The Territorialisation of Interest Representation in Scotland: Did Devolution Produce a New Form of Group-Government Relations?

The Scottish Government represents an important new ‘venue’ for group influence and provides a strong incentive for interest groups to engage. A large number have exploited this new opportunity. The devolution of powers to a Scottish Parliament in 1999 followed a century of administrative devolution in areas such as health, education, local government and justice. Many Scottish groups have long histories, and there is evidence of distinct territorial policy communities before 1999 in some areas—but devolution provided a new frame of reference for policy-making and a strong impetus to organise at this level. Factors such as Scotland's size, and the Scottish Government's limited policy-making capacity, have produced a ‘Scottish Policy Style’, in which groups and government interact in distinctive ways. However, this development is complicated by the multi-level nature of policy-making, producing the need for many groups to organise and lobby at local, Scottish, UK and/or EU levels. The devolution of economic policy, and the prospect of territorial corporatism, is limited. The picture varies markedly from issue to issue, from areas such as compulsory education producing Scotland and local-level relationships to agriculture and environmental policy in which key decisions are made by the EU for the UK and Scotland to implement.