Brexit and beyond: a Pandora’s Box?

Abstract

A fundamental challenge for addressing ‘Brexit and Beyond’ is its multi-faceted and multi-dimensional nature. This is also reflected in the multitude of analytical accounts of its causes and potential outcomes. These accounts, however, have tended to focus on voting behaviours and a number of economic scenarios in general. This special issue makes a different contribution in focusing on four lines of enquiry that can be generalised into a critical narrative of one of the most complex issues facing social sciences for over sixty years. These lines comprise: ‘drivers of the economy - industry, trade and immigration’; ‘Brexit’s wider European context’; ‘From politics to territorial governance’; and ‘Post-Brexit rural and fisheries policy’. By setting this analysis in a brief historical reading of ‘Europe versus Empire’, the Introduction to this special issue provides a context for understanding Brexit’s deeper and wider resonance.