Centenary celebrations meet a farewell party: British-Czech bilateral relations in the times of Brexit
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| Author | Monika Brusenbauch Meislova |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148119868153 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
research-article2019
Original Article
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
Centenary celebrations meet
2019, Vol. 21(4) 689 –708
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
a farewell party: British-Czech
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148119868153
DOI: 10.1177/1369148119868153
bilateral relations in the times
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
of Brexit
Monika Brusenbauch Meislova
Abstract
2019 marks an especially important year for British-Czech bilateral relations. As a year of both
centenary celebrations of opening of the British Embassy in Prague and Brexit, it makes for a
fascinating paradox: a symbol of a century-long continuity on one hand and a year of serious
disruption on the other hand. Against this background, the overarching aim of this article is to
investigate Brexit implications for British-Czech bilateral relations, placing this assessment in
the context of the long-term evolution of these relations and relating it to debates within the
scholarship on the effects of Brexit. At the same time, it addresses some of the wider political
questions that will determine the nature of Brexit’s supposed effects on the future direction of
individual bilateral relations between the UK and EU27 member states.
Keywords
bilateral relations, Brexit, Czech Republic, implications, United Kingdom
Introduction
2019 marks an especially important year for British-Czech bilateral relations, from at
least two perspectives. First, it is a year of centenary celebrations of the opening of the
British Embassy in Prague (promoted by the #STOLET hashtag): it was back in 1919,
in the very aftermath of the First World War, that the United Kingdom opened its
embassy in then newly born Czechoslovakia. Second, 2019 is ‘a year of Brexit’ – that
is, the year in which the United Kingdom is expected to leave the European Union
(EU). As the literature-based expectations go, the outcome of the British in/out referen-
dum is supposed to have a profound impact on individual bilateral relations between the
United Kingdom and EU27, including the Czech Republic. Because of Brexit, the
mutual relationship is facing moments of profound political change and will find itself
forced to adapt to the new circumstances. The United Kingdom’s departure is ‘by
Department of International Relations and European Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
Corresponding author:
Monika Brusenbauch Meislova, Department of International Relations and European Studies, Masaryk
University, Brno 60200, Czech Republic.
Email: brusenbauch.meislova@mail.muni.cz
690
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 21(4)
definition a matter of breaking things’ and British-Czech relations will surely not be left
undisturbed by the separation (cf. Drake, 2018: 97). 2019 therefore makes for a fasci-
nating paradox: a symbol of a century-long continuity on one hand and a year of serious
disruption on the other hand.
With the looming reality of Brexit drawing closer, the overarching aim of this article
is to investigate its implications for British-Czech bilateral relations, placing this
assessment in the context of the long-term evolution of these relations and relating it to
debates within the scholarship on the effects of Brexit. At the same time, it will address
some of the wider political questions that will determine the nature of Brexit’s sup-
posed effects on the future direction of individual bilateral relations between the UK
and EU27 member states.
To this end, the article sets out to answer two research questions: (1) What is the
nature of British-Czech bilateral relations? (2) What are the repercussions and implica-
tions of Brexit for British-Czech bilateral relations? The author aligns herself with the
view of Martill and Sus (2018: 2) but also others (Fierke and Jorgensen, 2015; Griffiths,
2007) that ‘(a)pplying a question-driven approach, rather than focusing on specific
theoretical frameworks or methodologies, allows us to benefit from a greater plurality
of existing scholarly approaches and to consider a greater variety of competing – and
complementary – processes at work’.
