British Devolution and the Labour Party: How a National Party Adapts to Devolution
| Date | 01 February 2007 |
| Published date | 01 February 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2007.00252.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
B J P I R : 2 0 0 7 V O L 9 , 5 5 – 7 2
British Devolution and the Labour
Party: How a National Party Adapts
to Devolution
Martin Laffin and Eric Shaw
In 1999 the Labour government in the UK devolved significant powers to the newly created Scottish
Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales. This article concludes that the British Labour
Party, as a national party, has not formally reorganised itself to reflect the new realities of
devolution. Rather, the national ruling elite has continued to stress the importance of maintaining
the valuable Labour brand to ensure the electability of the party at Westminster and retain the
possibility of using party links to co-ordinate policy on devolved matters across Britain. Even so, the
regional Labour elites in Scotland and Wales have acquired the freedom to make significant
strategic choices in terms of policy and electoral strategy. However, these choices are ultimately
constrained by tacit, intra-party understandings and ‘rules of the game’.
Introduction
Ever since the referenda in 1997 made devolution to Scotland and Wales
a reality the Labour Party has studiously avoided the central question it
raises: should a political party devolve as much autonomy to its members
in Scotland and Wales as Westminster has done to the Scottish and Welsh
people?
So declared Matthew Taylor, a former senior party official and currently head of
political strategy in Downing Street (The Guardian, 11 May 1999). The present
Labour party leadership has left this question hanging. Yet, Labour party links are
likely to be crucial in the development of intergovernmental relations given both
the dominant role of the party at both levels, which is likely to continue for some
years, and the limited role of the formal intergovernmental institutions, such as the
Joint Ministerial Council (Trench 2004). Thus, devolution has placed centre–
periphery relations within the Labour Party firmly on the research agenda, if not
necessarily the action agenda of the British Labour Party. Yet, the impact of con-
stitutional changes on the organisation and functioning of political parties in
devolved systems remains an under-researched and under-theorised area, both in
Britain and internationally. The institutional context in which political parties in the
UK, as in other European countries, operate is becoming increasingly multi-layered.
Yet, ‘the literature on multi-level governance is, however, very much a party-free
zone’ (Deschower 2003, 213) and ‘the ways in which statewide, national-level
political parties respond to territorial challenges have been relatively neglected’
(Hopkin 2003, 227).
© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
56
M A R T I N L A F F I N , E R I C S H AW
British devolution offers a fascinating case study through which to explore how
national political parties respond to the challenges of territorial devolution;1 in
particular, how the Labour Party, as a centralised party in a parliamentary, two-
party majoritarian system, is adapting to new territorial challenges. For the first
time, there are three at least potential, territorially-based power centres at the
regional level within the British Labour Party—Scotland, Wales and Greater
London (although this article is concerned with the former two). The party in both
Scotland and Wales is working within regional political systems posing electoral
challenges distinct from those at the national level. In both these new regional
political systems, the traditional assumptions of a two-party system are being
challenged by other parties to the left of New Labour—the regional-nationalist
parties (the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru), the Liberal Democrats and, in
Scotland, the Greens and Scottish Socialist Party. Not least, Labour has had to learn
to work in coalition. The Scottish Executive has been a Labour–Liberal Democrat
coalition since 1999 and the Welsh Assembly government (WAG) was a similar
coalition from 2000 to 2003. The politics of coalition with the Liberal Democrats,
and specifically the concessions they exacted, have contributed to significant policy
divergences from the Westminster government (for example over higher education
tuition fees, free personal care for the elderly and free prescription charges for
certain groups).
This article examines how the Labour Party as a British, national party is adapting
to these post-devolution realities. The changes within the Scottish and Welsh
parties and the specific electoral challenges facing them have been analysed else-
where by the authors (Laffin et al. 2007). The trend within the Labour Party, since
the late 1980s, has been towards greater centralisation within the party as succes-
sive party leaders sought to make Labour once again electable. Has devolution
begun to reverse this centralising trend? How far has the Westminster-based Labour
Party elite accommodated the new regional-level elites at the centre? How far is the
discretion of these elites circumscribed by the party centrally?
Theoretical Perspectives on Parties and
Devolved Government
The literature on federal and regionalised systems gives political parties a significant
role in structuring and managing conflict between the central and provincial levels.
William H. Riker argues that parties underpin the federal bargain:
the federal relationship is centralized according to the degree to which
parties organized to operate the central government control the parties
organized to operate the constituent governments. This amounts to the
assertion that the proximate cause of variations in the degree of central-
ization (or peripheralization) in the constitutional structure of a federal-
ism is the variation in degree of party centralization (Riker 1964, 129).
Even in the US case, the weakly centralised parties act as a centralising force within
the federal system. Similarly, David McKay (2001, 5) points out that a decentralised
constitution does not necessarily produce a decentralised polity. National political
parties, implementing their programmes at both levels, can reduce the diversifying
© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
BJPIR, 2007, 9(1)
B R I T I S H D E V O L U T I O N A N D T H E L A B O U R PA R T Y
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impact of devolution. Thus, the British case enables us to assess the extent to which
decentralisation at the level of the political system as a whole, with the commen-
surate emergence or strengthening of centres of elected territorial power, encour-
ages its replication at the level of party organisation.
To test this relationship two initial theses are advanced. The first thesis is that
Labour, as a national party, will prevent a decentralised polity emerging. The
Westminster elite will seek to compensate for the effects of devolution by retaining
strong central party control over the devolved governments. This thesis, reflecting
Michels’ classic ‘iron law of oligarchy’, would predict strenuous efforts by the
Westminster parliamentary leadership to assert central control, despite devolution,
and to block efforts to create a system of decentralised territorial power within the
party. This oligarchic thesis has been challenged by authors working in the stratar-
chical tradition (Eldersveld 1964; Carty 2004). Thus, the second thesis, advanced
here, argues that a territorially differentiated governmental system inevitably pro-
duces party decentralisation. Parties, Samuel K. Eldersveld (1964) contends, are
coalitions of ideological, social and geographic interests whose rival demands need
to be managed. To avoid disruptive internal conflicts, parties evolve a ‘stratarchical’
pattern of power in which the interests of their multiple constituencies are balanced
via a layered system of ‘power prerogatives and power exercise’. To sustain unity,
enhance electoral appeal and maximise adaptability to local circumstances, ‘the
party develops its own hierarchical pattern of stratified devolution of responsibility
for the settlement of conflicts, rather than jeopardise the viability of the total
organization by carrying such conflicts to the top command levels of the party’
(Eldersveld 1964, 9). A ‘stratarchical’ pattern of power is defined as one where a
party exhibits a ‘proliferation of ruling groups and a diffusion of power prerogatives
and power exercise’ (Eldersveld 1964, 9).
R. Kenneth Carty (2004) maintains that limitations on the stratarchic or decentral-
ising tendencies within a party arise from the need to retain a basic party identity
across its territorial units: an identity the national and sub-national elites see as
essential to their chances of winning and holding power at both levels. He argues
that a party, in a multi-level governance system, will seek to combine a ‘reliable,
identifiable product’ or ‘brand’, to use Matthew Taylor’s word, and ‘a centrally
controlled communication programme’ to ensure a cohesive message with the
advantages of responsiveness to local market conditions (Carty 2004, 10–11). The
key variable is the ‘political accord’, that is ‘the fundamental organizational bargain
that underpins and regulates the relationships among the various units of working
parties’ and which spells out ‘the rights, responsibilities and obligations of each’
(21). Thus, party leaders will refrain from trying to manage everything from the
centre, but will seek to retain a strategic control capability, while contracting out
tasks...
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