Comparing the Scottish Office with ‘Whitehall’: A Quantitative Approach

This article seeks to throw some light on what is perhaps a deceptively simple question: is the central administrative bureaucracy which governs Scotland from St Andrew's House in Edinburgh in any measurable way distinctively Scottish, as opposed to the mere manifestation in Scotland of the standard U.K. civil service? Do the Scottish Departments display characteristics not found in Whitehall, and is there a ‘Scottish administrative style’ for such Departments? Answers to these questions are not only interesting in their own right but clearly have some relevance to the devolution debate. For example, if Scottish administration is recognizably ‘different’, this might be regarded as evidence that a greater degree of effective devolution than is assumed already exists; if Scottish administration shows no distinctive features at present, one might speculate what changes devolution to an Assembly would engender. We shall make some brief comments on this point at the close of this article.