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‘Multicultural nationalism’ comes very close to being an oxymoron: devolution increased national self-consciousness and 9/11 added to the problems of multiculturalism everywhere, including Scotland. But in practice, potential problems proved to be solutions. Since England has a key role in defining Scottish identity, Scottish nationalism stimulates Anglophobia but not Islamophobia, and Muslims can use Scottish nationalism as a tool of integration. 9/11 made life worse for Muslims in Scotland, but not as much as elsewhere. Thus, 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ bound Muslims more closely to Scotland. Although both minorities criticized the governing performance of the new Scottish Parliament, both felt that its street-level impact has been more positive than negative. English immigrants feel that devolution has defused tensions, and Muslims self-consciously distinguish between the positive impact of devolution and the concurrent, negative impact of 9/11. Against the odds, multiculturalism and sub-state nationalism have not merely coexisted, but actually interacted positively within post-devolution Scotland.

Majority Scots have less contact, friendship, and knowledge of the minorities than the minorities have of the majority. Minority perceptions of the majority are broadly accurate. In particular, they are aware that the majority doubts the loyalty of minorities (English and Muslim) to Scotland. The frequent exposure to ethnic jokes and intentional insults have a dramatic impact on minorities’ perceptions, even though the victims try hard to believe that their harassers are exceptional rather than typical. These personal experiences have significantly more impact on English immigrants’ perceptions of the majority’s Anglophobia than on Muslims’ perceptions of the majority’s Islamophobia. English immigrants suffered less harassment but coped worse and reacted more indignantly. Signals from the new Scottish Parliament to minorities were critically important in determining minorities’ perceptions of the majority. The Parliament’s inclusive, multicultural publicity campaigns may have greater impact on the minorities’ perceptions than on the majority’s actual prejudices.

The relationship between the executive and legislature at the national level remains heavily weighted in favour of the government but a far more balanced relationship is observable at the sub‐national level.

The Scottish Parliament has, in its first decade of law-making, introduced important statutory reforms of the judiciary with the objective of modernising its position in the constitution and strengthening its internal structures and processes. Indeed, for the higher judiciary in the Court of Session in particular, the passing by the Parliament of the Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act 2008 is one of the most significant legislative landmarks since the Act of Union 1707. This chapter is organized as follows. First, brief consideration is given to the importance of a strong, independent judiciary for the maintenance of the rule of law. Second, the constitutional and legal provision for Scottish judges prior to the 2008 Act is evaluated. Third, the main reforms introduced by the 2008 Act are analysed. The chapter then concludes with a short assessment of the Parliament's contribution to the area.

This chapter argues that there was a determination that the 1997 devolution plan, unlike the earlier 1979 plan, would be ‘not like Westminster’ but would result from a ‘home-grown process’. It classifies the Holyrood parliament's successes and its failures, but its successes are there to be transferred and to be copied. In particular, it explains the four key principles of the Consultative Steering Group report: power-sharing, accountability, openness and accessibility, and equal opportunities. There is no generally accepted inclusive list of functions that a parliament is expected to carry out. It then investigates the four interlocking aspects of the parliament in operation over its first four-year session, as examples of how it has performed and how it may have lessons for Westminster. These include the arrangement of parliamentary business, legislation, committees, and accountability and representation. The committees are probably the Scottish Parliament's greatest single practical achievement. The other main feature of the parliament by comparison with Westminster is its greater institutional autonomy in relation to the Executive. The Scottish Parliament has also demonstrated a determination to be a learning parliament.

This chapter assesses what the Scottish Parliament has achieved in the area of culture. There has been significant legislative activity with respect to the Gaelic language. Provisions on Gaelic education were included in the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000, and two Bills on the language have come before the Scottish Parliament. One, the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Bill, introduced as a Private Bill in November 2002 by Michael Russell, then a member of the SNP opposition, received assent at the Preliminary Stage, but ultimately died when the first Scottish Parliament was dissolved in March 2003. The second Gaelic Language (Scotland) Bill, introduced into the Scottish Parliament by the Labour-Liberal Democrat Scottish Executive in September 2004, was ultimately passed, in amended form, unopposed in the Scottish Parliament in April 2005, and became the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005. Also significant have been the legislative developments relating to a proposed new agency, Creative Scotland, to assume the functions of certain other public bodies active in the area of culture.

All of the chapters in this book, which were presented at the Royal Society of Edinburgh's symposium, focus on the British incorporating union of 1707. Each chapter offers a fresh perspective on this momentous event in Scotland's — and Britain's — history. This chapter examines the union-related issues facing Scotland in 1707 and how such issues reflected in the Scottish Parliament during the fateful months from October 1706 to January 1707. In the years immediately preceding the Union in 1707, Scotland was a troubled nation, and a nation in trouble — although not without the capacity to trouble others. Internally the country was divided by deep fissures created by religious conflict and dynastic contest. Linked were issues of governance — including the role of the Scottish estates, or Parliament — and attitudes to monarchical absolutism. Possibly the issue that most exercised the hearts and minds of people outside Parliament Close was the fate following union of the ‘visible mark’ of Scotland's nationhood and sovereignty, the honours of Scotland — the ancient crown, and the sword and sceptre of state.

