Devolution: New Politics for Old?

Devolution: New Politics for Old? BY JONATHAN BRADBURY AND JAMES MITCHELL

DEVOLUTION represents a large constitutional upheaval for the territories of the UK. Following the first elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly in 1999 and the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998, we can begin to see its early operation in perspective. The article explores two themes where supporters of devolution hoped for possible transformative outcomes. First, advocates of devolution hoped for a move towards a more consensual elite political culture. In Scotland and Wales, it was suggested that a semi-proportional electoral system would usher in a ‘new politics’, by which was generally meant a more cooperative style of inter-party relations than that at Westminster. In Northern Ireland it was hoped that an elaborate system of consociational checks and balances, including use of the STV voting system, would coerce a form of ‘new politics’ in which parties had to cooperate for practical government to go ahead at all. Second, there were hopes for policy innovation. In Scotland and Wales it was expected that innovation in institutional procedures would bring about a more open and collaborative style of decision-making and produce distinctive policy outcomes. In Northern Ireland, devolutionists were less idealistic but hoped to develop a policy framework removed from direct UK control that carried at least a legitimising level of local cross-community support. The reality of devolution has been somewhat less remarkable than those hopes. Evidence of ‘new politics’ is limited. Instead, the early operation of devolution in Scotland and Wales suggests the emergence of the normal politics of decentralised political systems rather than new politics. Coalition government has been considered a necessity in Scotland from the start and latterly also in Wales, but there have been strong tensions between political parties both within and outside coalition arrangements. In Northern Ireland, the Assembly has had an unprecedented political composition and previously unthinkable steps have been taken towards power-sharing but the continued inter-party animosities threaten the very agreement that established devolution in the first place. Nor has devolution generally been marked by the achievement of policy distinctiveness. Instead, the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly have in their different ways had to cope with a steep learning curve and faced difficulties in marking out a distinctive approach to policy problems. In Northern Ireland the continued political wrangling has prevented anything like a normalisation of a devolved 쑔 Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government 2001 Parliamentary Affairs (2001), 54, 257–275

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process of policy-making. Overall, constitutional change in all parts of the UK remains contested, as politicians struggle to get to grips with the present dispensation as much as look ahead to a future one.

The electoral system and party politics scotland. In all cases, changes in the electoral system and procedures of representation have established a novel political arithmetic in the devolved bodies. In Scotland the key preparatory forum was the Scottish Constitutional Convention, consisting of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and other bodies, which met from 1989. Its main policy innovation was the electoral system. The decision to abandon first past the post in favour of a German-style additional member system seems at first sight perverse since it removed Labour’s historic advantage in Scottish politics. Under the old system, Labour would have had an overall majority of 20 in the Scottish Parliament and the Liberal Democrats would have been the main opposition party. The Conservatives would have had no representation and the SNP would have emerged with only seven seats. Under the more proportional system, Labour did not expect to win a majority. However, as Jack McConnell, then Labour’s Scottish general secretary stated in April 1997, the system was designed to make it very unlikely that the SNP would ever win power.1 Labour was prepared to surrender the likelihood of its own overall majority in order to achieve this aim, and the Liberal Democrats backed it because they expected to share in governmental power. The cost to Labour depended on what the Liberal Democrats could extract in forming a coalition. The other innovation occurred in relation to women’s representation. In a classic example of a social movement identifying an emerging opportunity structure, women’s groups gained the support of the Constitutional Convention for the principle of equal representation. Trade unionists and Labour activists in particular were strong supporters and won support for mechanisms within the Labour Party to ensure it was brought about, as well as influencing other parties to consider the matter seriously.2 Labour succeeded in achieving 50:50 representation and the SNP came close but the Liberal Democrats fell well below the target, as did the Conservatives though they had never accepted it. The outcome of the first elections to the Scottish Parliament was as predicted. Labour emerged as the largest party without an overall majority, the SNP the largest opposition party, with the Liberal Democrats coming in fourth behind the Conservatives (see Table 1). There were also few surprises when Labour and the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition. To some extent Donald Dewar, Labour’s leader, was successful in making this transition to coalition a success for the ‘new politics’ preached by advocates of devolution. Dewar had been Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland from 1983 until 1992 and had been instrumental in Labour’s decision to enter the Constitutional

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1. Results of the 1999 Scottish Parliament Election Lab. SNP Cons. Lib. Dem. Scot. Socialist Green Ind. Lab.

Constituency Seats

List Seats

Men

Women

Total Seats

53 7 0 12 0 0 1

3 28 18 5 1 1 0

28 19 15 14 1 1 1

28 16 3 3 0 0 0

56 35 18 17 1 1 1

Convention. His replacement by George Robertson during the 1992–97 period, when the parties to the Convention had to address the trickier details of Scottish devolution and Robertson had to announce the unpopular policy of having a referendum on setting up the Parliament, was also opportune. Soured Labour-Liberal Democrat relations were ended with the return of Dewar in 1997. Coalition formation was made easier as Dewar had not been entangled in many of the difficult issues within the Convention. His status as a senior member of the Labour Party in Britain also eased the process of establishing the Parliament and coalition government. Nevertheless, there were a number of tensions accompanying the process of political transition. During the first year of the Parliament there were sharp criticisms of the Scottish Executive and strong intraparty tensions within the Scottish Labour Party bubbling under the surface. Dewar’s illness and absence from front-line politics during summer 2000 served to increase already mounting speculation and positioning for succession. A bitter battle between Jack McConnell, who had become the Finance Secretary, and the Health Minister, Susan Deacon, over health finance had the overtones of a leadership contest. Dewar’s death in October ended this period of uncertainty. However, a different problem presented itself as the Scotland Act stipulated that an Executive had to be in place within 28 days of an election or death of a First Minister, or otherwise a Scottish general election would have to take place. The latter provision had been inserted to ensure that coalition formation did not drag on indefinitely. Leadership contests in New Labour, involving an electoral college with one-member-one-vote, take considerably more time. Dewar had refused to allow the election of a deputy Scottish party leader and the Deputy First Minister’s post was given to Jim Wallace, the Liberal Democrat leader, ensuring that no Labour figure had a head-start in any leadership contest. However, Henry McLeish, the Enterprise Minister, was perceived as the most experienced of Dewar’s cabinet colleagues and the establishment candidate. It appeared that he had few really obvious challengers. Assertions that Wendy Alexander, Dewar’s former policy adviser who was elected to the Parliament and appointed Communities Minister, was his favoured choice were never substantiated. Her mishandling of the repeal of Section 28, preventing

