Skip to main content

Brexit and the Condorcet Paradox

Tomorrow the government will trigger Article 50 and start the formal process of getting the UK out of the EU. So, how did we get in this mess in the first place? I think the Condorcet Paradox provides an interesting angle on the problem. In particular, I want to look at preferences for Remain versus Soft Brexit, i.e. leave the EU but still remain in the single market or other collaborations centered on the EU, and Hard Brexit, i.e. walk completely away from the EU. 
          The one thing we know for sure is that in the referendum last June around 52% of people voted Leave and 48% voted Remain. What does that tell us? In my recollection the referendum campaign primarily focused on the question of Soft Brexit versus Remain. No doubt some would disagree with that. But things like the customs union only started being talked about after the vote. Instead we heard a lot during the campaign about the Norway or Swiss model of Soft Brexit. True the Leave camp made promises like 'take back control of our borders' that inevitably mean hard Brexit. But, the Leave camp was far less pro-active in actually joining the dots and saying what hard Brexit would mean. The referendum vote tells us, therefore, that the British people prefer Soft Brexit to Remain.
         Once Theresa May took power the discussion very quickly turned to focus on Soft Brexit versus Hard Brexit. Now, the Brexiters were keen to join the dots and argue that 'taking back control' inevitably meant Hard Brexit. Soft Brexit, they argue, is essentially Remain in different clothes - if we are going to leave then it has to be Hard Brexit. We have no idea how the country would vote on this issue but I think there is a fair chance the country would prefer Hard Brexit to Soft Brexit. 
        If the country prefers Hard Brexit to Soft Brexit and prefers Soft Brexit to Remain then you might expect they would prefer Hard Brexit to Remain. But, I would be surprised if that was the case. If the original referendum campaign had been a tussle between Hard Brexit and Remain then Remain may well have won. The vote was close enough as it was and opinion polls have consistently shown that people want to remain part of the single market. Overall, therefore, we end up with a Condorcet Paradox:

Hard Brexit beats Soft Brexit
Soft Brexit beats Remain
Remain beats Hard Brexit.

          If there is a Condorcet Paradox then it is impossible to say which option is the most preferred. Note, however, that we are set to end up with an outcome, namely Hard Brexit, that is worse than we started with, namely Remain. That does not look like a good deal! Plaudits should, however, go to the Brexiteers for their strategic opportunism. In particular, we know that whenever there is a Condorcet Paradox the outcome depends on the voting procedures. The only way those favoring Hard Brexit were going to get what they wanted was to play off Soft Brexit versus Remain and Hard Brexit versus Soft Brexit. By design or good fortune that is exactly what has happened. 
          And are we going to get a vote on the final deal, pitting Remain versus Hard Brexit? Of course not. And how long before the UK votes to rejoin the EU because Join is better than Hard Brexit? Probably, a long, long while. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Honesty around the world

In my last post I looked at dishonesty in the banking industry. Sticking with a similar theme, this time I will at dishonesty across different countries.        Let us start with a study by David Pascual-Ezama and a long list of co-authors on 'Context dependent cheating: Experimental evidence from 16 countries'. They asked 90 students in 16 different countries to perform a very simple task: toss a black and white coin and record the outcome. If the coin came up white the student obtained a red Lindt Lindor Truffle. If it came up black they got nothing. Crucially, the coin toss took place in private and so the student could report whatever outcome they wanted. If they wanted a chocolate then they simply had to report white. (The study contrasted three different methods of reporting - form put in a box, form given to the experimenter or verbally telling the experimenter - but I will skip those details here.)           The chart below summa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Prisoners dilemma or stag hunt

Over Christmas I had chance to read The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure by Brian Skyrms. A nice read, very interesting and thought provoking. There’s a couple of things in the book that prompt further discussion. The one I want to focus on in this post is the distinction between the stag hunt game and the prisoners dilemma game.    To be sure what we are talking about, here is a specific version of both type of game. Adam and Eve independently need to decide whether to cooperate or defect. The payoff matrix details their payoff for any combination of choices, where the first number is the payoff of Adam and the second number the payoff of Eve. For example, in the Prisoners Dilemma, if Adam cooperates and Eve defects then Adam gets 65 and Eve gets 165. Prisoners Dilemma Eve Cooperate Defect Adam Cooperate 140, 140 65, 165 Defect 165,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Revealed preference, WARP, SARP and GARP

The basic idea behind revealed preference is incredibly simple: we try to infer something useful about a person's preferences by observing the choices they make. The topic, however, confuses many a student and academic alike, particularly when we get on to WARP, SARP and GARP. So, let us see if we can make some sense of it all.           In trying to explain revealed preference I want to draw on a  study  by James Andreoni and John Miller published in Econometrica . They look at people's willingness to share money with another person. Specifically subjects were given questions like:  Q1. Divide 60 tokens: Hold _____ at $1 each and Pass _____ at $1 each.  In this case there were 60 tokens to split and each token was worth $1. So, for example, if they held 40 tokens and passed 20 then they would get $40 and the other person $20. Consider another question: Q2. D...
Post a Comment
Read more