| Abstract [eng] |
In the past 30 years of EU integration the topic of EU disintegration has repetitively surfaced in academic literature. Various events provide basis for such academic discussions, e. g. difficulties of ratifying the Maastricht treaty in Denmark, Dutch and French “no” to Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. Such processes led to active theorization of regional disintegration. Post-functionalism – a theory of regional disintegration – proposes a framework to understand disintegration processes. Post-functionalism was used to analyze 3 major EU crisis: Eurozone crisis, Schengen crisis and Brexit. Post-functionalism is able to explain the reasons for disintegration that followed Schengen crisis and Brexit referendum. In case of Eurozone crisis, which satisfies all preconditions of post-functionalism for disintegration to occur, a deepening of integration was noticed. Main objective of this research is to test the validity of post-functionalism by expanding post-functionalism empirical research literature. Post-Brexit EU-UK negotiations were chosen as the research object. Following tasks were raised to achieve the mentioned objective: • To understand how post-functionalism explains regional disintegration and what strengths and weaknesses of this theoretical framework can be identify. • Distinguish national identity narratives that were politicized before Brexit referendum in the UK. • Examine 3 EU-UK negotiation events – abandonment of the Northern Ireland Backstop, UK's negotiating positions on fisheries and the deliberations on Internal Market Act – and to motivate, why other theories of regional (dis)integration cannot provide a convincing explanation of these events. • Analyze the discourse formed by 3 UK TAN political parties – Tory, Labor and Reform UK – on the above mentioned UK actions in the context of the EU-UK negotiations, showing the politicization of UK national identity. • Propose research possibilities to further test the validity of post-functionalism. In order to explain disintegration, post-functionalism proposes a theoretical framework, which is based on 4 assumptions: multi-level governance, erosion of permissive consensus, politicization of integration and changes in party cleavages. According to post-functionalism, regional disintegration can occur when TAN political parties politicize national identity in order to gain public support. EU-UK negotiations were chosen as the research object since post-Brexit negotiations can be viewed as negotiation on modified regional integration. Discourse analysis methodology was chosen to reach the abovementioned objectives. According to the findings of this research, three conclusions can be drawn. First, according to the discourse analyses, 4 national identity narratives were politicized in the course of EU-UK post-Brexit negotiations. These are imperial past, safeguard of sovereignty, protection of the nation state from external threats and UK as an island narratives. These national identity narratives politicized by TAN political parties, which were used to underpin disintegration actions of the UK suggest that post-functionalism can help to understand UK’s actions in EU-UK negotiations. Second, as analysis of N. Farage (former leader of Reform UK party) discourse in the European Parliament showed, that 3 out of 4 narratives used by major UK political parties (Tory and Labor) were taken over from N. Farage. Third, as discourse on Internal Market Act showed, politicized national identity narratives can be used not only to support disintegration, but also to counter it. This research is an addition to post-functionalism literature. The abovementioned conclusions stress the validity of post-functionalism when explaining regional disintegration. In future research, to further analyze the validity of post-functionalizm, more empirical cases should be analyzed in detail using this theoretical framework (e. g. EU-UK Trade and partnership agreement). |
