Compete for influence, coordinate with your team and shape the hierarchy of the international agenda.
The international system is organized around different areas of cooperation. International actors must decide how to distribute limited resources among them while pursuing their own interests, coordinating with their allies and contributing to outcomes that affect the system as a whole.
In this simulation, participants operate within five major international agreements: Climate, Economy, Security, Human Rights and Migration. Players accumulate strategic capacity in these different areas throughout the simulation.
Points represent strategic capacity or influence. The more points a player accumulates in a particular agreement, the stronger their position within that area. However, the effective value of those points also depends on the performance of the player's team and on the importance that all participants collectively give to each agreement.
The central strategic problem is therefore not simply how to accumulate points, but where to accumulate them, how to coordinate individual and collective interests, and which issues should become priorities of the international system.
Each participant represents an actor operating within the international system.
Players receive points in every turn and decide how to distribute them among the available agreements. Points accumulate independently in each item.
A player may therefore develop a strong position in one area of international cooperation while remaining comparatively weak in another.
Players belong to regional strategic blocs. Team performance affects the strategic value of the points accumulated by each of its members.
Teams are not associated with a particular agreement. Members of all teams may participate in any of the five policy areas.
Each item represents an international agreement and a major area of global cooperation.
International cooperation concerning climate change, environmental protection and environmental externalities.
International economic cooperation, trade, financial stability and economic opportunities.
International security, strategic stability, conflict prevention and collective security.
International cooperation aimed at protecting fundamental rights and common normative standards.
International cooperation concerning migration, mobility, borders and responsibility sharing.
The simulation requires participants to distinguish between different levels of strategic interest.
Each player seeks to accumulate strategic capacity within the different international agreements.
The accumulated points in each item represent the player's individual position in that agreement.
Players must therefore decide whether to concentrate their resources in a limited number of agreements or diversify their influence across several areas.
Each player also belongs to a team. At the end of every turn, teams are ranked according to the average total points obtained by their members.
Team position generates the following multiplier:
Individual and team interests may therefore diverge. A decision that maximizes individual points does not necessarily produce the best outcome for the team.
Climate, Economy, Security, Human Rights and Migration represent international public goods whose relative importance is not fixed in advance.
At the end of each turn, the accumulated points of all players are added together for each item. This produces a hierarchy of public goods according to the amount of strategic resources devoted to them.
Their position generates the following multiplier:
Players therefore collectively determine the hierarchy of the international agenda through their own strategic decisions.
Strategic performance combines individual capacity, collective strength and the systemic importance of the agreements in which that capacity is accumulated.
The strategic score of each player in each item is:
Strategic Score = points_item × Team Multiplier × Public-Good Multiplier
The individual winner is the participant with the strongest final strategic performance.
Teams are ranked according to the average total points obtained by their members.
The team with the strongest collective performance is the team winner.
The final distribution of accumulated points across Climate, Economy, Security, Human Rights and Migration reveals the hierarchy of priorities produced by the international system.
This hierarchy is endogenous. It is produced collectively by the strategic decisions made by all participants during the simulation.
Individual success, collective success and the preservation of public goods do not necessarily coincide.
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