Nicola Thompson

The Practice of Government in a Devolved Scotland: The Case of the Designation of the Cairngorms National Park

Proponents of devolution have argued that devolved governing leads to enhanced democratisation. This democratisation process is argued to be the result both of new governance structures and of new practices of governing which produce a new, more democratic, politics. The case of Scottish devolution is one example of where constitutional change was constructed as heralding a ‘new politics’. This proposition is analysed through a specific policy intervention in the devolved Scotland—the designation of a national park in the Cairngorms. This designation is traced from the instigation of national parks legislation to the formal creation of the park. The claim that devolution can bring about a more open and participatory approach to governing is critiqued. It is proposed that, although democratisation has a formed a political rationality of devolution, the actual practices of governing owe more to traditional rationalities of managerialism.

Articulating political knowledge in deliberation

The theory and practice of deliberative democracy have attracted considerable attention from political scientists in recent years. The reason for the increasing interest in this form of communication has multiple roots. These include concern about the effectiveness of representative democracy as a decisionmaking system, the possibility of stimulating increased interest and participation in politics, and concern for the conditions under which citizens are engaged in decision-making processes. In this article we focus on a particular rationale for the development of deliberative techniques advanced in particular by proponents of deliberative polling—namely that deliberation has the potential to increase knowledge levels and hence improve the conditions under which individuals make political decisions. This rationale is based on the proposition that on the whole people are relatively uninformed about policy and politics. Where decisions are being made in the context of a lack of knowledge we might reasonably expect that these are not properly informed decisions and may not reflect individuals’ ‘true’ interests. The case for deliberative polling as a type of deliberative institution therefore draws on a series of arguments concerning low levels of knowledge in the mass electorate, the potential for the act of deliberation to increase knowledge levels and hence its potential to alter policy preferences. This paper takes this argument for deliberative polling as a starting point for a discussion of the epistemological basis of current approaches to researching the relationship between knowledge and deliberation. We argue that existing discussion relies too much on a conception of knowledge as the possession and articulation of discrete ‘facts’. Consequently, methodologies for assessing or measuring knowledge rely on the ability to recall decontextualized pieces of information about the formal political sphere. These ‘civics test’ approaches use structured interviews and selfcompletion questionnaires, which are administered before and after deliberation, to ‘measure’ changes in levels of knowledge. We draw attention to the way in which knowledge is expressed in the act of deliberating and therefore propose an alternative epistemological and methodological basis for the study of knowledge and deliberation to the civics test approach, which we term the ‘deliberative content approach’. This approach relies on the argument that knowledge is expressed and constituted through the narratives that emerge in deliberation. Through studying the content of deliberative conversation we aim not only to demonstrate how instances of the recall of

Mentoring as a mechanism for improvement in local government

This article reports on a scheme to secure improvement in local government using a peer mentoring network. Mentoring promoted learning, and hence improvement, in many of the participating authorities. Mentoring schemes must be carefully designed to achieve positive outcomes—it is essential to have a clear understanding of what mentoring is and how it should be administered, and to involve members and relevant partners of the mentored organization.

Assessing the performance of the national park authorities: a case study of Northumberland National Park, England

Although the legislation for the designation of national parks in England dates back to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, it was not until 1997 that free-standing and independent national park authorities were established to help manage these landscapes. In 2014–15, the 10 English national park authorities were allocated £44.6 million from the Department for Food, the Environment and Rural Affairs to deliver their conservation and recreation purposes and their socio-economic duty. This paper discusses how the performance of the national park authorities has been assessed, using the Northumberland National Park Authority as a case study.