EU Referendum Research Articles

Explaining support for Brexit among parliamentary candidates: the case of Wales

The 2016 EU referendum was a key moment in the history of the United Kingdom. It has changed the course of the country and continues to shape political competition in the UK. Despite research on which voters cast their ballot for Leave having become a minor industry in recent years, we still know little about what factors motivated our politicians to do so. Using original data from the 2016 Welsh Candidate Study, this article explains support for Brexit among parliamentary candidates in Wales. It finds that both candidates’ socio-economic profile and political attitudes influenced their decision to vote Leave in 2016. The strongest determinants of Leave vote were candidates’ views on how the EU works; how democratic it is and how much influence it can exert. Candidates’ occupational background and policy concerns were also relevant, but their effects were slightly weaker. These findings not only highlight that there are important similarities between what influenced politicians and voters to cast their ballot for Leave, but also some salient differences.

Disentangling the Brexit vote: The role of economic, social and cultural contexts in explaining the UK’s EU referendum vote

A large number of studies have analysed the role of individual and geographical determinants of voting behaviour in the context of the recent EU referendum in the UK, but several questions remain. A key unresolved issue is the extent of the interaction between individual voter characteristics and the geographical context in which they live, with some of the variance in voter preferences previously attributed to individual characteristics potentially being mediated by the geographical context. Space, and the people who live in it, are in continuous interaction, which requires a careful conceptual and empirical treatment of the issues of composition and sorting. We therefore ask to what extent individuals with very similar individual characteristics voted differently in different places. We use data from the British Election Study, along with a non-parametric matching approach, to analyse whether comparable individuals voted differently in areas with particular economic and cultural characteristics. We find that composition effects account for less than half of the observed constituency-level variation in the vote, while the remaining contextual effects are driven almost entirely by cultural factors.

EU nationals’ vulnerability in the context of Brexit: the case of Polish nationals

ABSTRACT Since the late 1990s, populist discourse based on anti-immigration sentiments has been on the rise in Britain. This phenomenon reached a peak during the EU Referendum (ER) campaign and shortly thereafter. The ER has been linked to the upsurge in racially and religiously aggravated offences recorded post-July 2016. Polish nationals, who constitute the largest group of EU nationals in the UK, were targeted by many of these incidents. It could therefore be argued that, in the last years, and particularly, since the ER, EU nationals living in the UK have become more ‘vulnerable’. To test this hypothesis, this contribution is based on an interdisciplinary project that collected socio-legal evidence to compare the vulnerability of the Polish community in Southampton before and after the ER. The paper draws on vulnerability and psychology literature to differentiate between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ vulnerability. Our study deploys mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) to test changes in objective and subjective vulnerability among Southampton-based Poles before and after the ER. Our findings suggest that, following the ER, Poles felt significantly more vulnerable, especially in terms of subjective vulnerability, even if they had never experienced overt hate incidents or discrimination (objective vulnerability) before.

“Poor, Proud and Pretty” Community History and the Challenge of Heritage in “Darkest” Cheltenham

ABSTRACTThe article discusses a collaborative local history project in Cheltenham Spa’s Lower High Street, an area that has suffered from “symbolic annihilation” through a long history of stigmatisation at the expense the town’s Regency-era heritage. Residents’ testimonies give voice to marginalised experiences that help to establish the area’s distinctive “sense of place,” which is rooted in shared experiences of exclusion, hardship and community cohesion. Through nostalgic recollections, they also reveal a significant grassroots willingness to challenge the exclusionary practices of Cheltenham’s dominant and exclusionary Regency narrative. However, present concerns about ethnic diversity and urban decay also exposed contemporary anxieties that are indicative of the broader context of Britain in the EU referendum era. While offering a “history from below,” the paper also considers how universities operating as “anchor” institutions can help to address contemporary issues of social alienation and spatial inequality by fostering a greater appreciation of the past.

