Title: Cameron's pre-Brexit settlement for the UK within the European Union: failure or missed opportunity?

Authors: Max De Boer; Nathanael Hausmann; Miriam Mendelberg; Daniela Stammbach

Addresses: Bern Welcome, Bern, Switzerland ' Läderach (Schweiz) AG, Ennenda, Switzerland ' Novartis Pharma AG, Basel, Switzerland ' Swiss Federal Administration, Switzerland

Abstract: While the vote on Brexit showed a narrow yes to leave the EU, the most stunning effect was the end of former Prime Minister (PM) Cameron's political career. The vote was a surprise to many including Cameron himself who negotiated intensely with the EU members before the Brexit vote and got a surprisingly high number of concessions with the hope that the Brexit vote would be negative and that the UK would remain a member of the EU. This article endeavours to assess these concessions PM Cameron obtained before the vote, and how they were obtained. Multi-stakeholder theory and multi-actor negotiation theory have been applied to shed light on the negotiation process and a final closing section assesses whether these concessions were insufficient or whether the concessions were not communicated adequately by PM Cameron and his government.

Keywords: UK-EU negotiations; pre-Brexit negotiations; European Union negotiations; political negotiations.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2019.102024

European Journal of International Management, 2019 Vol.13 No.5, pp.662 - 677

Received: 21 May 2018
Accepted: 22 May 2018
Published online: 03 Sep 2019 *

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