Theresa May has rejected calls for the UK parliament to have a vote on the terms of Brexit, however on 12 October she accepted that there will be an opportunity for parliament to debate the country’s strategy before Article 50 is triggered. Valentino Larcinese states that the argument against parliament having a strong role in the process rests on a decidedly misguided notion of the ‘will of the people’ and that UK citizens deserve adequate deliberation and decision-making procedures to determine the way forward following the referendum result

Larcinese, Valentino

LSE Research Online

12/10/2016There is no such thing as the ‘will of the people’ – Brexit needsthe involvement of parliamentblogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/10/12/brexit-needs-the-involvement-of-parliament/Theresa May has rejected calls for the UK parliament to have a vote on the terms of Brexit, howeveron 12 October she accepted that there will be an opportunity for parliament to debate the country’sstrategy before Article 50 is triggered. Valentino Larcinese states that the argument againstparliament having a strong role in the process rests on a decidedly misguided notion of the ‘will ofthe people’ and that UK citizens deserve adequate deliberation and decision-making procedures todetermine the way forward following the referendum result.According to Britain’s Prime Minister, Theresa May, giving the UK’s Parliament a vote on Brexitplans will “thwart the will of the British people”. As political science and political economy students usually learnduring week 1 or 2 of their courses, this statement makes no sense. A well-established literature in social choicetheory, of which Kenneth Arrow’s impossibility theorem is probably the most important result, shows thatunfortunately the “will of the people”, British or otherwise, does not exist.Brexit and the ‘will of the people’It is difficult enough even to define and understand the desires of single individuals, as shown very clearly by recentadvances in behavioural economics. But let’s ignore this complication and let’s assume that everybody in a polity(say the UK) has well defined preferences, is well informed and it is a fully rational person. Let’s even concede thatthese preferences remain stable over time.These assumptions, unrealistic as they are, are nevertheless insufficient to result in collective rational preferences.In other terms it is impossible to aggregate individual preferences into a rational “will of the people” if we want togive a fair representation to all views and opinions in society (i.e. no dictatorships) and we also think that peopleshould be entitled to have any views they want. The debate on Brexit (or any other matter) would then be a betterdebate if it could avoid metaphysical representations that portray multiple individuals as a single entity.William Riker, one of the most prominent 20th century political scientists and one of the founders of the rationalchoice approach to politics, famously used Arrow’s results to distinguish between a populist and a liberal view ofdemocracy. In the populist view, democracy tries to aggregate the desires of individual members of a society into acollective will (like Theresa May would claim has happened with the Brexit referendum). In the liberal view thepurpose of democracy is rather to keep elected representatives held to account.These representatives do not deliver the public will (which does not exist), but must respond to the public for theirchoices according to some pre-defined procedures. We do not necessarily have to agree with Ricker, but still theproblem remains of how to take collective decisions and how to interpret these decisions once they are taken. Afterall, democratic regimes also allow referendums, whereby decisions on some matters are directly taken by thevoters: referendums might not deliver the people’s will but, once we agree that this is a good procedure, then theoutcome should be respected.May’s theoremThere is one insight in social choice theory which could support Theresa May’s approach to Brexit. This is calledMay’s theorem and is named not after the current Prime Minister, but rather after the American mathematicianKenneth May who proved the theorem in 1952. It is also useful to clarify that the other famous theorem “I am the1/4Prime Minister therefore I am right” has nothing to do with it.The theorem suggests that, in binary choices (i.e. when we have only two alternatives), majority voting is the bestsystem and the only one which satisfies a number of desirable properties. On 23 June the choice was binary (Leaveor Remain) and therefore the outcome of that referendum, which has been reached using the best possible rule,gets us as close as possible to the metaphysical idea of the “will of the people”.But while May’s theorem could be used as the foundation for Theresa May’s “will of the people”, we have nowlearned that there are at least two versions of Brexit, hard and soft, which only came to the forefront of public debateafter the referendum, as shown by the graph below reporting the weekly frequencies of Google searches on “Brexit”,“Soft Brexit” and “Hard Brexit” in the UK. The blue (“Brexit”) spike refers to the referendum week. It is only inSeptember that a clear awareness seems to have emerged of the existence of at least two possible Brexit options.Figure: Weekly number of searches for “Brexit”, “Soft Brexit” and “Hard Brexit” on GoogleSource: Google TrendsHad the Remain camp won the contest we would have probably learned that there was more than one Remainoption too. So what has happened is that a complex multidimensional choice has been reduced by the referendumto only two options: the consequence is that a choice has been made but it’s not clear which one. Note that if thiswas not the case, any discussion of hard or soft Brexit would be superfluous: the referendum outcome would