The publication of this book is very timely indeed. For the first time since devolution was implemented in 1999, there are now different parties in control of Government in Edinburgh and in Westminster. The emergence of the Scottish National Party (SNP) as the largest single party in the new Scottish Parliament − governing in no small part due to the Greens, and also more contentiously at times, to the Conservatives − has re-ignited a long-standing debate around Scottish public and social attitudes and their role in shaping policy agendas and outcomes. In particular, such controversies have revolved around the argument that there is a particular set of ‘Scottish’ values which contribute to the development of distinctive policy making. Such claims have been widely voiced since devolution, revolving as they do around oft-repeated suggestions that Scotland has embarked on a more progressive social policy making path, at least compared with some other parts of the UK.

The question of social democracy has often played a central role in these debates. In the 1980s and early 1990s, for instance, as is well known, the Conservatives were almost completely wiped out as a political force in Scotland. This has led many academics and other commentators over the years since to claim that as a bastion of social democracy ‘Scotland’ was in some ways protected from the worst effects of Thatcherism. Try telling that to the massed ranks of Scotland's poor and unemployed during the Tory years. These ideas are to some extent given voice in this collection. Michael Rosie and Ross Bond in their chapter, ‘Social Democratic Scotland’, argue that social democracy in Scotland comes during this period to be underpinned by a renewed sense of Scottishness and the re-emergence of a Scottish national identity. More importantly they remind us that claims that Scotland is a ‘naturally progressive country have to be treated with the utmost caution’.

While the Labour Party in Scotland, like its counterparts elsewhere in the UK, has long laid claim as the party of social democracy, in the context of the Blair and now the Brown years, it is the SNP who have made great efforts to present themselves as the Scottish social democratic party – in some ways seeking to present themselves as the only party that will protect ‘Scotland’ from the worst aspects of New Labour. In Scotland today there are then two, possibly three, if the Liberal Democrats are included, main political parties who lay claim to this label. In part, this serves to highlight that the notion of social democracy is itself a contested, elusive and mobile idea. Does social democracy of today (and not only of the Scottish variety), never mind of the 1970s and 1980s, of the post-1945 period, have the same set of ideas and values and similar objectives?

The contributors to this collection engage with the overriding questions and themes of social democracy in relation to a number of important sites of policy making in contemporary Scotland. These include some of the key devolved policy-making areas including education, health, economic regeneration and urban policy. The book is bolstered by other chapters that consider the question of gender mainstreaming and the equalities agenda, the relationship between the voluntary sector and social democracy, public services ‘reform’ and also in relation to crime control and penal practice. In this chapter, in my view the most forcefully argued chapter in the book, Lesley McAra argues that the welfarist aspects of the criminal justice system in Scotland were sustained during the 1990s and early 2000s precisely because they were underpinned by a ‘distinctive Scottish civic and political culture’ (p. 123). However, she recognises that such an approach is under threat post-devolution, not least due to the pervasive spread of more punitive approaches that have been gathering momentum elsewhere in the UK, in part fuelled by populist fears of crime and disorder.

Some other chapters are disappointing by comparison. In his discussion of urban policy in Scotland, Turok considers some of the ways in which the ‘new conventional wisdom’ that is underpinning urban policies in different parts of the world has come to be influential on city policy making in Scotland. Central to this new wisdom is the argument that cities have important roles to play in economic growth. In the context of Scotland, this is in stark contrast to some past approaches to the cities which effectively wrote them off in this regard. However, Turok does not really tie this discussion effectively enough to the wider themes of the book and to the question of what a social democratic urban policy might look like today.

One of the great disappointments of this book is that unsubstantiated claims are allowed to stand without any critical engagement. Freeman, for instance, in his discussion of health policy in Scotland, asserts ‘that the organised working class has all but disappeared’ (p. 85). But what has disappeared from this book is the question of class itself. There is a notable absence of any understanding of the relationship between class and social democracy. Further, and this goes to the heart of the limitations of this collection, there is little sense that social movements have played a crucial role in the fight for welfare in Scotland – and in protecting welfare services in the face of repeated assaults in recent times. There is, then, little sign of struggle, of protest and of resistance in this account. There is talk of a ‘Scottish Tradition in Public Services’ (pp. 263–4) and in different places throughout of a distinctive ‘civic culture’ that reflects social democratic Scotland. One could be forgiven for thinking that neo-liberalism stopped at the border with England. There is little conscious effort here to consider the ways in which neo-liberalism and third way politics have and are reconstructing social democracy.

However, in recent years in Scotland, as in other parts of the UK, there has been a resurgence of militancy on the part of public sector workers as they fight to protect jobs and services. They have often combined with service user movements and other campaigning groups to protect services often for the most disadvantaged groups in society, to save hospitals and to resist privatisation. It is here that we might want to look for some of the ways in which a meaningful social democracy can be sustained – against the new social democracy of both New Labour . . . and of the New SNP!