Provides a cultural history and political critique of Scottish devolution



Provides the first critical history of Scottish devolution
Offers the first multidisciplinary study of (UK or Scottish) devolution: engaging extensively with the work of historians, sociologists, political scientists and cultural theorists
Combines close attention to political and electoral factors with cultural issues and developments
Draws on political theory which illuminates devolution from outside its terms



This book is about the role of writers and intellectuals in shaping constitutional change. Considering an unprecedented range of literary, political and archival materials, it explores how questions of 'voice', language and identity featured in debates leading to the new Scottish Parliament in 1999. Tracing both the 'dream' of cultural empowerment and the 'grind' of electoral strategy, it reconstructs the influence of magazines such as Scottish International, Radical Scotland, Cencrastus and Edinburgh Review, and sets the fiction of William McIlvanney, James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, A. L. Kennedy and James Robertson within a radically altered picture of devolved Scotland.