Abstract
This paper develops an empirical agent-based model to assess the impacts of Brexit on Scottish cattle farms. We first identify several trends and processes among Scottish cattle farms that were ongoing before Brexit: the lack of succession, the rise of leisure farming, the trend to diversify and industrialise, and, finally, the phenomenon of the “disappearing middle”, characterised by the decline of medium-sized farms and the polarization of farm sizes. We then study the potential impact of Brexit amid the local context and those ongoing social processes. We find that the impact of Brexit is indeed subject to pre-Brexit conditions. For example, whether industrialization is present locally can significantly alter the impact of Brexit. The impact of Brexit also varies by location: we find a clear divide between constituencies in the north (highland and islands), the middle (the central belt) and the south. Finally, we argue that policy analysis of Brexit should consider the heterogeneous social context and the complex social processes under which Brexit occurs. Rather than fitting the world into simple system models and ignoring the evidence when it does not fit, we need to develop policy analysis frameworks that can incorporate real world complexities, so that we can assess the impacts of major events and policy changes in a more meaningful way.
Highlights
On 23 June 2016 the British people voted to exit the European Union
We develop an empirical agent-based model to investigate the impact of Brexit on Scottish cattle farms, while acknowledging that long before Brexit, changes have been ongoing among Scottish cattle farms that have led to the polarization of cattle farms and the decline of medium-sized farms
We ask the following research questions: How does a major national event like Brexit interact and interfere with local context, trends and processes? To what extent does the impact of Brexit depend on the trends and conditions that exist before Brexit? And which types of farms will be mostly impact upon by Brexit?
Summary
On 23 June 2016 the British people voted to exit the European Union (so-called ‘Brexit’). Many months before and after the vote, the media, the public and academics were engaged in heated debates and produced copious analyses to understand the possible impacts of such a major event. Many treated Brexit as a shock to a society in equilibrium [1, 2]; whereas historic data is more likely to support the notion that society is an ever-evolving complex system with many factors and processes constantly interacting with each other [3, 4]. Different approaches to policy analysis may partially explain why they have reached very different conclusions regarding the estimated impact of Brexit so far [5]. Researchers have long been arguing for a complex system approach to policy analysis that takes into account local context and dynamics [6, 7].
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