoid the risk of over-exposure to economic instability, as inthe case of the UK government bail-out of failed Scottish banks in 2008–09.

Nationalist politicians in Scotland ritualistically lament the lack of an inde-pendent state, as Alex Salmond noted in his first statement to Parliament asFirst Minister following his party’s success in May 2011:

. . . this is what independence means. We are not rushing the journey,but don’t let our steady pace fool anyone into thinking we are notdetermined – we shall keep travelling, and so get closer to home.(Salmond 2011b)

However, political Nationalism in Scotland functions largely as a strategicbargaining tool for enhanced autonomy. To use a term coined by SNPministers in the 2007–11 Scottish government, ‘devolution-max’ is demandedas a constitutional insurance policy for territorial justice, if not always socialjustice, rather than a go-for-broke gamble on sovereign independence.

Nationalists in Scotland legitimate their civic nationalist credentials inrational-legal terms. National identity in Scotland is symbolized by the valuesof social justice, where the Scottish nation is pictured as tolerant, pluralist,inclusive and democratic in dialectical contrast to more virulent, illegitimateforms of ‘ethnic nationalism’ based on blood, soil, violence, xenophobiaand sectarianism (see Salmond 2011b; Davidson 2000). Committed to civiclegality, the case for greater territorial autonomy, such as full fiscal powers,accepts the procedural confines of an overarching UK state.

Devolution and Legitimacy

The state-nation relationship is always determined by particular relations andperceptions of legitimacy, autonomy and dependency. For Scottish National-ists, the devolved state represents a platform to legitimize claims for animprobable independent statehood, while for Unionists the devolved statepromises to evolve into a more efficient and responsive manager of a territo-rially defined population. Both seek to legitimate their claims by conflating theterritorial justice of constitutionally defined communitarian groups with



demands for social justice arising from structural socio-economic inequalities,which always threatens to leap over the arbitrary lines of constitutionalborders.

Devolution was an outcome of the growing sense in Scotland during the1980s and 1990s that the British state ruled Scotland in an increasinglyillegitimate way. Scotland was ruled through polices imposed by a Conserva-tive government that fewer and fewer people in Scotland actually voted for(McEwen 2006; Greer 2007). By the 1990s, the presence of the UK state inScotland was experiencing what could be recognized as a ‘legitimation crisis’.A crisis of legitimation occurs whenever the state is unable to support itswelfare functions and so stimulate support for the ‘system’ within the existingset-up (Habermas 1976). This does not mean that ‘Scotland’ was mobilized asa national mass in order to secede from the rule of the UK as a state. It wasless the entire political-economic system that faced the withdrawal of legiti-macy than the particular form of governmental power assumed by the UKstate, minority rule by successive Tory governments attempting to imposeunpopular neoliberal policies on Scotland (see Davidson et al. 2010). Devolu-tion addressed itself to this more limited crisis of legitimation in Scotland. Thecampaign for devolution respected the valid legal forms of the UK state at thesame time as proclaiming the subjective rights of Scottish civil society to pressdemands for territorial justice. At no time did the campaign for Scottishdevolution represent an extra-parliamentary challenge to the legal-rationalauthority of the UK state, as the mass Poll Tax rebellion of the early 1990s haddone in conditions where social democratic values of redistributive socialjustice were flagrantly flouted (Lavalette and Mooney 2000).

Devolution was viewed by Scottish Labour as a tactic to forestall theelectoral threat to its core support in urban central Scotland from aNationalist-led opposition. It represented a pragmatic alternative to the risk ofthe break-up of the UK state (Nairn 1981). Voters were asked to decide onwhether to, first, establish a Parliament and, second, allow the Parliamenttax-varying powers. A decade later, the power to vary taxation retains politicalsignificance as a measure of government autonomy in Scotland. At the time ofthe devolution referendum, the precise powers of the Parliament were notspelled out in any detail, except for taxation. Vague inferences about the legalpowers of the Parliament were turned into statutory rights by the Scotland Act1998. Two sorts of powers were established: devolved powers held in Edin-burgh and reserved powers held in London. The reserved powers of the UKParliament are those thought by Nationalists to be fundamental to a ‘normal’nation-state: defence, foreign affairs, home affairs, macro-economic policyand social security.

