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Protection, Inc.
The price of power
Instructor guide · Edition 2026-10-10.1
Created by Yoav Duman
A solo activity about protection, bargaining and institutions that can outlast a leader. Preserve uncertainty about historical origins and legitimacy; students’ political choices do not earn better grades.
What students should be able to explain
- Distinguish continuing state-like organizations, replacement leadership, and an authority rule. One office is not automatically a sovereign state; CHECK is not a complete democracy.
- Explain a possible link from repeated resource demands to continuing collectors, records and guard command.
- Identify who enforces a limit and distinguish permission from the capacity to violate it.
- Use selected evidence to separate institutional continuity from claims about historical origins or accepted authority.
Assign it and protect discussion time
No prior theory knowledge or account is required. Solo completion is estimated at 45–55 minutes, not measured with human learners. Protect another 10 minutes for discussion and submission. For a 50-minute meeting, assign the briefing and first season beforehand. Another option is to split at the end of Season 2 and download a backup before leaving.
Assignment wording: “Represent Riverside, complete the two seasons and investigation, then download your individual PDF report and submit it to Canvas. A LOCAL choice is legitimate. Show what follows from the evidence and what remains uncertain.”
What each bargain actually changes
| Choice / term | Immediate consequence | Continuing consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Season 1 JOIN at 2 / 3 | Start at 6, spend 2 / 3, retain 4 / 3. Both JOIN and LOCAL protection work. | One-season patrol only. Price 3 includes discretionary surplus. No continuing office yet. |
| Season 1 LOCAL | Spend 3, retain 3. Each community chooses independently. | Local institutions continue. Refusal does not destroy another community’s protection. |
| Season 2 JOIN | Spend 3, retain 3. Two units fund patrols; one funds the office. | Recurring obligation, register and collectors. Joining guards answer to office command. At least one joiner creates an office covering joiners only. |
| OPEN / BLOCK | LOCAL costs 3 / 4. The extra unit is a detour loss, not captain revenue. | Changes the cost of refusing. Bridge control remains even if no new office forms. |
| AUTO / CHECK | Both begin at 3. No emergency extra is collected in Season 2. | AUTO permits one emergency extra. CHECK requires more than half of joining communities to approve; officials enforce that limit in the baseline. |
| No joiners | No recurring office levy. | No new office; local institutions and bridge control persist. Changing a written payment term cannot create members or collectors. |
The captain’s profile is fixed for a run. Market joins an OPEN offer in Season 2; Hilltop joins CHECK. These are authored policies, not predictions about real people. Free-text explanations do not determine the offer. A replay reruns these membership policies and can change the bargain; it archives the original outcomes.
The new captain: a controlled comparison
Students first answer whether the replacement can demand 4 without approval. Feedback then compares the actual rule, its opposite, and CHECK with officials following the captain instead. Keep the same joiners, bridge access, ordinary bill of 3, captain’s demand for 4 and zero approvals. Do not recalculate membership. The comparison changes no recorded supplies.
Worked arrangement: Riverside JOIN + OPEN + CHECK yields three joiners. The same three joiners under CHECK retain the ordinary levy of 3; collectors refuse the extra because zero approvals falls short of two. Change only CHECK to AUTO and the extra is permitted, so collection becomes 4. Return to CHECK and change only officials’ obedience: collection becomes 4 in breach of CHECK. The office, register and ordinary levy persist in all three rows.
Contrasting arrangement: Riverside LOCAL + BLOCK + AUTO yields zero joiners because Market refuses BLOCK and Hilltop refuses AUTO. Switching only the payment rule in the diagnostic leaves zero joiners and no new office. A genuine replay with CHECK would rerun Hilltop’s policy and could create an office; that is a different comparison.
The failure scenario assumes obedience to the personal order makes collection possible. It does not model a further refusal, administrative incapacity, capture process or revolution. Ask students what evidence would justify this assumption. CHECK is neither self-enforcing nor automatically stable in real politics.
Discussion and assessment
- Ask students to explain the new-captain outcome to a partner without reading the interface. What organization continued, what person changed, and who sustained the payment rule?
- Compare the actual and diagnostic rows. Which condition changed? Which remained fixed? Why is changing the rule different from renegotiating membership?
- Ask whether a written limit and effective enforcement can diverge. What would the simulation need to represent a collector unable to resist?
- Discuss the Harbor League. What do the two opened files support? What does the unselected file leave unknown?
Review reports for: a correct reading of the rule, a concrete causal link, appropriate evidence and an explicit limit. Supply totals, JOIN/LOCAL, word counts and completion indicators are not measures of reasoning quality. First checked answers, explanatory revisions and replays remain in the report. A supported answer need not change after feedback.
The Harbor League is an invented practice case. Its staff file requires three approvals out of four: two is only half. Payment cannot establish everyone’s motives; interviews are a convenience sample. The model does not prove a universal route to state formation or recommend war.
Saving, PDFs and submission
- Autosave: uses this browser on this device and website. The visible status reflects a successful write. Private browsing, disabled storage, clearing data or opening another website can prevent resumption.
- Save progress: download a JSON backup before switching locations. Restore validates it before asking to replace active work. Cancel and rejected imports retain the current run. Compatible original-edition backups retain decisions, feedback and history.
- Two tabs: conflicting checkpoints pause autosave in this tab. Download its backup, then choose the saved version or this tab explicitly. Close the other tab.
- PDF report: creates a readable file directly on the device, with page numbers and draft/completion status. Built-in font limitations route to Print / Save as PDF to preserve other scripts. Download HTML is another readable fallback.
- Submission: save the report, upload it through Canvas and check its confirmation. The game itself does not upload, notify an instructor or synchronize records. The progress backup is not the submission.
The standalone file works offline and contains matching instructor notes under Help & rules. Evidence does not require the illustrations: all facts are textual, controls are labeled, and responses do not depend on color or speed. Mobile layout and keyboard affordances have been inspected structurally; this edition has not been tested with human learners or a screen reader.
Scope and sources
Adapted from Yoav Duman’s Protection, Inc. classroom materials. Its historical interpretation draws on Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime” (1985), in Bringing the State Back In, pp. 169–191; Robert M. Fishman, “Rethinking State and Regime” (1990), World Politics 42(3), pp. 422–440; and Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation” (1919). Costs, actors, consequences, character policies and Harbor League evidence are authored fictional rules, not observations from these works.