A climate promise crosses borders. Politics decides what follows. Vela announces a stronger emissions target; in Luma, workers, businesses, and coastal residents have different stakes. Advise the government, predict its next move, and follow records that complicate the obvious story. Test competing explanations, revise your claim, and propose the evidence you would seek next. After You connects introductory international relations to current research on cooperation and domestic bargaining. Created by Yoav Duman.
About 36 minutes + a seven-minute class debrief · Solo or pairs
Created by Yoav Duman
For class. For fun.
The visible switch keeps your work as you change modes. For class: complete the evidence activities, forecasts, required responses, and final review. Print or save a PDF, then submit as your instructor directs. For fun: explore all chapters and evidence freely, without required writing. Printing your notes is optional.
Take a position.
Meet the people affected and advise the government. Then make a prediction about what it will actually do. Your advice and forecast can differ.
Follow the evidence.
Inspect records, compare explanations, and decide what the dates and statements can establish. A promise is different from an achieved emissions cut.
Keep your thinking.
Your first forecasts and original hypothesis stay in the research record alongside later revisions. Save progress, restore a file, and print your record for submission.
Real articles. Open to everyone.
Follow the question.
Every player can open these explanations and article links at any stage. All concepts needed for the core are taught inside the game. External reading is optional unless assigned; begin with the question and explanation before choosing a source to pursue.
Why would one country’s climate commitment change another’s politics?
Rowan examines whether countries’ updated pledges are related to their partners’ earlier pledges. Rudolph varies information about foreign target achievement and measures Swiss respondents’ policy preferences. The first studies national promises; the second studies a potential domestic response to foreign performance. Together they motivate an inquiry into how international signals and domestic politics might connect.
These are complementary questions, not interchangeable outcomes. Neither paper studies Luma or demonstrates the whole chain from a foreign announcement to coalition support, cabinet adoption, and achieved emissions cuts. Aklin and Mildenberger’s further reading supplies a substantive rival focused on domestic distributive conflict.
Countries can strengthen climate promises without a global authority forcing identical contributions. Rowan asks whether earlier commitments by politically connected partners help explain stronger later pledges.
The explanation, evidence, and limits
Why is coordination difficult? Mitigation offers benefits across borders, while governments must persuade groups at home to accept particular policies. Waiting for others can appear attractive. Conditional cooperation offers another possibility: confidence that partners will contribute changes what a government is willing to promise. Repeated political contact can provide information and make expectations of coordination more credible.
To see the proposed mechanism, imagine two governments considering common industrial standards. A credible partner commitment could reduce a firm’s fear of facing costs alone, making a domestic proposal easier to defend. That is a possible process, not a result measured inside a cabinet. It differs from saying that countries always copy friends or that any announced target guarantees delivery.
What the researchers compared
Rowan compares quantifiable 2015 and 2021 pledges for 112 countries. Political partners are weighted through shared international-organization memberships; economic partners through trade. Models relate updated targets to partners’ earlier targets and account for prior national targets and other characteristics.
What the evidence shows
Political partners’ stronger earlier pledges are associated with stronger updated pledges. Trade associations weaken when political connections enter jointly; the analysis does not find that trade ties obstruct ambition.
Where the conclusion stops
These are observational pledge comparisons, not random partner assignments or achieved emissions reductions. Shared circumstances and selection into relationships remain causal concerns.
Using it in the investigation: In Luma, ask whether a foreign signal changed a specific expectation or objection. The evidence would need to connect the signal to the decision process. A prior partnership makes that account plausible without settling it.
Why read it: Investigate the international pathway: whether a partner’s commitment could help a government strengthen its own promise.
Where to start & what it can establish
Read the abstract, then the research design and results. Technical network equations are optional. Notice how political ties differ from trade ties.
The study concerns real countries’ promises. The Luma/Vela chronology and targets are fictional, and a stronger promise is not an achieved cut.
Rudolph asks whether citizens respond to foreign nonachievement by supporting less ambition at home. Foreign performance can matter even when most people still support the existing policy.
The explanation, evidence, and limits
Reciprocity means responding to others’ behavior. It can support cooperation, but also pull it downward: “If important contributors fail to do their part, why should we do more?” Reciprocal defection is this movement away from expected cooperation. It is distinct from free riding’s incentive to enjoy others’ successful contributions while doing less oneself. A person can also favor maintaining a commitment while becoming less willing to strengthen it.