The Post-Liberal Moment

Brexit, Trump, the Gilets Jaunes, and now Boris Johnson's victory: the last four years have seen a popular revolt against the economic and social liberalism that dominated Western politics for the past forty years. In the United Kingdom, the upheaval has opened up a post-liberal space in which to renew the country's democracy and economy. The EU referendum result revealed deep divisions of geography, age, class, and culture that developed for decades. Both before and after 2016, politics and policies failed to address the deeper causes of discontent and disillusionment. After three years of frantic inertia, the Conservatives' parliamentary majority…

Co-instituting the Constituency

Traversing cultural studies and political theory, this paper asks how any representative is to represent a diverse constituency, given that any constituency is necessarily co-instituted—that is, made up of—multiple and conflicting bodies and interests. Arguing that the term has suffered from a deficit of enquiry within the theoretical and critical humanities, this article thus aims to re-figure the concept of constituency. The specific understanding of constituency formation within the context of British political system, something especially visible in the wake of the EU referendum and its aftermath, highlights that constituencies are understood within this context through an atomic logic—that is, that each constituency is made up of individual constituents. Thinking with the notion of constituent power allows for a better understanding of the co-instituted nature of constituencies: how and by whom they are co-created. This, in turn, undermines any understanding of political representation as a merely bi-directional practice between representative and constituency. Finally, a close reading of Ghislaine Leung’s CONSTITUTION helps probe further both a bi-directional account of constituency formation and the notion that constituencies are themselves atomically structured, upsetting set theory in the process and allowing us to better apprehend the co-constitutive relationship between constituency and constituent. 

The hostile environment, Brexit, and ‘reactive‐’ or ‘protective transnationalism’

AbstractThe ‘reactive transnationalism hypothesis’ posits a relationship between discrimination and transnational practice. The concept has generally been studied using quantitative methods, but a qualitative approach augments our understanding of two context‐specific dimensions: thenatureof the discrimination involved, and thetypesof transnational behaviour that might be affected. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with Bangladesh‐origin Muslims in London, Luton and Birmingham, in the UK, we demonstrate how anti‐Asian and anti‐Muslim racism have been conflated with intensified anti‐migrant racism in the context of ‘hostile environment’ immigration policies and the EU referendum (Brexit), producing an amplification of racist discourses associated with purging the body politic of its non‐white bodies. The insecurity generated is altering some people's relationships to Bangladesh, incentivizing investment in land and property ‘back home'. While this represents an example of ‘reactive transnationalism', we argue that ‘protective transnationalism’ might be a more appropriate way of describing the processes at work.

Bandit: Here to Haunt You! On Why I Became an Émigré Theatre Maker

Summary The article employs concepts of time lag, inspired by Ernst Bloch, and ghost and haunting, borrowed from Jacques Derrida. It also draws on Svetlana Boym’s and Vilém Flusser’s vision of the émigré and on Dominick LaCapra’s and Slavoj Žižek’s interpretations of trauma. The analysis is also informed by Karen Jürs-Munby’s and Cathy Caruth’s views on trauma and its representation in theatre. This critical apparatus is put into motion in the particular context of BANDIT: a theatre project developed in the UK by two Romanian émigré theatre-makers. The main focus is on exposing links between the references to trauma contained in the theatre piece BANDIT and the makers’ self-imposed artistic exile in the UK. The article seeks to answer the following question: what has pushed us, the makers of BANDIT, to leave our native country and what is our (new) role (as artists) in the country of emigration? The discussion is carried out within the wider context of the vast waves of Romanian emigration to Western Europe (after the fall of the Iron Curtain). The article critiques the troublesome relation of the contemporary Romanian society to its Communist past and the apparent inability and/or unwillingness to deal with the repressed/traumatic memories of that past. Analysis of BANDIT as performance of lingering trauma also references the historical Percentages agreement between Stalin and Churchill—the informal agreement that established spheres of influence in Europe at the end of the Second World War. Identifying the Iron Curtain as the epicentre of traumatic memory for Eastern Europeans, the discussion about BANDIT also makes a reference to Communist crimes against political prisoners committed in Romanian prisons in 1951–1952, put in parallel with the toxic EU referendum campaign in the UK in 2016. Underpinned by Derrida’s thinking, the article explains how the Romanian émigré-artist (as a paragon of the Romanian / Eastern European émigré in general) has to fashion herself into a ghost that haunts the adoptive culture, using artistic exile as a platform for processing the traumatic memories of an unresolved past.

Devolution, the Independence Referendum and Votes at 16 in Scotland: Holyrood, a Pioneer in Democracy Leading the Way for Westminster?

