The Cultural Mediation of State Policy: the democratic potential of ‘new community schooling’ in Scotland

The purpose of this paper is to assess the democratic potential of New Community Schools (NCS) as initiated by the Scottish Executive as one of its first major interventions. It traces the background to the initiative, locates it within the particular circumstances of the historical, political and cultural contexts of Scotland, and defines its particular ambivalence with regard to deliberative democracy. This ambivalence, it is argued, results from the cultural mediation of state policy. Policy, we argue, does not so much ‘migrate’ as become culturally ‘mediated’. It has to accommodate itself to, and be assimilated by, different national cultures – even, perhaps especially, across the national boundaries of an increasingly devolved UK. The paper argues towards an assessment of NCS in respect of the ends and purposes of deliberative democracy. Finally, it infers from the early NCS experience a number of conditions for democratic renewal.