The end of consensus? Folk theory and the politics of foreign policy in the Brexit referendum

ABSTRACT

While it is well-known that Brexit will have consequences for the UK’s role in the world, foreign affairs is not thought to have featured prominently in the referendum campaign itself. This apparent lack of foreign policy salience is surprising given the broader challenge to liberal international order provided by other anti-elite campaigns across Europe. In this article we analyse mentions of foreign affairs made by the Remain and Leave camps in the Brexit referendum campaign. We find that both campaigns articulated distinct views of Britain’s role in the world with regards to security, international organization, trade, morality, and regime-type. We argue these distinct perspectives represent “folk theories” of liberal internationalism and realism, respectively, given their correspondence with the core claims of these theoretical traditions. Our findings suggest that the goals of British foreign policy itself are likely to be increasingly subject of political division in the years after Brexit.

KEYWORDS:

• Brexit
• British foreign policy
• realism
• liberal internationalism
• folk theories
• global Britain

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Paul Beaumont, Sven Biscop, Filip Ejdus, Eleonore Heimsoeth, Lauren Kahn, Iver Neumann, Nora Fisher Onar, Srdjan Vucetic and three anonymous reviewers for comments on the manuscript, as well as participants at the Millennium Conference in London (October 2017) the ISA Convention in San Francisco (April 2018) and the UACES Conference in Bath (September 2018). We would also like to extend our thanks to Daniel Payne for his efforts in collating the LSE’s Britain and Europe Digital Archive.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.