Britain’s Brexit Bargaining: Insights from Game Theory
As we enter a key Brexit endgame week, a few thoughts – informed by game theory – come to mind on the ironies of the British negotiation position and strategy thus far. The basic claim of bargaining theory is that you need a strong ‘reversion point,’ that you can go back to if bargaining fails. Once Article 50 was activated, that was necessarily ‘No Deal’ for the UK. But No Deal is likely self-damaging and certainly divisive. So, it did not and cannot represent a credible reversion point. Without this clear reversion point, one option is to pretend you want something self-damaging – the ‘madman’ approach. For this tactic to work, though, you need to be believed to be ‘mad’ …
How did Voting on the Brexit Referendum Affect Voting on May’s Brexit Deal?
On January 15, 2019, Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal suffered a defeat of historic proportion in the House of Commons: 432 MPs voted against and 202 for the ‘EU Withdrawal Act’, with a staggering margin of 230 votes. But how do the MP positions on May’s deal compare with the constituency-level votes on the 2016 referendum? [i] Notably, almost all the intra-party variation in voting takes place on the Tories’ side of the aisle. Only 3 Labour MPs bucked the party line and voted for the deal, whereas 118 Tories voted against May’s proposal. The plot below shows the distribution of constituency vote on the Brexit referendum by MPs voting either for or against the Brexit deal. The graph …
Democracy, Development and Income Distribution
A Review of Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach, by Ben Ansell and David Samuels In this dense and absorbing review, Professor Ben Ansell explains how past and current models have failed to capture the paradox that development may lead to greater income inequality. He explores the roles of actors and structures in his own approach to the study of this relationship and casts a critical light on the plight of those who live in poverty despite democratization. Turning to the other end of the income spectrum, he discusses the global trend towards capital mobility and how it relates and affects different political systems. Overall, Inequality and Democratization raises a number of critical and highly relevant questions concerning the relationship between …
