Lesson-drawing and public policy: secondhand smoking restrictions in Scotland and England

The dangers associated with the use of tobacco products have been documented extensively in the literature on public health and tobacco control. As a result, various countries, including subcentral units in federations and other devolved political systems, have adopted policies to control tobacco consumption. This article examines the effects lesson-drawing had on the adoption of restrictive secondhand smoke policies in Scotland and England in 2006 and 2007. Using elite interviews and documentary sources, the study finds that in both countries secondhand smoke policies were influenced by the adoption of similar policies in other English-speaking jurisdictions, especially the nearby Republic of Ireland. In turn, the adoption of a non-smoking policy in Scotland influenced England. This confirms Castles’ (1993) claim of similar policies developing in the English-speaking ‘family of nations’ even at different levels of government. Policy transfer from Ireland to the United Kingdom is highly unusual, as is lesson-drawing from another jurisdiction within the United Kingdom to England. This may have occurred because the policy is fundamentally declaratory but with some need for compliance checks that are not resource-intensive. This path of lesson-drawing may be rare in the United Kingdom, but it may have broader implications for different types of lesson-drawing in multilevel governance.