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local authorities from promoting homosexuality, damaged her. Equally, Jack McConnell was damaged after he was forced to defend himself against accusations regarding relations with a lobbying company for which he had formerly worked. Labour felt constrained by the need to elect a leader quickly and a shortened contest was announced with a more limited party electorate. In the event, McConnell did stand but McLeish won, though by a narrower margin than had been expected. The victory had two implications. McLeish marked a move away from the strong link with the Westminster age represented by Dewar: he was a fresh leader for a new kind of parliamentary politics. The manner in which he was elected, however, left some doubts about the legitimacy of his leadership. As well as intra-party tensions within Labour, there were tensions in the coalition. These tended to rebound against the Liberal Democrats. In negotiating the post-election coalition deal, the strong stance taken by the Liberal Democrats during the election against student fees was a key issue. On election night, Jim Wallace emphatically announced the end of student fees, suggesting that this was a non-negotiable part of a coalition deal. In practice, a climb-down was necessary because Dewar was unable to give a commitment to a policy with UK-wide implications. A committee of inquiry was set up which eventually proposed a compromise by which students would not have to pay tuition fees while they were studying but would pay into a graduate endowment fund once they had started to earn a significant income. In essence, instead of paying fees, Scottish students would pay a graduate tax. Whilst representing a partial victory, this outcome left the Liberal Democrats looking weak and compromised. Coalition formation on other issues was relatively painless, aided by the vagueness of modern party manifestos and a fair degree of policy consensus between the two parties. However, Liberal Democrat leaders sought to claim that they had won much in the coalition, though it is difficult to identify policies which the coalition has pursued which would not otherwise have been pursued by Labour on its own, a point Labour were expert in making clear. Another issue which highlighted tensions within the coalition was Scottish Socialist MSP, Tommy Sheridan’s bill to abolish warrant sales —the enforced sale of goods of people in debt. The Executive initially proposed an amendment promising to introduce its own measure to deal with this antiquated aspect of Scots law highlighted at the time of the poll tax. During the debate on the principle of the bill in April 2000 it became clear that a number of backbench Labour MSPs were prepared to support Sheridan and the Labour leadership decided to withdraw its amendment at the time when Jim Wallace, as Justice Minister, was speaking against the bill. The Deputy First Minister did not appear to be part of the Executive. Wallace was also left to carry the can on another difficult issue. In August 1999, a patient was released

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from the high security hospital at Carstairs due to a loophole in the law. This provoked a storm of protest in the media. Emergency legislation had to be enacted to close the loophole—but not before the Executive, and Wallace in particular, had come under fire for an anomaly that had only just become evident but had long existed. The weakness of the Liberal Democrats’ position in the coalition was further underlined following the death of Dewar in October 2000, when Labour members prevented Jim Wallace, as Dewar’s Deputy First Minister, from stepping into the First Minister position temporarily while Labour elected a successor. The Scottish National Party was unimpressive in exploiting problems in the coalition parties. Indeed, its transition from a minority party in the Commons engaged in guerilla-style tactics to the main opposition party in the Scottish Parliament was far from smooth. Alex Salmond, its leader since 1990, had been remarkably successful in using extremely limited resources to make an impact. With only three MPs in Westminster after the 1987 and 1992 elections and still behind the Conservatives in terms of popular vote, the Nationalists had been punching well above their weight. However, his performances in the Scottish Parliament were lacklustre and there were complaints about the drift which appeared to be setting in. While opportunistic oppositionalism had been the only option available to the Nationalists at Westminster, the new Scottish Parliament afforded them a new playing field. For the first time, the SNP could portray itself as a potential party of government, but that required changes in style, emphasis and strategy which it seemed to be unable to make in the first year in the Parliament. Ironically, the SNP had been infected by Westminster as much as any other party. Salmond’s decision to stand down as leader offered an opportunity for a new leader to develop a new style. This came with the election of John Swinney in September 2000 and the subsequent move to a leader-of-the-opposition adversarial approach in parliamentary debate. In this context Dewar’s death and Salmond’s resignation coming so close together marked the end of a transitional phase in Scottish politics. The advent of McLeish as a ‘local’ leader of the Labour Party and as one with less easy relations with the Liberal Democrats, promised the normal intra-party and intra-coalition tensions of decentralised political systems. For a while Dewar’s particular stature held both of these developments at bay but no more. Swinney’s explicit embrace of adversarialism equally promised the adaptation of the SNP to their new role of offering an alternative party of government. Both relatively unknown to the Scottish public, McLeish and Swinney had faced each other across the chamber when McLeish was Minister for Enterprise and Life Long Learning and Swinney was his Shadow as well as Chair of the relevant subject committee. In these capacities, both had been credited with adopting a ‘new politics’ consensual style. However, on

