Journal Articles by Benjamin Martill
Foreign Policy Analysis
Research on foreign policy change claims leaders seek to restructure their country's foreign rela... more Research on foreign policy change claims leaders seek to restructure their country's foreign relations when internal and external opportunity structures are permissive. But a number of prominent efforts at achieving change have occurred during times of considerable domestic upheaval and rigid international constraints. To understand why, this article examines three well-known cases of Cold War foreign policy change, focusing on the external relations of Charles de Gaulle in France, John G. Diefenbaker in Canada and Willy Brandt in West Germany. These cases suggest that domestic upheaval and foreign policy change were inextricably interwoven, and that efforts to effect strategic change on a grand scale were motivated by a desire to respond to the demands of marginalised domestic constituencies without incurring the costs of domestic reform. Our analysis suggests key moments of international change are best understood as domestic incorporation strategies rather than instances of significant and principled foreign policy change.
Italian Political Science Review
This article examines the 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom. The main benef... more This article examines the 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom. The main beneficiaries were the newly formed Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats, both of which ran on clear Brexit platforms, while the Conservatives and Labour struggled to attract support. But the Brexit focus of the campaign-and the victory of parties with clear positions on these issues-belied the extent to which the election conformed to the expectations of second-order contest theory, with low turnout, declining support for the governing (Conservative) party, a surge in support for new and small parties, and scant discussion of EU-level issues. While the vote shows realignment in the UK continues and can tell us much about the shifting politics of Brexit, we should be cautious inferring much from the victory of the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats given the second-order nature of the contest.
Journal of European Public Policy
Research on the Brexit negotiations has linked the problems faced by Britain to flawed assumption... more Research on the Brexit negotiations has linked the problems faced by Britain to flawed assumptions in the UK's perception of EU interests. These include the ideas that the EU would be open to compromise on key principles, that it would offer the UK a bespoke relationship, that national capitals would respond favourably to bilateral initiatives, and that EU unity would not hold. Yet the origins of these assumptions have been subject to little systematic scrutiny. How did such wrong-headed assumptions about the EU's interests emerge? Drawing on insights from bounded rationality we identify three aspects of the decision-making environment linked with biased thinking: (1) ill-fitting routines and lessons, (2) a lack of decision-making openness, and (3) a lack of EU expertise and contact. We demonstrate our argument using data obtained from interviews in Brussels and London in 2017-18 and accounts of those involved in the decisions.
International Affairs
Research on political parties and foreign policy has grown in recent years in response to discipl... more Research on political parties and foreign policy has grown in recent years in response to disciplinary and real-world changes. But party research still bears the imprint of earlier scepticism about the role of parties, with most works aiming to show that parties matter, rather than how, when and where they matter. How can we advance research on parties and foreign policymaking? We argue that we first need to understand why political parties made initial inroads to FPA so gradually, before we can grasp what challenges confront the research programme. These two steps are necessary to show how closer engagement between International Relations, Comparative Politics and FPA scholarship can lead to a more self-reflexive research program. Drawing on recent work in Comparative Politics and International Relations, we suggest four avenues for future research: (1) ideological multidimensionality beyond left and right, (2) parties as organisations and the role of entrepreneurs, (3) parties as transnational foreign policy actors, and (4) the interaction between parties and the global order.
Journal of Common Market Studies
Though the UK is weaker than the EU on key metrics of bargaining power, the British approach to t... more Though the UK is weaker than the EU on key metrics of bargaining power, the British approach to the first phase of the Brexit negotiations has been characterised by hard bargaining. Efforts to explain this puzzle have focused on constraints at the domestic level, but have not engaged with the cultural sources of bargaining style highlighted by constructivist scholars. Drawing on a series of interviews, this article suggests a number of cultural factors have influenced the UK's decision to adopt a hard bargaining strategy, including the country's majoritarian institutional culture, its weak socialisation into the EU, overstated perceptions of its own capabilities, the prevailing conservative political ideology, and a longstanding preference for 'divide and rule' diplomatic strategies. Our findings suggest not only that the UK’s choice of negotiating strategy is sub-optimal but also that theories of bargaining need to pay attention to cultural factors predisposing actors to particular strategies.
