Political Science
COALITIONS
1. The political system created in this simulation will be controlled by the Game Overall Director ("GOD") whose decisions on every matter are final and authoritative. The part of GOD will be played by your instructor. No whining will be allowed.
2. The class will divide itself into 7 groups ("teams"). Each team will select a name and identify a Boss.
3. GOD gives each team $100 to start the game. The object of the game is to be the team with the most money at the end.
4. GOD holds an "election" to decide each team's number of votes in an political system. That is each team will receive a number of votes depending on their performance (luck) in the election.
5. The election begins with each Boss paying $10 to GOD in "election expenses." A deck of cards is shuffled and dealt until all cards are distributed. Each team receives votes equal to the sum total of points for each card they are dealt. However face cards (including jokers) and fives have no value. So if a team receives a 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, king and jack they get 19 votes (2+4+0+6+7+0+0=19). The suits of the cards make no difference, only the point value matters.
6. GOD puts the $70 he has acquired in election expenses in the "trough."
7. The parties have preferences as to the carbon tax rate to be established by the government. Each party's tax rate will be assigned by the instructor and will remain the same for the game. In addition, each party will have an (assigned) preference for the percentage of the government's budget that should be devoted to environmental remediation. Each of these will be distributed secretly to the parties and they may make them public as they see fit.
8. The teams must negotiate with each other to obtain the necessary votes to get a tax rate and environmental remediation budget passed by majority of votes. Each budget decision will be voted upon publicly and separately. In negotiating with each other, the teams should adhere generally to the rules governing the United States, the state of Oregon and Southern Oregon University. In other words no threats of force are allowed. However fraud and duplicity, while not necessarily encouraged, are permitted. Well, maybe they are encouraged.
9. The winning coalition for each vote must be presented to GOD. GOD will know that a winning coalition has been put together when the following things occur:
a. The coalition assembles its cards so as to reach 101 points.
b. The coalition writes down on paper (1) the tax rate which it is enacting; (2) what percentage of the budget will go to environmental remediation; and (3) how the money will be distributed among its partner-teams. That is, how much of the $70 will go to Team A, how much to Team B, how much to Team C etc.
c. Only one coalition "wins" each round. There are not separate coalitions for tax rate and remediation spending.
10. Only one person ("Coalition Leader"), representing the member parties, is entitled to "vote" (i. e. assemble and show cards to GOD on behalf of the coalition).
11. Once a proposal is approved, GOD takes the money out of the trough and gives it to the Coalition Leader. The Coalition Leader does with it what he/she likes but presumably this means distributing it to the member Teams as suggested/promised in paragraph 9 b. However GOD will not enforce that arrangement, the coalition partners must figure out how to make this work themselves.
12. After the coalition has distributed its money, it must return one dollar for each percentage point the tax rate deviates from their assigned tax rate. In other words, if team Z is part of the winning coalition, and its assigned tax rate is 34%, but the winning (i.e coalition established) tax rate is 28%, then Team Z must return $6 to God. Similarly each team on the winning coalition must return $1 for each percentage point difference from the team’s defense spending assigned percentage and the defense spending coalition developed percentage.
13. If at the end of 5 minutes, (the first round may go 10 minutes) no coalition is formed, the round ends and we begin again with another election (i. e. payment of $10 by each team, distribution of cards) and a new period of negotiation. In the beginning negotiation periods will last 5 minutes. After a few rounds, the negotiation periods may be reduced to 4, 3 or even 2 minutes.
14. At the end of the class (as determined arbitrarily and exclusively - with or without warning- by GOD), the teams add up how much money they have. The team with the most money wins and each team member will receive 7 class participation points. The second place team will receive 5 points for each team member. The third place team will receive 3 points for each member.
15. Teams that go bankrupt (run out of money to pay election expenses) may borrow money from other teams (on whatever terms they are able to negotiate) in order to stay in the game. You may want to spend some time now thinking about why or how in may be in the interest of a team to keep another team in the game.
