Brexit, as a Democratic Exercise, Prompts the Need for a Normative Theory of Political Disintegration (LSE Brexit) (original) (raw)
The rationale of Brexit and the theories of European integration
Oeconomia Copernicana, 2019
Research background: Recent developments have raised doubts on future sustainability of the EU as successful political and economic organization. Many phenomena — from euro and sovereign debt crisis to the emergence of right-wing, populist and anti-liberal movements — have brought into question the actual foundations of European integration, be it economic cooperation or a community of values. This problem became even more topical after the Brexit referendum. For this very reason a new strand of research on European disintegration has lately began to appear. It was supposed to fill in a serious gap in the body of literature, which had so far optimistically focused on integration processes. Purpose of the article: The aim of our work is to reflect on Brexit — which is an exemplification of disintegration tendencies — through the lenses of theories of European integration in order to find out how well the two match each other. We also try to identify the dynamics Brexit may provoke in theoretical research and in the future of European integration. Methods: We take three most influential theories of integration, i.e. neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism and post-functionalism, and attempt to analyze Brexit by means of their main assumptions and internal logic. Findings & Value added: We believe that only post-functionalism is able to satisfactorily explain Brexit by turning to mass politics and questions of identity instead of economic rationality. We also suggest that analysis of such issues will become more important in future research on European integration.
Brexit and the Risk of European Disintegration
a slim majority (51.9%) of the British voters who turned out to vote in the referendum on whether to stay in the European Union (EU) decided the leave the EU, breaking a forty-year course of enlargement from the original six members of the European Economic Community (EEC) to the present 28 members. For the first time, except for the limited case of Greenland which chose to leave the EEC in 1985 when it gained autonomy from Denmark, a member state has democratically chosen to divorce from the Union and reclaim "full sovereignty", as the Brexiters put it. This unprecedented move in the EU, affecting one of its bigger member states, raises a number of questions both about the British polity and about the future of the European project, which has been confronted with an equally unprecedented number of crises since the late 2000s, starting with the financial crisis in 2007-2008, followed by the eurozone sovereign debt crisis in 2010-2011. Wars in the Middle-East led to a refugee crisis in 2015 which was a challenge to countries such as Greece,
Can Brexit Be Turned Into a Democratic Shock? Five Points
This paper argues that to make sense of Brexit, we have to start by clarifying what was the actual content and relevance of the ‘Brexit deal’ agreed between the United Kingdom and the European Union in February 2016, and how that deal allowed the British Prime Minister to shape the terms of the debate in order to further short term and narrowly partisan interests, and, at the same time, provided the European Council with a new opportunity to further the locking in of the neoliberal turn of the European Union. It is also argued that causes of the leave victory are many and complex. Pending a full analysis of the social and economic geography of the vote, it is clear that the thesis favoured by a good deal of media pundits (the leave vote reflecting the triumph of low nationalistic bordering on xenophobic feelings) is too simplistic and reductionistic by half. Such an explantion fully misunderstands how the migration issue is shaping political debate in Britain and the rest of Europe, while obscures the influence that the ongoing neoliberal mutation of the EU is likely to have had in the outcome. It is finally concluded that for Brexit to be turned into a democratic shock, with the potential of leading to a fairer and more democratic EU and UK, it is necessary to avoid Brexit as usual (i.e. the British and European leadership finding a formula to leave things unchanged despite the outcome of the referendum) and take Brexit as the incentive to redefine what European integration is and should be.
Brexit: a consequence of the European social and democratic deficit
2017
The outcome of the recent referendum in the UK was straightforwardly affected by the policies followed by the EU. The main factors in which eurosceptics-populists had used in order to collect votes were both the immigration crisis (and the consequent EU policies) and the European political reactions to the economic crisis which increases EU powers, under the German supervision, and decreases national sovereignty. Although these two factors may seem different, they are directly linked as long as they comprise an outcome of the social and democratic deficit of the EU which increased concerns about the future effects in the UK and offered the opportunity for the cultivation of populist ideas. This article aims at indicating the main parameters of the European social and democratic deficit which affected Britons’ decision in the referendum while drawing the attention on the restructure of the European policy directions.
Brexit and the Differentiated European (Dis)Integration
Contexto Internacional, 2020
On 25 March 2017, the European Union celebrated the 60 th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome, which established 'an ever-closer union' as a fundamental principle for European regional integration. Only four days later, the United Kingdom delivered an official letter triggering its withdrawal process from the Community. How could we comprehend Brexit integrative and dis-integrative dynamics to the EU? The UK's decision to leave the EU alongside recent crises in the Community and the spread of Eurosceptic movements fostered studies about disintegration dynamics. This article presents the current debate about differentiated (dis)integration based on up-to-date related literature. Next, it proposes a framework to assess the recent shifts in the UK-EU relationship and its contradictory effects on the EU project. The main argument of the paper is that the UK's relationship with the European Union moved from an internal differentiated integration to a proposal of internal differentiated disintegration and, thereafter, to a process of external differentiated disintegration. Moreover, although Brexit means disintegration by one Member State, its effects on the EU project are mixed, initially promoting an integrative boom among the EU27 members, while at the same time neglecting disintegrating forces that could undermine the traditional European integration model.
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations
This article applies insights from comparative federalism to analyse different models for managing future EU–UK relations. The argument is that the stability of the EU–UK relationship before as well as after Brexit is best understood by examining the presence of federal safeguards. Drawing on Kelemen, four types of safeguards are identified as the means for balancing centrifugal and centripetal forces. During the United Kingdom’s European Union membership, the strong glue provided by structural and judicial safeguards was undone by the weakness of partisan and socio-cultural ones. However, each post-Brexit scenario is characterised by weaker structural and judicial safeguards. The most stable outcome is an indeterminate Brexit that limits the incentive to politicise sovereignty and identity concerns by ending free movement of people and reducing the saliency of European Union rules. Such stability is nevertheless relative in that, from a comparative perspective, federal-type safegua...
