The governance capacities of Brexit from a Scottish perspective: The case of fisheries policy
| Date | 01 July 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076720936328 |
| Author | Craig McAngus,Arno van der Zwet,John Connolly,Christopher Huggins |
| Published date | 01 July 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
2022, Vol. 37(3) 342 –362
Article
The governance
capacities of Brexit from
a Scottish perspective:
The case of fisheries
policy
John Connolly and
Arno van der Zwet
University of the West of Scotland, UK
Christopher Huggins
University of Suffolk, UK
Craig McAngus
University of the West of Scotland, UK
Abstract
Brexit leads to uncertainties about how policies will be ‘rescaled’ from the European
Union back to the United Kingdom and its devolved governments. Interviews with key
Scottish Government officials show how the UK’s withdrawal from the Common
Fisheries Policy presents mixed challenges for the Scottish policy system to absorb
policy change at analytical, administrative, political, and communicative levels. Our
analysis finds that absorbable areas concern fisheries management, operations, and
analysis. Yet there are capacity areas that will require greater investment at political,
communicative, and relational levels. This article makes an important contribution to
research on the multi-level governance capacities for accommodating Brexit in UK
policy-making. In doing so, our contribution applies the governance capacities literature
to a new field of scholarship in relation to Brexit studies.
Corresponding author:
John Connolly, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley Campus, Paisley PA1 2BE, UK.
Email: john.connolly@uws.ac.uk
Public Policy and Administration
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Connolly et al. 343
Keywords
Brexit, capacities, devolution, fisheries, governance
Introduction
The United Kingdom’s (UK) withdrawal from the European Union (EU) has
brought the issue of governmental capacities into sharp focus. Capacities are fun-
damental to the maintenance of governmental business (Matthews, 2012; Lodge
and Wegrich, 2014; Egeberg and Trondal, 2018; El-Taliawi and Van Der Wal,
2019).They matter for public policy and administration because ‘having a capable
public sector that is able to optimally align resources with actions and actually
implement designed policies is ... a crucial factor in any state’s quality of govern-
ment’ (El-Taliawi and Van Der Wal, 2019: 2). Over the last few decades, UK
governance has been marked by Europeanisation and hollowing out processes,
which have gradually eroded the centre’s capacities in policy-making (e.g.
Connolly, 2014; Knill et al., 2001). The context of austerity since 2010 has seen
the size of the UK civil service reduce and the governance challenges posed by
Brexit raise further questions about governmental capacities. Recent research
focussing on the impact of Brexit on environmental policy found capacity to be
a key variable insofar as a lack of capacity restricts the UK’s ability to diverge
from EU policy in the short term (Burns et al., 2019). Further complications
emerge by the fact that post-Brexit capacities challenge many competencies that
are formally devolved, meaning that capacities will need to be developed across
multiple levels of governance.
The central question underpinning this article is: What are the implications of
Brexit for the governance capacities of Scottish fisheries from a devolved perspec-
tive? We address this post-Brexit capacities question by examining the repatriation
of fisheries policy from the EU. Specifically, it explores the governance capacities
within one of the UK’s four fisheries administrations: Marine Scotland. Fisheries
represent the ideal case to assess post-Brexit governance and capacities within the
UK’s multi-level setting. First, fisheries policy is an exclusive EU competence so it
has been subject to significant Europeanisation, and much of the existing policy-
making capacities are located at the EU level. Second, although being relatively
small in the context of the UK’s overall economy, fisheries was politicised during
the UK referendum campaign. High expectations have been set regarding the
future of fisheries governance once the UK leaves the EU. Third, fisheries policy
is a formally devolved competence, but cannot operate in isolation from other
competencies reserved by the UK government, including international relations
and trade. This highlights the importance of developing multi-level governance
capacities.
The article makes distinct contributions to hitherto disconnected streams of
literature. From a public policy and administration perspective, it offers an applied
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