Crisis, what crisis? Conceptualizing crisis, UK pluri-constitutionalism and Brexit politics

ABSTRACT

Has Brexit triggered a constitutional crisis? Crisis is one of a family of concepts, including tipping points, catastrophic equilibrium and failure, identifying it as a decisive moment for overcoming contradictions and ambiguities. Across multiple UK levels – the whole state, constituent nations and different legal jurisdictions – even in ‘normal times’ the constitution has been marked by both a dominant ‘Anglo-British imaginary’ and territorial ambiguities. Drawn into political debate, these ambiguities became sources of basic constitutional instability during Theresa May’s premiership. Although May avoided full-blown constitutional crisis, one may yet come. Equally, she did oversee basic constitutional change, not necessarily in the form of crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Brexit
• crisis
• UK constitution
• pluri-constitutionalism
• Anglo-British imaginary
• devolution

JEL:

• H70
• H77
• K1

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this paper was supported by several grants from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Professor Wincott’s contribution was supported by the Leadership Fellowship on Governance and Brexit Research [grant number ES/R007500/1]. His contribution and that of Dr Davies were supported by the Between Two Unions Large Grant [grant number ES/P009441/1]. Dr Wager’s contribution was supported by the UK in a Changing Europe initiative [grant number ES/S014608/1].