The Scottish Parliament enfranchised 16 and 17-year-olds prior to the 2014 referendum on independence of Scotland from the UK. Scotland was among the very first nations in the world to lower the minimum voting age below 18. The Scottish National Party (SNP) majority Government emphasised the importance of recognising other rights and responsibilities acquired at 16, getting young people involved in the democratic process, and giving them a voice. It also knew that independence was popular among young people. All the main parties are now in favour of votes at 16 in the Scottish Parliament, whereas in the UK Parliament, the Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) remain officially opposed. This article addresses how and why Holyrood lowered the minimum voting age, contrary to Westminster. It first documents the processes that led to the enfranchisement of 16 and 17-year-olds in Scotland for the 2014 independence referendum. Next, the results of the referendum are studied and the outcomes in terms of the voting age in wider Scottish elections. The article then deals with the potential impact on Westminster debates on votes at 16 for the 2016 EU referendum. Last, there is a discussion on the differing stances in Holyrood and Westminster regarding young citizens and their right to vote.

Improving Infrastructure

Executive SummaryInfrastructure investment can substantially increase a nation's capital stock and thereby boost productive, or supply-side, potential. It can also be useful as a tool in macroeconomic stabilisation, while public spending on quality infrastructure projects has been shown to have significantly greater multiplier effects than tax cuts – so the case for an increasing spend is not undermined by a country's overall debt level.These arguments are especially apposite for post-Brexit UK. Britain's investment performance in general has been especially poor since the 2016 EU referendum. Fixed capital formation as a proportion of GDP is low by international standards, while the government's share of fixed capital formation, at 2.5 per cent, is also below average. It would make sense to target an increase in public and private infrastructure spend to 3.5 per cent of GDP which is the OECD's recommended level.While major infrastructure projects continue to generate controversy on grounds of cost overruns and other issues, UK policy-makers have recently taken a more constructive approach to infrastructure development, notably with the creation of an independent National Infrastructure Commission.But the UK's infrastructure remains unsatisfactory, with significant parts of its energy, water, transport and communications networks in need of renewal or replacement, and infrastructure project delivery remains poor. In summary, much of Britain continues to operate well into the 21st century largely with 20th century, sometimes 19th century, infrastructure assets that are creating bottlenecks, crimping productivity, putting off potential foreign investors, undermining the economy's competitiveness, increasing inequality, and leaving the economy ill-equipped to face future challenges such as Brexit and climate change.The government needs to be bolder, setting out a more ambitious set of priorities including energy projects, regional spending, and fostering capital recycling and private sector investment. A still more ambitious, but eminently feasible, proposal would be to establish a National Investment Bank to offer project guarantees, recommend user fees, lend to projects with the proceeds of National Investment Bonds and simplify planning among other tasks. In a serious downturn, with monetary policy exhausted, the NIB could also help to co-ordinate and finance a response.

Deaths of despair and Brexit votes: cross-local authority statistical analysis in England and Wales

Abstract Objectives To test the hypothesis that ‘deaths of despair’, a marker of social suffering, was associated with greater support for Brexit in the UK’s 2016 EU referendum. Methods Cross local authority regression models of 2016 Brexit referendum vote shares for each local authority in England and Wales on changes in rates of suicide and drug-related deaths pre- (2005-2007) and post-recession (2014-2016), adjusting for several socioeconomic and demographic factors. Survey population: 345 local authorities in England and Wales. Results Greater mortality rates from deaths of despair were significantly associated with higher Brexit vote shares. In unadjusted models, an increase of 10 drug-related deaths per 100 000 associated with a 13.20 percentage point increase in Brexit votes (95% CI: 7.09 to 19.31), while an increase of 10 suicides per 100 000 was associated with a 9.93 percentage point increase in vote shares for Brexit (95% confidence interval 6.21 to 13.65). These associations are explained by local area-level economic and education factors. Conclusions Worsening external causes of death correlate with Brexit voting. Such deaths may serve as an early warning indicator for political instability. Key messages Prior research has shown correlations between deaths of despair and votes shares for Trump in the 2016 US presidential election. We extend this research to the UK, showing that greater mortality rates from deaths of despair were significantly associated with higher Brexit vote shares.

Brexit: Modes of uncertainty and futures in an impasse

Alongside the emergence of various populisms, Brexit and other contemporary geopolitical events have been presented as symptomatic of a generalising and intensifying sense of uncertainty in the midst of a crisis of (neo)liberalism. In this paper we describe what kind of event Brexit became in the impasse between the UK’s EU referendum in 2016 and its anticipated exit from the EU in 2019. Based on 108 interviews with people in the North‐East of England, we trace how Brexit was variously enacted and felt as an end, advent, a harbinger of worse to come, non‐event, disaster, and betrayed promise. By following how these incommensurate versions of Brexit took form and co‐exist, we supplement explanatory and predictive approaches to the geographies of Brexit and exemplify an approach that traces what such geopolitical events become. Specifically, we use the concept of “modes of uncertainty” as a way of discerning patterns in how present uncertainties are lived. A “mode of uncertainty” is a shared set of practices animated by a distinctive mood through which futures are made present and felt. Rather than treat uncertainty as a static, explanatory context, we thus follow how different versions of Brexit are constituted through specific “modes of (un)certainty” – negative hope, national optimisms, apprehensive hopefulness and fantasies of action – that differentiate within a seemingly singular, shared sense of uncertainty.