Global Affairs, 2019
While it is well-known that Brexit will have consequences for the UK’s role in the world, foreign... more While it is well-known that Brexit will have consequences for the UK’s role in the world, foreign affairs is not thought to have featured prominently in the referendum campaign itself. This apparent lack of foreign policy salience is surprising given the broader challenge to liberal international order provided by other anti-elite campaigns across Europe. In this article we analyse mentions of foreign affairs made by the Remain and Leave camps in the Brexit referendum campaign. We find that both campaigns articulated distinct views of Britain’s role in the world with regards to security, international organization, trade, morality, and regime-type. We argue these distinct perspectives represent “folk theories” of liberal internationalism and realism, respectively, given their correspondence with the core claims of these theoretical traditions. Our findings suggest that the goals of British foreign policy itself are likely to be increasingly subject of political division in the years after Brexit.
Europe and the World: A Law Review, 2019
This article reexamines the capability-expectations gap in the European Union's foreign policy in... more This article reexamines the capability-expectations gap in the European Union's foreign policy in light of recent developments in this field. Our point of departure is the observation that the expectations being placed on the EU's foreign and security capabilities in recent years have been steadily increasing, in response to a number of external and internal developments, including the Arab Spring, the Ukraine crisis and America's 'pivot' to Asia, as well as the Brexit vote. We argue, however, that the institutional changes introduced as a result have not succeeded in fulfilling the lofty ambitions held of the Union either by itself or by other actors since they suffer from many of the same failings that have persistently bedevilled EU security initiatives. The result is a mismatch between the EU's ambitions and its ability to deliver on these, which threatens to reopen the capabilities-expectations gap, which has been steadily declining since the late 1990s. Existing scholarly approaches have missed this problematic dynamic since they have focused more on the institutional changes (the supply side) rather than the increasing expectations (the demand side). While pronouncements regarding Europe's 'strategic autonomy' and such like offer clear gains for European leaders in the short term, they may come back to haunt them in the years to come.
Security Studies, 2019
Cold War strategy in Western Europe almost exclusively followed the US policy of containment. Con... more Cold War strategy in Western Europe almost exclusively followed the US policy of containment. Conventional explanations for this continuity, however, fail to account for both the strategic rationale and the scale of domestic support behind attempts to disengage from the Cold War. This article seeks to explain why containment won out over disengagement in European strategy. By highlighting the underlying liberal tenets of containment, it argues this victory owed more to the advantages afforded the political center by the political institutions of Western Europe than to the logic of containment strategy itself. The occupation of the center-ground by advocates of containment afforded them distinct institutional advantages, including an increased likelihood of representation in government, greater bargaining strength relative to other parties, and limited sources of viable opposition. The dependence of containment strategy on centrist strength is demonstrated through a discussion of the politics of strategy in the French Fourth Republic.
The purpose of this article is to understand the EU/UK security relationship after Brexit and the... more The purpose of this article is to understand the EU/UK security relationship after Brexit and the institutional form(s) it may take. Taking stock of the literature on the consequences of Brexit for European foreign affairs, this article employs a question-driven approach to examine uncertainties regarding the future EU/UK security relationship. These questions relate in particular to the United Kingdom's commitment to European security after Brexit, the nature of post-Brexit developments within the Union, and the European Union's willingness to afford the United Kingdom a substantial role after withdrawal. This article examines each of these questions in turn, before considering the viability of three frequently mooted institutional arrangements post-Brexit: UK participation in the CSDP as a third country; increased engagement with NATO that becomes the main platform for cooperation between the United Kingdom and the European Union; and the enhancement of bilateral ties between the United Kingdom and key European allies – especially France.
International Politics, 2018
Executive autonomy influences the ability of states to make credible commitments, utilise their d... more Executive autonomy influences the ability of states to make credible commitments, utilise their domestic resources, and deter adversaries. In majoritarian parliamentary regimes, it is often assumed that executive autonomy is derived from the possession of a substantial parliamentary majority, since this affords the government a 'buffer' in the legislature. Yet, this understanding fails to account for the value of seats above the majority threshold for foreign policy, where the executive is constrained by internal dissent more than the non-passage of legislation. This article challenges the assumption of a linear relationship between seat share and executive autonomy through a theoretical re-examination of the politics of foreign policy in majoritarian parliamentary systems. It argues that possession of a significant majority can actually undermine the executive's foreign policy autonomy, since it increases the degree of intra-party factionalism without introducing corresponding benefits in the legislature. The argument is illustrated empirically through an examination of the politics of British foreign policy at three decisive elections (1950, 1955, and 1966) in the early Cold War period.
