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Corkin, Joseph --- "The liberal order: holed below the waterline or a ship that we can rebuild at sea?" [2019] ELECD 2817; in Ahmed, Tawhida; Fahey, Elaine (eds), "On Brexit" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 253

Book Title: On Brexit

Editor(s): Ahmed, Tawhida; Fahey, Elaine

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 17

Section Title: The liberal order: holed below the waterline or a ship that we can rebuild at sea?

Author(s): Corkin, Joseph

Number of pages: 19

Abstract/Description:

This chapter reads illiberal nationalist backlashes against the liberal order as a reaction to Modernity and its inbuilt bias towards a cosmopolitan universalism that subjects the local and the particular to rational critique and so threatens particularistic identities established in concrete communities. A (world) society, organised through the logics of legality and economics, builds an empire of law and reason that restricts politics, de-emphasises time and place, leaving many powerless and open to the predations of populists who promise to give them back control. On a charitable reconstruction, the liberal order, especially in multi-level configurations like the EU, might successfully organise the interactions of law, politics and expertise in an increasingly factually interdependent world, but only if they respect our historically-contingent choice to pursue democratic self-determination primarily through national political communities. This necessitates ongoing national legal independence, even as they manage its external effects and enable cooperation with others to achieve what it cannot alone.