Audit of Democratic Participation
Eleven years ago I was hired by the Scottish Civic Forum to write an assessment of whether the then-new Scottish democracy was meeting the aspirations that had been expressed for it. I had only just finished my PhD, which had had nothing to do with political economy, and I was largely ignorant of Scottish political history. I suppose I had in my favour that no-one knew very much about Scottish democracy, as it had only existed (in its current form) for two years by the time I was writing my job application. In any case, this was a wonderful opportunity for me. It was my first real job, and I went into it with enthusiasm. I spent a year travelling around Scotland meeting community groups, collecting data in the national records office, and interviewing some very smart civil servants; and I well knew how lucky I was to have been allowed to research something real and important, after spending most of the prior decade studying unrewarding subjects in philosophy.
The Scottish Civic Forum closed down in 2005, by which time I had left it and was working for Jubilee Scotland. It seemed that all electronic and almost all paper copies of the report I wrote had been lost. But thanks to a prompt from the Electoral Reform Society, I’ve now finally scanned and OCRed the document, and I hope it may be of some historical interest. I really enjoyed writing it, and remain grateful to Debbie Wilkie, Donald Reid, and others, for having hired me.
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