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assuming the leadership of their parties, each adopted the more familiar, indeed normal confrontational style. wales. In Wales the decision to have a new electoral system also had important consequences for the transition to devolution, though of a more unexpected kind. The decision to copy Scotland with a variant of the additional member system was the brainchild of former Labour Secretary of State for Wales, Ron Davies. He was aware that support for devolution in a referendum could not be taken for granted; and in order to enlist the support of the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru he needed to guarantee them reasonable representation. Given that Labour won 34 out of the 40 parliamentary seats in Wales in the 1997 general election the other parties had little confidence in a first past the post system. At the same time, he faced a Wales Labour Party generally opposed to proportional representation and with little or no tradition of cooperation with other parties. Crucially there had been no Constitutional Convention to make accessible the idea of an electoral system that regularly produced coalitions. Davies’ compromise was to create a 60-member National Assembly for Wales, 40 elected from the constituencies and 20 from regional lists. This split would inevitably give the other parties better representation, but would also normally deliver a 30+ majority for the Labour Party on the basis of continued constituency victories. Applying the new system to previous voting statistics, only in Labour’s disaster of 1983 would the party have failed to get an overall majority in the Assembly. The only way in which real change was envisaged was in women’s representation, where not only Labour but also Plaid Cymru introduced positive discrimination policies with similar effects to those in Scotland. Ron Davies’ personal difficulties, however, transformed electoral expectations. His resignation both as Secretary of State and putative Labour leader in the Assembly led to a disastrous decision by Tony Blair to back Alun Michael against the heir apparent, Rhodri Morgan, who had the overwhelming support of the party membership in Wales. Michael was perceived as Blair’s ‘poodle’, his election as Labour’s leader an affront to devolution. As a result, many erstwhile Labour voters decided either not to vote or to change their vote. Labour’s opinion poll lead under Ron Davies collapsed and it ended up as the largest party but without an overall majority, Plaid Cymru leaping forward to become the second largest party. This result was Labour’s worst nightmare and required new thinking about executive direction. There was little support for entering a coalition, and when Mike German, leader of the Liberal Democrats, approached Alun Michael to consider one, he was rebuffed. After taking soundings and following his own instinctive suspicion of coalition, Michael established a minority administration. Plaid Cymru, which had been highly successful in 1999 on a moderate campaign, playing down ambitions for independence,

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was cooperative and was appeased by Labour’s support for Lord ElisThomas as Assembly Presiding Officer. The other three parties could not agree on an alternative First Secretary in any case and both Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats were well aware that the principle of devolution itself might lose public support if they mired the Assembly in a row about who should be its leader (see Table 2).3 2. Results of the 1999 Welsh Assembly Election Labour PC Cons Lib. Dem.

Constituency Seats 27 9 1 3

List Seats 1 8 8 3

Men 13 11 9 3

Women 15 6 0 3

Total 28 17 9 6

Note: Alun Michael’s resignation as Labour’s list member led to his replacement by Delyth Evans, changing the male-female Labour AM ratio to 12–16.

Michael set up an all-Labour cabinet, though carefully constructed to provide both for gender and territorial balance. Thereafter, more often than not Labour won its votes in the Assembly by maintaining its own discipline and doing a deal with Plaid Cymru or Liberal Democrat members to abstain or support on an issue-by-issue basis. Superficially, this suggested some evidence of the much-vaunted ‘new politics’ of inter-party cooperation. Michael’s leadership, however, was always vulnerable to support of a no confidence motion from the other three parties. The four-year fixed-term Assembly removed the option of dissolution and the solidarity between the three parties which campaigned for devolution had its obvious limits. Conservative AMs were always likely regicides, as they adopted Westminster-style opposition politics from the start. Had Michael put at least some substance to the aspirations of devolutionists his administration might arguably have survived. However, the problem of his legitimacy as Labour’s leader was compounded by perception of failure on two fronts. Firstly, he stood accused of leading the Assembly as if he were still Secretary of State in London, denying members of his cabinet individual discretion and ignoring the will of the Assembly. Secondly, he was hounded over whether the UK Treasury would provide match-funding for the £1.2bn of European Union aid offered to West Wales and the Valleys for 2000–2006. As the budget debate approached in February 2000, he could only confirm £25 million match-funding for the first year; further news would have to await the outcome of the Treasury’s Comprehensive Spending Review due in the summer. Plaid Cymru alleged that Labour’s desire to control public expenditure threatened the full use of the EU aid and in January informed Michael that if the Assembly budget in February did not increase central match funding for the first year to £85 million, it would table a vote of no confidence. Michael rejected the charges of his dictatorial style and insisted that all match-funding would in due course be forthcoming, but he was

