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The conclusion draws the book together by offering an overview of the findings: the SNP has become a more professional party, focused on winning elections; it is pragmatic in its strategy but retaining independence as its ideal and motivations; and it is predominantly male and ageing.

Identities or self-images are multiple, nested, hyphenated, flexible, and instrumental. Culture and identity provide both bridges and walls between Scots and minorities, but what is a bridge for one is a wall for another. For English immigrants, culture is the bridge and identity the wall, while for ethnic Pakistanis, culture is the wall and identity the bridge. Since English immigrants’ identities are primarily territorial, they cannot identify with Scotland despite respecting its traditions. Since Pakistani identities are primarily cultural (Muslim), their territorial identities are flexible and instrumental. They identify quickly and easily with Scotland, despite wishing to change its culture and traditions by adding more variety. The SNP’s welcoming political stance and its opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq has made it even easier for Muslims to identify with Scotland.

The extent of single nucleotide polymorphism is reviewed, together with insights gained into the nature of allelic architecture in terms of haplotypes, linkage disequilibrium and recombination. The utility of SNPs in defining genetic determinants of common disease is discussed including the rationale, results and diverse applications of the International HapMap Project. The recent development and application of genome-wide association studies is reviewed including the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium study of seven common diseases. Issues relating to design, analysis and interpretation of such studies are described. A detailed review of age-related macular degeneration and inflammatory bowel disease is presented, two common multifactorial diseases where genome-wide association studies have recently enjoyed considerable success. Research in these diseases illustrates the timeline of different approaches used in defining genetic determinants of common disease and how such analyses can provide novel insights into disease pathogenesis.

This chapter provides an historic overview of the party, outlining its role as an amateur-activist party prior to devolution, organizationally dependent on its membership with few full-time staff and professional politicians. It describes how the party operated on the fringe of politics with no prospect of governmental power but able occasionally to influence the political agenda. Devolution created opportunities for the SNP, allowing it to become a professional party, securing its status as a Parliamentary party, and giving it the opportunity to hold government office.

The results of an open-ended question on why members joined the party are analysed. Independence is the main reason for joining for over half the membership though a significant part of the membership gives answers conforming with a more generalized view that the SNP as ‘good for Scotland’. The motivations of different cohorts of the membership are explored.

The chapter begins with a consideration of The Sun's stance toward the Scottish National Party in 2007, noting its virulence even by comparison with anti-SNP coverage in the Daily Record. There follows a discussion of the influence on the popularity of political parties of the press and broadcasting, noting the relative neutrality of broadcasters, but commenting on their ‘institutional bias’. The BBC is judged to be London-centric, and there is criticism of management. A broad pattern of anti-SNP press coverage is asserted, though difference is seen in the more locally-orientated accounts of the Press and Journal and Courier. The quality and quantity of serious political debate in the press is seen as having declined. New media offer better possibilities. A concluding discussion addresses the question of lack of transparency in the motives behind partisan press coverage. A world of informed choice and open discussion could pave the way for a better Scottish politics.

This chapter has two main purposes. The first is to examine some continuities in media coverage of the Scottish constitutional debate from 2012 until the new parliament sat at Westminster in May 2015. Some questions are addressed about balance in media reporting and commentary. The chapter also summarizes updates from a number of the volume’s contributors who assessed reactions in their various nations (including within the UK) to the electoral events of May 2015 and provided brief accounts, which are included as extracts in the chapter.

This chapter presents a preliminary account of women in the Scottish National Party (SNP) — an under-researched group in an under-researched party. It concentrates on candidate trends and electoral trends post-1999 as a foundation for future research. It also reports the Scottish Parliament elections 1999–2007, focusing on trends of candidate selection and recruitment in the SNP over time. The post-devolution performance of the SNP provides a good test for what happens to the issue of women's representation in changing political circumstances. The SNP did enforce proactive unofficial measures encouraging women to stand for election. It is noted that the SNP as a party continues to pose a number of gender paradoxes. Comparative evidence indicates that party women — particularly feminists — are critical actors in reform processes.

