The UK’s Decentralization Process And Its Political Influence In Scotland

Britain is representative model unitary state. Owing to small countries combined and established the United Kingdom, the local governments had taken shape before the central one, therefore it has profound tradition of local autonomy. The British constructed modern local autonomous system during the 19th century, became the earliest country to implement the system all over the world. Then, this country commenced reforming that system in 20th century as a pioneer. After World War II, the United Kingdom headed for centralized system of government. Later in the century, local power has been reduced and weaken in large amplitude. Meanwhile the contradictions between the central and local governments have become increasingly prominent. In order to gain more autonomous power, local governments’desire for self-managed continue to increase. Both the central and local governments have been playing power game persistently.Since the 20th century, Scottish independence movement has been gathering momentum which obliged the central government ceded its power to the Scottish local government. " Devolution of administrative power to lower levels " has become an important part of contemporary British politics. In 1997, the Labor Party had been came into power. To comply with the demands for the local self-government which lasted quite some time, and to fulfill their promise at election time, the Labor Party kicked off the British " devolution of power to lower levels " movement, launched a process of " localization ". As a main measure to deal with major national independence and regional separatism events, devolving power from central to lower levels, aiming better local autonomous behaviors, meeting the demands of local people who wanted to self-government. Thereby, restrain regional independence movement and maintain social stability in these region(Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland).This study is using the failure of Scottish referendum as entrance, analysis the origin and development of local autonomy traditional of British, and the situation after devolution of power to lower levels, exploring whether this steps will achieve a better local government, or be more propitious to the development of local and the whole nation? Under the background of UK’s profundity tradition of local autonomy, using Scotland as an example, the nationalist movement impelled the transfer power to lower level began.