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unable to meet Plaid Cymru’s specific demand. He was initially confident of withstanding a vote of no confidence because the other three parties could not agree on an alternative First Secretary and he could expect repeated renomination by the Labour group. However, Plaid Cymru threatened a second motion, supported by the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, to rescind the delegation of the Assembly’s powers to the First Secretary, effectively saying they would rather be run by the civil service than Alun Michael. Michael reacted with a preemptive resignation on 9 February, designed to hold off the noconfidence motion and unite Labour behind him. Michael’s strategy was confused and confusing. His representatives also sought a last minute deal with the Liberal Democrats to form a coalition but this time it was they who were rebuffed. The majority of the Labour group took the opportunity of his resignation to rally around Rhodri Morgan, who had waited quietly in the wings as Economic Development Secretary, as their new leader. Morgan was accepted unopposed by the Assembly as First Secretary a week later. The anguished Michael went on to resign his seat during the summer and returned to Westminster.4 Acclaimed as Labour’s rightful leader, Rhodri Morgan nevertheless knew that he faced the same political arithmetic and the same dangers to executive stability. He was also aware that the vote-by-vote approach made it impossible to announce a programme at the beginning of a session with any certainty that it would be passed, thus undermining any sense of direction. During the spring of 2000, he moved towards creating a more stable political administration. The prospect of forming a coalition with the six-strong Liberal Democrat group was always thought difficult because of the different personalities and interests involved. Hence, Morgan’s overtures were initially made to Plaid Cymru to extend their informal support. Discussions were held on Labour’s strategic 10-year plan, ‘Better Wales’, and although Plaid agreed 20 policies to insert in the front of the document, they refused to endorse the plan as a whole. When the parties moved on to the preliminary discussions over the budget in the summer, it became apparent that Plaid Cymru was inclined to take a more oppositionist approach. This followed the resignation of Daffyd Wigley as its leader and the election of Ieuan Wyn Jones as his successor. Meanwhile, Mike German had steered the Liberal Democrat group around to support for a more exclusive partnership, and Morgan himself, influenced by conversations with the late Donald Dewar, became persuaded of the merits of coalition. In October, after lengthy secret negotiations, Morgan announced a partnership agreement with the Liberal Democrats for the remaining two and a half years of the Assembly’s term and a list of 200 policies settled within the context of budget discussions. In a radical restructuring of the cabinet, the Liberal Democrats received two cabinet posts, including Mike German at Economic Development.5 To some observers these developments merely represented the politics

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of catch up with Scotland, presaging a new long-term collaboration between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The implications, however, remained far from settled. As in Scotland, there remained strong interparty tensions. Labour’s ratification of the coalition was done simply by its Welsh party executive, leaving a sense of unease among ordinary members, especially about Liberal Democrat control of the economic development portfolio. The discipline of the Assembly group, rattled by the flight from Alun Michael, was further weakened by dissatisfaction with a Labour leadership that appeared to be deciding things without proper consultation. The attempt to install Rosemary Butler as Deputy Presiding Officer of the Assembly as a booby prize for cabinet dismissal failed after a Labour rebellion. Outside the Assembly, Labour local government leaders were horrified to see consideration of electoral reform for local government as part of the partnership deal. Despite broader ratification by the party’s delegate conference, there were serious concerns among Liberal Democrats as well. The partnership agreement threatened their support in key marginals: from rural voters in Brecon and Radnorshire and from disillusioned ex-Tories in Cardiff Central. Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives looked on, sensing big political opportunities if the agreement faltered and failed to deliver. The move to a coalition, moreover, was fuelled by a strong paradoxical logic. On the one hand, the two parties recognised that they were very close to each other on core social and political values and the development of devolution. A clearer attachment to an exclusively Welsh identity politics, the scarcely concealed project of independence and the lack of sympathy with New Labour political economy all increasingly put Plaid Cymru out on a limb.6 There remained, however, little adjustment to the idea that devolution involved permanent coalition politics. Labour hoped to use the coalition to continue the process of recovering its ‘Welsh Labour’ appeal under Rhodri Morgan and to gain credit for giving better direction to the Assembly. It hoped to regain its 1999 constituency losses to Plaid Cymru in the 2003 election, which would give it a working majority. The Liberal Democrats hoped to use the coalition to improve their appeal across Wales as a prodevolution party and thus compete more effectively with Plaid Cymru for regional list seats, thereby becoming the main opposition in a prodevolution two-party system in which Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives were significantly marginalised. The wider recognition of these aims hardened Plaid Cymru’s change of tack to an adversarial stance against the executive. Thus ‘normal’ competitive politics were reconfigured in a manner similar to Scotland but with the potential for even more competition in the future. northern ireland. In Northern Ireland devolution grew out of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Proportional representation of the different communities was required to achieve legitimacy across the

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territory. Single Transferable Vote rather than the Additional Member System was adopted. This was familiar to voters in Northern Ireland and had been used in European Elections since 1979. Under its rules, the result of the first election to the assembly in 1998 was much as expected in terms of the Unionist/Nationalist divide: 58 Unionists, 42 Nationalist and eight others, the last consisting of the Alliance members and the Women’s Coalition (see Table 3). Gender played little part in debates within the parties, though the presence of the Women’s Coalition ensured that it was not entirely absent from Northern Ireland’s traditionally male-dominated politics.7 The Northern Ireland Women’s Forum, set up in 1996, saw two of its members elected. Otherwise, old politics left little room for the politics of gender and the rules to achieve proportionality entirely ignored the under-representation of women. Of far greater importance was the fact that 80 of the 108 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) were 3. Results of the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly Election (%) First preferences

Seats

Nationalist bloc SDLP Sinn Fein

22.0 17.6

24 (22.2) 18 (16.7)

Unionist bloc Ulster Unionist Party Democratic Unionists UK Unionists Popular Unionists Ind. Unionists

21.3 18.1 4.5 2.5 1.3

28 (25.9) 20 (18.5) 5 (4.6) 2 (1.9) 3 (2.8)

6.5 1.6

6 (5.6) 2 (1.9)

Others Alliance Women’s Coalition

Note: Four of the five UK Unionists resigned from the party after a dispute with its leader Robert McCartney and formed a Northern Ireland Unionist Party in January 1999. One was expelled in December 1999 and now sits as an Independent Unionist. The three Independent Unionists formed themselves into a United Unionist Assembly Party in September 1998.

