Abstract
The political and economic aspects of the 2016 Brexit decision by the UK have been widely discussed. Little discussed are the ethical questions it poses. A key question is: How should we, as participants in the global practices of international relations, evaluate Brexit from an ethical point of view? Does it uphold or undermine the core values implicit in the two major, contemporary global practices in which we all participate, the society of sovereign states and the global rights practice? This chapter explores a line of thinking developed by Chris Brown during an earlier phase of restructuring in Europe in an article which he entitled “The ethics of political restructuring in Europe: The perspective of constitutive theory.” Applying that approach shows Brexit to be ethically flawed.
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Notes
- 1.
Holist approaches are to be found in the Hegelian tradition, hermeneutic approaches to the social sciences, and in interpretative approaches based on the insights of the language philosophy of the later Wittgenstein. More recently holist insights are to be found in the practice turn within IR.
- 2.
Of course, in all practices, there are cheats, that is, those who flout the rules and seek to damage the ethical values embedded in the practice , but even those who cheat do so against a background in which most participants follow the rules and uphold the values created by them.
- 3.
There are a few anomalous exceptions who are stateless persons. There are very few such people and their status is discussed as a special case by international lawyers. The general point stands, most people, wherever they happen to be, are citizens in one or more states within the global society of sovereign states.
- 4.
Just as the participants in a game have to understand the rules of the game before they can play it. This is not optional but a requirement of participation.
- 5.
See Chris Brown’s discussion of this in his Sovereignty Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today (2002, Introduction).
- 6.
The measures moving the practice in this direction are the adoption of bills of human rights by many states, the inclusion of human rights specifications in the constitutions of new states, the adoption by international organisations of human rights provisions, the acceptance of the R2P as an emerging norm in international affairs and the enriching of international law with a number of human rights measures. Another major impetus to the establishment of this practice has been the creation of the global free market.
- 7.
There are of course many different routes that have been chosen by different states for their realisation.
- 8.
These inequalities are even built into some of the key institutions of the EU. For example, in the Commission, the wealthier states are accorded more votes than the less wealthy member states.
- 9.
Note that the claim being made here is not that the EU was deliberately created in order to achieve these ethical outcomes, but that this outcome has been an unintended but ethically progressive result that flowed from what was initially merely a contractual arrangement for specified instrumental purposes.
References
Brown, C. (Ed.). (1994). Political Restructuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives. London/New York: Routledge.
Brown, C. (2002). Sovereignty Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Frost, M. (2019). The Ethics of Brexit. In: Albert, M., Lang Jr., A. (eds) The Politics of International Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93278-1_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93278-1_10
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