Politics professor speaks to Scottish parliament

Politics Professor Nicole Bolleyer was invited to give evidence to the Devolution (Further Powers) Committee of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh on Thursday (27 August). She spoke about practices and challenges of parliamentary scrutiny in intergovernmental relations in federal and devolved systems. The meeting also involved other federalism experts from Edinburgh and York and was aimed at informing discussions around how the Scottish parliament could be involved in UK intergovernmental relations, especially in the process of managing overlapping competences shared between Scotland and Westminster. This process tends to be handled by the governments' executives alone, raising questions of accountability and transparency.

For her evidence Prof Bolleyer, who is the Director of the Centre for Elections, Media and Participation (CEMaP), drew particularly on her research on intergovernmental relations in Canada highlighting the difficulties of assuring parliamentary scrutiny in the negotiation of intergovernmental agreements between national and provincial. Prof Bolleyer is also an expert on Swiss and US federalism.