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Size matters
If Scotland were a recognized nation-state--which they would be had their vote for sovereignty not failed--they would be a much smaller nation than the big ones--India, China, the US, and 119 more[1] that would have a larger population than Scotland. Research into the potential for consensus being a key element in the "Scottish Approach" suggests that it may someday live up to the dearly held myths of an ancient Scottish governance practice that was far more participatory than merely voting in elections (Cairney, 2015). The researcher seems to suggest that time to begin such a "devolution" would ideally be when few truly hard choices over perduring problems would make consensus likely fail and be discarded, with a reversion to a more command-and-control model.
This raises the idea that, in the context of national politics, the size of the overall population might generally tend to be more or less amenable to a consensus approach, with the relational strengths of smaller nations lending advantage to attempting to introduce a consensus approach at the national level. If that is true, it seems logical that a much more local level would test out more strongly in any initiative to introduce a consensus model.
It might also suggest that, given the modifications made to consensus by larger international bodies, there are lessons from many places about the likelihood of success, depending in part on the alterations attempted and deemed acceptable.
While consensus isn't necessary one of the means of governance of highly democratic nations, it is interesting that countries that Democracy Matrix[2] ranks as "Deficient democracies," (including the US, Liberia, Poland, Panama and others) likely have few, if any, structures of consensus at national, state/province, or local levels). As the rankings get into autocracy (e.g., China, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, North Korea and more), one might predict fewer instances of attempts to practice consensus at any level.
Indeed, what is the relationship of consensus to democracy? When democracy is defined as "majority rule," that, in itself, can be a serious deficiency, as it says nothing about minority rights--the hallmark of the strongest democracies. Any permutation of consensus would likely tend to enfold minority rights much more vigorously than mere majority rule, making it very likely that, to the extent consensus is embedded in layers of governance, that democracy is of a higher caliber.
References
Cairney, P. (2015). Scotland’s Future Political System. Political Quarterly, 86(2), 217–225. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1111/1467-923X.12154
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