A Study of Driving Forces for Scottish Independence Referendum Based on the Level of Analysis

Abstract

Scottish Independence Referendum, as a specific case after cold war, is a hot topic in recent international relation studies, and these studies, to a certain extent, have being signified a drop from interaction among state actors to interaction among non-state actors. Introduction of the level of analysis from international political academic area in this study elaborates driving forces behind the desire for Scottish Independence, also, such an introduction attempts to structuring analysis paradigm for international political problems with level-dropped characteristic. This study starts with observation of Scottish Independence Referendum results, hence, pulls out the question of what driving forces facilitate the referendum. It further generalises three independence hypotheses, Boosting of National Sentiment, Discovery of Northern Scotland Oil and Defeat of Two Parties Campaign Strategies through the narrative history of Scottish independence, which points out particularities of combination of Scotland and England, effect of British Empire. It then indicates the inharmonious results by comparing the previous hypothesis and reality, and introduces the Level of Analysis due to analysis Scotland and England strength in system level, features of Scotland in actor level, consideration and preference of Prime Minister and First Minister of Scotland in decision maker level, sequentially, confirms that features of Scotland in actor level, together with consideration and preference of Prime Minister and First Minister of Scotland in decision maker level, are basis and direct driving force for Scottish Independence Referendum respectively. 一种对苏格兰独立公投成因的研究:基于层次分析法 李森林 1,a,* 澳门科技大学社会与文化研究所,氹仔,澳门,中国 Senlin.li.11@alumni.ucl.ac.uk 通讯作者 关键词:苏格兰独立公投;层次分析法;成因 中文摘要. 苏格兰独立公投是冷战结束后国际政治中出现的特殊现象。作为近年来国际关系 学界内所研究的热点问题,对它的研究代表着国家行为体间的互动向国家行为体内的次国家 行为体与该国家行为体互动的研究层次回落。本文试图以引入国际政治层次分析法来解释苏 格兰独立公投成因,并将此案例作为对于出现层次回落现象的国际政治问题分析的一种尝试。 本文通过观察公投结果引出何种推力促成苏格兰独立公投发生这一问题,经介绍苏格兰独立 公投的历史渊源,即阐明苏格兰与英格兰发生合并的特殊性以及长期以来大英帝国掩盖了苏 格兰问题后,详细说明了关于苏格兰独立公投成因的三种假说,即苏格兰民族情绪成因;发 5th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2019) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 319