Brexit turbulences: democratic legitimity, governance and public action

Five years after the 2016 Referendum, the UK has formally exited the European Union, but Brexit is not over yet. This observation is the common thread to all contributions of this thematic dossier. The wide range of perspectives mobilized, from parliamentary studies to public policy analysis, is useful for revisiting the issues of democratic legitimacy linked to governance and public action. This introduction aims to present the different contributions and their added value in relation to a now prolific academic literature on Brexit. The common conceptual framework devised here refocuses the academic debate on dimensions still too often neglected. First, Brexit needs to be approached as a political and institutional process marked by types of turbulences - organizational, environmental and scale. Second, Brexit has consequences in terms of the legitimacy of British public action, which can be questioned through the categories of analysis devised by Vivien Schmidt. The articles show how the historic decision to leave the EU has destabilized actors and institutions, forcing them to readjust their rhetoric, priorities and modes of action - with varying degrees of success. Compared to the pre-Brexit period a relative stability seems to mark the temporary arrangements found.