The people, the parliament, and the ultimate power: Competing political party discourses on sovereignty in post-Brexit Scotland

The 2016 Brexit referendum on EU membership has rekindled the constitutional debate in the UK, particularly in Scotland, where a second independence referendum was promised by Nicola Sturgeon. The constitutional debate is multifaceted, but the concept of sovereignty is central to it; political parties conveying ideas about its locus and practice in their discourse on constitutional reform. Yet sovereignty is a highly contested concept in the UK and Scotland, its definition varying depending on the fostered constitutional project. This chapter examines the discourse on the sovereignty of five Scottish political parties using an analytical framework drawing on Critical Discourse Studies. Through the critical analysis of policy documents and manifestos, the meaning attributed to sovereignty by each political party is scrutinised and questioned in light of relevant literature. This allows for a better understanding of the complexity of the discourse on sovereignty in post-Brexit Scotland, while contributing to previous work on the transformation of the concept of sovereignty itself.