{"title":"The space between leave and remain: archetypal positions of British parliamentarians on Brexit.","authors":"Constance Woollen","doi":"10.1057/s41293-021-00184-6","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Brexit has caused a chasmic divide in the UK. Voters and Parliament are divided, as are the UK's major political parties. Such divisions may not be so surprising, however, given that Brexit crosses traditional party lines. Preferences to leave or remain do not fit neatly onto the traditional Left/Right dimension. Instead, the idea that European integration constitutes a new dimension in party competition has been gaining ground. This article creates a typology of Brexit 'clusters' through a discourse analysis of Conservative and Labour MPs, building an intricate picture of the archetypal positions of parliamentarians during the cacophonous Brexit period. Six clusters of MPs are found, crossing party lines and indicating that a Europe-related dimension is taking hold in British politics. Proposals for future research using the typology are also put forward.</p>","PeriodicalId":46067,"journal":{"name":"British Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8181536/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"British Politics","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-021-00184-6","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2021/6/7 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Brexit has caused a chasmic divide in the UK. Voters and Parliament are divided, as are the UK's major political parties. Such divisions may not be so surprising, however, given that Brexit crosses traditional party lines. Preferences to leave or remain do not fit neatly onto the traditional Left/Right dimension. Instead, the idea that European integration constitutes a new dimension in party competition has been gaining ground. This article creates a typology of Brexit 'clusters' through a discourse analysis of Conservative and Labour MPs, building an intricate picture of the archetypal positions of parliamentarians during the cacophonous Brexit period. Six clusters of MPs are found, crossing party lines and indicating that a Europe-related dimension is taking hold in British politics. Proposals for future research using the typology are also put forward.
期刊介绍:
British Politics offers the only forum explicitly designed to promote research in British political studies, and seeks to provide a counterweight to the growing fragmentation of this field during recent years. To this end, the journal aims to promote a more holistic understanding of British politics by encouraging a closer integration between theoretical and empirical research, between historical and contemporary analyses, and by fostering a conception of British politics as a broad and multi-disciplinary field of study. This incorporates a range of sub-fields, including psephology, policy analysis, regional studies, comparative politics, institutional analysis, political theory, political economy, historical analysis, cultural studies and social policy.
While recognising the validity and the importance of research into specific aspects of British politics, the journal takes it to be a guiding principle that such research is more useful, and indeed meaningful, if it is related to the field of British politics in a broader and fuller sense.
The scope of the journal will therefore be broad, incorporating a range of research papers and review articles from all theoretical perspectives, and on all aspects of British politics, including policy developments, institutional change and political behaviour. Priority will, however, be given to contributions which link contemporary developments in British politics to theoretical and/or historical analyses. The aim is as much to encourage the development of empirical research that is theoretically rigorous and informed, as it is to encourage the empirical application of theoretical work (or at least to encourage theorists to explicitly signify how their work could be applied in an empirical manner).