Cawley, Anthony (2022) Credit positive or negative? Credit rating agencies’ framing of Brexit’s implications for the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the EU, and the Northern Ireland peace process. Journal of Contemporary European Studies. ISSN 14782790, 14782804
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Abstract
Among Brexit’s implications was its potential to destabilise the Northern Ireland peace process, cast doubt on the future status of the Irish border, and weaken the constitutional integrity of both the UK and the EU. A less publicly visible aspect of Brexit, however, was the weight such implications carried in how international credit rating agencies evaluated the creditworthiness of the EU, the UK, and the other state most affected by the Leave vote, the Republic of Ireland (ROI). A frames analysis of the agencies’ discourse during the withdrawal period, from 2016 to 2020, suggested that their privileging of market perspectives had the effect of shaping but also of limiting their engagement with Brexit’s socio-cultural, identity and political implications for the border and the peace process. In particular, the agencies drew weak discursive links between Brexit as an instance of EU disintegration and its implications for the peace process and for the ROI’s shifting geopolitical relations as a continuing member state. This was further reflected in the agencies’ tendency to underplay socio-cultural, identity and political implications in their discourse on potential future processes of UK and EU disintegration.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information and Comments: | This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Contemporary European Studies on 6th June 2022, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14782804.2021.2023483 |
| Keywords: | Rating agencies; Brexit; peace process; Irish border; EU; disintegration |
| Faculty / Department: | Faculty of Creative Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities |
| Depositing User: | Anthony Cawley |
| Date Deposited: | 18 Jan 2022 10:32 |
| Last Modified: | 05 Dec 2024 16:25 |
| URI: | https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/3461 |
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