Brexit, as a Democratic Exercise, Prompts the Need for a Normative Theory of Political Disintegration (LSE Brexit) (original) (raw)
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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
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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.
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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.