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The impact of national political polarisation on local government coalition formation

Cleavages
Elections
Local Government
Political Competition
Political Parties
Coalition
Party Systems
Political Ideology
Jonathan Parker
University of Glasgow
Jonathan Parker
University of Glasgow

Abstract

Following the 2022 local elections political party groups in councils across Scotland began to conduct the regular round of post-election negotiations to put together local administrations for the next five years. For the first time since the introduction of proportional representation at the local level in 2007, minority administrations became the most common category, with many administrations being led by the 3rd largest party on the council. For the most part these arrangements resulted from a growing reluctance to work with parties on the other side of both the independence issue and the left-right divide, and the instructions of national party leaders not to do so (often contrary to the wishes of local councillors). Despite the growing salience of the independence question since the Scottish National Party (SNP) first came to power in 2007, for the most part it had not precluded parties working across conditional lines at the local level. Indeed, contrary to the findings of scholars such as Reuse (2023) that left-right divisions play a significant role in local government coalitions, local coalitions crossing this divide were also very common in Scotland. However deepening polarisation on both dimensions in national politics has led to a decline in cross-constitutional coalition agreements over time. While at first the polarisation on this issue failed to filter down to the local level, by 2022 this had led to the collapse of cross-constitutional power-sharing in local councils. At the same time, coalitions crossing the left-right divide also became much rarer, indicative of an increasing double-polarisation of national politics structuring local political dynamics This paper will explore the how and why this process has taken place, using a mixed methods approach including surveys of local and national office holders and process tracing to unpick the factors which have caused local office holders to become more reluctant to work with other parties who disagree with them on major national issues, and why national parties have become more inclined to become involved in local coalition formation.