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Modern Scotland presents a paradox: a landscape of formally robust regulatory frameworks coexisting with widespread, low‑visibility institutional failure. This project investigates how ordinary citizens encounter systemic dysfunction across multiple domains — consumer protection, higher education, welfare administration, policing, and legal redress — and asks why accountability mechanisms consistently fail to prevent harm. Drawing on political economy, regulatory theory, and lived case studies, the research examines how self‑regulation, fragmented oversight, and asymmetric information create environments where exploitative practices can flourish, from predatory vehicle repair markets to opaque university governance and adversarial welfare systems. By mapping these failures as interconnected expressions of structural power rather than isolated incidents, the dissertation aims to articulate a “state of the union” diagnostic for Scotland: a grounded analysis of how institutions designed to protect the public can instead reproduce vulnerability, and what reforms are necessary to restore trust, transparency, and democratic accountability.

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