Disentangling the Brexit Vote: The Role of Economic, Social, and Cultural Contexts in Explaining the UK's EU Referendum Vote

A large number of studies have analysed the role of individual and geographical determinants of voting behaviour in the context of the recent EU referendum in the UK, but several questions remain. One key unresolved issue is the extent of interaction between individual voter characteristics and the geographical context in which they live. For instance, much of the variance in voter preferences that has been attributed to individual characteristics may have been mediated by the geographical context, and vice versa. Space, and the people who live in it, are in continuous interaction, which requires a careful conceptual and empirical treatment of the issues of composition and sorting. We therefore ask: to what extent did individuals with very similar individual characteristics vote differently in different places? We use data from the British Election Study, and a non-parametric matching approach, to analyse whether comparable individuals voted differently in areas with particular economic, social, and cultural characteristics. We find that composition effects account for less than half of the observed constituency-level variation in the vote, while the remaining contextual effects are driven almost entirely by cultural factors.

‘Parliamentary’, ‘popular’ and ‘pooled’: conflicts of sovereignty in the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union

ABSTRACTMany believe the UK to have been an awkward member of the EU, firmly attached to a traditional idea of parliamentary sovereignty. In fact, the UK’s membership of the EU has coincided with a profound transformation in the British state and corresponding understandings of sovereignty. This article examines this transformation by focusing on its legal and constitutional aspects. The article contends that EU membership has provided a context for ‘constitutional modernization’ in the UK, undertaken in the absence of public scrutiny or debate. By the EU referendum of June 2016, the UK found itself with a transformed constitutional structure in practice but with an unchanged reliance in theory on a traditional notion of parliamentary sovereignty. Events over the last 3 years have revealed the depth of this disjuncture and its implications for British sovereignty.

Lay discourses about Brexit and prejudice: “Ideological creativity” and its limits in Brexit debates

AbstractMuch research on Brexit has studied whether the vote to leave the EU is a marker of growing prejudice. In this article, we study instead how the relationship between support for Brexit and prejudice is constructed, negotiated and contested in lay discourse. Our analysis of focus groups (N = 12) conducted prior to and following the EU referendum shows that support for Brexit was predominantly constructed as based on nationalism and anti‐immigration prejudice, especially in Remain‐supporting accounts. This prompted identity management strategies and counter‐arguments by Leave supporters, such as providing alternative constructions of prejudice and racism; relating Brexit with “progressive” values; and presenting it as rational and economically sound. In our discussion, we draw attention to the “ideological creativity” that underpins these accounts and also reflect on the possibilities and constraints of developing alternative political narratives under conditions of political polarisation.

A streetcar named expertise

A streetcar named expertise

What Drives the Right-Wing Populist Vote? Topics, Motivations and Representations in an Online Vox Pop with Voters for the Alternative für Deutschland

