| Abstract [eng] |
This Master thesis is called “Divorce between United Kingdom and European Union as the Change of Historical Structures: “Brexit” and Critical Theory”. The problematic of the thesis derives from the United Kingdom’s “Brexit” referendum and its results. Researchers, political scientists and other specialists were expecting UK to vote “Remain” and to stay in the European Union. However, British people chose a completely different path and decided to leave EU. That is why in this thesis it was assumed that we need a different approach to the problem and the critical theory was chosen to identify the roots of the “Brexit” referendum. Critical theory was chosen because of its ability to recognize not only the formal causes of the event but also deeper social forces that traditional problem-solving theories tend to ignore. Moreover, the main assumption of the critical theory is that the institutions, relations, material conditions and other forces in the world could be changed or is changing; in other words, critical theory does not take constructs of the world as given. Therefore in this thesis it was assumed that “Brexit” might be a manifestation of the changing world and the critical theory could help us understand how. So the main question of the thesis is how the decision of British people to leave EU was affected by the social and power relations? To find out this, Robert W. Cox’s method of historical structures was used. This method, described in Cox’s 1981 article “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory”, analyzes three categories of forces that constitute a historical structure: ideas, material capabilities and institutions. This method is applied to three levels: social forces, forms of state and world orders. In this thesis all categories of forces were analyzed on all three levels in a case study of “Brexit”. The most important findings of this thesis are: • Two types of ideas were evolving in United Kingdom: intersubjective meanings, that unite people (UK’s powerful soft power) and two collective images, which are specific to the British people (imperialistic past and euroscepticism). • Material capabilities are also of two kinds: they are accumulated or dynamic. Accumulated material capabilities are very powerful in UK: the country is 5th largest economy in the world and has 6th strongest military in the world. However, dynamic material capabilities are facing serious problems, such as work and housing market issues. Furthermore, global market issues affect UK by forming a „forgotten“ class. • Institutions work both ways: on the one hand we have one of the strongest democracies in the world, so it is clear that British are afraid of losing their sovereignty; on the other hand we have a representational crisis in traditional British party system that gave an opportunity to radical parties, such as UKIP, to emerge. • Social forces were analyzed through the organization of production and power relations. It was found out that the “forgotten” class consists of mostly traditional working class. This class is most aggrieved by the globalization and its issues, so the members of this class are most likely to vote for populistic ideas, such as “Brexit” has presented. • As the “forgotten” class longs for “good old times”, when they had more influence in social and power relations, they also miss traditional state that incorporates tight economic regulation and protectionism. Therefore traditional Westphalian state is taking back its stand. • Finally, world order faces crisis of neoliberalism, where the “forgotten” class tends to get more nationalistic and populistic and where such decisions as “Brexit” takes place. Thesis provides us with the means to understand the process that was forming up for a while and lets us look deeper in the issue, combining both ideas and material conditions. |
