Brexit, the City and the Contingent Power of Finance

James, Scott; Quaglia, Lucia

doi:10.1080/13563467.2018.1484717

Cited by 44 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…It potentially favours interests that would benefit from deregulation (e.g. some in the City, see James and Quaglia 2018) at the expense of others, including farmers exposed to increased competition and manufacturing industries and their workers excluded from EU supply chains. The potential for politicisation here is also clear given that the pro-Brexit referendum result involved a 'coalition' 'between two largely antithetical positions often seen as ideological rivals': the economic nationalist rhetoric ('taking back control') swaying the 'left behind' and hyperglobalist Euroscepticism (Adler-Nissen et al 2017, p. 582).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bound by Gravity or Living in a ‘Post Geography Trading World’? Expert Knowledge and Affective Spatial Imaginaries in the Construction of the UK’s Post-Brexit Trade Policy

Siles‐Brügge

2018

New Political Economy

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A key battle has been fought within the UK cabinet on the direction of post-Brexit trade policy. The opposing sides have favoured either continued alignment or a 'hard' break with the European Union's (EU's) regulatory and customs regime, in the latter case to allow the UK to pursue an independent and ambitious trade policy agenda. Contrary to much commentary on 'post-truth' politics, both sides have relied on rival forms of expertise to support their claims. I argue for the need to not only re-emphasise the malleability and political nature of expert knowledge, but also appreciate its emotional bases. The Treasury has led the charge in favour of a softer Brexit by drawing on econometric ('gravity') models that emphasise the economic costs of looser association with the EU. In contrast to this attempt at technocratic legitimation, the specific legal expertise drawn upon by cabinet advocates of 'hard' Brexit has appealed to an emotive political economy of bringing the UK, and its (in this imaginary) overly regulated economy, closer to its 'kith and kin' in the Anglosphere, deepening the UK 'national business model'. I conclude by calling for more explicitly emotive and values-based argumentation in the public debate on the UK's future trade policy to improve the quality of democratic deliberation.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bound by Gravity or Living in a ‘Post Geography Trading World’? Expert Knowledge and Affective Spatial Imaginaries in the Construction of the UK’s Post-Brexit Trade Policy

Siles‐Brügge

2018

New Political Economy

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“…For the first twelve months of her premiership, Theresa May was almost impermeable to arguments aired in cabinet, her listening-and-learning ears sealed-off by the two powerful advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill (see Perrior 2017). Far from consulting widely with MPs from across her party, let alone seeking to forge a cross-party consensus, Theresa May instead relied on a small and narrow clique of eurosceptic MPs to formulate her early Brexit 'strategy' (James and Quaglia 2018). Yet in the absence of meaningful cabinet dialogue or agreement, this meant relying on the rhetorical tautology of 'Brexit means Brexit' to conceal the absence of rank-ordered preferences, and to silence dissenting voices.…”

Section: Learning Reflexivelymentioning

confidence: 99%

Can’t get no learning: the Brexit fiasco through the lens of policy learning

Dunlop

James

Radaelli

2019

Journal of European Public Policy

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It seems paradoxical to suggest that theories of learning might be used to explain policy failure. Yet the Brexit fiasco connects with recent approaches linking varieties of policy learning to policy pathologies. This article sets out to explain the UK government's (mis)management of the Brexit process from June 2016 to May 2019 from a policy learning perspective. Drawing on interviews with UK policy-makers and stakeholders, we ask how did the UK government seek to learn during the Brexit negotiations? We consider four modes of learning: reflexivity, epistemic, hierarchical, and bargaining. By empirically tracing the policy process and scope conditions for each of these, we argue that learning through the first three modes proved highly dysfunctional. This forced the government to rely on bargaining between competing factions, producing a highly political form of learning which stymied the development of a coherent Brexit strategy. We argue that the analysis of Brexit as a policy processrather than a political eventreveals how policy dynamics play an important role in shaping the political context within which they are located. The article concludes that public policy analysis can, therefore, add significant value to our understanding of Brexit by endogenising accounts of macro political developments.

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“…For Peer Review (James and Quaglia 2019), it is likely to serve as a means of deepening the neoliberal project in the guise of populism and nationalism. Indeed, British ultra-liberals and extreme Thatcherites have exploited working class discontent with the austerity measures these same actors had imposed to rescue the British financial sector in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.…”

Section: German Hegemonic Transformation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

German Ordoliberalism and the Future of the EU

Cafruny

Talani

2019

Critical Sociology

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Far from enabling France to enhance its power over European monetary policy, the Euro has served to consolidate the Federal Republic of Germany’s primacy in Europe. We argue that German policies that have underwritten this primacy are determined not primarily by the ordoliberal ideas of German state managers, but rather because these ideas correspond to the requirements of Germany’s neo-mercantilist export model and the interests of its most powerful socio-economic actors. Germany’s material/corporate interests—and its particular domestic and regional predicament—create enormous obstacles to the abandonment of ordoliberalism and the adoption of the more expansive fiscal policies that most observers believe are necessary to sustain the Eurozone.

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Brexit, the City and the Contingent Power of Finance

Cited by 44 publications

References 29 publications

Bound by Gravity or Living in a ‘Post Geography Trading World’? Expert Knowledge and Affective Spatial Imaginaries in the Construction of the UK’s Post-Brexit Trade Policy

Bound by Gravity or Living in a ‘Post Geography Trading World’? Expert Knowledge and Affective Spatial Imaginaries in the Construction of the UK’s Post-Brexit Trade Policy

Can’t get no learning: the Brexit fiasco through the lens of policy learning

German Ordoliberalism and the Future of the EU

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