Chapter 2 develops the book’s theoretical contribution: a model explaining how partisan inclusion fosters de facto autonomy in electoral management bodies. The chapter distinguishes between de jure independence, which is often established through constitutional or legal reforms, and de facto autonomy, which emerges only when political actors perceive electoral management bodies as legitimate, transparent, and predictable. It outlines how partisan engagement can build trust, reduce informational asymmetries, and create mutual constraints that deter manipulation. The chapter presents an “institutional pathways” approach, detailing how some electoral commissions have followed a process of legal reform, stakeholder embedding, and administrative routinization that lead to autonomous practice. It further examines how consultation mechanisms, conflict-resolution procedures, and internal accountability practices reinforce autonomy over time. The chapter concludes with a set of comparative expectations linking variation in inclusion to observable differences in election quality and crisis resilience across “cases”.

The First World War generated multiple state and non-state humanitarian replies, encompassing not only material and financial donations, but also different forms of voluntary work. In colonial India, one of these relief activities was the formation and working of the ambulance corps. Staffed with (Indian) volunteers, the corps assisted wounded and sick soldiers of the British Indian Army in Great Britain, Mesopotamia and India. Corps members worked closely with, or as part of, the military. Their duties not only included the transportation of war victims but also comprised other tasks, such as nursing them, dressing their wounds, providing medical care as doctors, and interpreting and cooking for them. The male volunteers came from all over India, and depending on the nature of the corps, their religious, caste, educational and class backgrounds varied substantially.

Sources suggest that at least four Indian volunteer ambulance initiatives existed: the Indian Field Ambulance Training Corps (IFATC), the Indian Branch of the St. John Ambulance Association (ISJAA), the Bengal Ambulance Corps (BAC) and the Benares Ambulance Transport Corps. In Chapter 1 we have already read about the work of the ISJAA. This chapter sets out to analyse the Indian Field Ambulance Training Corps. Established in Britain in autumn 1914, the unit was, as far as I know, the only relief initiative organised by colonial subjects back in the metropole during the war. This does not mean that it was the only humanitarian endeavour organised by non-Westerners.

Chapter 6 investigates the erosion of electoral integrity in Venezuela, focusing on the transformation of the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) from a partially autonomous institution into a politically captured body under Hugo Chávez and his successors. The chapter shows how reforms that insulated the National Electoral Council (CNE) from partisan influence, which intended to protect independence, paradoxically weakened transparency and accountability. Without mechanisms for party consultation, internal checks declined, administrative discretion expanded, and opportunities for manipulation increased. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival research, the chapter analyzes controversial decisions related to districting, voter registration, technology adoption, and election timing. It argues that Venezuela illustrates the risks of insulation without meaningful stakeholder engagement and provides a powerful contrast to cases where partisan inclusion stabilizes electoral governance.

Every serious analyst of Britain’s role in global politics understood that the country’s decision to leave the European Union would have a significant – perhaps fundamental – effect on its standing in the wider world and the way it would henceforth pursue its foreign, defence and security policies. It was the biggest strategic reorientation in Britain’s external relations for over half a century; a shift for which the country was completely unprepared and in which the policy establishment was explicitly prevented from doing any contingency planning. With the shock of the Brexit decision in 2016, the prospects for British foreign affairs seemed to range from the excitingly uncertain to the simply dire. In the event, Britain’s standing in the world has both risen and sunk in the decade since, driven by challenges, events and responses only peripherally connected to Brexit issues as they arose at the time. ‘Brexit Britain’ certainly figures in the way the country is perceived internationally, but those perceptions are overlaid by more imperative judgements about how the country now positions itself in response to more fundamental challenges than were ever envisaged in Brexit debates at the time.

Our task was not helped by the fact that the civil service had been prevented by the Cameron government from making any preparations for a leave vote. In fact, the civil service and No. 10 generally were still in a state of shock. The only real European policy experts all came from the ‘Remain’ side of the fence. While their professionalism was not in doubt, it was clearly going to be a huge task for them to pivot to embrace the new reality of the UK’s changed status with the EU. It wasn’t long before the UK’s long-serving Ambassador to the EU, Ivan Rogers, was moved on. His expertise was never in question, but in the weekly meetings with the Prime Minister in her study behind the Cabinet Room, he barely sought to disguise his dismay at the UK’s decision. Treating Brexit as a problem to be managed rather than an opportunity to be seized was never going to go down well with the Brexiteers still drunk on their own success. What Ivan saw as pragmatism, the Brexiteers saw as pessimism. He quickly became public enemy number one and was swiftly replaced.

