Explaining Economic Brexit in Scotland and Wales - A comparative study between two devolved nations

Abstract

The Brexit-vote shook both the United Kingdom and the rest of the European Union as UK is the first country that has ever voted to leave the EU. It is thus important to understand on what grounds the people have cast their vote. Previous research has mainly been focusing on the UK as a whole, or on England specifically, and has thus left a gap in the literature not explaining the vote in the different devolved nations. This thesis therefore aims to understand why Scotland and Wales, which in many regards are similar, voted differently in the referendum on UK membership in the EU, as a majority in Wales voted to leave the EU while a larger majority in Scotland voted to remain. While previous studies have shown socio-economic factors to matter, this thesis aims to explain that economic evaluations in the EU, both national and personal, have a decisive power in citizens choice of voting leave/remain. This argument will be supported by using a logistic regression model, which will further reveal that the economic argument interacted differently with nationality factors in Scotland and Wales.