The Brexit deal, as represented by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is the start of a new relationship between the UK and the EU. As the economic and political consequences of Brexit play out, there will be pressure to change the TCA, either in a “softer” or “harder” direction in one particular issue area or another. To try to find out where the EU-UK relationship might be heading in the medium-term Simon Hix and his co-authors conducted a conjoint survey experiment with a random sample of British voters, where they were asked to choose between different hypothetical “package deals”. This forced respondents to have to make trade-offs across key issues. When faced with such choices, British citizens overall prefer a “softer” form of Brexit to the TCA: where the UK applies EU regulatory standards in return for greater access to the EU’s single market. However, a majority of Leave voters prefer a much “harder” trade-off: of full regulatory sovereignty but continued restrictions on UK exports. Hix et al also found that Scottish citizens prefer a closer relationship with the EU across a range of issues than do English citizens. Reconciling these differences will continue to be a challenge for British politicians and policy-makers.
This seminar will be hybrid. Please register as places are limited and are available on the first-come, first serve basis.
Speaker: Prof. Simon Hix (EUI – Department of Political and Social Sciences)
A workshop covering the work of the project’s Work package 2 on Legal Feasibility and Constitutional Acceptability of Differentiated Integration
Organiser(s): Prof. Bruno De Witte (European University Institute)
More information coming soon.
A conference organised by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks
How do influential approaches in political science shed light on the contemporary political divide in Western societies? This conference asks prominent researchers to probe the power and limitations of a key theory/approach for explaining political polarization in Western societies.
The conference will take place over three afternoons, with five plenary sessions each devoted to a particular theoretical perspective.
Day 1: Cleavage Theory (Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks); Political Economy (Torben Iversen and David Soskice).
Day 2: The Politics of Space (Catherine De Vries); Social Identity Theory (Leonie Huddy).
Day 3: Worldview Politics (Marc Hetherington and Caroline Lancaster).
Each session is introduced by the author(s) followed by two commentaries. We then open to discussion from the floor.