Tag Archives: Scotland

Are There Lessons from Turnout at the Local Elections?

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Dr. Alistair Clark is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Newcastle University. He has written widely on political parties and elections, and has covered Scottish local elections since 2003. His current research includes electoral integrity and parliamentary standards. This blog was originally published on the Centre for Constitutional Change website.

Amid all the spin and recriminations about the results of the Scottish local elections, one story has barely been touched upon. This is that despite all the pessimism about participation, turnout for the council contest was up significantly to 46.9% from 39.6% in 2012. This was the highest turnout for standalone Scottish council elections for several decades. By contrast, the turnout for the six new Metro Mayors elected in England was poor for such a flagship piece of the UK government’s devolution agenda in England. Tees Valley recorded a turnout rate of only 21%, the West of England and Greater Manchester contests achieved 29% and only 27% of voters went to the polls in the West Midlands.

There had been concern about turnout amongst Scottish policymakers prior to the elections. Local elections are low participation and low information second order contests. In the aftermath of the 2012 elections, the Scottish Parliament’s Local Government and Regeneration Committee held an enquiry into low turnout, among other things (which, for disclosure, the present author gave two rounds of evidence to). This exercise was recently repeated with the Committee hosting a roundtable debate on turnout prior to the 2017 contests. Many would have been pushed to know there was an election on however. Most Scottish councils actually go so far as to ban campaign posters on council property (i.e. lampposts), which hardly help underline the importance of local issues.

edinburgh

In the event, turnout was high for local elections at 46.9%. Nine of Scotland’s 32 councils actually broke the 50% benchmark, with East Renfrewshire performing best at 57.8% (+9.4%), and Edinburgh Council just getting over that hurdle at 50.5% (+7.9%). There were some significant rises, with Aberdeen, East Dunbartonshire, and Scottish Borders all recording an increase of 10% or more, and eight others recording between 8-10% rises. In only three councils did turnout fall. Argyll and Bute recorded a 1.7% drop, while Orkney fell by 7.4% and, most strikingly, Shetland Islands declined by 13.5% to 41.2%. Only one council, Glasgow, at 39%, recorded turnout below 40%, although this was still up by 6.8% on 2012.

These figures are impressive for local elections, given that they were being held as standalone contests not combined with election to any other level of government. Equivalent local contests in England are often lucky to achieve around a third of the vote if held alone. It raises a number of questions however. Firstly, why did turnout rise? There are three likely reasons. It is a legacy of the high levels of registration and participation seen in the Indyref in 2014. A general election in June called by a pro-Brexit Prime Minister has undoubtedly heightened the political atmosphere, as has Nicola Sturgeon’s push for a second Independence referendum. Consequently, it is also likely to be a reflection of the polarisation between the SNP and ongoing revival of the Scottish Conservatives over the constitutional issue. The council elections were a proxy for this. Motivated voters turnout, and voters have undoubtedly been motivated by this question. Give voters something important to vote for and many will do so, even if this is not necessarily directly related to the issue at hand – running local services in this case.

Secondly, what does this mean for the general election in June? In particular, which party is likely to get its vote out on the day more efficiently? Differential turnout will be key. Former Scottish government Minister Marco Biagi suggested in a Tweet over the weekend that the pro-Independence parties (SNP and Greens) did less well at getting their vote out than the Unionist parties. More research needs done into this, but that Yes-voting Glasgow’s turnout was so low, and the formerly, and now once again, Conservative voting areas of Aberdeenshire, Perth and Kinross and the Borders recorded between 9 and 10% rises suggests there may be something to this. Higher turnout did seem to benefit the Conservatives, primarily at Labour’s expense, even in Glasgow.

Given the threat from the Conservative Party that has been talked up recently, the SNP will no doubt want to ensure that, if this explanation is correct, their sizeable army of activists is motivated for a considerable get out the vote (GOTV) operation and that they do so effectively. The local elections will act as a wake-up call for them. The Conservatives do not have the same number of activists but they will be well resourced, motivated and will likely target seriously narrowly a small number of potentially winnable constituencies since there are no prizes for coming second under first past the post.

Thirdly, why was turnout higher in Scotland than in what were also constitutionally important elections to the Metro Mayors in England? I have argued elsewhere that the UK government needed to do much more to engage the public with these new positions. As we have seen in places such as Hartlepool and Stoke on Trent, both of which had elected Mayors but voted to give them up, the devolution agenda can go into reverse if the public are not suitably engaged with important positions with significant powers. The broader lesson from Scotland is that engaging voters can work.

Rather than having election fatigue, Scotland’s political engagement seems to remain high in the run up to the general election, as demonstrated by turnout in the 2017 council elections. If people had been fed up of elections, participation would have been lower. The results will motivate both the SNP and the Conservatives, the SNP because they are defending so many seats, the Conservatives because there would be considerable pride in becoming Scotland’s second party at Westminster and taking the shine off the SNP’s dominance. Turnout will certainly be higher in the general election, although whether it hits 71% as it did in 2015 remains to be seen. What also remains to be seen is just who that higher turnout will benefit.

This blog originally appeared on the Centre for Constitutional Change website.

