I will address the theme of the end of the market state by examining Brexit and the Eurocrisis through the lens of what Dani Rodrik calls the fundamental political trilemma of the world economy: namely, the impossibility of having globalisation, national self-determination and democracy – only any two of these three is possible. Brexit was won by offering the British population the option of combining national self-determination and democracy without globalisation. Increasingly, though, it seems much more likely it will offer globalisation and (formal) national self-determination – which was what many of its advocates (Fox, Johnson and Davis – the ministers now mainly responsible for Brexit) had wanted all along. By contrast, the EU has often been seen as a means for having globalisation, and democracy by shifting democratic control to the EU level and modifying national self-determination. The Eurocrisis suggests this promise has not been met, and also some of the difficulties of doing so. Instead the EU is clearly perceived by many (quite a few Brexit voters included) as promoting global rules and eroding national democracy without replacing it at the EU level. I shall suggest an alternative role for the EU, that of allowing for what Rodrik calls ‘smart globalisation’ – that is multilateral demoi-cratic control of globalisation, in which when globalisation threatens national self-determination on social rules and welfare it is globalisation not national diversity that gives way.
