The Political and Institutional Effects of Brexit

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While the full political and economic implications of the June 2016 referendum to take the UK out of the EU remain unknown (and indeed unknowable), it is possible to already gauge some of the potential institutional implications that will result regardless of the details of the divorce settlement ultimately negotiated.  Among the various institutional effects will be a shift in the partisan dynamics within the European Parliament and a rebalancing of the various coalition patterns within the Council and the European Council, while the Commission and the European Court of Justice will be arguably less effected. The long term political implications of these anticipated changes are not immediately clear. To some degree the long term implications of Brexit for the functioning of the EU will depend on the outcomes of a number of critical upcoming national elections, which themselves may be impacted by the perceived groundswell of support across Europe for Euro-skeptic and anti-establishment parties following the Brexit vote. The largest impact of Brexit may not be the tangible institutional and political dynamics caused by the British departure from the EU, but rather from the critical support the Brexit vote has provided for Euro-skeptic actors across the EU.

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Amie Kreppel is a Jean Monnet Chair (ad personam) and the founding Director of the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence (JMCE) at the University of Florida (2007- present). She also served as the founding Director of the University of Florida’s Title VI funded Center for European Studies (CES) from 2003-2011. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. Dr. Kreppel has written extensively on the political institutions of Europe in general and the European Union and Italy more specifically. Her publications include a book on the Development of the European Parliament and Supranational Party System (2002), and two edited volumes on decision making in the EU (2015) and politics in Italy (2014), as well as articles in a wide variety of journals including Comparative Political Studies, the British Journal of Political Research, European Union Politics, the European Journal of Political Research, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of European Public Policy and the Journal of Common Market Studies.