Brexit vote part of an anti-establishment 'wake-up call'

The virulentreactionto the United Kingdom'sBrexitvotemay help to explainwhat motivated the Leave campaign in the first place.

Those apparently in the know, the same people who predicted a victory for the Remain side, have beencasting offthe referendum resultsas the actions of areckless andxenophobic voting bloc, who have unwittingly unleashedan economic and political cataclysmupon the planet.

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While atleast a small part of theLeavevotewas likely an effort to stick it to theso-calledelitesand punditry, it surely can be linked to ananti-establishment trend that has grownthroughout Europe and the United States.

'Shocked but not surprised'

"I am shocked but not surprised," ElliotTepper, political science professor and senior fellow at Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs,saidabout the results. "We have seen across Europe and in theUnited States, the rise of anti-establishment feeling. And certainly there are reasons for the disaffection."

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Those reasons aren't onlyattributableto a publicfed up with mass migration, Tepper said. While anti-immigrationis certainly a key factor for some, he pointedto other issues, such as anti-globalizationand anti-mass-corporatizationsentiment. Also significant is the impact of the 2008 recession.

Tepper suggests allthis has come together tocreate a mood of hopelessness anddisaffection that expresses itself in a varietyof ways, including the Brexit vote.

"The anti-establishment sentiment, or the Leave sentiment in the U.K., isa mixture of forces that indeed does have a strong nativist xenophobic component. But there is alsoa senseby many that the worldis passing them byand somebodyhas to be at fault. And in this case, it was Brussels [where the EU is headquartered]."

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Theidea that the "little guy" has no voice is a phenomenon all across Europe and in the U.S, Tepper said. Yet there are parties and leaders andmovements that have emerged to give them that voice, he added, even though it may contain elements they don't support.

Frustration with the establishment

SusiDennison, director of European Power program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the Leave votewas verymuch an expression offrustration with theestablishment, as well as a commenton how the current and previousgovernments haven't been delivering what manywant to see.

Voters haveconcernsabout public services and thepressures agrowing population isputting on those services as well as concerns about the pressure the U.K. austeritypackage is putting on everything.

"Theybelievethestoriesthat the Leave campaign told ofthe EUbeingresponsiblefor that," Dennison said.

It wasvery telling, she said, that a slew of thepopulistparties includingFrance'sNational Front, Germany's AFD,the Freedom Party of the Netherlands andLegaNordin Italy were the first towelcome the Brexit results.

In the 24 hours after the vote, Dennison said there were at least 34 different calls forreferendums by anti-establishment parties across Europe onvarioustopics, not all related to EU membership.

Thisisn't a left orrightphenomenon, she said.

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The parties her organizationlooked at came from across thepoliticalspectrum and included new and old parties. They all had one thing in common: ananti-establishmentfrustration and asense the EUis not working in its current form.

'Let the people down'

"A sense that theestablishmenthas let the peopledown is common to them all," Dennison said. "The ideathat they canre-establishthat democraticlinkbetween thepeopleandgovernment is quite common to them all."

It is for those reasonsthatsupport has been showered uponpoliticalfigures like presumptive Republicannominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, whose voters may share much of the same impulses that animated Leave supporters.

"The idea that the fix is in and it's against us has some basisin realityfor a broaddemographic," said Tepper. 'We saw that in the Brexitvote and we see it in the rise of both BernieSanders and Donald Trump."

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The degree of alienation a lot of citizens feel from their institutions and elected politicians, the anxietyassociated withglobalization, and technological change bringing about the potential for job losses all these factorswere in play in the Brexit vote, said Richard N. Haass, president U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations.

"One piece of potential, positive effect would be if policy-makers and officials be it in the EU or the U.S. government or elsewhere take this as something of a wake-up call and understand the price they pay if they continue to alienate voters and citizens. That sooner or later, as Mr. Churchill put it, they'll get the order of the boot."