Britain-out and Trump-in: a discursive institutionalist analysis of the British referendum on the EU and the US presidential election

Abstract

ABSTRACTAdding discursive institutionalism to the political science toolkit is key to understanding the victory of the forces pushing the UK to exit from the EU and for Trump's election in the US. The contextualized analysis of the substantive content of agents' ideas enables us to explore the ideational root causes of discontent, including economic neo-liberalism, social liberalism, and political mistrust. The examination of the discursive dynamics of policy coordination and political communication calls attention to agents' rhetorical strategies, the circulation of ideas in discursive communities, and the role of ideational leaders along with that of the public and the media in a post-truth era. Discursive institutionalism also lends insight into questions of power, including how ideational agents have been able to use their persuasive power through ideas to channel people's anger while challenging experts' power over ideas as they upended the long-standing power in ideas of the liberal order.