Having established the wider UK context in which it operated, this chapter now turns to examine the post-devolution Scottish Conservative Party. It finds that while the Scottish Conservatives did adapt organisationally to the external shock of devolution and the Scottish Parliament, they spent the following decade trying to repeat the same pre-1997 political strategy. Contrary to some assumptions in the literature about sub-state party demands for autonomy, the Scottish party in fact had more autonomy than it wanted or needed. This chapter finds overall that the potential for party change beyond constitutions and management charts was for the Conservatives in the gift of a leadership (Goldie and McLetchie) that chose not to attempt radical change. Faced with a significant section of the party which remained hostile to devolution, the party leadership instead concentrated on more ‘banal’ issues of everyday parliamentary business, policy-making and campaigning, giving the impression of progress without much internal struggle.

This chapter focuses on the process by which laws have been made. It takes a deliberately wide view of the legislative process, looking at what happens before a Bill is introduced, when the conventional wisdom asserts ‘all executive policy and most legislation is conceived, drafted and all but enacted’, as well as at what happens once it embarks on the parliamentary stages of the process. It begins by looking at the expectations that were held of the process.

This chapter assesses what the Scottish Parliament has achieved in the area of transport. Investment in transport infrastructure was limited during the twentieth century — a situation aggravated by unprecedented growth in private car use throughout the UK and elsewhere. There has also been an increasing awareness of the environmental costs of travel and the need to address the environmental impacts of travel and transport systems. These were the transport issues and challenges facing the new Scottish Parliament — challenges which had to be addressed in the context of national and local government structures, the legal framework for transport and the environment, and the availability of funding to support investment. In dealing with these challenges, the Scottish Parliament has taken into account the key drivers of infrastructure investment, environmental mitigation and social inclusion.

This chapter illustrates how ‘most of the Holyrood political class has been reluctant to explore the boundaries between the devolved and the reserved’, even on less life-and-death issues such as broadcasting. Conversely, it also tells of at least one post-devolution success story for classic informal pre-devolution-style ‘Scottish lobbying’ in Westminster. Scotland is presently one of the UK's leading audiovisual production centres, with Glasgow as the linchpin. The capacity of the Scottish Parliament to debate questions of media concentration but also its incapacity to act legislatively has been observed. There are both political and economic calculations behind the refusal to devolve powers over the media via the Communications Act 2003. Ofcom now has a key role in policing the terms of trade for regional production that falls within a public service broadcaster's target across the UK. The BBC's position as the principal vehicle of public service broadcasting has come increasingly under question. The Gaelic Media Service set up under the Communications Act 2003 has a line of responsibility to Ofcom in London. Scottish Advisory Committee on Telecommunications (SACOT) determined four key regulatory issues needing future attention by Ofcom.

This book has examined how well the Scottish public think they are being governed now that devolution is in place. It has also analysed the incidence and nature of national identity in post-devolution Scotland. In so doing, the book has examined and evaluated many of the key claims that were made about what devolution would deliver for Scotland. Some of the worst fears about the impact of devolution on the quality of Scottish democracy do not appear to have been realised. Elections to the Scottish Parliament may not have particularly high turnouts, but they cannot be dismissed as unimportant ‘second-order’ affairs in which those who do vote do so primarily on the basis of what is happening at Westminster. In providing Scotland with its own distinctive national political institutions without doing harm at least to support for the Union, the devolution project can be said, so far at least, to have delivered. However, getting the public actively engaged in the working of that mechanism has proved to be a rather more elusive objective.

This chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to offer critical analysis of the first ten years of law making by the Scottish Parliament in a number of key areas, putting it into its wider policy and socio-legal context. Although the book does not seek to provide comprehensive coverage of all of the legislation of the Scottish Parliament, a number of significant issues emerge from the individual chapters, which are grouped loosely under five headings: the genesis and operation of the Parliament; rights and society; public administration and services; justice and legal system; and economy and environment. The overall thesis which emerges from the majority of the individual discussions is that of optimism tempered by experience. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Local government has been described as ‘big business’. With the exception of Northern Ireland, local authorities in the United Kingdom are responsible for education, housing, personal services, transport, planning, fire and rescue services, policing, libraries and museums, leisure and recreation, waste services, consumer protection and environmental health. This chapter examines the role which has been played by the Scottish Parliament in the development of local government. In relation to the organisation and structure of Scottish local government, and in sharp contrast to the position south of the Border (where the Local Government Act 2000 required most councils in England and Wales to choose between an elected mayor and executive, an appointed leader and executive, or an elected mayor and council manager) the Scottish Parliament has been largely non-interventionist, preferring to allow local authorities to review and also reform their own organisational and decision-making structures on an informal basis.

A considerable amount of the legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament can be seen as falling within the general area of environment and sustainable development, but providing an assessment of it is not straightforward. In the first place there are difficulties over the scope of what should be covered. A second key element is the need to take account of the extent to which there are significant constraints on the Scottish Parliament's ability to go its own way on many issues. After considering these preliminary issues in more detail, this chapter examines the role of sustainable development both within the parliamentary procedures and in the substantive content of legislation, as a pervasive issue and where specific substantive rules are imposed. The chapter then examines the main areas where the Scottish Parliament has acted on environmental topics, followed by consideration of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, which is a significant measure for both ideas. The chapter ends with an assessment of the Parliament's contribution in this field.

This chapter assesses what the Scottish Parliament has achieved in the light of the problems it was designed to solve; the promises held out for it by its creators; and the subject-specific goals of child and family law itself. It shows that the Scottish Parliament has been active and productive, passing a myriad of statutes devoted to the field and numerous others impacting significantly on aspects of it.