Brexit and the European Union: Hanging in the Balance?

When on 23 June 2016 a majority voted in favour of the United Kingdom (UK) leaving the European Union (EU), it generated a host of unknowns. Prior to the referendum, scholars had already started to anticipate the implications of a potential Brexit from different perspectives, including considering the legal ( Cardwell 2016 ; Łazowski 2016 ; Butler et al. 2016 ), political ( Kroll and Leuffen 2016 ; Oliver 2016 ; Freedman 2016 ) and economic ( Jensen and Snaith 2016 ) implications. After the referendum, studies have begun to address the reasons for the Brexit vote ( Hobolt 2016 ; Clarke et al. 2017 ) and its potential consequences. This chapter will add another piece to the Brexit jigsaw by focusing on the impact upon the EU itself. To do so, it first develops an analytical framework to study the shifts in power that may occur because of Brexit, using an approach that tackles in turn the micro, meso and macro levels of analysis (focussing alternately on changes within the institutions, between the institutions and outside of the institutions). It afterwards outlines a brief introduction to Britain’s historically fractious relationship with the EU as a means of demonstrating where key policy divisions lie and suggesting where Britain’s exit will leave the greatest strategic vacuums. The subsequent analysis centres on the actors that will likely win and lose from the UK’s exit from the Union.