Don’t cry for me Britannia: The resilience of the European Union to Brexit
| Author | Robert Thomson,Daniel Naurin,Narisong Huhe |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116519882096 |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Don’t cry for me
Britannia: The resilience
of the European Union
to Brexit
Narisong Huhe
School of Government and Public Policy, University of
Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Daniel Naurin
Department Public and International Law, University of
Oslo, Oslo; Norway and Department of Political Science,
University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Robert Thomson
School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne,
Australia
Abstract
We assess the impact of the United Kingdom’s 2016 decision to leave the European
Union on the Council of the European Union, where Brexit is likely to have the clearest
observable implications. Using concepts and models from the spatial model of politics
and network analysis, we formulate and test expectations regarding the effects of
Brexit. We examine two of the most prominent datasets on recent decision-making
in the European Union, which include data on cooperation networks among member
states before and after the 2016 referendum. Our findings identify some of the political
challenges that Brexit will bring, but also highlight the factors that are already helping
the European Union’s remaining member states to adapt to Brexit.
Keywords
Bargaining, Brexit, Council, networks, legislation
Corresponding author:
Robert Thomson, School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne VIC3800, Australia.
Email: robert.thomson@monash.edu
European Union Politics
2020, Vol. 21(1) 152–172
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1465116519882096
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
What impact will Brexit have on the decision-making processes and outputs of the
European Union (EU)? Much has been written about the causes of Brexit and its
possible effects on the United Kingdom (UK), and the economic relations between
the UK and the EU27 (e.g. Armstrong, 2018; Gamble, 2018; Steenbergen and
Siczek, 2017). However, there has been little systematic analysis of the possible
effects of Brexit on the functioning of EU institutions. Losing one of its largest
member states – in terms of the size of the UK’s population, economy, diplomatic
resources and military power – could have important consequences for the policies
that the EU will adopt and for the relations among the remaining states. This is
particularly plausible with respect to the Council of the EU, the primary intergov-
ernmental institution in EU decision-making and the part of the EU system on
which we focus.
Our study presents comparative quantitative analyses of recent evidence on
decision-making and cooperative relationships among member states. For the
most part, the few existing studies of the impact of Brexit on the EU rely on
qualitative syntheses of expert opinions. For instance, Jacobs (2018: 73) posits
that Brexit could have a range of significant consequences for the power relation-
ships among the remaining EU27, including the possibility of reinforcing the
power of Germany. He further notes that the consequences of Brexit, while poten-
tially significant, are unclear for most of the remaining states. Similarly, Krotz and
Schild’s (2018) recent study of the effects of Brexit on Franco-German bilateralism
presents three contrasting scenarios, which include German hegemony, the decline
of the European project and a rejuvenated Franco-German tandem. An earlier
study by M€
oller and Oliver (2014; see also Oliver, 2016) offers a range of perspec-
tives from other countries, including some of the remaining EU27 states.
While these contributions are informative, they illustrate the wide range of
expert opinion on this matter. Moreover, the evidence and theories that support
their conclusions are often unstated.
Our analyses assess the emerging impact of Brexit by integrating two established
approaches to research on the EU’s legislative process. The first approach is based
on the spatial model of politics, in which actors’ policy positions are represented as
points on one or more conflict dimensions. The spatial model has been used to
formulate and test a broad range of rational choice institutional theories of the
EU’s decision-making process, including theories that focus on formal legislative
procedures (e.g. Crombez, 1996; Steunenberg, 1994; Tsebelis and Garrett, 2000)
and informal bargaining (e.g. Achen, 2006; Bueno de Mesquita and Stokman,
1994). We use the dataset from the decision-making in the EU (DEU) project,
which includes information on EU actors’ policy positions on controversial legis-
lative proposals that were on the agenda in the period 2004–2008, before the
prospect of Brexit arose. Comparisons of member states’ policy positions in
these data with their policy positions in previous periods reveal a significant
degree of stability (e.g. Thomson, 2011). While we cannot know if member
states’ policy positions will be similar in the future, the stability of these data in
the past indicates that they provide an informative basis for assessing the impact of
Huhe et al. 153
To continue reading
Request your trial