Yet essentially, the paper is a qualitatively based single-case study, with this
method chosen for its ability to help gain in-depth insights, thereby allowing for a
careful, information-intensive examination of a given phenomenon as well as for a
focus on unique details and context (Gerring, 2011; Seawright and Gerring, 2008;
Yin, 2014). Leaving the symbolic importance of the centennial aside (which in itself
is worthy of detailed reflexion), there are several reasons why the author limits her
analysis to just one case and why she chooses the Czech Republic as a typical (repre-
sentative) case to study Brexit implications for bilateral relations between Britain and
other EU member states (bar the UK’s key strategic partners such as Germany, France
or Poland). Crucially, among the key European bilateral relations, British-Czech rela-
tions are rarely given pride of place. In fact, the British-Czech bilateral relationship
does not stand out in any way, shape or form. The bilateral cooperation between the
two entities is not a top priority for either side. They are, to borrow from Paterson
(2018: 88), neither’s ‘singular other’. The relations lack the centrality of the United
Kingdom’s relationship with the United States or the Czech Republic’s with Germany.
The relationship is also devoid of the great historical symbolism and high-level insti-
tutionalisation that characterise the London-Paris axis or the Czech-German and
Czech-Slovak relationship. Instead, the Czech Republic represents an example of a
middle-sized, middle-level EU member state whose relations with the United
Kingdom are characterised by generally successful, but rather quiet, pragmatic coop-
eration on a range of policy issues and good but not outstanding trade relations – as
is the case of the majority of such EU member states. Moreover, the country’s eco-
nomic exposure to Brexit consequences is neither exceptionally high nor low (Chen
et al., 2018; Department of Finance, 2018; Irwin, 2015) and nor is the size of the
Czech diaspora living in the United Kingdom, or the number of British nationals in
the Czech Republic. Neither did the Czech Republic come up with any country-spe-
cific, distinct priorities vis-à-vis Brexit or the future UK-EU relations, as did, for
instance, Spain or Ireland, and which would have impacted heavily upon its policy-
making towards the United Kingdom. Findings drawn from the Czech case might
Brusenbauch Meislova
691
thus serve as a suitable illustration of Brexit implications for the United Kingdom’s
bilateral relations with this type of EU countries.
The article unfolds in the following manner. The first part offers a state-of-the-art
overview of the research on British-Czechoslovak/Czech relations and the implica-
tions of Brexit thereupon as well as information on the data used for this study.
Without pretending to be exhaustive, the next section reflects upon the nature of
British-Czech relations, taking into account their historical context as well as the
political, economic, security and other dimensions. Owing to space constraints, the
coverage of many issues within the historical overview is necessarily brief and
incomplete, with the chapter not intended to be an exhaustive account of mutual
relations. Nonetheless, it serves as a useful point of departure for building up the
background for the third part of the paper which explores Brexit implications for
the bilateral relations, looking inter alia at the strength of (dis)incentives for
enhanced post-Brexit collaboration on both sides as well as the political feasibility
of such a partnership. Finally, drawing on this analysis, the last section provides
some concluding remarks.
Literature review and data
Even though the relevance of bilateralism has been questioned in today’s complex, multi-
layered policy environment, it remains ‘the dominant practice in international relations’
(Renard, 2015: 22) and ‘a key, yet changing, feature of what might be viewed as a “post-
modern” (or perhaps “post-Westphalian”) foreign policy’ (Bátora and Hocking, 2002: 3;
for more on this see, for instance, Barston, 2013; Berridge, 2015; Melissen, 2005). The
EU provides an especially intriguing laboratory to study bilateral relations in that it ‘both
embraces bilateralism as part of its densely-textured pattern of multilateral interactions
whilst at the same time providing both a new context for and alternatives to traditional
bilateral diplomacy’ (Keukeleire, 2003; for bilateral diplomacy specifically within the EU
context see, for instance, Bátora and Hocking, 2002; Hill and Wallace, 1996; Hocking
et al., 2012; Smith and Tsatsas, 2002). Yet the fact that relations between individual EU
member states ‘remain an underexplored yet crucial area’ represents ‘a major shortcom-
ing of EU studies, resulting from a bias towards the EU-level of European politics’
(Sattich and Inderberg, 2018: 1).
In line with this, there is rather limited literature on the British-Czechoslovak/Czech
bilateral relations and their long and rich past, let alone the effects of Brexit thereupon.
The issue of British-Czech relations has been regularly addressed in the Czech Foreign
Policy series...
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