Introducing the EU exit index measuring each member state’s propensity to leave the European Union
| Author | Markus Gastinger |
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165211000138 |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Forum |
Forum
Introducing the EU
exit index measuring
each member state’s
propensity to leave
the European Union
Markus Gastinger
Department of Political Science, University of Salzburg,
Salzburg, Austria
Abstract
Which member states could leave the European Union in the years ahead? To answer
this question, I develop the ‘EU Exit Index’ measuring the exit propensities of all
European Union member states. The index highlights that the United Kingdom was
an outlier and uniquely positioned to leave the European Union. While all other states
are far behind the United Kingdom, the index still reveals substantial variation among
them. Moreover, the index allows monitoring the development of exit propensities
over time. It shows that the European Union is in better shape today than before the
Brexit referendum and that, currently, no further exits are on the horizon. Still, this
could change in the future and the EU Exit Index provides systematic and reproducible
measurements to track this development.
Keywords
Brexit, composite index, European disintegration, Euroscepticism, national exits
Corresponding author:
Markus Gastinger, Department of Political Science, University of Salzburg, Rudolfskai 42, 5020 Salzburg,
Austria.
Email: Markus.Gastinger@sbg.ac.at
European Union Politics
!The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14651165211000138
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
2021, Vol. 22(3) 566–585
Introduction
The United Kingdom’s(UK) decision to leave the European Union (EU) ushers in a
new era of European integration. So far, integration was largely perceived as a one-
way street, with the EU continuously growing from initially six to28 member states.
It seemed only a matter of time before the whole European map would be printed in
reflex blue, notwithstanding a few holdouts such as Switzerland or Norway. This
belief has been shattered on 23 June 2016, when the UK became the first country
voting to leave the EU in a referendum, which is what it formally did on 31 January
2020. While Brexit will have profound and long-lasting consequences, the most
immediate impactis that it proves that it is possible to leave the EU.Many countries
have since been connected to future exits but, to date, there is little systematic
research on how close other countries are to such exit scenarios.
This article speaks to an emerging literature on the causes and consequences of
Brexit. Explaining the Brexit decision has attracted considerable attention (e.g.
Goodwin and Milazzo, 2017; Hobolt, 2016; see also Huysmans, 2019) and much
of it will be used in this article to develop a general argument about how demo-
cratic nation-states leave the EU by extrapolating from the British case.
Increasingly, however, the consequences of Brexit move to the fore. Huhe et al.
(2020) ask how Brexit affects decision-making in the Council of the EU, while Hix
(2018) predicts the UK’s relationship with the EU in the long term (see also
Schimmelfennig, 2018). Still, the most pressing question posed by Brexit is whether
any other countries could follow suit. In an article appearing shortly after the
referendum, Hobolt (2016: 1271) asked: ‘Is Britain an outlier?’ Limiting herself
to Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, she considered it likely
given the need for coalition governments and greater levels of public support for
EU membership. ‘Yet’, she concludes, ‘that is not to say that the Brexit vote
represents a uniquely British phenomenon’ (Hobolt, 2016: 1271), leaving the
door open for the possibility of future exits.
The question of whether, and if yes which, member states could leave the EU
has been present in the literature for some time. Pierson (1996: 146) wrote about
the ‘growing implausibility’ of a member state leaving the EU, describing national
exits as ‘virtually unthinkable’. Still, already neo-functionalists acknowledged that
integration may also ‘spill-back’ and noted that states could leave the EU (Hodson
and Puetter, 2018: 466). More recent contributions can be structured along three
dimensions. Some stress the social dimension, where leaving the EU becomes more
likely when citizens hold exclusive national identities or negative attitudes towards
the EU (Carl et al., 2019; Glencross, 2019) or prefer their domestic political system
over that of the EU (De Vries, 2018). Others emphasize the expected economic
impact, which is taxing for Eurozone economies (Vollaard, 2014: 1154) or those
deeply integrated into the single market (Hix, 2018: 19; K€
onig and Ohr, 2013).
Finally, yet others point to the political dimension, such as when countries are
frequently outvoted in EU decision-making (Kelemen, 2007: 62–63) or have strong
Eurosceptic parties (Heppell et al., 2017; Tournier-Sol, 2015).
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Gastinger
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