GPPI: Gaming the Political Economy of Conflict

The Global Public Policy Institute has issued a new report on gaming the political economy conflict.

How do economic factors shape the dynamics of violent crises? To launch and sustain their fighting, conflict actors rely on financial resources and access to physical supplies; economic motives may themselves also be an important driver of violence. There is no lack of academic research describing these dynamics, nor of practice-oriented frameworks for grasping how they play out in a given conflict context. Yet there remains a very large step between better contextual understandings and being able to anticipate the concrete consequences of an external intervention. 

This is a significant challenge for policymakers as they consider intervening in the political economy of a crisis setting. They have a range of interventions at their disposal, from sanctions regimes to fostering peace-positive investments. But the complexity of conflicts means it is crucial to think through the possible impacts – and unintended consequences – of any potential intervention. This project explored how simulation games can serve as a valuable tool for conducting forward-looking analysis in such contexts. It positioned simulation games at the intersection of political economy analysis and serious games methodologies. 

The project’s final publication offers a practical toolbox for developing simulation games tailored to analyzing political economy interventions in stabilization settings, including a step-by-step process and a menu of potential design choices. While these apply to a broad range of settings and themes, the discussion also draws on the project team’s experiences in designing a game on conflict dynamics in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The report is an extremely useful contribution to the literature on confict simulation. You will find both a summary of their work and a link to the full (49pp) report at the link above.