Litofsky 4
Alec Litofsky
Dr. Joaquín Roy
INS 594/694- European Union relations with Latin America
26 September 2018
The European Union: Good for integration, or not?
When news broke that the United Kingdom had voted to secede from the European Union, a large debate ensued over whether or not their time spent as one of the leading countries of the bloc had at all played a role in the positioning of the British economy in the global marketplace. Those in favor of Brexit argued that maintaining their position as a member state of the EU would add little to an economy which was the fifth-largest is the world, and had long been governed by a complex system of laws (Bruszt and Campos). On the other hand, opposers of the Brexit movement hold that the integration brought about by being a member of the European Union played an essential role in fortifying the United Kingdom’s antitrust laws, which is an indispensable component of economic regulation in any longevous state (Kessler).
In an attempt to uncover a telling correlation related to integration processes, The Washington Post conducted research which looked at the cases of the 17 countries which were annexed by the European Union between the years of 1997 through 2015. They concluded two major ideals: (1) deep integration that comes about as a result of the combination of economic and political themes; in other words, a customs union does substantially increase a state’s capacity to govern; and (2) the order in which changes were introduced in a specific country’s market and state institutions mattered (Bruszt and Lundstedt). This evidence explains that the possible gains from being deeply integrated may serve as a powerful motivator for state leaders...
