Tensions Between Constituency and Regional Members of the Scottish Parliament Under Mixed-Member Proportional Representation: A Failure of the New Politics

About a decade after devolution in the UK created a Scottish Parliament elected by mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation, tensions between those representatives elected by the two different routes (single-member constituency and multimember region) remained. This article shows how controversies in 2008 over the level of office allowances, as well as the wording of the code of conduct, demonstrate that Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) held differing views on the constituency role of MSPs, and that the partisan animosity between the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Scottish Labour has been exacerbated by the competition at the constituency level facilitated by MMP. This deeply partisan outcome, while reflecting the successful operation of rational choice logic on the part of individual politicians, worked against the larger attempt to engineer a less adversarial post-devolution politics in Scotland.