Brexit’s “Super Saturday” from a Bargaining Perspective
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/19/uk/brexit-super-saturday-explainer-gbr-intl/index.html
Almost 3 years ago, the British people decided by a narrow margin to invoke Article 50 and leave the European Union. Ever since, Brexit has become a never-ending source of negotiations with the EU, debates in Parliament, and even reelections. This whole interaction has been one very complicated bargaining exercise, one that in its entirety is far too complicated to analyze in a single blog post. A simpler starting point then is to look at the most recent developments from the framework of bargaining and game theory.
Ever since he was elected, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been using strong-arm tactics to try and force Parliament to approve of a deal by October 31. He justified his actions by saying essentially that the UK leaves with the deal he struck on the 31st, or they crash out of the EU, leaving them with no deal whatsoever. We can look at this situation as a bargaining setup: Johson and Parliament are bargaining on appropriate legislation for Brexit. As far as Johnson is concerned, he has all the power and Parliament has zero outside options. In fact, he could scare ministers into believing there are negative outside options- if they don’t enter a partnership with Johnson, if they don’t support his deal, then the UK will be even worse off.
This balance of power began to change during what was supposed to be “Super Saturday” on the 19th. Johnson was supposed to finally win this bargaining game, and receive most of the payoff. Until minister Oliver Letwin introduced an amendment that withholds support for the PM’s deal until all of the necessary legislation to support Brexit had been passed. From Letwin’s perspective, even if they agreed to the deal with Johnson, they would still risk the negative payoff of crashing out of the EU because they weren’t adequately prepared. The new amendment was passed, meaning Parliament now has to pass all the legislation necessary before voting on Johnson’s deal. What this does is change Parliament’s outside options. They now no longer have an outside option of at most zero, since they haven’t actually rejected the PM’s deal. Parliament now has a little more power in this bargaining situation, and hopefully, they will be able to use it to maximize the benefit (or minimize the damage) to all.