Abstract In a recent study (Miglbauer, Marlene and Veronika Koller (2019). “‘The British People have Spoken’: Voter Motivations and Identities in Vox Pops on the British EU Referendum.” Veronika Koller, Susanne Kopf and Marlene Miglbauer, eds. Discourses of Brexit. Abingdon: Routledge, 86–103.), we investigated vox pops (short for ‘vox populi,’ i.e. ‘voice of the people’) with self-declared Leave voters in the run-up to the 2016 British EU referendum. The study presented here complements this research with a comparative perspective, exploring the motivations expressed by voters for the German right-wing populist party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland). On the day of the 2017 general election, the German news website Zeit online (ZON) invited its readers to say why they voted AfD. Although the AfD voter profile and the ZON readership profile are noticeably different, the question elicited 468 replies numbering a total of around 59,000 words, which we compiled into a corpus. Working with corpus analysis software AntConc 3.4.1w, we first prised out topics and motivations by analysing this collection of online vox pops for word frequencies as well as collocates and concordances for selected lexical units, before manually grouping the different lexemes into ten topics. In a second step, we manually analysed the data for social actor representation (van Leeuwen, Theo (2008). Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) and appraisal (Martin, James R. and Peter R. R. White (2005). Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.). The results of the analysis show that next to previously documented motivations for right-wing populist votes – e.g. in-group bias and rejection of the Other as morally deficient (Heinisch, Reinhard (2008). “Austria: The Structure and Agency of Austrian Populism.” Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, eds. Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 67–83.) –, the group of AfD voters represented in the written vox pop have specific additional reasons, namely a focus on German chancellor Merkel as an ‘anti-hero’ and a belief of being victimised by the media. An additional, unexpected finding was that a number of posters to the dedicated comment forum explicitly distance themselves from perceived stereotypes of right-wing populist voters. Our findings therefore also problematise previously identified characteristics of right-wing populist discourse as anti-elitist and anti-intellectual (Wodak, Ruth (2015b). The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. Los Angeles: SAGE.) and call into question the support from workers, and associated fears of wage pressure and competition for welfare benefits, as one of the main factors in the success of right-wing populism (Oesch, Daniel (2008). “Explaining Workers’ Support for Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Evidence from Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, and Switzerland.” International Political Science Review 29.3, 349–373.).

Engaging with the Media in a Pre and Post Brexit World: Racism, Xenophobia and Regulation: A United Kingdom Perspective

This paper engages with the perception that the UK media was instrumental in promoting racism and xenophobia in the period before the UK EU referendum. Furthermore, that this promotion led to actual hate crimes within the UK: How and why this occurred are central research issues. However, a further question is why no prosecution took place of either individuals within the media, or media companies themselves, promoting such rhetoric. Primary data analysis consisted of surveying newspaper content, online or otherwise, and particularly the tabloid press, but also EU reports, legislation, including Article 10 and 10.2 European Convention on Human Rights (Freedom of Expression), and European Court of Human Rights cases. Academic literature on Racism and Xenophobia, and their encouragement was utilised. The conclusions revealed weaknesses in the perception, identification and prosecution of ‘hate speech’ and racist and xenophobic material. Moreover, that prosecution has also proven problematic because of competing notions of ‘Freedom of Expression’ for individuals and organisations. However, regarding the media, the internal procedures, lack of adherence to ethical standards and lack of compulsory external regulation, further enabled such content. The effect cannot be conclusively determined, although spikes in recorded hate crimes coincided with virulent media content.

Do Directors’ Mobility Restrictions Matter? An International Evidence

From business to politics and academia, the economic effects of restrictions of high-skilled migration are under scrutiny. We examine and quantify the effects of the restrictions on corporate directors’ mobility on the firm market value. Using two unexpected events – the outcome of the EU referendum in the UK and the election of Donald Trump as the US President and his decisions to restrict the entrance of nationals of several majority Muslim countries to the USA - we find that restricting international mobility of high-skilled workers has a negative impact on the firm value, measured as the cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). This result remains robust under alternative specifications and placebo tests. Moreover, we show that the firms that have foreign directors on boards that do not face additional mobility restrictions experience an increase in value around the aforementioned events, suggesting the transfer of usefulness between the two categories of foreign directors.

Factors Behind the UK EU Referendum 2016: A Multivariate and Path Analysis

The United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, also known as the EU referendum and the Brexit referendum, took place on 23 June 2016. delivered a new sort of political division. Voters were divided, more or less fifty/fifty (52%, 48%),but not on traditional party lines but rather on a new dimension one of social conservatism versus social liberalism. It has been suggested that this new division is even more salient than the traditional Left - Right Tory - Labour one and one which may presage a reorientation in UK politics, given that the major incumbent parties Labour and Tory are similarly internally split. A remarkable fact about this new dimension is that its persistence equals its salience Subsequent polling evidence, the average of monthly polls plotted in the chart below show the split has changed little in the interim since 2016. Later polling continues to reflect this such that parties are starting to align themselves in terms of this split The new Brexit party (social conservative, Leave) and the Liberal Democrats (social liberal, Remain). Both of these parties have seen their support surge. Much has been written about the background to the emergence of this new phenomenon and this won’t be re-explored here. The focus rather is on the demographics and social factors which are possible causes of this emergence. The analysis is based upon two data sets; the EU referendum voting results and The Legatum UK prosperity index for 2016, which has concepts and indicators for health, sense of security, social capital as well as education, business friendliness and economic prosperity. Both of these data sets show analyses at the Local Authority level which permits the assessment of vote causes at a quite granular level.