Advisory ex ante referendums, such as the referendum on the UK membership in the European Union in 2016, provide MPs with a (more or less) clear mandate from their principal, but they are not legally binding. Implementation thus still requires a legislative act, usually by parliament. MPs therefore face the decision whether to follow the will of ‘the people’ or to decide according to their own judgement, and thus whether to act as delegates or trustees.
How do legislators deal with having preferences that go against those of the principals that they represent in parliament? This article analyses the debate in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum in the House of Commons to explore the relationship between divergent preferences and legislative speeches. It finds that legislators who defy the will of their country or constituency are rather communicative, and their speeches reveal higher levels of negativity. In contrast, those defying their party refrain from speaking in parliament, but if they speak, they use a significantly less negative language.
Every vote creates winners and losers, opening a satisfaction gap between the two. At a time when concerns are high for democracy, we do not know what exactly leaves substantial proportions of voters—losers—dissatisfied with the system. This paper provides causal evidence for the cognitive dissonance theory, which points at unfulfilled winning expectations. With a difference-in-differences design around the Brexit referendum, it finds that the result caused an additional 3% decrease in the Remainers’ satisfaction if they were expecting to win the vote.