Beyond Brexit: The UK's Past and Future Relationship with the EU

The prospect of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union has not only ignited and inflamed a series of wicked problems in the British polity; it also portends a profound reordering of the external alignments of the UK, not least with the EU and its member states. The Brexit process is concerned with both the terms on which the UK leaves the EU and the ways future UK-EU relations will be organised. Although these two aspects are treated in the Treaties as sequential parts of a supposedly orderly process, the experience of Brexit since the 2016 referendum illustrates how deep divisions over the latter shape, constrain and perhaps thwart the former. The Brexit process brings into sharp relief the deep interdependence that characterizes membership of the EU and the acute challenges, both domestic and external, associated with disentanglement and the choice of exit over voice. The Brexit experience so far also confirms the centrality of both domestic politics and path dependencies to all aspects of the (re)alignment of UK-EU relations. From the vantage point of the EU, Brexit raises and reanimates a series of questions about the prospects for differentiation in both internal and external governance. It may even alter the nature and dynamic of EU differentiation in significant ways. It also forces the EU to be more explicit about its core principles and what it means to be a member state. These Panels will be concerned with the reordering of UK-EU relations in light of Brexit. UK-EU relations are defined broadly to include the wide array of relevant interactions, be they legally or informally constituted, diplomatic, economic or sociological in nature, political or administrative in form. We welcome Panels and individual Papers that ask pertinent questions about how post-Brexit relations are imagined, practiced, debated and contested. We are interested in contributions, from all relevant subfields, that examine these issues historically as well as from particular national vantage points, both within and beyond the EU.