The Reverse Groucho Rule and Brexit

Anyone surprised that the deal the British will get from the EU may sucketh mightily?  Nope.  On the road today, I tweeted thusly:

I don't know the deets but as an IR prof who studied separatism, my take is: if EU members could agree to It, it must suck mightily for UK. https://t.co/vaIlobylpM

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) November 25, 2018

How can I explain this tweet?  I have been focused on other shitshows so I don't know the details, but I don't think I need ot know them as we have two different routes lead to the same answer:

1. Invoking Monica Duffy Toft and ye olde Chain Store Paradox: When it comes to dealing with separatist units, when a country fears that letting one separatist unit go might lead to others seeking to secede, they resist mightily, if only to deter the subsequent units.  While it may not be so rational to spend a heap of effort resisting the first secessionist unit, the desire to deter others make such resistance more likely. Which explains why some secessionist conflicts are far more violent--that it is the country doing the resisting against the secession that causes the conflict to be violent.  If we think of the UK to be a separatist movement (and it certainly acts like one), then it makes sense for the EU to impose steep costs--so that no other member tries to imitate the UK. 
2.  A simplistic application of veto player theory: For the EU to make a deal with the UK, it needs to get its members to agree.  If they are operating by consensus or anything close to it, any one member or a small group of members can block the EU from offering a deal.  To get enough countries (or all?) to agree to a deal with either each one holding a veto or a subset, the question becomes--which kind of member is going to be the hardest one to persuade, the one getting in the way: a country or coalition that wants to soften conditions on the UK or a country or coalition that wants to impose costs?  I'd bet on the latter every day and twice on Sunday, as the British path to this point has not exactly been all that kind to other EU members.  Some may enjoy an EU sans UK, but my guess is that there is more bitterness.  So, whatever deal that Theresa May can introduce to parliament first had to get past the intra-EU bargaining process, right?

I am no expert on the EU, but it was pretty easy to foresee that the EU would not be letting the UK go without making it quite hard and even painful.  Indeed, seeing how May is having problems not just with her own party but within her own cabinet, I can't imagine that the deal is that good for the UK.  The funny thing, ok, not funny, the tragic thing is that this was all pretty obvious two years ago before the Brexit vote--that leaving the EU would be very, very costly.  If the UK had some leaders who could, well, lead, one could imagine them sacrificing their careers to back out and go back to something approaching the status quo.  But leaders are in short supply.  Congrats on the second biggest unforced error of the 2010s..... 

And, yes, if the Groucho Rule is that he would not want to be a member of any club that would have him, the Reverse Groucho Rule is that one would not want any member who wants to leave an organization to do so.

Brexiteers Are the Worst Separatists?

One of the basic tendencies of separatists (non-decolonization edition) is that they soft-pedal the costs of transition and overplay the benefits.  This makes sense as a political strategy: "hey Quebeckers, you get to keep everything you like about Canada, but get to be independent."  Of course, these promises are contradictions--if you are an independent country, then you can't have someone else issuing passports for your country.  You can rely on someone else's currency, but that basically means that you cannot have your own monetary policy. When the Scots tried to secede a few years ago, the Scottish National Policy changed its stance on NATO, saying that they would not mind staying in an alliance that they had long opposed.  Why?  To get more votes.

The problem is this: in a normal political campaign, you can make all kinds of promises, including ones that are in contradiction with each other and then finesse the differences afterwards.  Separatism is different--if one is successful, then one has an independent country and suddenly face a lot of new realities that are much harder to finesse.  Why?  Because becoming a different country does indeed mean breaking with the old country and so many of those promises either cannot be kept or must be kept but are very costly to do so.

Part of this is that a party that comes into power after winning an ordinary election in a democracy has to bargain with other parties, but they can ultimately pick and choose which parties and which issues to negotiate.  When one secedes, one can't choose the bargaining partners--they will be the rump state and the international organizations that one wants to (re-)join.  The rump state will have far less incentive or desire to bargain than parties after an ordinary election--the politicians of the rump state are no longer responsible for the well-being of the citizens of the new state nor do they feel a compulsion to appeal to some kind of subset of the citizens of the new state.  I am probably downplaying coalitional bargaining (of which there is much, much literature I have not read), but it almost certainly pales in comparison to the amount of bargaining power one surrenders when one secedes.

Maybe Canada would have been gracious to a Quebec that a separatist referendum. Maybe a UK minus Scotland would have been kind to a departing Scotland (I doubt it).  Part if it is, of course, that the rump states want to make the transition painful to deter other separatist units.  But part of it is just the nature of the politics of the situation--the power imbalance usually favors the rump state because, here's the dirty secret, many separatist entities are among the better off in their previous country relative to the other units so they have more to lose.  Quebec gets far more from Canada in terms of equalization payments and other benefits than Canada gets.

