Description
The UK’s 2021 Integrated Review of foreign policy details a variety of national role conceptions for a ‘Global Britain’. This includes acting as a ‘force for good in the world’ with a defence of human rights (HM Government, 2021, p.14). However, the publication of the 2023 Integrated Review Refresh presents a rethink of the UK’s role conceptions in response to an increasingly complex and unstable world. This Refresh no longer makes reference to the discourses of ‘Global Britain’ and a ‘force for good’, while there is a more limited focus on human rights. This paper uses role theory to identify these changes in the UK’s national role conceptions between the two Integrated Reviews and assesses what this means in the context of the UK’s foreign policy on human rights and human protection as part of its commitment to upholding a rules-based international order. It compares these national role conceptions with the role expectations that other actors have of the UK’s role in international relations and its approach to human rights and human protection. The paper therefore presents important theoretical and empirical contributions to role theory and analysis of human rights and human protection in the UK’s post-Brexit foreign policy.
