Party elites and the search for credibility: Plaid Cymru and the SNP as new parties of government
| Author | Craig McAngus |
| Date | 01 August 2016 |
| Published date | 01 August 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-856X.12070 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2016, Vol. 18(3) 634 –649
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148116606610
bpi.sagepub.com
Party elites and the search
for credibility: Plaid Cymru
and the SNP as new parties
of government
Craig McAngus
Abstract
Stateless Nationalist Regionalist Parties (SNRPs) are widely considered as mainstream political
actors, and their ideological and strategic development in this regard has been well documented by
scholars. However, little attention has been paid to how party elites view such processes. Adopting
a comparative case study approach, this article looks at the case of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish
National Party (SNP), both of whom entered government for the first time in 2007. Drawing
on original and extensive elite interview data, the article examines how elites in both parties
attempted to use the transition to government to portray their respective parties as mainstream
and credible. The article finds that this aspiration is driven largely by a desire to change historically
embedded stereotypes, but also, in the case of the SNP, to further the party’s primary goal of
Scottish independence. In the case of Plaid Cymru, having to become a junior coalition partner
meant that the party felt obliged to take up stereotypical portfolios which undermined, in part, the
purpose of governmental participation for some elites.
Keywords
devolution, autonomist parties, nationalism, British constitution
Introduction
Stateless Nationalist Regionalist Parties (SNRPs) across Europe cannot, on the whole, be
considered ‘niche’ political parties in the sense that they espouse broad policy platforms,
position themselves firmly and clearly on the ideological spectrum, and participate in
government at different institutional levels. Rather than being seen as outsider parties
(McDonnell and Newell 2011), these parties are generally seen as ‘mainstream’ (Elias
and Tronconi 2011a) and ‘normal’ (Hepburn 2009) political actors. Although there are
exceptions, Elias and Tronconi (2011a, 508) make the point that behaving in this way is a
choice that parties make. However, these choices are probably more the embodiment of
historical imperatives rather than rational decisions made in the context of new and
University of Stirling, UK
Corresponding author:
Craig McAngus, University of Stirling, UK.
Email: craig.mcangus@stir.ac.uk
606610BPI0010.1177/1369148116606610
research-article2016
Article
McAngus 635
evolving political circumstances and institutional arrangements. Indeed, according to
Ware (1987, 1), political parties are ‘the product of a specific historical experience which
is not replicated elsewhere’ and thus are the products of their own history.
Literature on SNRPs has examined this party family in a comparative manner (De
Winter and Türsan 1998; De Winter and Gomez-Reino Cachafeiro 2002; De Winter et al.
1996, 2006), their relationship with European integration (Lynch 1996; Elias 2009a) and
more recently on the strategic challenges that new and regionalized ‘spaces for politics’
(Carter and Pasquier 2010) bring to this party type (Hepburn 2009; Jeffrey 2009).
Furthermore, a new strand of literature on SNRPs considers their status as parties of gov-
ernment (Toubeau 2011; Elias and Tronconi 2011a). Although this extensive body of lit-
erature collectively accounts for the development of SNRPs into mainstream actors and
parties of government, little attention has been paid to the importance of mainstreaming
and governmental participation from the point of view of party elites. It is this gap that
this article aims to fill by assessing how two elites in two SNRPs, Plaid Cymru and the
SNP, used the transition into being parties of government as mechanisms to attempt to
address and overcome negative stereotypes they believed the public had of their respec-
tive parties.
Adopting a comparative case study approach (Yin 2009) and utilising extensive elite
interview data, this article examines the cases of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National
Party (SNP). Both parties provide an interesting and helpful comparison in that they both
entered into government for the first time in their respective histories in 2007. The theo-
retical question will develop a hypothesis which suggests that Plaid Cymru and the SNP
would attempt to use governmental status as a mechanism to overcome negative percep-
tions of their parties. The empirical analysis will then ‘test’ this hypothesis. The hypoth-
esis will be addressed in the context of further understanding the processes of becoming
mainstream and normal political parties by examining what crossing the ‘threshold of
governance’ (Deschouwer 2008) meant for Plaid Cymru and the SNP.
The article is organised into four parts. Firstly, a discussion of the relevant theoretical
literature is offered which will provide a framework for the analysis. The second section
provides a brief overview of the methods and data utilised in this article. The third section
looks at the historical development of both parties under investigation and argues that
they became fully-fledged mainstream political actors by the 1960s in order to attract sup-
port away from and thus compete with statewide parties in UK general elections. This
section also considers the relevance of the creation of the National Assembly for Wales
(NAW) and the Scottish Parliament. The fourth section provides the empirical analysis,
and focuses on elite views regarding the relevance of governmental participation for both
parties. As this section will show, governmental participation, according to party elites,
was a key mechanism for achieving credibility amongst the electorate and overcoming
stereotypes that party elites felt that the electorate held. In the case of Plaid Cymru
specifically, governmental status was a mechanism that, for some elites, could be used to
educate some elements of the party that were sceptical of taking up office, while for the
SNP government was perceived as a necessary step in Scotland becoming a more self-
confident nation on the route to independent statehood.
Party Elites and the Use of Government as a Mechanism for Promoting
Credibility
In the introduction to a special edition of Regional and Federal Studies, Hepburn (2009)
adopts the analogy ‘niche to normal’ to describe the development of SNRPs. In their
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