Abstract
The article analyses how the setting of EU simulations influences negotiation outcomes, that is, the content of the simulated directives. We have played the same simulation of the chocolate directive – the same roles and the same Commission proposal – in various settings (with different kinds of participants, various group sizes, for one or two days, with instructors or participants playing the European Parliament (EP)). A quantitative analysis elucidates relations between settings and outcomes we would not see when considering only one simulation at a time. First, the simulation scales well. Simulation duration, number and kind of participants have little impact on the range of outcomes. Second, the directive is more liberal if participants play the EP, indicating that our instructors play the EP too tough. Third, Swiss participants negotiate stricter and more consensual directives. These results can inform the further evolution of the simulation based on hard data.
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Notes
It is easy to find a majority for an amendment in the EP, but the Council votes on a whole package.
About half of the simulations need a Conciliation Committee.
The Commission is nearly always impersonated by EuroSoc instructors.
Especially the connection to theoretical concepts is important. Feedback sheets indicate that not all students ‘automatically’ connect their experience to theoretical concepts. A feedback ‘Theoretical introduction of no use for the simulation’ does not imply that the theory introduction was faulty, but that the reflection phase failed to elucidate the connections.
More formal methods of assessment are employed by our customers. Often, EuroSoc performs the simulation as part of a broader curriculum, and the formal assessment (e.g., a written test) is done by the customer (the university). Thus, we have no data on these formal assessments of learning outcomes.
Using the number of words as a measure of information content of documents is standard in political science.
‘Bis zu 5 prozent Ersatzfette.’ and ‘Klare, neutrale und objektive Angabe der verwendeten Fette.’
Pupils use simplified documents, but the positions and the codecision procedure are the same.
A systematic relationship (e.g., if student groups were always larger than pupil groups) precludes separating the effects of participant type from the effects of participant number.
Many students at Swiss universities come from all over the world. However, we may presume that a major proportion of students at Swiss universities actually is from Switzerland (based on the proportion of common Swiss names in our participant lists).
The relationship is driven by one simulation (the simulation played in Duisburg in 2010) with 100 participants using major issue linkage (50/100/0/100), a liberalisation of chocolate products termed ‘chocolate substitutes’.
There is no relationship between the number of participants and the mean issue position.
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Supplementary information has been added to this article in the form of an addendum, available at (http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/eps.2015.50)
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fink, s. 36 different chocolate directives: how does the setting influence negotiation outcomes in an eu simulation?. Eur Polit Sci 14, 241–253 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/eps.2015.21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/eps.2015.21