Policy Review Section

At the UK Political Studies Association Conference, held at the University of Glasgow on April 10-12 1996, the British Territorial Politics Group of the Association held a panel on New Labour and Devolution. Regional Studies subsequently invited panellists to submit their papers to the Policy Review Section in two parts. Part One in this section examines the Labour Party's approach to devolution in Scotland. The second part in the next edition of the section features papers on Labour's proposals for devolution in Wales and regional reform in England. In the first article Peter Lynch of the Department of Politics, University of Stirling, sets out the changing political context of the devolution debate in Scotland. He examines the development of Labour Party thinking and the politics of the Constitutional Convention, concluding that, whilst the Labour Party in Scotland as a whole is much more positive about devolution than in the 1970s, this has not been achieved without considerable efforts at managing internal party dissent and painful compromises. In the second article James Mitchell of the Department of Government, University of Strathclyde, considers the broader political philosophy of the territorial state in Britain which influences current Labour Party thinking. He focuses on Rokkan and Urwin's models of unitary and union states, arguing that the modern Labour Party is far more strongly influenced by a union-state conception of Britain than hitherto. This creates new potential for offering coherent and persuasive justifications of devolution in Scotland on a different basis from the rest of Britain. Mitchell, nevertheless, discusses the constraints upon the further development of such a union-state approach. In the third article, Graham Leicester of the Constitution Unit, University College London, addresses the significance of changes in the broader contexts of British politics to the efforts by the Labour Party to carry Scottish devolution should they come to power at the next General Election. He considers the issues surrounding legislative reform, arguing that the chances for devolution will be much enhanced by being but one part of a large programme of constitutional reform. He is, nevertheless, realistic about the pitfalls Labour must avoid and the virtues they must attain if Scottish devolution is ultimately to be achieved.