from parties which had supported the Good Friday Agreement though some Unionist MLAs had voted against it in the referendum. The Ulster Unionist Party performed less well than it had hoped though it remained the largest party. In contrast to the former Northern Ireland Prime Minister, Lord Brookeborough, who described Stormont as a ‘Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People’, David Trimble, Northern Ireland’s First Minister, declared that the new Assembly would be a ‘pluralist Parliament for a pluralist people’. However, the constant fear haunting Trimble was that his position would grow to resemble that of Brian Faulkner, another former Northern Ireland Prime Minister a quarter of a century before, who lost the confidence of the Unionist community. The Good Friday Agreement also stipulated the rules for composing the Northern Ireland Executive. The offices of First and Deputy First Ministers were essentially treated as one, using a parallel consent procedure for the

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purposes of election. This gave the two offices to David Trimble (Ulster Unionist Party, UUP) and Seamus Mallon, deputy leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). The Executive was elected from amongst the Assembly, rather than appointed by the First Minister, using a complex system (d’Hondt) to ensure that a grand coalition would emerge including each of the four main parties—UUP, SDLP, Democratic Unionists (DUP) and Sinn Fein. The system delivered three ministers each to the UUP and SDLP and two each to the DUP and Sinn Fein. The most unexpected aspect was the portfolios won by each of the parties. Opposition by the UUP to Sinn Fein having the Culture, Arts and Leisure Ministry, given the importance of symbols in Northern Ireland politics, meant that Sinn Fein took charge of the two largest spending departments—Education and Health. One of the paradoxes of the party system in Northern Ireland after devolution was the strengthening of the extremes.8 Any expectation that the peace process would strengthen electoral support for moderate parties, supportive of the Good Friday Agreement, appeared at best to be premature. Both the UUP and SDLP are under pressure from those who were critical of the process, or at least aspects of it. The South Antrim by-election in September 2000 when the DUP won what had been the UUP’s second safest seat confirmed a trend evident in local byelections and polls. Power-sharing may have been the most effective and perhaps the only means of creating peace but it makes the process of ‘normalising’ politics in Northern Ireland very difficult. The extremes were brought in from the cold and given an officially granted legitimacy. At this stage in Northern Ireland’s politics, the extremes were probably likely to benefit most whenever crises arose. While the people may have hoped for a new politics in which health, jobs, schools and housing had priority over constitutional issues, to arrive at this requires the institutional acknowledgement and entrenchment of a party system based on constitutional divisions. Hence, despite winning an overwhelming 72% majority at the Ulster Unionist Council in April 1998 for the Good Friday Agreement, Trimble was unable to use this as a mandate for firm leadership. He was most severely limited by the almost anarchic nature of Ulster Unionist politics, with constant recall meetings of the Council and the everpresent threat of a leadership challenge. More than any other leader, he was at the mercy of his party and required to win its approval for each and every initiative he took. Internal party democracy and leadership accountability in one of Northern Ireland’s parties contributed to the underdevelopment of democratic institutions and political accountability in the territory as a whole. Such constraints meant that key issues like arms decommissioning, prisoner release and policing contributed to setbacks in the stabilisation of devolution. This was sadly predictable. The vagueness which had allowed Unionists and Nationalists to interpret aspects of the Good Friday Agreement differently may

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have been necessary to secure a majority in the referendum, but it was always going to create problems later. Whilst a degree of consensus was built around the new institutions, though there remained hostile critics and problematic detail, no consensus on arms decommissioning was apparent. Specifically Unionist concerns over such issues led to the suspension of devolution after only 72 days and despite its re-establishment three months later, continued to threaten the collapse of the entire Agreement. Observers were always aware that the cumbersome nature of the institutions, requiring broad consensus amongst hostile political actors, would prove difficult to operate. At the very least, political paralysis was likely. At worst, it was feared that the institutions would join the growing pile of failed initiatives designed to win cross-community support since direct rule was imposed in 1972. Measures designed to protect the rights of one community and requiring consensus could equally be used to bring the institutions to a standstill. The unusual nature of an Executive representing four parties made collective decision-making most unlikely. The suspension of devolution and its continued shaky existence inevitably provoke a rash of historic parallels. Northern Ireland, it seems, remains a territory in which consensus is extremely difficult, with little space for ‘conventional politics’. Richard Rose’s depressing conclusion of thirty years ago that no solution is immediately practicable in the foreseeable future still seems apposite.9

Institutional development and public policy scotland. To assess whether devolution has delivered distinctive institutional styles and policies, one must look first at the degree of competence given to the devolved institution. The Scotland Act gave the Scottish Parliament 1998 considerable authority. This included primary legislative power across a wide range of domestic policy areas, and potentially the power to legislate in any non-reserved area of policy. It also was given the power to vary income tax by up to 3p in the £. It inherited the Scottish Office’s responsibility for funding a wide range of services in Scotland and for overseeing other public bodies, including local government and the quangos. At the same time, it was established with novel roles for committees—both as policy makers assisting the executive and scrutinisers of the actions of the Executive. This provided it with the greatest scope for taking new initiative.10 In practice, the Parliament has a mixed record of achievement. There were few critics of its more open, consultative policy-making approach. After a year of operation, it became clear that the original committee structure needs some modification. The Justice Committee was swamped with legislation and concerns were expressed about insufficient staff and resources to service the committees. For the most part, though, the Parliament’s internal operation has proved uncontroversial and generally deemed a success. However, many MSPs found that the

