Understanding Scotland's Double Constitutional Question

The proposed PhD aims to measure, understand, and discuss past and present value cleavages in the Scottish electorate in relation to Independence and Brexit. It will be presented as a coherent series of journal articles, from which will flow the answer to the main overarching question: how is Scotland's double constitutional question, over Brexit and Scottish Independence, anchored in intertwined demographic and value differences?

Article One: Explaining Scotland's Independence Cleavage
This first paper aims to examine the electoral rift around Scottish Independence by providing a longitudinal analysis of the value and sociodemographic drivers behind nationalism. The key questions stand as follows. How do demographic and value cleavages interact have interacted across time to explain support for Scottish Independence? Is the supposed shift from a class-based to a 'civic' nationalism rooted in competing value orientations? Has it occurred within the same electorate, or do we now have two parallel types of nationalism?
These questions will be addressed through the quantitative analysis of Scottish-focused datasets - of which the Social Attitudes Survey and Scottish Election Studies are particularly useful in their long running and their containing detailed variables on Scottish nationalism. The analysis will mainly consist in logistic regression models with support for independence as the dependent variable, and the longitudinal component of this research will involve a specific focus on cohort-driven change.

Article Two: Explaining Scotland's Brexit Cleavage
The second article will look at the Brexit divide in Scotland and compare it to the broader UK value landscape. Mainly, it will ask: why is the Scottish electorate more Europhile despite strong sociodemographic similarities with the rest of the UK? Is the relationship between demographics and values different in Scotland - ie. the electorate is inherently more liberal or postmaterialist - or is the alignment between values and electoral outcomes different north of the border?
This paper will use the 2017 and 2019 British Election Studies to undertake a comparative analysis of the Scottish and British electoral value landscapes. This data follows both the Scottish electorate and the UK as a whole on a range of value orientations and taps into relevant sociodemographic data. This analysis will mainly consist in regression models with support for Brexit as the dependent variable.

Article Three: The cross-cutting of Brexit and Independence in Scotland
The third section of the proposed PhD will look at the relative salience of the Independence and Brexit cleavages in Scotland and try to explain the dynamics behind the two cross-cutting cleavages. Can value analysis and political psychology help explain the prioritising of either Independence or Brexit in voters who are faced with the choice? How do both cleavages interact with one another within the individual? Does the cross-cutting nature of the two cleavages and the fragmentation it causes cancel out their electoral impact? Or are there specific situations such as being in favour of Independence and against Brexit - where the two cleavages have reinforced one-another?