What "Brexit Means Brexit" Means to Citizens

在2016年6月23日的公投中，选民们授权英国政府成为第一个脱离欧盟的国家。然而，对于人们想要或将接受什么样的英国退欧，“脱欧”或“留欧”的选项并没有给出明确的指引。这项研究项目的核心是一个对政策制定者非常重要的问题：哪些谈判结果将被英国公众视为合法？未来的谈判涉及一系列复杂的政策问题，包括围绕英国政府是应该优先控制欧盟移民流入还是与欧盟达成优惠贸易协定这一备受争议的取舍。但还有许多其他政策选择，涉及欧盟预算缴款、欧盟补贴、金融服务、欧洲法院的管辖权等。这些都没有出现在公投投票中，也不是大多数人在公投前考虑过的问题。因此，该项目旨在阐明首相反复提出的格言--“脱欧就是脱欧”--对普通人到底意味着什么的问题。无论是脱欧派还是留欧派，选民对英国退欧都有什么期望，他们希望谈判进行什么过程，最终他们希望得到什么结果？我们的目标也是促进我们对人们如何形成政策态度的更广泛的了解。除了自身利益，对态度形成的主要解释是，人们依赖信息捷径，通常是来自政党的线索。但退欧公投是两个最大的政党--工党和保守党--在公投前公开内部分裂的情况，而且在英国退欧的性质上仍存在分歧。我们认为，人们也会对其他暗示做出反应。这既是社会性质的，也是政治性质的。前者暗示了类似社会群体中的其他类型的人是怎么想的。后者的基础是基于脱欧者和留欧者之间的区别而形成的新的基于意见的团体的政治分歧。因此，我们的目标是收集人们对英国退欧谈判的看法的新信息，同时也阐明这些意见是由哪些类型的社会和政治线索塑造的。我们将与“变化的欧洲中的英国”计划密切合作，通过关注三个关键问题来传播人们对英国退欧的预期：什么、为什么以及后果。-人们对英国退欧有什么期望，他们希望谈判采取什么过程，他们希望取得什么结果？-人们为什么以及如何在这些复杂的政策问题上达成立场？-这些预期和偏好对政策制定者的谈判立场和英国退欧结果的合法性有什么影响？为了解决这三个核心问题，我们利用最先进的调查和实验方法，与领先的在线民意调查公司YouGov合作。这些方法包括1)联合分析，这是一种创新的实验设计，使我们能够确定人们如何重视复杂的英国退欧权衡的不同特征；2)调查实验，允许我们因果检验不同的群体内线索如何影响意见；3)三波调查小组，以苏格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰的超额样本为样本，允许我们研究英国退欧谈判过程中的民意动态，以及社会群体和国家认同意见的异质性。我们的目标是通过一系列正在进行的公共活动、简报会、博客帖子和媒体露面，为英国退欧的公共辩论做出贡献，并为关于公民如何对复杂的政策问题形成意见的学术辩论做出贡献。

In the referendum on 23 June 2016 voters gave the British government a mandate for Britain to be the first country to ever leave the EU. Yet, the options of 'leave' or 'remain' do not give clear guidance as to what kind of Brexit people want or will accept. At the heart of this research project is a question of huge importance to policy-makers: which negotiation outcomes will be considered legitimate by the British public? The negotiations ahead involve an array of complex policy questions, including the much debated trade-off over whether the government should prioritise controlling the inflow of EU immigrants or preferential trade agreements with the EU. But there are many other policy choices that relate to EU budget contributions, EU subsidies, financial services, jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and so on. None of these featured on the referendum ballot, nor are they issues that most people gave much thought to in advance of the referendum. This project therefore aims to shed light on the question of what the Prime Minister's repeated dictum - 'Brexit Means Brexit' - actually means to ordinary people. What expectations do voters, both Leavers and Remainers, have of Brexit, what process do they want the negotiations to take and ultimately what outcome do they want? We also aim to advance our broader knowledge of how people form policy attitudes. Alongside self-interest, the dominant explanation of attitude formation is that people rely on informational short-cuts, typically cues from political parties. But the EU referendum is a situation in which the two largest parties - Labour and the Conservatives - were openly split internally before the vote and are still divided on the nature of Brexit. We argue that people are also responsive to other cues. These are both social and political in nature. The former are cues about what other types of people in similar social groups think. The latter are based around political divisions based on new opinion based groups formed around the distinction between Leavers and Remainers. Our aim is to thus gather new information on people's views about the Brexit negotiations, but also shed light on what types of social and political cues shape these opinions. In close collaboration with the 'UK in a Changing Europe' programme, we will disseminate information on people's expectations of Brexit by focusing on three crucial questions: What, Why and With What Consequence.- What do people expect of Brexit, what process do they want the negotiations to take and what are their preferred outcomes? - Why, and how, do people arrive at positions on these complex policy issues? - What are the consequences of these expectations and preferences for the negotiation positions of policy-makers and the legitimacy of the Brexit outcome?To address these three core questions, we make use of state-of-the-art survey and experimental methods in collaboration with YouGov, a leading online polling company. These methods include 1) conjoint analysis, an innovative experimental design that enables us to determine how people value different features of complex Brexit trade-offs; 2) survey experiments that allow us to causally examine how different in-group cues affect opinions, and 3) a three-wave survey panel, with an oversample of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, that allows us to study the dynamics of public opinion over the course of the Brexit negotiations, as well as heterogeneity in opinions by social group and national identity. We aim to contribute to the public debate on Brexit, through a series of on-going public events, briefings, blog posts and media appearances, and also contribute to the scholarly debate on how citizens form opinions on complex policy issues.