Journal Article

Contesting government, producing devolution: the repeal of 'section 28' in Scotland

Armstrong, Kenneth A

2003

Overview

Devolution is usually described in terms of the transfer of powers from central to regional and subordinate authorities. Attention then tends to focus on one dimension of relational power, namely that between the sovereign ‘principal’ and its ‘devolved’ agent. In this paper, and without seeking to assert that devolved institutions are sovereign, it is suggested that we need to develop an additional dimension to our studies of devolution, namely the relational power between government and governed in devolved contexts. Taking the example of devolution to Scotland and the exercise of devolved law‐making powers to repeal ‘section 28’ of the Local Government Act 1988, it is argued that in the process of exercising legal and political authority, contestation and conflict over government can produce important constitutional discourses that normativise what counts as an appropriate or inappropriate exercise of devolved governmental power. The process of contesting devolved government is productive of what it means to govern and be governed under conditions of devolution, thereby producing and reproducing devolution itself.

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd,Cambridge University Press