Wales has contributed more than its fair share of melodrama to the unfolding of Britain's devolution story.

It began with the cliff-hanging referendum vote a little over a year ago, followed by a couple of fraught Labour leadership contests, the second caused by Mr Ron Davies's resignation as Secretary of State for Wales after his adventures on Clapham Common. And there are signs that the melodrama is not yet over.

So far, however, the election campaign for the assembly itself, which reaches its hoped-for climax this Thursday, has proved a yawn for the pundits. It has been virtually ignored in the London media, which have focused what attention they have had to spare from war in the Balkans on Scotland.

In Wales, the press has chased around for issues in a lacklustre campaign where, on the surface, little appears to separate the parties. As ever on these occasions, personalities have dominated. In the forefront is Mr Alun Michael, the Secretary of State for Wales who succeeded Mr Davies. More than any other politician, he has put his bureaucratic stamp on a campaign which would have been different if his predecessor had carried the devolution project to the people.

As it is, Mr Michael has found himself struggling in the uncertain swamps of Welsh politics, parachuted in suddenly from the firmer territory of long-term, low-profile administration as a deputy minister in the Home Office.

Variously described as "Blair's poodle" (by Plaid Cymru, the nationalist party) and "one of life's natural number twos" (by his friends, according to the Western Mail), he is a Welsh speaker from north Wales but now representing a Cardiff Westminster seat. Try as he might, he has been unable to escape the tag of being the man from Whitehall and, in particular, Mr Blair's man from Whitehall.

This does not run well in the first Welsh general election. It runs even less well that he beat his fellow - and more popular - Cardiff MP, Mr Rhodri Morgan, in a leadership contest which was blatantly manipulated to prevent the democratic choice winning.

More to the point, Mr Michael arrived on the scene so late that he could not find a safe seat. He is standing for the party list in the Mid and West Wales region where pollwatchers reckon he only has a 50-50 chance of being elected.

Because of the complicated mixture of 40 first-past-the-post seats in the assembly, combined with 20 top-up additional member seats, Mr Michael's chances will be much improved if Labour loses to Plaid Cymru in the marginal Carmarthen East constituency contest. Even then there is no guarantee. Analysts at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, reckon that in an electorate of more than 400,000, Mr Michael will win or lose by a few hundred votes.

In all this it is Plaid Cymru which is benefiting most. In British general elections, the party has never won more than 11 per cent of the Welsh vote. In this election, the polls are giving the nationalists between 20 per cent and 30 per cent. As a result, they are certain to emerge as the main opposition party, with the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives trailing some way behind in third and fourth place respectively.

The uncertainties are whether Labour will have a majority and whether Mr Michael becomes the first prime minister of Wales. The tone, style and character of Welsh politics and government will then be substantially affected.

If Labour fails to win a majority it will still govern but in a more inclusive way involving the other parties. However, if it has a clear majority it may be tempted to revert to the worst excesses of one-party rule which has so disfigured some of the Labour-run authorities in Wales.

If Mr Michael leads the assembly there will be a competent continuation of the current Welsh Office style of administration. The emphasis will be on caution and ensuring that anxieties from Westminster and Whitehall about unpredictable initiatives are assuaged.

On the other hand, if Mr Michael loses, Labour will be forced to chose between Mr Morgan and Mr Davies as assembly leader and all bets on a smooth transition will be off.

This is the importance of an otherwise low-key campaign. Yet this is the surface politics. Delve deeper and it is possible to discern the outline of a new society which is in the process of being constructed by the Welsh devolution experiment.

Because it has lacked institutions, Wales has a relatively under-developed civil society and, as yet, little if any distinctive sense of Welsh citizenship. This is certainly the case when compared with Scotland, whose separate legal, religious and educational institutions have meant that Scottish identity is strongly felt. The coming of the Scottish parliament will not fundamentally change Scottish society. It will provide an essential keystone in the arch of Scottish distinctiveness but it will not have to create from scratch a separate Scottish civic society.

In Wales, the assembly will have to do just that. It will have to construct the arch and then develop and increase its own powers so that it can also become the essential keystone at the head of a Wales which will be felt by its people in a civic way for the first time. Put like that and it can be seen that the national assembly has a much bigger task than the small-change of day-to-day politics.

The emergence of Cardiff as a capital city with a metropolitan feel is providing a taste of what we can expect. More and more organisations - not least a new consulate representing the Irish Republic - are finding the need to have a presence in Cardiff to interact with the Welsh Office, the Welsh Development Agency and other institutions. When Welsh governance becomes democratic, this trend will accentuate.

Policy changes brought by the national assembly will also have an impact. One area where change could happen quickly is in secondary education.

There is a consensus that the Alevel curriculum is too narrow and fails to deal adequately with vocational needs. If anything, these pressures are stronger in Wales than in England. This is because of the requirements of the larger manufacturing sector.

There is an opportunity to develop a curriculum which also foregrounded education about citizenship in relation to modern Wales. One proposal being advocated by Plaid Cymru and the liberal Democrats is for a Welsh Baccalaureate which would broaden and Europeanise post-16 education, giving vocational subjects parity of esteem with the academic and more space to Welsh studies.

It is not hard to imagine how such policy changes would impact on Welsh society. They would give it a much sharper sense of its civic identity. First, however, the assembly has to find its feet, develop self-confidence and a distinctive leadership. A lot depends on the outcome of this week's election, which will tell us whether the melodrama has a few more acts to run.

As with the referendum on the night of September 17th, 1997, when the Yes vote was secured only with the final nail-biting count, the last result this Friday is again expected from Carmarthen.

John Osmond is the director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs, a policy think-tank based in Cardiff.