Consider a separate illustrative citizen who supports an energy transition but fears unaffordable bills. Information that other countries are falling short might make additional costs seem less acceptable. Another citizen might maintain support because local benefits or a sense of responsibility remain important. These possible responses connect international information to domestic politics; they do not assume one reaction for everyone.
What the researchers compared
The Swiss Environmental Panel drew its sample from the resident population register, a list of residents aged 15 and older. The experiment analyzed 3,464 survey responses collected in winter 2018/19; the article was published in May 2026. Respondents received hypothetical foreign-target achievement or nonachievement scenarios and chose whether Switzerland should strengthen, implement, weaken, stop measures, or withdraw.
What the evidence shows
Support for strengthening falls from 29% under foreign achievement to 11% under nonachievement: an 18-percentage-point difference. In the latter condition, 61% still prefer implementation as agreed. Larger perceived economic burdens are associated with stronger shifts toward weakening or stopping.
Where the conclusion stops
The randomized comparison concerns information and stated preferences, not cabinet decisions. Burden perceptions are measured rather than assigned, so their moderating role is correlational. The study tests failure to achieve targets, not proof of a deliberate refusal.
Using it in the investigation: Vela announces a stronger future promise; Rudolph’s scenarios concern later achievement or nonachievement. Use the paper to formulate a question about domestic reactions, not to assign Luma a predicted target or treat a promise as performance.
Why read it: Investigate a domestic pathway: how information about foreign performance can change willingness to support national action.
Where to start & what it can establish
Read the abstract, experimental comparison, and Figure 1. Keep preferences for stronger action separate from support for implementing an existing commitment.
The Swiss responses are evidence about a specific survey comparison. They do not establish how Luma’s cabinet, firms, or coalition would react.
Related research & background reading
Follow the debate
International Organization · Future IR essay · 2025
The essay examines climate politics after Trump’s return and identifies research priorities involving opposition to the green transition, differing national economic strategies, and the international effects of retreat from mitigation.
The explanation, evidence, and limits
A powerful country’s retreat could affect expectations, markets, and alliances. Those are different pathways. Ask whether another government changes because cooperation seems less credible, because an economic opportunity changes, or because domestic opponents gain leverage. A change abroad need not have the same effect in every country.
What the researchers compared
The authors synthesize political developments and climate-politics arguments to develop a research agenda. They critically examine “Climate Realism,” an approach emphasizing preparation for missed targets, competitive clean technology, and avoidance of catastrophic warming.
What the evidence shows
Their argument directs attention to political opposition, the diversity of viable national strategies, and international consequences rather than treating climate politics as one uniform coordination problem.
Where the conclusion stops
The essay does not estimate a universal effect of retreat or provide a causal result for Vela. Its political setting and examples are dated to the essay.
Using it in the investigation: Use this source to generate a more specific follow-up question: which pathway should matter in which kind of country?
Why read it: Extend the international question when powerful actors retreat and countries face different economic paths.
Where to start & what it can establish
Read the abstract and sections on disruptive forces and future research. This is a research-agenda essay, not an experiment.
An interpretive agenda offers questions and arguments, not measured effects for the fictional case.
Sociological Methods & Research · Methods article · 2011
The authors examine why observational network similarities cannot readily distinguish influence, selection into relationships, and other causes.
The explanation, evidence, and limits
Friends may have similar tastes because they influence each other, because similar people become friends, or because they encounter the same environment. The same reasoning can motivate questions about countries: prior priorities may affect both partnerships and policies. “Selection” means the connections themselves are not formed independently of relevant characteristics.
What the researchers compared
Mathematical arguments and examples show how different processes can produce overlapping observational patterns, requiring additional assumptions or information to separate them.
What the evidence shows
Observed network associations do not automatically identify a contagion or influence effect. Accounting for some measured traits may leave important unmeasured ones.
Where the conclusion stops
The argument does not establish that influence never happens or that every observational study is worthless. It explains what an identification strategy must address.
Using it in the investigation: For Luma, ask what would distinguish a response to Vela from earlier shared priorities or a common shock.
