A Coastal and Marine National Park for Scotland: a tactical or strategic affair?

Through a detailed discussion of attempts to create a Coastal and Marine National Park in Scotland, this paper critically examines the fate of an individual policy idea. It explains how this initiative succumbed to alternative political options to address strategically the problems of the marine. It identifies six critical issues for policy-makers: the validity of extending terrestrial national park experience into the marine; the nature of learning-based argumentation and practice evidence in legitimizing policy innovation; the role of politics in policy development; the tensions between tactical and strategic policy-making; and the institutional complexities of policy-making in the marine environment.