How does this apply to Brexit?  Besides the fact that some of the Brexiteers were lying sacks of xenophobia (Nigel Farage), prior to Brexit, the British had the best of all worlds--they got to participate in much of the EU that they wanted, they got to opt out of what they did not want, and they had a goodly amount of decision-making power.  Post-Brexit, they lose all decision-making power except if they are smart bargainers (they aren't), they lose the ability to opt into the stuff that they want, and they are forced to accept what the EU has to offer.  Oh, and the EU has no incentive to make it easy for them.

Was this foreseeable?  Absolutely.  Just the whole Ireland/Northern Ireland issue was patently obvious, to name one aspect.  Which is why the Brexiteers lied about the process and the outcomes.  Brexit is one of the biggest unforced errors a country has made (other than invading Iraq without a good post-war plan, electing Donald Trump, ....).  Could we have predicted it would be this big of a shitshow? Probably not because we wouldn't have known that Labour would suck this much.

David Cameron has much to answer for, as he let this happen.  Theresa May has not played this well, but she has faced a tough situation.  Corbyn?  Oh my.  Labour could have walked into power how many times if it was not led by such an awful person.

And, yes, it reinforces my confirmation bias about one thing--massive political and social change should not be decided by 50% plus one.  All you need is for some drunk frat boy voters or, to be more specific, resentful voters seeking change but having no clue what change really means and lying politicians to pander to the worst instincts to temporarily bridge 50% to start something that any sane, sober person would regret quickly enough.  Britain was not broken before Brexit, but it surely is now.  Whatever flaws the EU had and continues to have, ripping the UK from it is far more destructive.  And, again, we knew that two years ago.  Who has the political courage to risk their careers by suggesting going back?

Brexit and NATO

I am not an expert on the European Union, and my mid-career move to thinking about multilateral military operations did not spawn a new interest in the EU.  I am too much of a skeptic about the EU's ability to do common defence policy.  But I have been studying NATO for nearly a decade now, so what are the implications of Brexit for NATO?  Um, damned if I know.  Ok, perhaps I have a few clues.

First, there are no direct implications since NATO and the EU are entirely separate entities despite efforts by some (France) to have the latter supplant the former.  The UK was a major member of NATO before it joined the EU and remained such after joining.  I don't think there are much in the way of discernable behaviors that changed due to that move to inside the EU, although the EU may have lost one major obstacle to defence cooperation (the UK was always worried about expanding the EU's defence stuff at the expense of NATO).  However, as one expert noted:

sure, but the brits are not the only problem to def coop. 27 other problems remain. https://t.co/CkEZuZQX6A

— Christian Mölling (@Ce_Moll) June 27, 2016

Second, the indirect implications could be many, but until we see how Brexit actually is implemented, we really cannot speculate too much.  So, of course, here are some speculations:

• The most immediate impact of Brexit is on the UK economy--the pound lost a heap of value, companies may flee, and growth outlooks are now poor.  This means that the UK, which already cut defence deeply and almost randomly in response to the 2008 crisis, will have less money to spend on alliance efforts.  This will not stop the UK from being a framework nation (leader of one of the four 1k units of troops) in the persistent basing in the Baltics to be announced at the Warsaw Summit (who will be UK rep in less than two weeks?).  This is no wartime deployment of brigades to countries with little infrastructure, so it will cost but not so much that the UK will back out.  Indeed, this will be an opportunity to show the world that the UK is still a significant player with a stiff upper lip and all that.
• The most significant impact down the road is also more uncertain: that if Scotland were to secede from the UK due to Brexit, then the UK and NATO would lose the bases in Scotland.  The Scottish National Party dropped much of its hostility to NATO as it sought to make independence more attractive two years ago, but what happens before and after a referendum are, as we are learning anew this week, two different things.  That the Scots have indicated that they don't want nuclear weapons in "their" bases is problematic, as this means the English (or UK minus Scotland) subs would have to find a new home, not to mention the US ships that often call Scotland home.  

There is probably more, but that is all I have for now.  What am I missing?

More Reactions to Brexit

I wrote some quick thoughts about Brexit on Friday, and then spent yesterday mostly offline as I drove to and from the US to pick up both my repaired car and my exhausted daughter (film making is hard work!).  So, of course, I have more reactions:

• I have always thought that 50% plus one is a lousy decision-making rule for big decisions.  For many reasons:
• The drunk frat boy vote.  Ok, not this time, but instead we have some folks, don't know how many, who may have not been voting sincerely.
• Turnout, turnout, turnout. More on this below, but having major historical events potentially being affected rain is not great.
• More importantly: tyranny of the temporary majority.*  The UK has already borne tremendous costs and is likely to incur much more despite the fact that the country is essentially ambivalent about leaving.  For major decisions, I have always believed that qualified majorities are necessary.  Sure, that gums up the works, and paralysis can be problematic.  But paralysis looks mighty good today compared to Brexit.
• Referenda suck.
• The founders of the US opposed direct democracy for a reason: "unchecked, democratic communities were subject to "the turbulency and weakness of unruly passions".
• We are only now learning about the details of the process, the complications and all that.  Only after the event?
• Reminds me of my time in California where much policy was decided by propositions.  And those were mostly shitshows.  Yes, that is the technical political science term.  How do we decide the best car insurance scheme?   Vote against the propositions endorsed by the car insurance industry and the trial lawyers.  California tied itself up in knots due to popular votes on tax policy.  At least in California, the government gave out booklets explaining each proposition, its estimated costs, and who was on which side and their arguments.  Brexit? Not so much.
• The age splits on the vote and on turnout are appalling but not surprising.  Those under 50 voted against Brexit, those over voted for it.  Any student of democracy knows that the young don't turn out, but the older folks do. Which is why government spending, such as health care dollars, often is focused on the last few years of life.  Politicians respond to those who show up.  In a referendum, the outcome is determined by turnout (again, that stupid 50%+1), and this is the turnout for Brexit by age: 

