The Impact Of Globalization Influence The Success Of Brexit

On June 23, 2016, voters in the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union (EU) in what is known as Brexit (British Exit). The “Leave” campaign had their reasons why they wanted the United Kingdom to no longer be a part of the EU. However, did globalization influence the success of Brexit? In order to understand whether or not globalization had an influence on the outcome of Brexit, it is necessary to define what globalization is. In Is Globalization Civilizing, Destructive or Feeble? A Critique of Five Key Debates in the Social Science Literature, sociologist Mauro F. Guillén defines “globalization” in several ways. Guillén writes that “globalization is a process fueled by, and resulting in, increasing cross-border flows of goods,

These reasons directly relate to the “cross-border flows”1 of money and people and “greater interdependence”1 of “economic…and social units”1 that Guillén speaks about. The United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union was ultimately a result of globalization and their reason for leaving it is the result of globalization as well. Therefore, globalization influenced the success of Brexit.

In his article In Defense of Globalization: It Has a Human Face, Jagdish N. Bhagwati states that people who are against globalization “principal focus is not on the effect of globalization on economic prosperity” rather they “are concerned instead with…the “social effects of “economic” globalization. They fear, indeed claim, that economic globalization is harmful to social agendas…”.3 However, the European Union has a focus on both economics as well as human rights and many other topics. It was created following the Second World War, “to foster economic cooperation: the idea being that countries that trade with one another become economically interdependent and so more likely to avoid conflict”. Eventually, “what began as a purely

By being a member of the European Union, the UK was participating in globalization, but a slight majority of people did not find this participation to be beneficial. Those who were dissatisfied with being in the European Union felt that the UK did not gain anything from being in the EU, it was not an economically interdependent relationship, rather they felt that other countries were dependent on them. Furthermore, Leave campaigners did not like the influx of immigrants into the UK that is a result of the EU’s single market that allows people to freely move between countries. The United Kingdom joined the European Union in 1973, expanding into the world and in 2016 they left, showing that this form of globalization was not for