James Mitchell 
Governing Scotland [PDF ebook] 
The Invention of Administrative Devolution

Governing Scotland explores the origins and development of the Scottish Office in an attempt to understand Scotland’s position within the UK union state in the twentieth century. Two competing views were encapsulated in debates on how Scotland should be governed in the early twentieth century: a Whitehall view that emphasised a professional bureaucracy with power centred on London and a Scottish view that emphasised the importance of Scottish national sentiment. These views were ultimately reconciled in ‘administrative devolution’.