Journal of Political Ideologies, 2017
Recent years have seen significant interest among scholars of International Relations (IR) in ide... more Recent years have seen significant interest among scholars of International Relations (IR) in ideological analysis. By treating international theories as international ideologies, this trend entails both a radical reconceptualization of IR's disciplinary foundations as well as the emergence of important new lines of inquiry for scholars of ideology. And yet, as a research programme, ideological analysis in IR has failed to establish a significant foothold in the discipline. This article locates the source of this weakness in the fractious nature of IR as a discipline, which has contributed to the emergence of five distinct paradigms of ideological analysis: analytical, historical, philosophical, critical and reflexive. Reviewing these five distinct bodies of scholarship, this article demonstrates that ideological analysis is 'alive and well' in IR, but argues that greater engagement between divergent paradigms will be required in order to fully understand the complexities of international ideologies.
Books by Benjamin Martill
Are theoretical tools nothing but political weapons? How can the two be distinguished from each o... more Are theoretical tools nothing but political weapons? How can the two be distinguished from each other? What is the ideological role of theories like liberalism, neoliberalism or democratic theory? And how can we study the theories of actors from outside the academic world? This book examines these and related questions at the nexus of theory and ideology in International Relations. The current crisis of politics made it abundantly clear that theory is not merely an impartial and neutral academic tool but instead is implicated in political struggles. However, it is also clear that it is insufficient to view theory merely as a political weapon. This book brings together contributions from a number of different scholarly perspectives to engage with these problems.
Brexit will have significant consequences for the country, for Europe, and for global order. And ... more Brexit will have significant consequences for the country, for Europe, and for global order. And yet much discussion of Brexit in the UK has focused on the causes of the vote and on its consequences for the future of British politics. This volume examines the consequences of Brexit for the future of Europe and the European Union, adopting an explicitly regional and future-oriented perspective missing from many existing analyses. Drawing on the expertise of 28 leading scholars from a range of disciplines, Brexit and Beyond offers various different perspectives on the future of Europe, charting the likely effects of Brexit across a range of areas, including institutional relations, political economy, law and justice, foreign affairs, democratic governance, and the idea of Europe itself. Whilst the contributors offer divergent predictions for the future of Europe after Brexit, they share the same conviction that careful scholarly analysis is in need – now more than ever – if we are understand what lies ahead for the EU.
Papers by Benjamin Martill
The Brexit negotiations present a puzzle for scholars of international bargaining, who tend to as... more The Brexit negotiations present a puzzle for scholars of international bargaining, who tend to assume hard bargaining follows from advantages in bargaining power. In spite of its relative weakness vis-à-vis the EU27, however, the UK’s negotiating strategy bears all the hallmarks of hard bargaining. Drawing upon a series of elite interviews conducted in late 2017, this working paper argues that British hard bargaining is a consequence of three ideational factors particular to the UK case: the dominance of a conservative ideology of statecraft, a majoritarian institutional culture, and weak socialisation into European structures. These three factors not only predisposed UK policymakers to favour harder bargaining strategies, ceteris paribus, but also contributed to a misperception that Britain possessed more bargaining power than was actually the case. This paper argues that the UK’s bargaining strategy comes with a high risk of immediate failure, as well as longer term self-harm.
Book Reviews by Benjamin Martill
British foreign policy. By Jamie Gaskarth. Cambridge: Polity. 2013. 271pp. Index. Pb.: £17.99. is... more British foreign policy. By Jamie Gaskarth. Cambridge: Polity. 2013. 271pp. Index. Pb.: £17.99. isbn 978 0 74565 115 6.
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Journal Articles by Benjamin Martill
Books by Benjamin Martill
Papers by Benjamin Martill
Book Reviews by Benjamin Martill