‘Anything Westminster can do we can do better’: the Scottish climate change act and placing a sub-state nation on the international stage

ABSTRACT

In 2009, Scotland passed, at the time, the world’s most ambitious climate change legislation, gaining significance due to its high-reaching targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a complex bureaucratic set-up. It was the most complex legislation to pass through the Scottish Parliament since its inception, and a landmark bill of the Scottish National Party’s first term in government. Based on documentary research and interviews with policymakers and stakeholders, I use the Multiple Streams Model against the context of multi-level governance to analyse the emergence of the Climate Change Act in Scotland and what factors influenced its form, analysing problem, policy, and politics streams as well as structural and cultural-institutional entrepreneurship. The Act’s creation was tied up in attempts to position Scotland, a sub-state nation, on the international stage, with the legislation framed not only as necessary in the face of climate change, but an opportunity for Scotland.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• framework legislation
• climate change acts
• Scotland
• multi-level governance
• multiple streams model

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the participants of the workshop ‘The Emergence, Impacts and Implications of Climate Change Acts’ for their feedback on this case study, as well as inputs from three anonymous reviewers, Reinhard Steurer and Anthony Zito on previous versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. After the CCA passed this group became the 2020 Group, an independent business group that aimed to help Scotland achieve its GHG emission reduction targets. It disbanded in 2018.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Austrian Climate Research Program [ACRP9 - CCA - KR16AC0K13333].