Whatever one’s position on Brexit, Brexit will continue to preoccupy us for years to come. It will also most likely be remembered in the history books as a monumental ‘policy fiasco’ for both Britain and the EU. We are therefore calling for paper proposals focused on two main research questions: First, how did this policy fiasco come about both for Britain and the EU? Secondly, what lessons can be learned from this policy fiasco in terms of a) the future design the EU as a policy-making system, and b) the way that domestic policy systems face and process the challenges to domestic politics that EU membership presents.
Answers to these questions are likely to benefit from the extensive literature on policy failures, fiascos, blunders and crises, some of which has appeared in JEPP over the past years (Boin et al. 2009; Bovens and t’Hart 2016; Oppermann and Spencer 2016). The collection of papers would also underpin the current trend for academic analysts to use their expertise in a way that might have some ‘impact’ on the outside world. Put simply, what does the JEPP ‘family’ of scholars have to say about one of the biggest, if not the biggest crisis in the EU’s history, that might be useful to those policy actors trying to keep the EU project more or less on the rails?
The collection will be edited by Berthold and Jeremy and will be either a Debate Section, in which case papers will be 5,000 words, or a full Special Issue, in which case papers will be 8,000 words. We would expect to work to a fairly tight timeframe in view of the topical relevance . Please send your paper abstracts of no more than 500 words to Berthold & Jeremy by 15 January 2019 (berthold.rittberger@gsi.lmu.de, jeremy.richardson@canterbury.ac.nz).
References:
- Boin, A., McConnell, A. and t’Hart, P. (2009) ‘Crisis exploitation: political and policy impacts of framing contests’, Journal of European Public Policy16(1): 81-106.
- Bovens, M. and t’Hart, P. (2016) ‘Revisiting the study of policy failures’, Journal of European Public Policy 23(5): 653-666.
- Oppermann, K. and Spencer, A., eds. (2016) Fiascos in Public Policy and Foreign Policy, Journal of European Public Policy (Special Issue), 23(5).