Does the Scottish Parliament Matter?

Does the Scottish Parliament matter? Beyond expectations of a ?new politics? in Scotland and beyond anecdotal examples of practice, this paper provides the first systematic attempt to investigate the salience of the Scottish Parliament to legislative outputs in Scotland. Adapting the methodological framework of Griffith’s 1974 study of the impact of the UK Parliament on government legislation, this paper assesses the impact of the Scottish Parliament on Executive bills to date (1999-2002). Assessment is based on an analysis of all amendments (N = 3983) for the first 37 Executive bills passed by the Scottish Parliament (1999-2002). Initial findings on the success and failure of amendments in the Scottish Parliament shows that the Executive dominates the process nearly as much as the UK Government was found to dominate the House of Commons in the Griffith (1974) study. However, when we account for type of amendment and initial authorship we find evidence that the Parliament actually makes more of an impact, particularly in terms of the level of success of substantive amendments to Executive bills. Moreover, when we investigate meanings behind ?non-success? we find that much of this is either intended as a means of fulfilling other legislative functions such as scrutiny, constituency representation and tension release, or is a consequence of the Executive having taken on board parliamentary concerns. Evidently, expectations of power sharing between the Executive and Parliament are being realised. Consequently, notions of a ?new politics? operating in Scotland, at least in terms of power sharing, may not be as fanciful as many critics suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]