Devolved power in Scotland allows some exercise of power normally asso-ciated with sovereignty in the areas of law, home affairs and the police. Itsmain powers, however, are economic, social and cultural (Scotland Office2009). First, devolved economic powers include agriculture, fisheries, plan-ning, economic development, training and tourism. Second, devolved socialpowers cover policies in health, social work, housing and local government.Third, devolved cultural powers enable control over policies in education, thearts and sport, and the natural and built environment. The UK government



continued to appoint a Minister for Scotland. This posed little problem whenthe same parties ruled at both London and Edinburgh but could result inpolitical tension when different parties ruled the separate Parliaments, aswas the case with the SNP minority Scottish government from 2007 to 2011under first a Labour government and then from May 2010 a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition UK government. Scotland also acquired a differ-ent method of election, a mix of ‘first past the post’ and proportionalrepresentation.

Devolution and Social Policy: Divergence and Convergence

The scope for distinctive policy-making in Scotland remains wide, althoughit is constrained by the fiscal as well as the constitutional reserve powers ofthe UK government. Michael Keating (2010: 255ff.) identifies five types ofpolicy divergence and convergence from the rest of Britain. First, there are‘non-comparable’ policies where Scotland initiates a radical policy depar-ture from the UK, such as policies around land reform. Second, in lessunique ways ‘policy autonomy’ occurs within areas of shared policies acrossthe UK but customized to Scottish conditions, such as education, healthand criminal justice. Third, ‘concurrent policies’ shadow broader patterns ofpolicy-making across the UK or Europe, as in much health policy. Fourth,‘policy uniformity’ is imposed on Scotland through legal or external con-straints, as with ratification of the International Criminal Court. Finally,‘policy competition’, a special case of policy autonomy, where policy inScotland reacts to and mimics high profile policy innovations elsewhere inthe UK stimulating reconvergence, as in draconian youth justice policies(see Croall et al. 2010). Generally, there has been little of the radically dis-tinctive and responsive policy innovation in Scotland that was supposed tobe the sine qua non of devolution (Mooney and Scott 2005, 2012 forthcoming;Stewart 2004).

Some argue that worsening conditions of fiscal crisis will bring nationalsystems of popular values into conflict, exposing the underlying fault-lines ofdevolved social policy. As the UK state withdraws fiscal support for welfareservices in order to shore-up the financial system, Neal Ascherson (2010)argues that conflicting conceptions of social and territorial justice betweenScotland and the rest of Britain may become more, not less, acute, propellingthe political case for an independent state and a new legitimation crisis for theUK state. In the process, Ascherson identifies a fundamental clash of valuesseparating Scotland from the rest of Britain:

It’s not just that nearly a third of employment is in the public sector. It’sthat the mania for privatising never made sense here, in a country whosetradition is communitarian rather than individualist, deeply suspicious ofits own and everyone else’s elites, obsessive about equality . . . It upholdsbeliefs which were once shared all over the UK: that health and pre-scriptions, school meals and university education, care and public trans-port for the old, should all be free, the state’s honouring of the contractbetween citizen and ruler.



Devolution, therefore, represented a solution to the legitimation crisis ofterritorial justice in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, almost all politicaldebate about Scotland fluctuates around the question of just how much fiscaland political autonomy from Westminster the Scottish government ought toacquire. Michael Moore, the Scottish Secretary for the UK coalition govern-ment, described the Scotland Bill as the greatest transfer of fiscal power in theUK since 1707 (Settle and Dinwoodie 2010). It proposed to give the Scottishstate greater fiscal autonomy and accountability, removing 10 per cent fromthe block grant and allow the Scottish Parliament the power to set a definiterate for income tax. Other taxes, like stamp duty and landfill tax, becomedevolved powers but any new taxes require Westminster’s agreement. TheScottish state can borrow up to 10 per cent of its capital funding to amaximum debt of £2.2 billion (2010 prices). The Bill also grants additionalpowers over traffic laws and airguns.

The 2010 Scotland Bill was proposed by a ‘consensus’ of the UK largestparties (reflected in the report of the Calman Commission in 2010, see Com-mission on Scottish Devolution 2009) but did not include the governing partyin Scotland, the SNP. According to established convention, the UK Parlia-ment cannot ‘normally’ legislate on devolved issues without majority supportin the Scottish Parliament. Moreover, the minority SNP government viewedthe fiscal powers granted by the Scotland Bill as far too limited compared tothe comprehensive fiscal powers that they claim are more appropriate for anincreasingly autonomous Scottish Parliament. They also objected to the con-descending tone of Unionist politicians introducing the Bill. The Scottishgovernment, of whichever stripe, Unionists argue, needs to be exposed toincreased financial ‘accountability’ and take ‘responsibility’ for raising its ownrevenue rather than simply spending it. The ruling Scottish government wastold to take responsibility by the grown-up parties at Westminster, neglectingthe fact that Labour and the Liberal Democrats formed the government inScotland for its first eight years.

