Using board games to teach Global Politics

I've just come across a series of blog posts from PAXsims that take a look at games you can use in the classroom when teaching Global Politics, particularly the theories and ideologies such as realism, anarchism, liberalism and so on.

One of the posts explains how you can use the game Risk to teach Neo-Realism, Anarchy, Offensive Realism, the Security Dilemma, and the Balance of Power. The aim of the game is to capture as much territory as possible and gain global domination! The blog suggests limiting the number of moves to 20. There are online versions of Risk, but you may feel that encouraging face-to-face classroom interaction (or lunch club!) is better - playing both formats may actually give students something to think about. Are they persuadable/nicer to their friends in class than they are online?

The same blog post goes onto to discuss a co-operation game called Diplomatic Mission made by a company called Family Pastimes. It's difficult to explain the game adequately here - I think you'd need to play it - but it should provide a nice contrast to Risk, in that you can teach the concepts of liberalism and constructivism, as well as the principal-agent problems, and the practical problems of peace-keeping missions.

I also found many other board games from Family Pastimes that could easily be used in the Global Politics classroom, including Peace in Our Time (solve internal conflicts without causing strife on your borders!), Power Blackout (negotiate and practise diplomacy skills, acting either in your own interest or for the greater good!),