To residents of the United Kingdom, whichever bit they live in, devolution still has the feel of relative newness. And yet it is very nearly ten years since the project, so loudly advertised in the manifesto of New Labour, was set in place following a series of referenda in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It thus seems an apposite moment to stop and take stock. The question asked in this collection of essays is an obvious one: “Has devolution delivered?” Of course, the question begs a series of collateral questions, not the least of which is what does “delivered” mean? What is the criterion of delivery? But then that is the spice that heats the dish, for no one really knows. And a central thesis shared in many of these essays is that this critical question remains unanswered. The general sense of mild disappointment that the process appears to have nurtured during its first decade, it can be insinuated, is a direct result of a process put in place the reason for which was never really argued through, at least not beyond a visceral sense of nationhood shared by a few, together with a more widely held, if no less vague, belief that somehow a Scottish, and Welsh and Northern Irish, government must surely be able to do better than that which is situated far away in London.

There are ten essays in Has Devolution Delivered? together with an introduction and a conclusion. The first three explore the original “moment” of devolution and independence and its enduring impact upon the Scottish political consciousness. The second set, of four essays, delves rather more deeply into the nature and context of the elections to the devolved Parliament in 1999 and 2003. The third section addresses the broader questions of nationalism, inclusion, and exclusion. The methodology is heavily empirical and statistical. Each of the essays is grounded firmly in extensive surveys of public opinion regarding each particular subject or theme. This has obvious strengths and weaknesses. It provides the student of the subject with invaluable statistics. But it can tend to frustrate, most obviously in the tendency to present intriguing paradoxes and conundrums, but then move on to the next set of numbers. Some of the most challenging broader issues are addressed in the two final essays, “Routes into Scottishness,” by Ross Bond and Michael Rosie, and “Islamophobia and Anglophobia in Post-Devolution Scotland,” by Asifa Hussain and William Miller. Lindsay Paterson's discussion of the apparent demise of the Scottish National Party falls into the same category. In matters of political identity, its sources and its expression, statistics tell only so much, and probably not that much.

While the constituent essays address various aspects of devolution, there is particular merit in the way in which the editors of the collection have enforced a focus on the original question set. And it is not just a matter of shared methodology and the love of numbers. The tightness of the focus means that a number of conclusions are shared commonly. Most striking is the pervasive ambivalence. As the introduction concludes, “The record of the early years of devolution has thus been a mixture of apparent success and disappointments” (9). The same sentiment is revisited 191 pages later, in the conclusion to the conclusion. It is, as Alison Park and David McCrone observe, a “core conundrum,” a disappointment that no one seems that bothered about (24). There is much that is similarly ambivalent. And the resultant sense of apathy is everywhere present. It seeps out of each and every statistical chart. It is pregnant across John Curtice's three essays on different aspects of the electoral processes during the last decade. Not many vote, it seems, because not many are that bothered, and not many think it will make much difference—a conclusion also reached by Catherine Bromley in her particular essay on the 2003 elections. Not that people seem to be too upset by the apparent impotence of the parliament for which, the more romantic nationalist proclaims, so many have struggled so long. If devolution can be said to be one thing more than anything else, that thing is “inoffensive.” It does not provoke hostility.

And this alone, as many of the contributors to the collection conclude, can be attested a success. Devolution seems to have dampened down the potentially more radical, and destabilizing, calls for Scottish independence. If anything, the Union seems to be that little bit stronger, even if popular attachment to it is weaker than an alternative, or perhaps collateral, sense of Scottishness: a conclusion pressed by Paula Sturridge in her essay “A Better Union?” and rejoined by Bond and Rosie in their investigation of “routes” into Scottish identity. Moreover, while it appears to have disappointed lots of people, at least a bit, there is a residual faith, if not affection, for the Scottish Parliament. “People,” as Park and MacCrone again conclude, “may be critical of Holyrood, but at least they think of it as their own” (28). A retained collateral suspicion of the Westminster Parliament is another conclusion shared across many of the essays in the collection. The Scots may not think so much of their parliament ten years on, but they continue to think less still of that which remains in London.

So has devolution delivered? Well, it seems, it all depends. But not to worry; no one else is.