Having faced not one financial car crash but several in less than a generation, it is little wonder today’s risk-takers, investors, households and corporates alike, are sticking rather than twisting, saving not spending, braking not accelerating, their animal spirits anaesthetised. Although collectively damaging, this is the individually prudent thing to do. We are facing a twenty-first-century ‘paradox of thrift’, whose psychological scars might easily persist as long as those of its twentieth-century counterpart. The upstream effects of this reduced risk-taking can be clearly seen in the damped dynamism and caged animal spirits of both businesses and households. In the words of Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, the forces of ‘creative destruction’ have been significantly and persistently diminished by the sequence of crises, stunting innovation, enterprise and hence the dynamism of our economies. For businesses, those caged animal spirits have manifested themselves in reduced numbers of firms entering and, just as importantly, exiting the market. Entry and exit rates for UK firms are around a third lower today than at the time of the GFC. Entrepreneurs are more fearful of starting new businesses, despite them being the wellspring of innovation and jobs.

The promise to hold a referendum on EU membership looked like politicking to the top of the German government. By the end of 2012 debate about the UK’s future in Europe was cresting. But, as often happens, the moment of peak interest passed. At the start of 2013, however, Cameron resurrected the topic. Merkel was bemused, and then nettled when it seemed that the speech to launch the referendum idea would clash with celebrations in Berlin to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Élysée Treaty. No. 10 responded to German lobbying: the speech was delivered at breakfast time on 23 January in Bloomberg’s offices in the City of London, German and French legislators having gathered in the Reichstag building the day before. The speech was twenty minutes of Euro-boilerplate followed by five minutes that grabbed the headlines. Cameron was confident that the referendum could be won; confidence that was so pronounced that the Chancellery wondered why the referendum was necessary. It seemed to Merkel’s advisers that the Prime Minister had created a bargaining chip to discard in coalition negotiations with the Lib Dems after the next general election.

It has been said that Brexit was a solution in search of a problem. The campaign encouraged the idea that voting for Brexit could satisfactorily shift the practice and discourse of national political priorities; the downside proved to be the confusion over exactly what specific issues it was meant to address. An indeterminate number of loosely focused grievances could not easily be translated into a programme. The protracted parliamentary stand-off in the following years encouraged suspicion about any attempts to adjust or fine-tune precise legal provisions – suspicion of elite interests, of reversion to rule by anonymous experts and of legal process itself. A distinctly close vote in the actual referendum was rapidly mythologised as an overwhelming popular mandate, even though it was unclear what exactly it was a mandate for. The lasting legacy has been to reinforce a ‘theatrical’ approach to politics, in which actual problem-solving and long-term strategising yield to performative or gestural decisions. Both globally and nationally, this is an increasingly disturbing and destabilising trend; those on both sides of the Brexit debate need to acknowledge this as a real issue about the health of a critical and engaged democracy.

We are living through a period of growing global disorder. There are various causes, but one is the declining unity and efficacy of the political ‘West’ – the coalition of countries, including the UK and led by the United States, that came together after the Second World War to defend and promote liberal democracy at home and open markets abroad. For countries like ours, in a changed and changing geopolitical landscape, the challenge is not to build a single new world order, but instead to contribute to what the historian Adam Tooze calls ‘world ordering’. This means coalitions of the willing, on a range of issues, to meet the challenges that people and nations need to face together. This imperative makes Britain’s relationship with other European countries, and the EU, more important, not less. These countries, and the EU, have shared values and interests with the UK. We face a common threat from an increasingly anarchic form of ‘might makes right’ globalisation. So we need to renew our cooperation that was sabotaged by Brexit.

It is possible to pinpoint the moment it became clear that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party was not going to try very hard to repair the economic damage done by Brexit. It came on the evening of 18 April 2024 when the European Commission published an expansive proposal for a youth mobility scheme to allow young Brits and Europeans to live, work and study freely in each others’ countries for two or three years. One EU official in Brussels – keen to emphasise the willingness to rejuvenate the EU–UK relationship under a future Labour government – excitedly described the envisioned scheme as ‘like free movement for young people’. Several European governments, including the mighty Germany, had even suggested that a youth mobility scheme could even provide a gateway to easing restrictions on the movement of business professionals. But the excitement didn’t last out the day. Within hours the Labour Party, then in opposition, rejected the idea out of hand. ‘Labour has no plans for a youth mobility scheme,’ it said in a statement. There was no hedging or hesitation.

We estimate the short-run effects of Brexit border disruption on the UK economy. We estimate relationships for the UK where Brexit effects are identified by the dates of Brexit events, the referendum and the exit from the single market. We find evidence of short-run effects of Brexit: temporary effects on GDP, exports and imports (slightly negative), and on inflation and interest rates (slightly positive). These effects are consistent with modest disruption from introducing a border with the EU, a border due to be made barrier-free and seamless by the UK–EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Previous work using other countries as comparators is vulnerable to difficulties in isolating the Brexit effects among numerous other shocks. We also survey earlier modelling work on the long-run effects of evolving policies of free trade, UK-sourced regulation and liberalised immigration. Models of long-run trade suggest the emergence of substantial gains.