The independence of Scotland: self-government and the shifting politics of union

In a thought-provoking analysis Keating reviews the political, constitutional, and legal issues around Scottish independence and the political economy of independence surveying the options for a social and economic project for an independent Scotland.

After three hundred years, the Anglo-Scottish Union is in serious difficulty. This is not because of a profound cultural divide between England and Scotland but because recent decades have seen the rebuilding of Scotland as a political community while the ideology and practices of the old unionism have atrophied. Yet while Britishness is in decline, it has not been replaced by a dominant ideology of Scottish independence. Rather Scots are looking to renegotiate union to find a newplace in the Isles, in Europe, and in the world. There are few legal, constitutional or political obstacles to Scot

"Three hundred years after its conception) the Anglo-Scottish Union is in serious difficulty. This is not because of a profound cultural divide between England and Scotland but because recent decades have seen the rebuilding of Scotland as a political community, while the ideology and practices of the old unionism have atrophied. Yet while Britishness is in decline, it has not been replaced by a dominant ideology of Scottish independence. Rather Scots are looking to renegotiate the Union to find a new place in the British Isles, in Europe, and in the world. There are few legal, constitutional, or political obstacles to Scottish independence, but an independent Scotland would need to forge a new social and economic project as a small nation in the global market-place, and there has been little serious thinking about the implications of this. Short of independence, there is a range of constitutional options for renegotiating the Union to allow more Scottish self-government along the lines that public opinion seems to favour. The limits are posed not by constitutional principles but by the unwillingness of the English to abandon their unitary conception of the state. The end of the United Kingdom may be provoked not by Scottish nationalism, but by English unionism."--BOOK JACKET