Why read it: Explain why connected countries moving together can support more than one causal account.
Where to start & what it can establish
Read the abstract and introduction. The mathematical demonstrations are optional.
A general methods argument does not identify the decisive process in Luma.
Global Environmental Politics · Competing theoretical account · 2020
Aklin and Mildenberger argue that climate policy is often better explained by conflicts over costs and benefits within countries than by governments waiting for foreign contributions.
The explanation, evidence, and limits
The atmosphere connects countries, but policy decisions pass through political institutions at home. Cleaner energy can change jobs, asset values, bills, and business opportunities. The groups facing these changes have different priorities and different power. A government can support a policy because a domestic coalition favors it, even without a foreign commitment. This separates the physical problem of shared climate benefits from the political process selecting a policy.
What the researchers compared
The authors assess collective-action explanations using quantitative evidence, archival material, and elite interviews, comparing them with domestic distributive accounts.
What the evidence shows
They challenge strong claims that free riding is the principal barrier and argue that several patterns attributed to it can also fit domestic conflict.
Where the conclusion stops
This is a contested theoretical account, not proof that foreign behavior never matters. New evidence can test when international concerns and domestic distribution interact.
Using it in the investigation: A useful rival asks whether changing a domestic bargain would secure support even without a new partner signal. A mixed account must show how the bargain and signal connect.
Why read it: Test whether the apparent international response could instead reflect a domestic bargain—or an interaction between the two.
Where to start & what it can establish
Begin with the abstract and introduction. Ask what observations each explanation predicts, and which would distinguish them.
The working paper may differ from the published article. Neither establishes which process caused Luma’s decision.
A nationally determined contribution, or NDC, describes a country’s climate efforts. Paris requires successive contributions and domestic mitigation measures aimed at achieving them.
The explanation, evidence, and limits
An institution can organize cooperation without centrally assigning identical goals. Publishing commitments makes intended contributions visible; a recurring review creates opportunities to strengthen them. Governments still need policies and resources to implement their promises. A target document and an emissions record answer different questions.
What the researchers compared
This official explainer describes the Agreement’s requirements and processes; it is not an evaluation of whether the design causes compliance.
What the evidence shows
NDCs are submitted every five years, with successive contributions expected to progress and reflect highest possible ambition. The global stocktake assesses collective progress and informs future contributions.
Where the conclusion stops
A procedural obligation does not demonstrate achievement of a promised emissions reduction. Real NDC formats vary; the game deliberately uses one common measure.
Using it in the investigation: Ask separately what a government promised, what measures it adopted, and what emissions actually did.
Why read it: Understand how national promises fit within the Paris Agreement.
Where to start & what it can establish
Read the NDC overview and submission cycle. Separate promised contributions, measures, and outcomes.
These institutional rules explain the setting, not the cause of Luma’s fixed decision.
Kyoto established negotiated binding emissions targets for participating developed countries. The Doha Amendment created a second commitment period covering 2013–2020.
The explanation, evidence, and limits
A binding target is an obligation, not a physical result. To evaluate a treaty, distinguish who accepted commitments, how commitments were monitored, and whether policies delivered reductions. Different institutional designs can affect participation and ambition differently; “binding” and “effective” should not be treated as synonyms.
What the researchers compared
This official historical overview describes targets, commitment periods, flexible mechanisms, monitoring, and the compliance system.
What the evidence shows
Kyoto assigned heavier obligations to developed countries under differentiated responsibility. Its architecture provides a comparison with Paris’s nationally determined contributions.
Where the conclusion stops
The overview is institutional history, not an experiment comparing treaty designs or a claim that commitments always succeed.
Using it in the investigation: Compare the design of commitments without assuming that identical legal wording produces identical political support.
Article links open a new tab. The same reading guide is available inside the game throughout your investigation.
For instructors
Let the explanation develop.
Use in introductory international relations after introducing cooperation and sovereignty, or let the opening introduce them. No specialist climate-policy knowledge is needed. The fictional countries and records are separated from published research on conditional cooperation and domestic bargaining.
Assess how students connect evidence to explanations, consider a rival, state what remains uncertain, and propose a useful next test. Completion, political preference, use of support, and forecast accuracy are separate from the quality of the reasoning.