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scope for initiative was much less than they had hoped. It varies depending on the type of policy. In redistributive policies, the Parliament and the Executive had a very limited scope, given that taxation and welfare benefits were retained at Westminster. Even had Labour decided to use the meagre tax-raising power it would have had little impact. The Executive had some scope in terms of distributive policies to alter spending priorities though this was been limited by the usual constraints, including unavoidable spending, long-term commitments and, of course, a limited budget. As far as regulatory politics are concerned, the Parliament had the capacity to be imaginative so long as the costs are minimal. As a result, much important work was done by the Parliament and Executive but it was of a mundane nature. Two pieces of legislation, long supported by the Scottish Law Commission but never pursued at Westminster due to lack of time, were passed. One abolished the archaic system of feudal tenure (proposed as far back as the 1970s and subject of a Scottish Law Commission report in 1991). The Adults Incapacity (Scotland) Act, 2000 reformed the law regulating the financial affairs of those suffering from mental incapacity (subject of a Law Commission report in 1995), with a potential effect on the lives of around 100,000 Scots. In neither case did the legislation attract a great deal of media interest, but these were the kinds of issues which home rulers had long argued were neglected through lack of time in Westminster. Other more controversial matters were tackled. Wendy Alexander, Communities Minister, made a bold statement promising to remove Clause 28 prohibiting local authorities from promoting homosexuality. In the event, a much watered-down change occurred, though more than was achieved in England; after a vociferous campaign led by sections of the press and the Catholic Church, the Executive, including Alexander, backed off from the issue. For Scotland’s liberal establishment, which had supported the Parliament’s establishment in the hope of liberal reforms, it was a shock to discover the extent to which Scots were more conservative than liberal and to be confronted with an absence of political leadership on the issue. Indeed, many of the media in the first year of the Scottish Parliament were hostile. This included coverage from previously long-standing supporters of Scottish devolution such as The Scotsman and Daily Record, both of which came under the control of right-wing anti-devolution editors. Debates on MSP allowances, as well as the siting and escalating cost of the new Parliament building contributed to almost a siege-mentality and provoked David Steel, the Presiding Officer, to complain about the media’s coverage of the Parliament. Institutional relationships for Scotland within the UK were also problematic. Scant attention was paid to the question of relations between Edinburgh and London after devolution before Labour came to power at Westminster. New institutions, statements of principle on

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intergovernmental arrangements, (borrowings from the Good Friday Agreement), the retention of old institutions and old ideas taken back off the shelf, all appeared ad hoc. The late introduction of a clause setting up a Joint Ministerial Committee, concordats which were not justiciable, the British-Irish Council, the retention of the Scotland (formerly Scottish) Office and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council were all designed to ease relations between London and Edinburgh. In effect, they provided a somewhat incoherent attempt to hold post-devolution Scotland in the Union. The relationship between the Scottish First Minister and the UK Secretary of State for Scotland also proved difficult during the transitional phase, with turf wars breaking out between Donald Dewar and John Reid, Dewar’s successor at the Scotland (formerly Scottish) Office. The role of the Secretary of State after devolution had not been considered by the Convention. Indeed, the Convention’s parochial concerns had concentrated almost exclusively on the Scottish Parliament, partly explaining the messy institutional development in London-Edinburgh relations. This can be seen as either British constitutional pragmatism or evidence that this aspect of devolution remains in transition. wales. The powers delegated to the Welsh Assembly contrasted quite sharply with those given to the Scottish Parliament. It was given purely subordinate legislative powers to act within a primary legislative framework still set at Westminster. There was not even theoretical fiscal autonomy, leaving the expenditure of the Welsh block grant as the key power of the Assembly. The Assembly was given general powers of control and funding over a range of other public bodies but was denied legislative powers, for example to reform the structure of local government. The settlement meant that relationships with central government remained crucial to defining the powers of the Assembly and how it could deal with other public bodies in Wales. A memorandum of understanding and a series of concordats were established to govern working relationships with central departments. The role of the Secretary of State was the key means for persuading the Cabinet in London to introduce primary legislation which applied solely to Wales and to influence other legislation in its effect on Wales. Great attention was also given to the operation of the Assembly itself. It was agreed that leadership of the Assembly was best expressed through a cabinet, led by a First Secretary, but there was a general desire to empower all Assembly members. Powers were, therefore, devolved to the Assembly as a corporate body. At the first meeting these powers were delegated to the First Secretary and the cabinet, but crucially this delegation could be rescinded by the Assembly as a whole. As we have seen, this helped to bring about the downfall of Alun Michael. At the same time, the system sought to give a strong role to committees. Subject committees were established to mirror exactly the

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responsibility of Secretaries and they were given the dual roles of assisting in the deliberation of policy issues and matters of subordinate legislation, as well as scrutinising the work of the cabinet.11 Relations with central government have been very mixed in practice. On the one hand, a major success in 2000 was the primary legislation to produce a Children’s Commissioner for Wales, the need for which was established by the North Wales Children’s Homes Inquiry. The UK government’s Comprehensive Spending Review delivered Wales’ best settlement in recent memory and brought an end to the bitter politicking over whether Wales would receive the Treasury match-funding for EU aid. However, a resentment lingered that Welsh planning needed to wait on a timetable set in London. Other clashes served to undermine the authority of the Assembly. Despite the fact that the Assembly had declared Wales a GM-free zone, the Ministry of Agriculture in London waited a month before telling the Assembly in May 2000 that GM rapeseed had been sown in Wales in both 1999 and 2000. A beleaguered Agriculture Secretary, Christine Gwyther, was left to assert that ‘the Whitehall machine does not recognise devolution.’ She was sacked by Rhodri Morgan in summer 2000, a victim of both inexperience and the realities of interdependence in a decentralised system of government. The Assembly also ran into difficulties in relations with the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions over the powers the Assembly had in relation to the proposed establishment of cabinets under the local government reform bill. Equally, the Assembly Pre-16 Education Committee took legal opinion which proved to be at loggerheads with the guidance of the Department of Education and Employment about the Assembly’s discretion in the implementation of performance-related pay for teachers. The policy-making style of the Assembly and its implementation of key policies have also received mixed reviews. Critics suggest that Michael’s period as First Secretary was marked by the thwarting of any new style of decision-making. In the first budget round, 1999–2000, the opposition parties were in turn accused of exploiting Labour’s minority position in using the subject committees as launch pads for the promotion of pet policies. This made the establishment of budgetary priorities extremely difficult. After a year of operation, some subject committees won praise for their capacity to reset the agenda, notably the Pre-16 Education Committee, but others were generally felt to have engaged on a long learning experience. In its relations with other public bodies, the Assembly was generally seen as rather weak. There was no firm resolution of the vexed issue of local councillors’ allowances and, given the fact that quangos had been a major focus of criticism in predevolution times, there was no obvious ‘bonfire of the quangos’. Local government and the European Commission both voiced their concern at the lack of clear direction and speed in the Assembly’s implementation of the EU aid programme.12

