The battle of national identity in foreign policy

Sammanfattning: This paper endeavours to study whether Brexit could be Britain’s way to find its national role in the international arena by analysing three levels of theory analysis from foreign policy analysis operating discourse analysis in its different forms. Initially, individual decision-makers are scrutinised by operating psychological discourse analysis on three Prime Minister’s speeches to learn the primary actor’s construction of the world. Further, domestic politics with Putnam’s two-level game lenses is studied operating critical discourse analysis to analyse the language use of leave and remain side, the major parties, Labour and Conservative, as well as the media during the EU referendum campaign. Moreover, national identity operating discourse theory examines the nation’s construction of a national role from the postcolonialism concept to comprehend whether Brexit could help Britain accomplish its goal of becoming a ‘Global Britain’. The timeframe of this paper is from Cameron’s declaration of an EU referendum till the end of the transition period studying how the past affects the future and plays a role in Britain’s national role construction that has led to Brexit.