•  Yeah.  Not great, Bob.  We can and should blame the young for poorly asserting their interests. We can and should blame the old for screwing over the young.  Heaps of blame to be shared although, sorry but you cannot really blame Obama for this one.
• The leadership on all sides in the UK is, um, wow, um, a train wreck.  Who comes out of this looking like they knew what they were doing, were representing their constituents and their country well?  Lots of craven behavior with folks running away from their stances (did we say that 350 million pounds were going to the EU?  Oops, our bad!).  
• Yes, the EU has a democratic deficit--hard to do any research related to the EU without running into heaps of articles on this.  But one of the most likely outcomes for the UK (or UK minus Scotland) is to have to live with/by the EU's dictates but with no power to influence them--the Norway model as it is called.  Having some kind of association with the EU that reduces the costs of the transition and provides access to markets means accepting regulations written in Brussels but with no members in the EU parliament, no Brits serving as commissioners, and no UK folks on the Council of Ministers.  So, whatever "taxation/regulation without representation" folks might have thought been problematic before is going to be far worse now. Well done.

*  This is probably the attitude that makes me most American despite 14 years in Canada--concern about tyranny of the majority.

Instant Hottakes on Brexit

We will have much, much time to ponder and study what happened yesterday... whether it was the weather that made the difference in London, why Cameron was such an idiot, and on and on.  I have a few quick reactions guided by and due to my faith in confirmation bias!

1. While I am kind of surprised by the results, I should not be as I co-authored a book that argued that individuals and leaders will often embrace xenophobia for its short term allure despite the  great costs to the country. That is why we named the book: For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism, and War (now available in an updated 2015 paperback version!).  That Brexit did well in England but not in Scotland or Northern Ireland (Wales confuses me as it always does--not enough vowels) is not surprising, AND neither does the fact that most of the polls indicated that the relationship between fear of immigrants and support of Brexit.  The strange thing, of course, is that the UK was not part of the Schengen system so it still had much more control of its borders and of immigration than the rest of the EU.  So, leaving the EU does not really "fix" the "problem" of too much immigration.
2. Events like these have huge ramifications for those inside that country, including potentially more separatism, but not so much elsewhere.  In short, direct effects matter a lot [update: see statement by Scottish National Party leader], but indirect lesson learning does not.  Why?  For the former, the exit will directly affect the interests (incomes!) and power of those inside the UK, leading to stronger interests on the part of the Scots to leave (although it may not be as instant as some might have thought).  For the latter, the problem is that there are multiple lessons to learn.  For those who want to leave the EU or separate from their current country, they can look at Brexit and say: they did it, we can do it too, taking away the positive lessons.  For those who don't want to leave the EU or secede from wherever, they can observe the economic shocks and other painful consequences and learn that this would be awful for them.  Let confirmation bias be your guide, I always say.  Again, multiple lessons to learn, so which lessons will people take away?  The only common lesson will be that David Cameron will go down in history as one of the worst Prime Ministers of all time.
3. Already folks are worrying what this says about Trump--that if the wave of populist nationalism can break the UK, then shouldn't we worry about Trump getting more votes than we expect?  Um, no.  Why not?  First, the electoral college means that the US election is not a pure referendum where mobilizing the cranky can lead to a win.  Trump would have to do very well across a number of states, including some very diverse ones.  Second, while whites are a majority in the US, white men are not. I don't know what the gender breakdown of Brexit was, but in the US, Trump has been quite successful at alienating not just non-whites but women.  Third, there is a huge imbalance in the American election in terms of organization, skill, discipline, resources and resources and resources--Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have a huge lead here that Trump will not be able to surmount, especially as potential donors ponder whether Trump is using the campaign contributions to win the election or to save his failing businesses.  I have no idea what the balance was in the UK.  Fourth, the GOP is divided, with vulnerable Senators running away from Trump as fast as they can.  Yes, the Dems are currently divided with Sanders still not dropping out (oy!), but eventually he will.  That HRC is ahead despite Sanders sticking around is a testament either to her strength, revulsion for Trump or both.
4. Most importantly, Lindsay Lohan is relevant again!

As if we weren't already headed towards a freaky Friday https://t.co/Epkvv3Khny

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) June 24, 2016

Alas, she seems to have deleted all of her anti-Brexit tweets.

Anyhow, for those outside of the UK, we don't need to panic much.  For those inside, I am so sorry for your loss.