Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T20:53:33.803Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Comparing the Scottish Office with ‘Whitehall’: A Quantitative Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Extract

This article seeks to throw some light on what is perhaps a deceptively simple question: is the central administrative bureaucracy which governs Scotland from St Andrew's House in Edinburgh in any measurable way distinctively Scottish, as opposed to the mere manifestation in Scotland of the standard U.K. civil service? Do the Scottish Departments display characteristics not found in Whitehall, and is there a ‘Scottish administrative style’ for such Departments? Answers to these questions are not only interesting in their own right but clearly have some relevance to the devolution debate. For example, if Scottish administration is recognizably ‘different’, this might be regarded as evidence that a greater degree of effective devolution than is assumed already exists; if Scottish administration shows no distinctive features at present, one might speculate what changes devolution to an Assembly would engender. We shall make some brief comments on this point at the close of this article.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example, Report of the Committee on Scottish Administration (London: HMSO, Cmd. 5563, 1937)Google Scholar; Report of the Royal Commission on Scottish Affairs (London: HMSO, Cmd. 9212, 1954)Google Scholar; Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 5460, 1973)Google Scholar; Kellas, J. G., The Scottish Political System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

2 Riggs, F. W., The Ecology of Public Administration (Bombay: Asia Publishing, 1961).Google Scholar

3 See Report of the Committee on Scottish Administration; and Kellas, , The Scottish Political System.Google Scholar

4 Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution; Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government in Scotland (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 4150, 1969)Google Scholar; Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Local Government Finance (London: HMSO, Cmnd. 6453, 1976)Google Scholar; Page, E., ‘Why Should Central-Local Relations in Scotland be Different from those in England?’, Studies in Public Policy No. 16 (Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, 1978).Google Scholar

5 Kellas, , The Scottish Political System, pp. 75–6.Google Scholar

6 Hanham, H. J., ‘The Development of the Scottish Office’ in Wolfe, J. N., ed., Government and Nationalism in Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1969), p. 68.Google Scholar

7 Hanham, , ‘The Development of the Scottish Office’, p. 69.Google Scholar

8 Fesler, J. in Maass, A., ed., Area and Power (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1959).Google Scholar

9 Expenditure Committee (General Sub-Committee), Minutes of Evidence (London: HMSO, HC 368–xv, 19751976), p. 560, para. 29.Google Scholar

10 Fenno, R., The Power of the Purse (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1966).Google Scholar

11 Anderberg, M. R., Cluster Analysis for Applications (New York: Academic Press, 1973), p. xi.Google Scholar

12 Wishart, D., Clustan IC Manual (London: University College, 1975).Google Scholar

13 It is interesting that Sir David Milne, in the closing remarks of his book on the Scottish Office, makes the same point. SirMilne, D., The Scottish Office (London: Allen and Unwin, 1957), p. 210.Google Scholar

14 For the purpose of Figure 4, SHHD staff are taken to include prison service and state hospital staff; these are not, however, counted as ‘local office’ staff.

15 Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution, p. 116, para. 379.Google Scholar

16 See Siegel, S., Non-Parametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956).Google Scholar

17 See Wishart, , Clustan IC Manual.Google Scholar