New Scotland, New Society?: Are Social and Political Ties Fragmenting?

This text asks a series of vital questions regarding the attitudes and behaviour of the Scots: are the ties that bind people to each other and to the democratic system fragmenting? Do people no longer trust each other? How do people relate to each other in terms of social trust? How do they relate to social institutions such as the family and systems of morality? Is constitutional reform restoring that trust? Drawing on the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey and its predecessors, the overall aim of the book is to provide an independent account of public opinion in post-devolution Scotland. The chapters cover a range of contemporary debates. Attitudes to key issues such as co-habitation, teenage pregnancy, religion, sexuality, abortion, and racial prejudice are be explored. The capacity of Scotland’s political institutions to restore trust are questioned, and the links between the trust which people have in each other and the trust they have in their institutions are tested. These attitudes are set in context over time and also in comparison with the rest of the UK, to see how attitudes have developed, and whether Scottish attitudes are distinctive. Much of the public debate in Scotland in recent years has been about constitutional and political change. This book moves beyond these issues to look at their social basis. It asks whether popular attitudes might actually be even more fundamental than the undoubtedly important constitutional upheaval that Scotland has recently experienced.