Political Studies, 2020
While the emerging debate about the disintegration of the European Union focuses on descriptive and explanatory questions, this article approaches the phenomenon from the perspective of democratic theory. Building on a concept of disintegration as a form of constitutional politics that includes various possibilities of dismantling supranational polities, I argue that disintegration gives rise to a democratic puzzle. While it must be possible, for democratic reasons, to partially or entirely reverse European integration, any such step threatens the European Union's democratic achievements. Disintegration seems to be caught between legitimate change and regression. To address this democratic puzzle, I examine to what extent European integration has produced democracy related "ratchet effects" that limit the scope for legitimate reversal. This analysis leads to three principles of legitimate disintegration that can be applied to any supranational polity and have important implications for the post-Brexit relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
Brexit as a Cause and a Consequence of Political Change in the UK
It is difficult to overstate the impact that the 2016 decision by the United Kingdom (UK) to leave the European Union (EU) has and will have on the country’s politics and society. The referendum held that year became an opportunity for the crystallisation of various discontents and disaffections—not all of them directly linked to the EU itself—and opened up a substantial rupture within the underlying assumptions of British statecraft. In particular, the self-image of British politics as being driven by pragmatism has hindered—and will continue to hinder—the ability of politicians and society to work a way through these challenges.
Brexit: Historical and Socio-Political Developments
Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2019
BREXIT is a long and difficult process, authors with this contribution try to analyze it. The Brexit referendum is a long way off, but does the debate focus on the practical decisions to be made, how and when will the United Kingdom really come out of the EU? Will England and especially its capital be able to retain the label of a global business goal? How will British politicians limit the profound and long-term consequences of an inevitable recession? The question is not just economic.
Swiss Political Science Review, 2021
Since Brexit, there has been increasing interest in democratic theory in the question of the conditions under which reversals of European integration can be considered legitimate. So far, however, the literature is very much focused on the specific case of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. In this article, I seek to prepare the ground for a systematic theory that clarifies, at a general level, the scope and limits as well as the actors and procedures of democratically legitimate disintegration. To that end, I map the potential democratic costs and benefits of EU disintegration. In doing so, I distinguish five types of disintegration: retreat, revocation, exit, expulsion, and dissolution. All of these measures can produce conflicts between the democratic claims of citizens and peoples. Many of these cannot be resolved but must be dealt with politically. Overall, disintegration bears more potential costs for citizens than for peoples.
Brexit: The trends since 2009 foreseeable. The turn to diversity, identity and autonomy.
Observations since the financial crashes (2007) and the events in Europe suggested clearly the shift to the present turmoil of the EU-project (diversity, identity and autonomy). Since the foundation of European unity vision after second war six significant periods and episodes are evident. The Brexit illustrates the most dramatic scenario - following the earlier periods and spirit of the European idea. The latter generated more contradictions than integrating impacts on a Europe which seems more diversified and reluctant against a "globalized" and homogeneous part of world society.
Examining Brexit: Level of Analysis and Explanations
Comillas Journal of International Relations, 2021
This article analyses the scholarly debate on the Brexit phenomenon and its possible causes. By contextualizing Brexit in the International Relations Theory debate about the levels of analysis, the article focuses on some of the most recent contributions of the Brexit literature. Firstly, it analyses the contributions that explain Brexit as a problem of international and European politics, related to the adaptation of the United Kingdom to the process of European integration. Secondly, it analyses the contributions that explain Brexit as the result of causes located at the domestic level, such as the decisions and perceptions of national leaders, the decision-making process, and the impact of populist and Eurosceptic political discourse. The article identifies the advantages of an approach capable of considering both international and domestic variables. This allows a deeper understanding of the phenomenon and a potentially fruitful collaboration between political scientists from di...
The Causes and Modes of European Disintegration
Politics and Governance, 2023
This thematic issue on the causes and modes of European disintegration seeks to answer two main questions: What are the causes of (potential) European disintegration across countries? And what are the actual and potential modes of European disintegration? The articles on the causes of EU disintegration go beyond the immediate causes of Brexit, to date the prime example of European disintegration. They address, for instance, the impact of ignoring the results of referendums on EU treaty changes. The articles demonstrate that the extensively studied proximate causes of Brexit may be different from more long-term drivers of potential disintegration in the UK and other member states. The second question raises a point that has been largely overlooked. Going beyond the growing literature on Brexit, differentiated integration, and non-compliance, the articles on the modes of European disintegration address issues such as (temporary) opt-outs from the Schengen agreement. The thematic issue is innovative not only due to the questions it raises but also by deploying a multidisciplinary social science perspective. Contributions are quantitative, qualitative, and theoretical from a wide array of social science disciplines. Taken together, the contributions to this thematic issue advance scholarly understanding of European (dis)integration.
Governance and Politics in the Post-Crisis European Union, 2020
'Take back control': in the lead up to a June 2016 plebiscite on whether to remain in or leave the EU, this was the rallying cry that framed the predominant narrative on the pro-Brexit side. Whatever might explain the determinants of individual voter choice in the eventual decision of the British electorate to leave by a majority of 52 per cent to 48 per cent, public debate during the campaign crystallised around the proposition that the UK should reclaim its sovereignty. The content of this cry for sovereignty was not empty. It was understood to mean the return of powers to the UK government for unilateral decision-making -powers that had been previously ceded to the EU, even though UK representatives are integral to EU decision-making processes. While the supposed material advantages of greater