ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a new stability in Scottish economic discourse that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s, centred around the post-1999 devolved settlement. A new perspective on economic management saw “enterprise” and “entrepreneurship” as the main problems in Scottish history and sought to locate the institutional roots of a perceived deficit in Scottish capitalist spirit. The chapter shows how this perspective became almost synonymous with “economic thinking” and was rarely contested. The origins of this discourse are traced to the technocratic sphere in the 1990s. However, it would subsequently form a framework for party-political competition, taking place within the new ideological consensus. The chapter also suggests that this narrowing of economic discourse meant that few could observe the emergent weaknesses within Scotland’s globalising boom sectors in financial services and banking. Overall, the chapter observes how an overarching consensus – in this case, for an economy and citizenship imagined through an enterprise framework – can nonetheless create the conditions for intense discursive conflict.