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Generally, the Assembly has had difficulties in determining its authority in relation to central government, its relations with other public institutions in Wales, and the character of its own policy-making process. As a result, there has been little sign of a coherent Welsh policy-style emerging. This is characteristic of uncertainties over the role of decentralised forms of government and will take more time yet to resolve. Meanwhile, irritation with the pressure to be different has emerged. In February 2000, Rhodri Morgan himself pointed to the more salient fact of the decline in public interest in the Assembly and the perception that it had made little difference to the ordinary lives of people in Wales. While Morgan was fully in favour of strong committees, he lamented the inclination of those who designed the Assembly to place a priority on being different from Westminster in all matters, suggesting, e.g. that more dramatic plenary sessions were necessary to grab public attention.13 In this context, it is interesting to note that the Lib-Lab agreement established Plaid Cymru as the official Opposition, with extra questions granted to its leader in Assembly questions to the First Secretary. With this attempt to establish a flavour of ‘Westminster’ theatre to Assembly politics may come a similar realism about the limits to a Welsh policy paradigm. northern ireland. The consociational nature of the arrangements provided for in the Good Friday Agreement was unmistakable: crosscommunity power-sharing; proportionality rules applied throughout the relevant governmental and public sectors; community self-government and equality in cultural life; and veto rights of minorities.14 Members of the Assembly had to designate themselves as ‘Unionist’, ‘Nationalist’ or ‘Other’. The consent of both communities was required for a number of matters. The assembly was empowered to make ‘normal laws’ with straightforward majority voting though there was provision for a minority to demand special procedures. Controversial key decisions, however, required special procedures with parallel consent of both the Unionist and Nationalist blocs as well as majority support in the Assembly. In addition, some issues were made subject to weightedmajority voting requiring the support of 60% of members voting, including 40% of Nationalist and Unionist blocs. During the referendum on the Agreement, Trimble had argued that these provisions would ‘open the door to new politics’.15 The record of the Northern Ireland Assembly on day to day policy has proved less controversial than related Good Friday Agreement policies on such issues as arms decommissioning, but it has still been highly problematic. Achieving even a modicum of consensus within the Assembly has had its costs. Unlike Scotland and Wales, progress in this respect was achieved at the cost of openness. Assembly committees met to discuss agendas behind closed doors. Within the Executive, the absence of coherence amongst the politicians had a number of

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consequences. The Office of First Minster and Deputy First Minister has taken on the role of coordinating the work of the Executive. Initially assigned eleven functions, took its responsibilities more than doubled within a couple of months, and by December 1999 there was a need to appoint two junior ministers to deal with the workload. In essence, what emerged was the equivalent of a Prime Minister’s department with four Ministers. The two junior ministers were close colleagues of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in the UUP and SDLP respectively, provoking criticism from the other parties in the Executive. One major problem was the poor personal relations between Trimble and Mallon. On a number of occasions, each of the two men offering the best prospect of stability and leadership within the Executive publicly disagreed with the other, often in highly critical fashion. A further consequence of the inability of the Executive to operate coherently were the continuing reliance on the civil service. The ‘bureaucrats v. democrats’ tension which afflicts all executives remained firmly in favour of the former, though this also reflected the continuing emphasis on constitutional politics and relative lack of preparedness for ‘ordinary politics’. There were few public policy initiatives. A policy deficit existed alongside the democratic deficit in Northern Ireland. Paralysis caused by suspension, combined with the emphasis on constitutional and allied matters, squeezed out other issues. Nonetheless, issues which had long lain dormant or debated at a remote distance from political power have been seriously discussed, though are far from resolved, e.g. Northern Ireland’s 11+ exam system. The Programme for Government had to have the agreement of the whole Executive, ensuring that public policy would be subjected to the principle of the lowest common denominator. Previous attempts to build consensus in Northern Ireland foundered in part because of Unionist opposition to cooperation with the South. On this occasion, the North-South dimension to the agreement proved less controversial. Trimble’s long-standing support for equivalent EastWest institutions emphasising Northern Ireland’s links with Britain, and the Republic’s overwhelming vote to remove Articles 2 and 3 of its 1937 Constitution, contributed to removing this as a major issue of contention.16 Meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council focused on six areas for cooperation: transport, agriculture, education, health, environment and tourism. The institutions that have been developing around the North-South strand gave anti-Agreement politicians another set of bodies to boycott in disputes unrelated to the functions of these bodies, but they also offered opportunities in which confidencebuilding and shared experience could be gained. The British-Irish Council, designed specifically to appease Unionist sentiment, probably excited less interest in Northern Ireland than in Scotland and Wales. Expectations that the normalisation of policy-making in Northern Ireland would follow the smooth implementation of the Good Friday

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Agreement, however, ignored its loose ends. The lack of trust following years of violence ensured that the process would be slow. Little approaching conventional decentralised politics has emerged in Northern Ireland. Nonetheless, the move away from the dominance of paramilitary activity has been remarkable; and measured against some of the bleak earlier periods there has been considerable progress. Ron Davies’ remark that devolution is a ‘process rather than an event’17 is perhaps more relevant in Northern Ireland than Scotland or Wales.

