Quoting from their 'Insight' document: “Opinion polling on Scottish foreign policy attitudes is rare…” which prompted their survey in Autumn 2022. They gathered representative samples of English and Scottish respondents, ensuring they were sizable enough for meaningful cross-national and within-Scotland comparisons of public attitudes towards foreign policy. This survey is believed to be the first of its kind.

The following is taken from the ‘Insight’ document summary:

As a democratically elected body, the Scottish Government must retain citizen support. Opinion polling on Scottish foreign policy attitudes is rare, and we lack understanding of whether Scottish citizens have foreign policy attitudes that align well with the feminist-influenced perspective of the Scottish Government and whether the positions of those residing in Scotland differ from their English counterparts.

Our analysis of a specialised foreign policy survey commissioned in fall 2022 finds broad support in both Scotland and England for cooperating with other nations, putting provisions to respect gender, human rights, and the environment into trade agreements, and engaging with the world. Intra-Scottish differences along the Unionist- Nationalist divide, particularly on the unilateral use of the military and apologising for the legacy of colonialism are more stark than Scottish-English differences. This suggests that elements of the Scottish Government’s “paradiplomacy” policy fall along the fault line around independence that polarises politics in the nation.”

The full PDF document and Codebook can be downloaded via the links further down this page and, should you be interested in the full dataset behind the responses, all data is accessible at the Harvard Dataverse here.

In addition to the comprehensive Insight document, they delve into this survey in the latest episode of our podcast series. John Edward interviews Prof. Tom Scotto and Dr Claire Duncanson from the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively, discussing their research on public attitudes in Scotland.

In the inaugural in-depth study of its nature, they have examined attitudes spanning nationalist and unionist perspectives towards contemporary international issues, including well-being, global justice, colonial legacies, military intervention, and development expenditure. Particularly, they have scrutinised attitudes towards the feminist approach to foreign policy endorsed by the Scottish Government, among others.

The podcast will soon be accessible on your preferred platform – simply search for 'Scottish Council on Global Affairs' – and is directly hosted on Acast. For instant playback, we've embedded the episode below.

 

First published: 15 April 2024

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