Деволюция как фактор политической субъектности британских регионов после Брекзита: кейсы Шотландии и Уэльса

Abstract

Brexit, as a profound political and institutional shock for the United Kingdom and the whole European Union as an integration organization, has significantly changed the context of the functioning of British ethno-regional autonomies. The UK’s exit from the European Union has transformed the parameters of the political actorness of British regions in the context of an ongoing devolution. The devolutionary framework, characterized by asymmetrical relations between the center and the regions, as well as the unthorough nature of the reforms carried out, created barriers to the development of the political actorness of the regions in a situation of redistribution of powers after the elimination of the supranational level of governance after Brexit. Britain’s exit from the EU led to an attempt to recentralize domestic policy by the Conservative government of Boris Johnson, following which he acted in line with the previously pursued devolutionary policy. The authors of the article set out to identify the impact of Brexit on the political actorness of the British regions of the United Kingdom – Scotland and Wales – using theoretical tools of historical institutionalism. The study concluded that the increased demand for expanding the political actorness of British regions after Brexit does not lead to an increase in the powers and preferences of regional administrations, based on the existing devolutionary framework that limits the ability of regions to fight for their status, powers and preferences within the existing political system. The system determines the limits of the strategy of regional government actors in the absence of a clear configuration of multi-level politics in the United Kingdom and the lack of institutional mechanisms to increase the actorness of the regions. It was revealed that the central authorities use an exclusionary policy of ‘soft recentralization’ after Brexit in relations with the regions. Scotland and Wales, in turn, implement strategies of ‘managable confrontation’ and ‘forced cooperation’ in relation to the center based on the lack of effective institutional mechanisms for increasing their own status within the national political system.