Brexistential Angst and the Paradoxes of Populism

On the Contingency, Predictability and Intelligibility of Seismic Shifts

Bibliographic Data

ID6345210
AuthorsCameron Hay (0000-0001-6327-6547, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume68
Issue1
Pages187-206
Publication date2020-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3217 • E-ISSN: 1467-9248
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0032321719836356
OpenAlexW2924658864
LanguageEN
Citations received26
References cited37

The time-travelling political scientist stepping out of her time machine today, having started her journey even 5 years earlier, would be amazed and, no doubt, shocked by the world in which she found herself. What sense, if any, might she make of British politics after the vote for Brexit – and, indeed, of the politics which gave rise to it? And what does the answer to that question tell us about how the vote for Brexit happened, how it was allowed to happen, its wider implications (both political and economic) and the seismic changes in and through which British politics is currently being remade? In an inevitably prospective and necessarily provisional way, I seek to reflect on the paradoxes of populism and neoliberal globalism that Brexit reveals as a way of drawing out a few of its implications for the conduct of British political analysis in a world in which Brexit could happen yet was essentially unforeseen

Brexit · Contingency · Economics · Epistemology · European union · Globalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Sociology · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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