This chapter provides a socio-demographic overview of Scottish National Party (SNP) members. It investigates some of the key attitudes and identities of the party's members. It then evaluates the levels of political activity before drawing general conclusions about the SNP. It shows that SNP members seemed older than those in other parties. The SNP membership is also largely middle class. The profile of SNP members in terms of age, social class, education and religion is not markedly dissimilar to the Scottish population, and quite similar to most other parties based on previous membership studies. There is little evidence of potential for a fundamentalist backlash against devolution. It might have been expected that SNP members would feel exclusively Scottish, but the party's civic tendencies are in evidence across a number of measurements of identity.

This chapter considers political expressions of nationalism, examining events from the 1970s in more detail and drawing attention to the wider socio-political context of the politics of nationalism in Scotland. National identity has long been a component of the Scottish people, and nationalism has long been a part of Scottish politics, but it is only within the last forty or so years that both have entered the ongoing political arena, and only in the last decade that they have occupied centre stage on a regular basis. When the nationalist movement regained the public fore with the design for a Scottish parliament, it was a movement that included individuals from a number of parties and organisations, but not from the SNP.

Two battles were being fought when Scotland went to the polls on 1 May 2007. The first contest was for the 129 seats in the devolved Scottish Parliament. The second tussle was for 1,222 seats on all of the country's 32 local councils. Both events appeared to represent a watershed, or even a revolutionary change in the nature of Scottish politics. In the parliamentary election, the Scottish National Party (SNP), whose principal objective is that Scotland should leave the United Kingdom and become an independent state, emerged with most votes and most seats. This chapter introduces these issues, and asks whether these two developments do indeed represent a revolution in Scottish politics.

This chapter looks directly at trends in attitudes towards how Scotland should be governed. Did the SNP's success in the 2007 election really signify a growing demand for independence? And even if people in Scotland still have doubts about the merits of independence, does this necessarily mean that they are content with the degree of autonomy afforded their country by the current arrangements? This chapter examines the development of attitudes towards how Scotland should be governed since the advent of devolution.

Even if it were the case that people in Scotland want more autonomy and that support for independence has increased, it does not necessarily follow that this is why the SNP achieved its breakthrough in 2007. This chapter examines the role that evaluations of the performance of government and voters' attitudes towards some of the key policy debates that surfaced during the campaign played in determining how people voted. It consider whether voters took into account their views about how well or badly they believed the Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition had performed since it was first formed in 1999. Second, it examines whether the way in which people voted reflected their views on some of the key differences in the policy proposals put forward by the parties.

This chapter focuses specifically on how one can best account for the success of the SNP in 2007. First, it considers how those who voted for the SNP in 2007 had behaved in the previous Scottish election in 2003. Second, it compares the demographic profile of the nationalist vote in 2007 with its character four years previously. Third, it assesses the link between national identity, constitutional preference and voting for the SNP and how it has varied between elections.

Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to genes and how they work for those without the necessary background or for review. Its emphasis is on the major types of genetic polymorphisms including single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), allele and genotype frequencies, and the utility of genetic polymorphisms in studying the history and current structure of natural populations. It examines different types of models including mathematical models, as well as their relative strength and limitations. How models are modified to be progressively more realistic is illustrated in both discrete-time and continuous-time models of exponential and logistic population growth.

This chapter begins with an overview of the main political traditions in Scotland, examining how party autonomy goals have been shaped by different ideological discourses. Then, it examines how parties conceptualise the ‘nation’ and Scotland's position within Britain and Europe. Next, it introduces the European dimension, with consideration of party responses to European integration since 1979. It argues that Scottish parties have continuously re-positioned themselves on Europe. In the early 1980s, Labour and the SNP opposed European integration as a Conservative free-market project that would undermine Scottish values. This changed in the late 1980s with a new emphasis on the social and political dimensions of integration. Labour and the Liberal Democrats began to view subsidiarity as intrinsic to Scottish devolution, whilst the SNP re-conceptualised the EU as an alternative arena to the UK for security and trading opportunities.