Critics of the Calman Commission and the Scotland Bill point to flaws inthe tax proposals that run contrary to claims about territorial justice (Cuthbertand Cuthbert 2011). First, if the Scottish government reduced the rate ofincome tax in order to give capital in Scotland a competitive market advan-tage, then overall total income tax receipts might well rise but the sharereturned to the Scottish government would decrease. Second, the Scottishgovernment receives a lower proportion of revenue generated by the higherrate bands, potentially resulting in a decline in the average proportion ofrevenue flowing back to the Scottish government. Critics also highlight thedifferent political implications of the adverse effects of the tax proposals for themain political parties in Scotland. Further restrictions on public spending inScotland will appeal to core Conservative support while the Nationalists havepublicly spelled out their objections to the proposals. On the other hand, theLabour Party, which was instrumental in setting up Calman, may becometrapped in a Unionist consensus but have most to lose electorally from anyfurther rounds of public sector austerity.

These apparently constitutional issues have a much wider basis, however,reflecting as they do questions of social justice and demands for a ‘fairer’



Scotland. Following the 2011 May elections, these issues are now at the top ofthe Scottish political agenda – an agenda that is already in the monthsfollowing the May elections having major repercussions at a UK level.

In his celebration speech on 7 May 2011, and again in his statement toParliament on 26 May 2011 (Salmond 2011a, 2011b), First Minister Salmondlaid out the key objectives for the new SNP government, a government that isplanned to stay in office until 2016. In this second speech, ‘Taking ScotlandForward’, the SNP leader stated his goal of strengthening the 2010 ScotlandBill. Among the headline demands made by the SNP are that the CrownEstate comes under the control of the Scottish Parliament; greater borrowingpowers for the Scottish government; the devolution of corporation tax (fol-lowing the planned devolution of corporation tax for Northern Ireland), andScottish control of all excise duties raised in Scotland. As was noted at theoutset, already this has put the new Scottish government at odds with the UKcoalition government, as the SNP attempts to nudge Scotland towards theindependence referendum. Constitutional change, whether ‘devolution-max’or ‘independence-lite’, along with full blown independence, are presented ina narrative which talks of Scotland becoming a ‘better nation’, ‘a nation thatis fair and just’, ‘a place of equality, fairness and justice’, through policy-making that will ‘make the nation proud’. This immediately opens up ques-tions not only of the relationship between the two forms of justice highlightedhere, but also of the relationship between nationalism and social policy-making – and of nation and class.

Welfare Nationalism and Competitive Nationalism

Devolution has shifted the focus of territorial politics in Scotland moreemphatically from class to nation. Prior to the 1990s, social class played asignificant role in political attitudes and collective identity across Scotland andEngland since their socio-economic structure was largely similar (McCrone1992). Much of Scotland’s support for Labour and hostility to Conservatism,at least from the early 1960s, was typically explained as reflecting, first, thenational egalitarian values of an ‘industrial nation’, and, later, the rapidlydeteriorating conditions for the industrial working class in the 1970s and1980s. Unemployed labour expelled during Scotland’s manufacturing declinein the early 1980s was only partially reabsorbed by service employment as anextended form of class reproduction (Law and Mooney 2010).

Since the late 1980s, this has been replaced by an expansion of highlyqualified professions, mainly in public services and financial services (Patersonet al. 2004), both of which since 2008 are now in retreat in terms of numbersemployed. Today, the traditional classes on which political support depended– landowners, industrial bourgeoisie and organized labour – have undergoneradical transformation, losing the social weight to shape electoral preferences(Keating 2009). There is no longer a cohesive ruling class of the kind that oncedelivered the votes of skilled and unskilled Protestant workers for the Conser-vative Party until the mid-to-late 1950s. At the same time, organized labour isincreasingly confined to the public sector (which, following years of growthand expansion, is now in 2011 experiencing deep and far-reaching job losses).



With the general growth of public sector employment in Scotland during theperiod from the 1960s to the 2000s, a new interest coalition was construed asa permanent bloc of electoral support over which Labour and the SNP nowcompete, taking the SNP into the ‘heartland’ sectors and areas that were inthe not-too-distant past characterized as solidly Labour.

