THE REGIONAL COUNCIL ELECTIONS OF MAY 1978*

Regions are responsible for a variety of important local govern-ment functions including strategic planning, roads and trans-portation, industrial development, and the police, fire, education and social work services. Though they vary enormously in area, population and resources, the Regional authorities are all large and complex organisations whose performances importantly affect the daily lives of the people they govern.l Regional councillors were first elected in 1974 and it would be fair to say that since then the Regional authorities have been the targets of a good deal of criticism. Generally the com-plaints have been that they are too large, remote from the ordinary elector, over-bureaucratised, cumbersome and in-efficient. There exists quite a strong current of opinion that, in any future reorganisation of local government in Scotland-especially if the proposed Scottish Assembly becomes a reality-the Regions should be abolished. Indeed this is the declared policy of the Scottish National Party. Consequently, in addition to the normal sets of issues that might be found in local govern-ment elections, the second round of Regional elections held on 2 May 1978 was seen by many people as an opportunity for *We are grateful to Brian and Wilma McHardy for their indispensable assistance in the collection and processing of the data upon which this paper is based. Some of the data was collected as part of a larger projec