Strategický kontext referend o setrvání Velké Británie v ES/EU: Analýza motivace politických elit
The Strategic Context of the British Referenda on Continued Membership in the EC/EU: An Analysis of the Political Elite’s Motivation

Summary/Abstract: The main research objective of this article is to explain the motives behind the British political elite’s decision to hold nationwide referenda on continued membership in the EC/EU in1975 and 2016. In order to do so, the author applies her own analytical framework using a theoretical model of dichotomous logics of appropriateness and consequentiality. The article demonstrates the primacy of domestic parameters during the convening of these referenda. In both cases, decisions came at a moment when the party system was no longer able to accommodate EC/EU-related tensions within the governing parties. In this context, the research points to a strategisation and an instrumentalisation of the European agenda on behalf of domestic intra-party politics. The author concludes that while the official rhetoric accompanying the political elite’s decisions to hold both referenda on continued membership in the EC/EU operated with the normative logic of appropriateness,the real basis of these decisions lay in the utilitarian logic of consequentiality.

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