The future EU–UK partnership: a historical institutionalist perspective

Abstract

This article takes a comparative perspective to identify the likely parameters of the future partnership between the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU). It asks why and how the EU exports institutional norms to its neighbouring countries, and what this implies for the EU–UK relationship. Drawing on historical institutionalism, the authors argue that as a specific legal-institutional order, the EU exports not only regulatory norms and values but also institutional norms into its partnerships with neighbouring countries, mainly through the mechanism of reproduction. For the UK this means that the nature of its future partnership with the EU is likely to be influenced more by established practices in and precedents from the EU’s relations with European neighbours than by any sense of privilege emanating from the UK’s position as a former member state.