Acceso usuarios
Arrondissement de Toulouse, Francia
In 1995, George Robertson, then Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, famously claimed that devolution would ‘kill nationalism stone dead.’ Almost 30 years later, the reverse seems to be true: devolution has been used as a platform not only by Scottish nationalists, but also by their Welsh counterparts, who have drawn inspiration from Scotland. This analysis focuses on interactions between Wales and Scotland since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales in 1999. It first explores how Plaid Cymru (the Party of Wales) has looked to the Scottish National Party (SNP) to advocate for a more symmetrical devolution settlement than initially introduced in 1999. It then examines the social movements for independence that have emerged through the newly created institutional structures in Wales and Scotland, especially in the wake of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. The study concludes that the devolved legislatures indirectly enabled the formation of independence movements that go beyond the electoral sphere, thereby inadvertently reinforcing the very sentiment which they were intended to quell.
