The Domestic Politics of British Policy on the Euro

Abstract

A wide variety of explanations have been applied by academics and journalists to explain the details of British government policy on the Euro. This article examines four leading explanations rooted in an analysis of domestic politics, arguing that British government reluctance to support Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) membership can be explained more in terms of ideologically infused intra-party politics and the realities of neo-pluralist (interest group) politics, while explanations rooted in an analysis of inter-party politics (electoral considerations) and public opinion are less helpful. The article also compares the relevance of the four domestic political explanations of British policy with regard to the positioning of respectively the two largest political parties in the country: (New) Labour and Conservative (Tory).

Delineating the Scope Conditions of the Poliheuristic Theory of Foreign Policy Decision Making: The Noncompensatory Principle and the Domestic Salience of Foreign Policy

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Opting Out of an Ever Closer Union: The IntegrationDoxaand the Management of Sovereignty

“…However, the Labour government's attempt to present the euro as merely a question of economic calculations has not proved effective. Parliament and the eurosceptic media have established a discursive consensus that the euro is one of the major political questions related to the fate of the UK as a sovereign state (Risse 2003;Howarth 2007). Consequently, to further reassure an anxious British public and avoid a difficult debate, the former Labour government promised that a decision to recommend joining the euro zone should not only be put to a vote in parliament, but also a referendum.…”

Ten years EMU: an assessment of ten critical claims

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