ABSTRACT
The issue of constitutional change has never been far off the top of the agenda for Scotland’s political parties since the late 1980s. One could go further and argue that the pursuit and accommodation of autonomy has been the stuff of Scottish politics for most of the twentieth century. However, what makes the last 20 years interesting – apart from the devolution settlement – is how the issue of European integration has become entwined in debates about Scottish self-determination. The processes of decentralisation and supranational integration have created a new political playing field in which parties compete not only on the class dimension, but also on the territorial and European dimensions. The last two issues have never been the exclusive domain of the pro-European, pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP). Instead, parties of every political creed have become involved in issues of territorial autonomy, and have articulated separate visions of the Europe that Scotland should play a role in, whether that be a Confederal Europe, a Europe of the Regions or a Socialist Peoples’ Europe, for example. The diversity of party responses to European integration counters the assumption that minority nations tend to act as homogenous blocs. Rather, the Scottish case mirrors the experience of other nations such as Brittany, Catalonia and the Basque Country, in which parties compete in their representation of national identity and interests, many of them expanding their constitutional goals to include Europe.
