The international consequences of Brexit: an English School analysis

ABSTRACT

The English School is one of the main traditions of thought in International Relations and the only one home-grown in Britain. While initially unconcerned with questions of integration, and the regional level more generally, its concepts and insights have recently been applied to the European integration process. However, an English School analysis of the consequences of Brexit has yet to be conducted. This article rectifies this omission and offers a broad system-level analysis of major-state withdrawal from deep multilateral arrangements. Following a brief introduction to the main phases of English School development, the article analyses the consequences of Brexit in terms of three central areas: the pluralist-solidarist debate; primary institutions; and great power status. It finds that while the adjustment costs of Brexit will be considerable, the longer-term systemic consequences are unlikely to be far-reaching. The main consequence is the additional pressure Brexit puts on Britain’s precarious great power status.

KEYWORDS:

• Brexit
• English School
• international society
• primary institutions
• pluralism
• solidarism
• great powers

Acknowledgments

This is a revised version of papers presented at the EISA conference, Barcelona, September 2017, and the ISA conference, San Francisco, April 2018. We are grateful for the many helpful comments and suggestions received, and especially to Spyros Economides and Olivia Nantermoz who carefully read and commented on a later draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. There is no easy way to capture the entity that is the EU. Attempts include ‘multiperspectival society’ (Diez, Manners, and Whitman 2011) and ‘multilevel political system’ (Lacey 2016). Most agree that in terms of integration it is more than an international organization but less than a single polity, containing thin democratic but thicker demoi-cratic elements (Bellamy, Lacey and Nicolaïdes 2017, 490). Demoi-cracy is the normative commitment to govern together but not as one (Nicolaïdis 2013; Lord 2017).

2. Note Bull’s (1982) observation that ‘There is a known antagonism of a majority of ordinary British people towards membership of the European Community, carefully kept at bay by the elite who feel (rightly, as I think) that they know better’.