Let’s Shutdown the Government: An Instructional Game
By Michelle M. Buehlmann, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks
In Let’s Shutdown the Government: An Instructional Game, Dr. Buehlmann argues that government shutdowns are the crisis in a negotiation strategy, commonly called brinkmanship. This game presents shutdowns as a tool to foster acquiescence and relies on the assumption that elected officials benefit when their actions align with public preferences. The Shutdown Game facilitates the students’ understanding of the national budget process and government shutdowns. The author has found the game to be an effective instructional tool in her undergraduate political science and public administration courses and hopes that it may prove valuable to others.
The Journal of Political Science Education is an intellectually rigorous, path-breaking, agenda-setting journal that publishes the highest quality scholarship on teaching and pedagogical issues in political science. The journal aims to represent the full range of questions, issues and approaches regarding political science education, including teaching-related issues, methods and techniques, learning/teaching activities and devices, educational assessment in political science, graduate education, and curriculum development.