Playing Politics, a rational-choice workbook of sixteen games, is designed to help students understand the logic behind political decision-making, from creating a constitution to formulating foreign policy. Played in class in 30 to 45 minutes and easily adaptable to any class size, whether 30 or 300 students, these games illustrate such concepts as the importance of rules, the difficulty of collective action, and the rationality of political decisions.

State of Nature: Why does government exist? Students create a political society from a state of nature.

Great Compromise: Students revisit the Great Compromise and explore how policy is affected by different legislative structures.

Federalism: Students create a federal system, demonstrating how political interests, democratic principles, and compromise shaped the Constitution.

Voting Rights: Should the right to vote be universal? Students examine the importance of the franchise and the political strategy involved in choosing who can vote.

Lawmaking: Acting as legislators, students learn the importance of building legislative coalitions and the power of being in the majority in passing a bill.

Veto: When is the president�s veto power effective? As legislators, students learn this as they attempt to pass a bill on minimum wage.

Budget Cutting: Students explore the principle-agent problem as Congress attempts to force the federal agencies to implement its policies.

Crime and Punishment: Through a fictitious criminal trial, students investigate the relationship between jurisprudence, voting rules and political strategy in decisions.

Coalition Building: How difficult is it to build a coalition when there are incentives to free ride? Students explore this by attempting to build their own coalitions.

Campaigns: Beginning with seven political parties, each one seeking the best strategy to win voters, students learn why the United States is a two-party system.

Proportional Representation: How different are elections in a proportional representation system? Students learn this by playing the Campaigns game with a new set of rules.

Media: Students learn how the media covers politics by sorting through various news sources to decide which source is the most accurate.

Tax and Spend: As a member of a budget committee, students test the importance of negotiations and compromise in building political coalitions by creating a tax system and a budget.

Fairness: Students play the Tax and Spend game again, but with an important change in the rules: they must decide on a tax system and a budget without knowing who will benefit from it.

Foreign Policy: What influence do economic, political and historical ties between nations have on foreign policy? Students return to the State of Nature game to compete with other nations, but this time they play within a modern, global system.