Abstract
This article explores the issues faced by the EU in developing its international roles post-Brexit, using a combination of discursive analysis and role theory to investigate the development and performance of roles in a number of linked arenas. Central to this analysis is the assumption that whatever form Brexit takes, the EU and the UK will remain closely entangled, and thus that the post-Brexit role assumed by the UK will shape the evolution of EU external action. But a key task for analysis is to place the impact of Brexit into the array of wider forces affecting EU external action, and this is a key aim of the article. The article begins by exploring the discourses of globalism characteristic of UK and EU foreign policies, as focused by the debates about ‘global Britain’ and EU global strategy since 2015. It then introduces a simple framework for considering the roles conceived and performed by the EU, and their potential impact in the post-Brexit world. The article then considers three areas of EU external action, and the ways in which they might be shaped by a post-Brexit world: trade and development, transatlantic relations and security and defence policy. The conclusion discusses the implications of the cases, especially in relation to the conversion of discursive role constructs into performable roles—a problem central to EU external action—and concludes that whilst the impact of Brexit will be significant, it is likely to be less fundamental than the impact of the challenges faced by the EU in the global arena more broadly.
Highlights
Throughout the tangled history of the British engagement with European integration, there has been an intersection between the international roles conceived, aspired to or performed by the UK and the European institutions
This article sets out to provide a framework for the analysis of the interplay between Brexit and the EU’s international roles, broadly defined, with the general aim of illuminating some of the processes that have shaped it, of providing insight into some of the dynamics that are likely to shape the future of EU external action and of placing the impact of Brexit into the context of challenges faced by the EU in the global arena more generally
Brexit is only one of a number of factors contributing to a generalised sense of fluidity and uncertainty in the global arena of the early 21st century
Summary
Throughout the tangled history of the British engagement with European integration, there has been an intersection between the international roles conceived, aspired to or performed by the UK and the European institutions. Both entities have been subject to debate about the nature of their international identities and about the ways in which British membership of the European project has affected both parties. This article sets out to provide a framework for the analysis of the interplay between Brexit and the EU’s international roles, broadly defined, with the general aim of illuminating some of the processes that have shaped it, of providing insight into some of the dynamics that are likely to shape the future of EU external action and of placing the impact of Brexit into the context of challenges faced by the EU in the global arena more generally
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