Martin in The Guardian on Brexit Deadlock
Cathie Jo Martin, Director of the Center for the Study of Europe at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor of Political Science at Boston University, was interviewed for an article exploring options for breaking the current deadlock in Westminster over Brexit.
Martin was interviewed for a January 19, 2019 article in The Guardian entitled “How to Break a Brexit Deadlock: ‘Keep Going, Be Flexible…and Listen’.“
From the text of the article:
Cathie Jo Martin, professor of political science at Boston University who co-edited the Political Negotiation Handbook, said there were similarities between the crisis in Westminster and the government shutdown in the US in the apparent lack of interest in compromise displayed by key players. “If our children behaved in this way, we mothers would give them a time-out,” she said. “Too bad that one cannot do the same for unruly politicians.”
She said good negotiation required those involved to avoid “sibling rivalries”, ie a preoccupation with the idea that the other party could get more from a proposed deal, and sacrificing something that would leave everyone better off to prevent that.
Martin is a Professor of Political Science, Director of the Center for the Study of Europe, President of the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, and former chair of the Council for European Studies. Her book with Duane Swank, The Political Construction of Business Interests (Cambridge 2012) received the APSA Politics and History book award, and she has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Russell Sage Foundation, among others.
Martin’s most recent article (“Imagine All the People,” World Politics, July 2018) uses machine learning processes to analyze large corpora of British and Danish literature and to uncover the deep cultural roots of education reform. British literary narratives highlight benefits of schooling for individual self-growth (for upper/middle classes). The individualistic cultural slant to British stories have justified the neglect of marginal youth, because celebration of those conquering challenges with self-initiative make it easier to blame those who fail and to dismiss the youth that are left behind. Danish narratives justify schooling as a social investment to strengthen society and have driven Danish investments in educational innovations. Neglect of low-skill youth has been viewed as a waste of societal resources and a threat to social fabric. High socioeconomic equality has been a fortuitous but felicitous side effect of this mandate to educate all the people. Learn more about Cathie Jo Martin here.