Parties and Party Leaders in Belgium: Measuring the Learning Effectiveness of Role-Playing Simulations in Government-Formation Processes

Abstract

Focusing on student experiences before and after a role-playing simulation on government formation in contemporary Belgium, I use a pretest/posttest methodology to measure the effectiveness of a role-playing simulation in an introductory comparative politics course. By using a survey instrument I measure student beliefs about the dynamics of government formation in parliamentary systems before they cover theories and examples of government formation in parliamentary systems. I then retest their beliefs after they have engaged in the role playing simulation where their roles as competing party leaders show how they would act in an actual government formation game. The results of the waves of the survey instrument as well as their post-simulation debriefing papers demonstrate a significant change in their beliefs about the dynamics of government formation in parliamentary systems and they also illustrate significant levels of knowledge acquisition.

Keywords: simulations, international relations, survey

JEL Classification: A22