While, since devolution in particular, ‘nation’ has become increasinglymeaningful in Scotland, ‘class’ has been rendered relatively meaningless aspolitical discourse. Class functions as an ‘absent presence’ in Scotland, mobi-lized only in euphemistic tropes – as ‘underclass’, the ‘socially excluded’,‘anti-social’ youth, intransigent labour, the economically inactive – as calls toorder for assorted ‘problem’ populations. Symbolic legitimacy for thedevolved state in Scotland derives from a trans-class people-nation. Under-stood in this way, the state in Scotland yokes unequal social relations toterritoriality through the nationalization of class. Although the Scottish statelacks full sovereign power it, nevertheless, exercises considerable economic,cultural and symbolic power, with profound consequences for the reproduc-tion of class relations. Territorial politics is filled with different, often contra-dictory, class content, not least in the appeal to values of social justice at thesame time as enacting neo-liberal policies in the service of Scotland’s globaleconomic competitiveness (Law 2005; Scott and Mooney 2009). Here, sym-bolic power rests on the common sense appeal of nationalism, concealingconflicting social interests behind the disinterest of national unity:

I will govern for all of the ambitions of Scotland and all the people whoimagine we can live in a better land. This party, the Scottish party, thenational party, carries your hope and we shall carry it carefully and themake the nation proud. (Salmond 2011a)

Devolution was born for a purpose – to let Scotland find peace withherself, for our nation to become comfortable in her own skin . . .Scotland should have control of her destiny. What we choose to dowith that control – the allegiances we may forge, the bonds that wemake, the interests shared – are ours and ours alone to determine.(Salmond 2011b)

Central to this narrative is a vision of a ‘Scotland that is open for business’, ‘adynamic, flexible modern economy’. However, in these narratives, class rela-tions are actively recomposed in Scotland through a state-imposed vision ofthe competitive nation. Supply-side class restructuring lies at the heart of theScottish government’s national project (Boyd 2008). Shortly after it assumedgovernmental power, the SNP mobilized the symbolic power of a singleunified national ‘Purpose’ in The Government Economic Strategy (Scottish Govern-ment 2007). Here ‘the economy’ is mobilized as a neutral means to the greatersymbolic end of a shared national interest. According to First Minister, AlexSalmond, the Scottish state’s ‘one central Purpose’ is to develop ‘Scotland’scomparative advantage in the global economy’ in the form of the ‘humancapital’ of the ‘Scottish people’ (Scottish Government 2007: v). A unifyingnational purpose envisaged, ‘opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish,



through increasing sustainable economic growth’ (Scottish Government2007: 1).

The emphatic nationalization of Scottish society and the occlusion of theclass structuring functions of the devolved state are hallmarks of devolution.Outside of its favoured euphemisms, Scottish government narratives mention‘class’ only in the context of its aspirations for Scotland to become a ‘worldclass’ economy (Scottish Government 2007). In the devolved Scotland, thesymbolic national interest in ‘sustainable economic growth’ trumps the par-tisan interest politics of class.

In general, the main varieties of the relationship between class, nation andstate can be termed ‘welfare nationalism’ and ‘competitive nationalism’.‘Welfare nationalism’ generates support for devolution because the Scottishstate is smaller, more responsive and accountable, and can experiment withthe various policy instruments under its control to reduce class inequalities(McEwen 2002). However, operating against the amelioration of classinequalities in the universal interest of the nation stands the fact that the maininstruments of redistribution, taxation and social security, remain centralized‘reserved matters’ not devolved powers. The Scotland Act 1998 did not specifydevolved matters but listed ‘reserved matters’ as the sole responsibility of theUK Parliament (see Mooney and Scott 2005).

‘Competitive nationalism’, in contrast, mobilizes the resources of thedevolved Scottish state within a neo-liberal political economy. As the nationaleconomic strategy indicates, to attract mobile global investment and securethe accumulation of indigenous capital, competitive nationalism offers variouscapital-friendly incentives, including lower relative wage costs, flexible laboursupply and infrastructural requirements through higher public spending(Graefe 2005). Here class inequalities are likely to worsen since redistributionpushes in the opposite, regressive direction towards private capital. In the longrun, competitive nationalism projects that private capital will raise the abso-lute standard of living even if wealth and income distribution become grosslyunequal within and across regions.

Devolved policies combine unevenly with reserved policies to actively struc-ture class relations, albeit in contradictory ways. Class reproduction is bisectedby the vectors of competitive nationalism and welfare nationalism. Competi-tive nationalism envisions the devolved state as an enabler for capital; welfarenationalism envisions the devolved state as an enabler of social justice (Law2005). Successive devolved governments in Scotland have used their powers toeffect a number of original policy developments, some tending towardswelfare nationalism and others to competitive nationalism. The formerincludes free personal care for the elderly and land reform, while the latter isapparent in neo-liberal programmes for public services, urban regenerationand successive economic strategy documents (cf. Andrews and Martin 2010;Burchardt and Holder 2009).

