This thesis addresses the Europeanisation of of tithe Scottish Executive from 1999 to 2007. By tracing the nature and extent of change within the Scottish Executive in this period across four European Union (EU) policy areas, it examines why changes may have been more pronounced in some policy areas than in others by considering both EU-level and domestic-level factors.

This thesis aims to determine whether the concept of multi-level governance works on a practical, theoretical and normative level as a valid and unique concept in the bottom-up analysis of politics and policy. To do this, two case studies - British Columbia and Scotland - are examined to resolve what the current conception of MLG adds to our understanding of governance. The central argument of this thesis is that in order to develop the idea of 'governance' as a theoretical and practical concept, analysis of policy and politics must take into account both the level of hierarchy and the flexibility of the governance framework in order to understand the nature of governance processes in the case in question and the effect of these processes on politics as a whole. This deeper conceptualisation of governance will allow for a clearer understanding of the relationship between governance and power, the implications of governance structures on political and policy processes and the true extent that multi-level 'governance' has taken hold over a more traditional idea of multi-level 'government'.

Scotland has long been a nation within a wider state, but only within the last four decades has a political party dedicated to the establishment of a Scottish state emerged as an electoral force. Yet, since that time the political landscape within the United Kingdom has changed rapidly. While some see devolution as a step towards the separation of Scotland from the United Kingdom, others argue it is a strengthening of that relationship. This thesis argues that only by acknowledging the ethnic and mass influences on the nature of Scottish national identity will an understanding of Scottish nationalism be possible. After considering the theoretical arguments surrounding nationalism, and specifically Scottish nationalism, the work shifts to an empirical analysis of Scotland. To examine the nature of Scottish nationalism and national identity, this research considers the manifestos of the political parties over the past thirty-five years, examining how they have employed a sense of Scotland the nation, and Scottishness. This consideration is then linked to an analysis of mass perceptions of national belonging and identity, which are themselves contrasted with elite perceptions, gleaned through interviews conducted amongst MPs and MSPs. The results indicate the need to recognise that ethnic aspects of Scottish national identity are more significant than the foremost theoretical considerations of nationalism and national identity allow. Furthermore, this case study illustrates that the impact that mass perceptions have on national identity also requires greater recognition within the field.

This thesis provides an analysis of the new Scottish politics of information. It examines the implications of information communication technologies (ICTs) for the reformation of Scottish politics within the new historical Scottish moment of devolution. This is related to the advent of ICTs and the possibilities they afford for a further extension of democracy in contemporary Scotland. This in turn is set amidst the concept of informatisation. This term denotes the ability of ICTs to produce new information networks, and the thesis explores the likely outcomes of such conditions within their Scottish context. We begin with an exploration of the tensions existing within a specific frame of reference (Scottish post-war politics), and end with an account of the new context and circumstances of the informatised political system. As such, the thesis details the post-war technocratic era, and traces the movement into democratic deficit and outwards into the new Scottish historical moment: the devolution arrangements of 1999, and onwards. The associating theme throughout is the search for a new politics of settlement. The future of this settlement is however, finely balanced and lies somewhere between a set of contradictory and oppositional political forces. The connecting principle is provided by the informatisation process, and electronic governance. These political technologies are a pivotal feature of the new Scottish politics of information, and the thesis illustrates their centrality within contemporary governance. The positioning of distributed technologies, and distributed informatisation, is a central component of the thesis. In turn, it is contrasted with the development of a centralised form of political computing: given expression throughout the thesis as the new Information Union. Put simply, the thesis explores the implications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the reformation of Scottish politics within the new historical Scottish moment. It does so in the context of an opposition between two prevailing theories of the impact of information communication technologies on political life - the theories can be labelled Transformational Politics (Schwerin 1995) and Reinforcement Politics (Danziger et al 1982). The thrust of Transformational Politics is that there are new forms of interactivity which enable new forms of governance characterised by more widely distributed discourse, and new institutional forms such as social-political partnerships between government and community. The thrust of Reinforcement Politics is that the new technical forms of communication are used to further concentrate and control power by existing elites. Both these potentials are visible in the new Scottish Politics and this thesis charts the struggle between these tensions.

This thesis explores the shifting political culture of inter-war Scotland and Britain via an examination of political identities and practice in Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh. Drawing on the local and national archives of the Labour movement and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) alongside government records, newspapers, personal testimony and visual sources, relations on the political Left are used as a means to evaluate this change. It is contended that, as a result of the extension of the franchise and post-war fears of a rise in political extremism, national party loyalties came to replace those local political identities, embedded in a sense of class, trade and place, which had previously sustained popular radicalism. This had crucial implications for the conduct of politics, as local customs of popular political participation declined, and British politics came to be defined by national elections. The thesis is structured in two parts. The first section considers the extent to which local identities of class and established provincial understandings of popular democracy came to be identified with an appeal to class sentiment excluded from national political debate. The second section delineates the repercussions this shift had for how and where politics was conducted, as the mass franchise discredited popular traditions of protest, removing politics from public view, and privileging the individual elector. In consequence, the confrontational traditions of popular politics came to be the preserve of those operating on the fringes of politics, especially the CPGB, and, as such, largely disappeared from British political culture. This thesis thus offers an important reassessment of the relationship between the public and politics in modern Britain, of the tensions between local and national loyalties, and of the role of place in the construction of political identities.