provideby itself an indication of what should be done now. Good bye May, we are back in Arrow’s world!The importance of institutionsOne of the key insights in Arrow’s theorem is that institutions matter: when three options or more are available,different procedures can induce the same society (with exactly the same individuals) to take different decisions onthe same matter. We might, for example, end up with a different government depending on whether we use a firstpast the post or a proportional electoral system. We need to acknowledge this unpleasant characteristic of collectivedecision-making: there is nothing divine about these rules and about the decisions which are taken using them. Thebest we can hope for is that everybody (or at least a qualified majority of citizens) agrees on the rules themselvesirrespective of the outcome that they deliver.This is the reason why most constitutions provide a bias in favour of the status quo when it comes to issues ofextreme importance, like amending the constitution itself. While ordinary policy is normally taken by simple majority2/4rule, constitutional changes require more complex procedures. These procedures typically create a status quo biasboth to protect minorities against a “tyranny of the majority” and to make it more likely that the changes have beencarefully evaluated, possibly by different independent players. Broad coalitions must then be formed to pass aconstitutional change.Amendments to the US constitution, for example, must be voted by two thirds of both the House and the Senate andmust then be approved by three quarters of the 50 state legislatures. In Italy there will soon be a referendum on amajor constitutional reform. This reform has already been passed twice by the parliament (with a “reflection pause”of at least three months between each vote).In comparison, it is quite extraordinary to observe the levity of the Brexit decision-making process, ever sinceCameron committed to a referendum. Brexit is no less important that a major constitutional change (except maybethat it is more costly) and yet, following a consultative referendum, it now seems to be taken as an accomplished,inevitable outcome, which only needs to be implemented (if only we knew how). Brexit is “the will of the Britishpeople”, the contemporary correspondent of the divine will in the ancient regime.Such misunderstandings as to the interpretation of the outcome of the referendum can emerge for many reasons,including short-term political opportunism, but there are at least two other reasons worth discussing. The first is thesomewhat naïve view that democracy is the simple implementation of majority rule and that the referendum hasenabled us to discover the “will of the British people”. Unfortunately, the absence of written constitutional rules hasallowed this simplistic view to become prevalent.The second reason stems from the gravy train which Brexit is creating in Whitehall. There are few things which aremore desirable for politicians than being able to expand their influence by distributing jobs and perks. So far two newdepartments have already been created specifically to deal with Brexit and they have hired (or poached from otherdepartments) hundreds of civil servants. It is now anticipated that the Brexit ministry will need to double its size andone wonders how many times it will have doubled before Brexit is accomplished.Outside of these departments, it is hard to think of any area of public administration that will remain unaffected byBrexit. The civil service will have to expand, hiring thousands of new employees who will spend their days reviewingEU laws and the ways they currently affect the British legal and regulatory system, preparing material fornegotiations with the EU and for the individual new trade deals that will have to be struck with dozens of countries,delving into the intricacies of fisheries, agriculture, financial services and virtually every other sector of the Britisheconomy.Armies of external consultants will be hired and paid thousands of pounds per unitary day of work. Nobody knowsthe impact of this process on the UK budget but, over the many years that the process will take, it could easily addup to billions of pounds. In brief, for politicians Brexit is a rare opportunity to expand and shape publicadministration. If a populist view of democracy seems to reflect the current prevalent mood in the British public, thegravy train might have its appeal for decision-makers.It should be clear at this point that allowing parliament to vote on Brexit plans will not thwart the will of the Britishpeople. Yes, a referendum has taken place and, whatever its interpretation, there is no doubt that its outcome mustbe respected. At the same time, however, taxpayers’ money, people’s jobs and more generally the prosperity of thiscountry also deserve respect.This does not mean that the outcome of the referendum should be ignored – I would never claim this – but simplythat the people of this country deserve adequate deliberation and decision-making procedures to determine whathas to be done now. It would be paradoxical if the parliament was not part of this process since one of the mostimportant arguments in favour of Brexit concerned precisely the sovereignty of Westminster against the technocracyof Brussels. Even more paradoxical is the fact that the government intends to interpret the outcome of thereferendum as a mandate to do pretty much what they like.3/4Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/2dw3fL3 _________________________________About the authorValentino Larcinese – LSEValentino Larcinese is Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Government at the LondonSchool of Economics.4/4

There is no such thing as the ‘will of the people’ – Brexit needs the involvement of parliament

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

LSE Research Online