PS 160 Intro to World Politics

Leanne C. Powner

This page contains some of the various activities, assignments and games I have created to support the teaching of introductory world politics, particularly when using the Bueno de Mesquita text. All documents linked to this page are © Leanne C. Powner, 2004, unless otherwise noted. Documents are PDF format unless otherwise noted; users are under the honor system to make only minor modifications to accommodate their own lesson plan purposes to any documents available in Word 2000 format. UPDATE: Remaining links pending document conversion to PDF format. Posting expected within this term; please email and ask if you see something you want sooner.

Study Guides – Chapter by chapter vocab lists with study and reading questions. [Note: document references bonus point opportunities at the bottom of many pages.]

Teaching and Practicing Modeling Concepts: Student Worksheets

Make Your Own Extensive Form Games – provides a framework for students to create four simple (two-actor, three-node) extensive form games.

Median Voter Theorem – US, Canada, and Mexico negotiate the NAFTA agreement. Two-page assignment featuring two sets of issue negotiations and power-weighted voting; paired issues with the same actors facilitate conversion into a spatial model as a class activity or teaching tool.

Spatial Models

With Circular Indifference Curves

German Reunification and the Fate of Berlin - Following the text’s end of the Cold War theme, this page asks students to create a simple spatial model representing interaction between Kohl and Gorbachev over the security of Berlin and policy towards East German refugees. Allows a good introduction of issues of types and uncertainty as a preview of the next text chapter.

Domestic Turmoil and East Asian Security – Advanced spatial modeling concepts applied to interaction between Taiwan and Mainland China over integration and regional security. Integrates ideas of war as a breakdown in bargaining, domestic politics, uncertainty/types, faces of power, and suggests some links between security and IPE in the context of leader security. Students need a solid understanding of indifference curves to complete this assignment; advanced students are invited to convert this scenario into an extensive form game with uncertainty.

With Non-Circular Indifference Curves

US Assistance in the Nicaraguan Civil War - Page remains in development. Please email if interested; draft or incomplete versions may be available.

Games with Uncertainty – Document contains three separate sets of two-actor extensive form games with one information set: enough games to allow your students to practice and master this skill. Set I includes ‘The Jerry Springer Game,’ in which Pat and Chris confront allegations of infidelity without ever using a single gender-specific pronoun. Set II includes Bush and Hussein, the Japan-EU trade relationship, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Double-Zero Option, a three-type game used as a challenge for students. Set III includes Kohl, Gorbachev, and Berlin (reprised from the spatial model worksheet), the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court, EU-WTO negotiations on agriculture protection, the Yom Kippur War, and a challenge game of the appeasement at Munich, where a prior move by Hitler causes pooling of types at the point of Chamberlain’s decision. The set also includes an incomplete game composing both Bush-Hussein matches above, where both players face uncertainty. Please note that pages in the middle of the document are out of order.

Solving Strategic Form Games – Handout reviewing how to solve a strategic-form game. Prisoner’s Dilemma used as an example. (NB: not an assignment, just a handout)

Make Your Own Strategic Form Game – ‘Preferences, Choices, and Common Games’ takes students through the steps of creating and solving a strategic form game, then comparing those payoffs to the logic of other simple, common games. References a document currently unavailable electronically, which contains tables from the BdM workbook with payoff structures from common games (prisoner’s dilemma, stag hunt, chicken, battle of the sexes, deadlock, etc.).

Battle of the Sexes and First Mover Advantage – This page asks students to create preference orderings and extensive-form games for Franco-British interaction over which Chunnel lanes would travel in each direction. The extensive-form games then collapse into a Battle-of-the-Sexes strategic form game. (NB: The term ‘battle of the sexes’ does not appear.)

International Political Economy

Comparative Advantage worksheet – appropriate for homework or in-class partner activity. The logic of comparative advantage, as revealed when a disaster in Ann Arbor destroys all commercial sources of beer and pizza so that two frats must produce their own.

IPE group project prompts (used with Lairson and Skidmore but appropriate with minor modification for use with BdM alone)

IPE vocabulary crossword puzzle – created using the crossword puzzle generator at Discovery.com.

Hegemonic Stability Theory and Game Theory – COMING THIS TERM

General Logic (trade-theory related) – Prussia, France, and the United Kingdom, 1860s.

Relative and Absolute Gains – three-player PD

Teaching Modeling Results: Instructor Plans and Student Handouts

Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Problems of Cooperation (Morrow 1994)

Median Voter Theorem

Bureaucratic Politics and Crisis Decision-Making (Allison 1969)

Institutional Arguments for the Democratic Peace (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999)

Power, Motivation, and Uncertainty in War Outcomes

War as Bargaining (Fearon 1995)

Alliance Reliability and War Diffusion

Extensions to Balance of Power and Power Transition Theory

The Scientific Method and Student Exposure to Scientific World Politics

Reading and Understanding Political Science

Article Helpers

Teaching the Scientific Method – see my paper from APSA 2004, available on the Publications page.