Conclusions: Insights from Switzerland’s Experience

This concluding chapter weaves together the various threads developed in the preceding chapters and seeks to distil the key insights Switzerland’s experience has to offer to the United Kingdom and, more broadly, for the management of complex international co-operation in the XXI century. It highlights five takeaways in particular: (a) the nature of the fundamental trade-offs underlying relations with the EU; (b) the pros and cons of different legal-institutional models of relations; (c) the domestic impact of “integration without membership”; (d) the determinants of public attitudes and voting behaviour; and (e) the degree to which the UK is likely to learn from the Swiss experience. By so doing, the chapter outlines the book’s contribution to the scholarly efforts to shed light on these important questions.