The Political Psychology of Brexit: Legitimacy, Trust and the ‘People’s Will’ in Political Decision-Making

The 2016 UK referendum provided direct citizen participation in deciding whether the country remained a part of the EU and this in turn affected how political decisions are legitimated by citizens and politicians in the UK. As the UK government shifts governance processes to include more direct democratic engagement, it is crucial to understand how citizen perceptions affect what decisions are seen as politically legitimate. The paper addresses several research questions. Did citizens’ perceptions of political legitimacy affect the UK referendum vote? What psychological justifications shaped people’s perceptions on the referendum as a tool of political decision-making? These questions have important effects on how citizen participation in politics affects decision-making. This paper focuses on perceptions of legitimacy in terms of input (participation), output (performance) and/or throughput (process). We predict that ‘remain’ and ‘leave’ voters legitimated their referendum vote in different ways, focussing either on the legitimacy of output (‘what’s in for me?’) or the legitimacy of input (‘can I take back control by participating?’), respectively. This paper defines and tests perceptions of legitimacy and their psychological motivations with regard to the Brexit referendum. Drawing on psychological experiments and survey data, this paper defines and tests perceptions of legitimacy and their psychological motivations with regard to the Brexit referendum. Different actors’ perceptions of legitimacy can lead to a mismatch between what elites feel governance should be and how it plays out in practice (Curry, 2017). Psychologically, political input (i.e. how one can contribute to governance) is grounded on feelings of personal control and political efficacy (Karp & Banducci, 2008) and social values such as self-direction (Schwartz, 2012). Political throughput (i.e. how one understands governance processes) depends on both political knowledge and how that is filtered through one’s webs of beliefs, values, and psychological needs and interests (Jost et al, 2016). Finally, political output (i.e. what one gains from governance) links to value priorities (Jiga-Boy et al, 2016), but it also captures the balance between rationality and “reasonableness” (Scanlon, 2014). This project is practically, methodologically and theoretically innovative and relevant. Recent political decisions and new ways of governing (e.g., increased use of referenda) have called into question traditional ideas of political legitimacy. Practically, it adds to our understanding of direct citizen participation, connecting it to concepts like legitimacy, trust and control. Methodologically, it develops a framework for assessing legitimacy with experimental designs. Co-authors not registered with MyECPR - Dr Gabriela Jiga Boy, Swansea University (G.Jiga@swansea.ac.uk); Dr Glenn Gottfried, Ipsos Mori (Glenn.Gottfried@ipsos.com)