ABSTRACT
The image of Scotland’s First Minister visiting the White House for an audience with the US President was somewhat surreal in 2001. Yet it seemed to symbolise how much had changed in so little time. Now that Scotland had its own parliament, for a brief moment it appeared that the country was once again master of its own destiny. Yet as a good many Scots soon discovered, ‘the parliament did not have the powers to meet their expectations’ (Mitchell 2001: 48). Whilst the parliament would be responsible for ‘domestic’ matters such as education and health, other areas of policy which also fell within its competence, such as fisheries were for the most part determined not in Edinburgh nor even necessarily in London but more so in Brussels. Thus, although 1999 appeared briefly to have been something of a turning point for Scotland, more latently that was not necessarily so. In turn, that raises the question as to whether devolution is ‘unfinished business’, the underlying issue being whether the country possesses sufficient autonomy.2 This has long been a hallmark of Scottish-UK relations, with some arguing that Scotland enjoyed a fair degree of self-government prior to 1999 under what was then termed ‘administrative devolution’.3 For instance, Kellas (1989) maintained that Scotland had its own distinctive political system and it possessed a measure of autonomy within the UK.4 He was by no means a lone voice.