21st Century Rural Development – learning from Scotland

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Professor Mark Shucksmith OBE’s Closing Keynote Speech at Scottish Rural Parliament 2016

The Scottish Hebrides

What does successful, community-led rural development look like in the globalised, networked world of the 21st Century? This question faces rural communities and governments I meet around the world and I often respond with the suggestion that they look to learn from Scotland.

In the 1960s, in the early days of the Highlands & Islands Development Board (HIDB), the model of growth centres was in vogue – an aluminium smelter here, a pulp mill or a nuclear power station there, all part of a plan devised and imposed top-down. The strategy failed, largely because control lay far away, with too little input from those who lived in and knew these areas. Later, as a reaction to such failures, this was superseded in many countries by a model of “bottom-up” rural development (development from within), based on local assets, local knowledge and local action. The EU LEADER programme was seen as emblematic of such an approach, and this was more successful. However there were a number of issues even with the “bottom-up” approach.

One issue was that it proved hard to find examples of truly bottom-up development: usually initiatives, even if locally led, relied on external funding or networks. LEADER areas and groups, for example, were selected and approved by governments and disbursed EU funding according to EU budgetary rules and strategies in Brussels-approved business plans. Moreover they learned from one another through national and transnational networks, sharing external ideas and know-how.

Another problem was that inequality was built in, and in two respects. Localities whose capacity to act was greater, or where capacity had been built through earlier interventions, were better able to mobilise and capture further funding leading to a very uneven geography of development. And within localities it tended to be those already with capital and power who captured the lion’s share of the available funding – especially when these were in the form of capital grants. Then, as the world moved into an era of neoliberalism and rolling back of the state, it was all too easy for bottom-up development models to become ‘self-help’ remedies which allowed the state to withdraw.

Taking these issues on board, and also reflecting the transition to the ‘network society’ of the 21st Century, a more helpful model is now that of “networked rural development.” In this approach, place-based strategies are led by local people but are acknowledged to involve external partners too. Moreover this approach draws not only on local assets and local knowledge but also makes use of external assets and knowledge to augment what is available locally. Most notably this recognises the necessary contribution of an enabling state (rather than an absent state leaving it to self-help), as well as the contributions of links with other rural communities, activists and researchers.

Scotland already exemplifies this approach. Take community land ownership, as one example, led and controlled by local communities of place, but helped and enabled by the state through land reform legislation, a community land fund and the community land unit, as well as activists and supporters with useful skills and contacts, and of course the mutual support and shared learning now offered through Community Land Scotland.

mark-at-scottish-rural-parliament-2016

The Scottish Rural Parliament also exemplifies this approach. The idea came through learning from the experience of other countries (notably Sweden), facilitated by externally-funded studies and disseminated through various networks. Now the SRP functions at one level as a means for the people of rural Scotland to collectively articulate and present their manifesto to government and other authorities, calling for the state to play its part in enabling a better future for all parts of rural Scotland. At the same time, the SRP is a network for sharing and celebrating ideas and experience, which local people can then take back to their own communities to consider and to weave into their own strategies and actions.

Around the world many people in rural areas are interested in these ideas and Scottish experiences of networked rural development, and they draw strength and inspiration from them. But this is more than bottom-up rural development or self-help. A successful approach requires an enabling state, not an absent state leaving each community to sink or swim in a neoliberal world which would inevitably lead to widening inequalities and a two-speed countryside. Scotland is fortunate in having had successive governments which recognise that they must play their part. In addition this approach requires rural communities to think not only of the assets and knowledge within their locality and of building their capacity to mobilise for action; they must also consider their network resources, and how these can be used to draw in assets and knowledge from elsewhere and from one another as they seek to thrive in the networked world on the 21st Century.

These lessons are especially important during the turbulent times ahead. In fashioning future rural policies outside the EU, both farming interests and environmental interests have powerful and effective lobbying capabilities which could easily crowd out rural development and rural community interests – along with many of the elements of the rural manifesto just agreed by the Scottish Rural Parliament. It is vital that the rural communities’ voices are also heard and that post-Brexit policies are informed by these lessons from Scottish experiences of rural development.

Professor Mark Shucksmith OBE is Director of the Newcastle University Institute for Social Renewal. He was formerly Co-Director of the Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research at Aberdeen University. The ideas in this blog are elaborated in his report for the Carnegie UK Trust, Future Directions in Rural Development. http://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/publications/future-directions-in-rural-development-full-report/

You can also watch a video recording of Mark’s speech at the Scottish Rural Parliament.

Developing a Stronger Voice in the North East – Working for Everyone?

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On Tuesday 28th January, NISR Director Professor Mark Shucksmith  gave the following presentation at The January Conference: Developing a Stronger Voice for the NE, held at the Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne. The conference, supported by the Community Foundation, ippr north, Millfield House Foundation, Northern Rock Foundation and the Webb Memorial Trust, was focused around issues of citizen action and community organising in the NE. This presentation offered some context for those discussions.

What can the people of the North East themselves do to ensure that the region’s best days lie ahead, and not in the past? At a time when the region faces severe cutbacks in its public services and public investment, while the balance of the national economy shifts ever further toward the south-east (whatever is said about rebalancing), can we think of new ways forward?

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