Conclusion The first years of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have been marked by transition. The new basis for inter-party relations is most settled in Scotland. Whilst the Lib-Lab coalition of October 2000 makes Welsh politics look very similar, the political arithmetic is different: both single-party Labour government and a further surge for Plaid Cymru are possible changes in 2003. Inter-party relations in Northern Ireland remain highly unstable. In all cases, however, the hopes for ‘new politics’ have been shown to be somewhat illusory as intense party competition has simply been reconfigured in a new context. Institutional approaches to policy-making have settled most in Scotland. In Wales, they are still subject to negotiation as politicians and civil servants seek to make sense of the more opaque secondarylegislation version of devolution. A stable devolved approach to policymaking has barely been broached in Northern Ireland. Again, while there has been novelty in the use of committees, and some substantive policy gain in the case of Scotland and Wales, the search for distinctive devolved policy paradigms remain highly problematic. Devolution has, of course, spawned further constitutional debate, with the SNP looking ahead to independence and nationalist parties in Northern Ireland to a united Ireland. In Wales, doubts remain as to whether secondary legislative powers are a coherent basis for devolution. In March 2000, this was reflected in the comment made by Lord Elis-Thomas of Plaid Cymru and Presiding Officer of the Assembly, that: ‘We are not at the beginning of a new constitution for Wales. We are at the beginning of the end of the old constitution.’18 Debate also continues about the English question, whether in the form of devolution for the English regions or special arrangements at Westminster, or some combination of the two. However, consideration of the futures of devolution is recognised by most of the members of the new devolved institutions as a dangerous game. The SNP has embarked on a pragmatic long haul for independence rather than a strategy of rapid change. Middle opinion in the Welsh Assembly asserts the mid-term priority of practical policy achievement if it is to gain even a basic popularity among voters. Indeed, in each territory, as there is a good deal of uncertainty about

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where constitutional politics is heading, the normal priorities of political institutions have to a considerable extent been reasserted. In large measure this reflects an appreciation of the fact that expectations amongst many advocates of change were inflated and that the success of devolution requires a more realistic awareness of the continuities of party politics and policy-making from pre-devolution days. As Jean Blondel noted: ‘Even in the best of circumstances, constitutional provisions will only with difficulty change patterns of behaviour, with the corollary that they will tend to be most effective if they do not depart markedly from existing practice.’19 1 2

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At a press conference, 22.4.97. J. Bradbury, J. Mitchell, L. Bennie and D. Denver, ‘Candidate Selection, Devolution and Modernisation: The Selection of Labour Party Candidates for the 1999 Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly Elections’, British Parties and Elections Yearbook, 2000. J. Barry Jones, ‘Post-Referendum Politics’ and ‘Labour Pains’ in J. Barry Jones and D. Balsom (eds), The Road to the National Assembly for Wales, Wales UP, 2000; R. Deacon, ‘New Labour and the Welsh Assembly’, 30 Regional Studies 7; J. Bradbury, D. Denver and I. McAllister, ‘The State of Two Nations: An Analysis of Voting in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly Elections 1999’, Representation, 2000/1. J. Osmond, ‘The Vote of No confidence’ in J. Osmond (ed.), Devolution in Transition, Institute of Welsh Affairs, 2000. J. Osmond, ‘The Devolved Government’, ibid. J. Bradbury et al., ‘The Partnership Agreement: A Coalition of Minds or Convenience?’ Agenda, Journal of the Institute of Welsh Affairs, Institute of Welsh Affairs, 2000. See e.g. Democratic Dialogue, Power, Politics, Positionings: Women in Northern Ireland, Report 4, Democratic Dialogue, Belfast, 1996. B. Hayes and I. McAllister, ‘Ethnonationalism, Public Opinion and the Good Friday Agreement’, in J. Ruane and J. Todd (eds), After the Good Friday Agreement: Analysing Political Change in Northern Ireland, University College Dublin. R. Rose, Governing Without Consensus, Faber and Faber. J. Mitchell, ‘What could a Scottish Parliament do?’, Regional and Federal Studies, 1998/1. J. Bradbury, ‘The Blair Government’s White Papers on British Devolution: A Review of Scotland’s Parliament and A Voice for Wales’, Regional and Federal Studies, 1997; National Assembly Advisory Group, Recommendations, Report to the Secretary of State for Wales, Welsh Office, 1998; K. Patchett, ‘The New Welsh Constitution: the Government of Wales Act 1998’ in J. Barry Jones and D. Balsom (eds), The Road to the National Assembly for Wales, Wales UP, 2000. J. Osmond, ‘Policy Development’, and J. Osmond and B. Lewis, ‘Relations with Westminster and Whitehall’ in J. Osmond (ed.), Devolution in Transition, Institute of Welsh Affairs, 2000. R. Morgan, Variable Geometry UK, Discussion Paper No. 13, Institute of Welsh Affairs 2000. See B. O’Leary, ‘The Nature of the British-Irish Agreement’, New Left Review, 1999. Ulster Newsletter, 9.5.98. H. McDonald, Trimble, Bloomsbury, 2000. R. Davies, Devolution, A Process Not An Event, Gregynog Papers No. 2, Institute of Welsh Affairs, 1999. Lord Elis-Thomas, Wales: A New Constitution, Welsh Governance Centre, 2.3.2000. J. Blondel, Comparative Government, Philip Allan, 1990.