Description
International organizations (IOs) establish and maintain trust among their members. When a state leaves an IO, however, this trust becomes precarious and tensions arise between former partners. Using the case of Brexit, this paper examines (1) why interstate trust is often damaged in the course of states’ withdrawal from common institutions and (2) how this affects subsequent cooperation efforts. Drawing on existing trust research, we argue that withdrawals are likely to set in motion a self-reinforcing process that leads to the long-term erosion of trust. Our detailed reconstruction of key episodes in the post-referendum UK-EU negotiations, analyzing public statements about trust from political leaders on both sides, illustrates this dynamic: After the exit decision called into question the trusting relationship between the UK and the EU, relations deteriorated further during the negotiations as the UK repeatedly backtracked on its previous commitments. While the EU lost confidence in the ‘ability’ of the May government to deliver on its promises, the perceived lack of ‘benevolence’ and ‘integrity’ was the main problem in EU dealings with the Johnson government. Overall, these doubts damaged trust and prompted the EU to step up its control efforts, which made the implementation of the agreements more complicated.
