The Scottish National Party and Organizational Democratization

Abstract

This chapter will present a case study on one changing organization in the English-speaking world: the Scottish National Party (SNP), which has existed since 1934. The SNP is a centre-left party which campaigns for Scottish independence. It has held power in Scotland since 2007, when it became a government party for the first time in its history after winning the Scottish Parliament election with a narrow one-seat majority. Most commentators explained this first SNP victory through external factors, mainly the decline of the Labour Party both within the Scottish political arena and British-wide. But what was less remarked on was the role played by the internal reform of the SNP in this victory. In the first book that tried to make sense of the rise of the SNP in the 1960s, when it went from being a very marginal party to being a serious challenger in Scotland to the major British parties, political scientist Jack Brand argued that this rise was a result of the combined effects of organizational changes and wider changes in Scottish and British politics, adding that ‘neither could have worked alone’ (Brand, 1978: 260).