Conclusion: Social Policy and Nation-building

It is hardly surprising that SNP First Minister, Alex Salmond, proclaimed hiselection success as a victory for a ‘new Scotland’. The SNP was quick to



announce that it would hold a referendum on independence during thelifetime of the Scottish Parliament. In response, Prime Minster DavidCameron declared that he would ‘campaign to keep our United Kingdomtogether with every single fibre I have’, a figure unlikely to strengthen supportfor the Union in Scotland. Demands were also be made by the SNP leadershipto strengthen and fast track the Scotland Bill to grant wider fiscal powers toScotland by 2016. To the fiscal arsenal the SNP also demands control overcorporation tax and Crown Estate revenues (particularly in relation to rev-enues from the resource-rich Scottish seabed). Other issues, such as the futurerole of the UK armed forces in Scotland, have also excited widespreadcomment. All this amounts to a period of renewed tensions between govern-ments in Holyrood and in Westminster. Devolution has entered a new anduncertain phase. In these uncharted waters, the question of the legitimacy ofthe UK state in Scotland is a constant feature and the form of statehood thatis emerging in Scotland.

Each government in Scotland since 1999 made social policy a significantfocus. Our reframing of the relationship between sub-state Nationalism andthe devolved UK state as expressing a nation and policy dialectic goes beyondthe Nationalist terms of a ‘normal’ state-nation relationship that underpins thestateless nation model. It also lends comparative support to claims made byBeland and Lecours that social policy lies at the core of the state-nationdialectic in multinational constitutions like the devolved UK. This ensuresthat demands will continue to be made for greater powers for a Scottishgovernment, for outright independence or more devolution. There is littledoubt that attempts will constantly be made to establish the essentially ‘Scot-tish’ character of social policies. Policy-making is tied to contested visions ofScotland as the project to align the social justice community to the nationalcommunity continues unabated. In this respect, social policy is pivotal tocontemporary nation-building, identity and interest formation within multi-national states. While this is not unique to Scotland, it appears to have aparticular potency for mobilizing interests and constructing collective identityby appealing to welfare solidarity (see Hassan 2009; Mooney and Williams2006; Williams and Mooney 2008):

Elsewhere on these isles, the tolerance of the poor is being tested –budgets slashed, priorities changed, hope crushed in the braying tones ofpeople who claim to know best. We should aspire to be different. InScotland the poor won’t be made to pick-up the bill for the rich. Whenwe control our natural assets as a sovereign power, the profit from theland shall go to all. Too many of them have been ill-served by the unionas it currently stands. There is a better way (Salmond 2011b)

As we have seen, the SNP has a specific national project for Scotland as amodern, competitive country able to stand up for itself in the context of aglobalized world economy. That is not to say that the neo-liberal narrative ofcompetitive Scotland is necessarily a coherent or hegemonic one across Scot-tish society. The vision of a country prospering on the back of sustainablegrowth built around ‘the knowledge economy’ and other leading sectors,



supported by a low tax regime and an efficient government and public sector,reflects the perspective that globalization is an opportunity more than a risk orthreat to Scotland’s future development. The global failure of this neo-liberalvision in the context of far-reaching economic and financial crisis has yet tosee the SNP and New Labour abandon neo-liberal premises and models.Meanwhile, the UK Conservative/Liberal Democrat government coalition isintent on deepening the neo-liberal experiment in what Colin Crouch (2011)aptly terms ‘the strange non-death of neoliberalism’. A much more austereand draconian species of social policy is being re-fashioned as the cost imposedon society for irresponsible corporations ‘too big to fail’.

Building the new Scotland in the 21st century, therefore, involves are-conceptualization and a re-imagining of Scotland, a changing nation aswell as a changing state. That there is a specific social policy-making agenda,around social integration, inclusion, fairness and solidarity, does not contra-dict neo-liberal assumptions wedded to a national project of competition,growth and prosperity. The naturalization of ‘Scotland’ and the re-nationalization of economic and social policy in the Scottish ‘national interest’are key components of this project. Before and after the May 2011 Scottishelections, the SNP made considerable play of its vision of a ‘better Scotland’.Its outstanding election success was hailed as ‘a victory for a society and anation’ (Salmond 2011b). In the period of the fourth Scottish Parliament, withthe SNP forming a majority government, there is likely to be more of this typeof language and emphasis, as it builds towards a referendum on independentstatehood. The interplay and tensions between nation-building and socialpolicy-making is therefore about to enter a new and more significant phase inthe years to come.

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devolution in a ‘stateless nation’: nation-building and social policy in scotland

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