Deal or no Deal: Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement and the Politics of (Non‐)Ratification
本文挑战了将梅的脱欧协议失败归因于首相议会弱势的常见解释，提出政府以“无协议”威胁议员的能力在谈判中瓦解才是批准失败的主因，对理解英国脱欧政治有重要参考价值。
Abstract The defeat of Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement in the British Parliament is often ascribed to the prime minister's precarious situation in Parliament and her inability to negotiate a deal that satisfied domestic stakeholders. But the contradictions of Brexit were always going to produce a least‐worst agreement and patterns of support for the deal were largely invariant to changes in its contents. Drawing on the literature on ratification, this article sets out an alternative explanation for the demise of the Withdrawal Agreement. It argues that the government's ability to threaten MPs with a ‘no deal’ outcome placed the executive in a strong position following the referendum, and that the primary source of ratification failure was the breakdown of this ability over the course of the negotiations. This account helps us understand why the government was initially unwilling to seek the support of stakeholders outside of the Conservative Party for its Brexit proposals.