The Significance of the Scottish Vote

“What is the Significance of the Scottish Vote?”

The significance of the Scottish vote, in which a majority of Scots 16 and older, not by a wide margin but still a majority, rejected leaving the United Kingdom and becoming an independent nation, means that for the time being the UK will remain a largely centralized, unified state. But I believe it also means that the UK will move closer to a Federal model, with the even more rapid “devolution” of powers to the Scottish Parliament that began in the late 90s. Yet this will be a Federal model that can’t be fully realized due to the relative size and power of England within the UK. In addition, this move towards a hybrid Federalism may result in a backlash within the English majority, resulting in the loss of the Scottish voice in some English, but also some national affairs. To consider whether this represents an inability of the model laid out in the Federalist Papers to be applied to the UK, it is necessary to consider the background to the vote in terms of steps taken towards the devolution of powers to Scotland; the key elements of Federalism as discussed in the Papers, and how they may come to bear now due to the pressure for independence; and the critical economic problems addressed by but only partially answered by vote.

The UK has been devolving some powers to regional assemblies in Scotland and Wales since the late 90s, Scotland’s Parliament having much more explicitly authorized powers and control over revenues than Wales’. This has been done to assuage calls for better representation of Scottish interests, since the national parliament in Westminster is dominated by England given the size of its population. It has also relieved political pressure due to the fact that as the UK parliament has come to be dominated by Conservative governments, and in the interim led by a Labour Party that hardly resembles the party that once enjoyed strong support among the working classes of both Scotland and Wales, Scottish voters have increasingly voted for the Scottish National Party, as well as Labour, leading to a pretty wide gulf between the political, and as we’ll discuss, the economic interests of Scottish voters vs. the English majority. This has led to what has been termed a “democratic deficit” in the UK, where the institutions of representative democracy fail to provide for representation of large parts of their constituencies not due to deliberate policy, but due to structural issues. The SNP’s calls for independence boil down to a lack of involvement in actually making laws and policy, not just participating remotely in their implementation, whether to the benefit of Scots or not.

So while the gradual devolution of powers has led to “a system of government as close to federalism as you can have in a nation where one part forms 85% of the population (former Prime Minister Gordon Brown as quoted in Kettle, 2014),” the so-called “democratic deficit” in UK remains a problem. There is now a movement, supported even by Prime Minister Cameron, to come up with a system that provides for ”English votes for English laws.” To some this would mean an English parliament, to others several regional parliaments within England, but to Cameron and others in the Conservative leadership it appears to mean a system for preventing Scottish MPs from voting in Westminster on laws affecting only or primarily English. This does not mesh with the Federalist model of the Federalist Papers, because England is not a separate regional authority within a federal system.

The UK has been moving towards Federalism, many argue, in its devolution of powers to legislatures in Scotland and Wales, but it still isn’t truly a Federal republic as described by Hamilton et. al. in the Federalist Papers : there is no true separation of powers between branches with overlapping powers; executive power is wielded by a cabinet of Members of Parliament able to form a government, and the upper house, the House of Lords, rather than guaranteeing equal representation of the constituent regional members of the state, rather represents an odd assortment of special interests, hereditary powers (though these are on the decline), and notable persons with no particular relationship with direct constituencies. In addition, the judiciary does not play the same role as it does in the US, or in Germany for that matter, in adjudicating the constitutionality of laws and policies enacted by the legislature or ordered by the executive. In