Applying wargames to real-world policies

Oberholtzer, Jenny; Doll, Abby; Frelinger, David R.; Mueller, Karl P.; Pettyjohn, Stacie L.

doi:10.1126/science.aaw6278

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Hyde (2015, 406) concurs, characterizing the assumption that "subjects in a lab are like relevant IR populations" as one of the major fault lines in experimental IR. Oberholtzer et al (2019) go further, arguing that "although observations of players who do not resemble actual decision-makers can produce statistically significant results, they are likely to be irrelevant to realworld policy decisions." 1 Ultimately, the question of how political elites differ from masses is an empirical one, which as both Sheffer et al (2018, 304) and Kertzer and Tingley (2018, 328) note, requires using similar methods to study both types of actors; it is difficult to gauge how distinct elite political cognition is from mass political cognition if we only use case studies to study the former and lab experiments to study the latter, for example.…”

Section: Elites and Publicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Re‐Assessing Elite‐Public Gaps in Political Behavior

Kertzer

2020

American J Political Sci

135

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Political scientists often criticize psychological approaches to the study of politics on the grounds that many psychological theories were developed on convenience samples of college students or members of the mass public, whereas many of the most important decisions in politics are made by elites, who are presumed to differ systematically from ordinary citizens. This paper proposes an overarching framework for thinking about differences between elites and masses, presenting the results of a meta-analysis of 162 paired treatments from paired experiments on political elites and mass publics, as well as an analysis of 12 waves of historical elite and mass public opinion data on foreign policy issues over a 43 year period. It finds political scientists both overstate the magnitude of elite-public gaps in decision-making, and misunderstand the determinants of elite-public gaps in political attitudes, many of which are due to basic compositional differences rather than to elites' domain-specific expertise.

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Section: Elites and Publicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Oberholtzer et al. (2019) go further, arguing that “although observations of players who do not resemble actual decision‐makers can produce statistically significant results, they are likely to be irrelevant to real‐world policy decisions.”…”

Section: Elites and Publicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re‐Assessing Elite‐Public Gaps in Political Behavior

Kertzer

2020

American J Political Sci

135

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“…Wargames do not predict what will happen in conflict or crisis, but they can tell us why and how one outcome or another occurred. While widely accepted within practitioner communities (Bartels, 2020; Oberholtzer et al, 2019; Perla, 1990; Perla and McGrady, 2011; Wong et al, 2019), these assumptions about the value of wargaming as a research tool are mostly untested. We lay them out in this section to begin outlining a forward-looking research agenda on the unique role of wargames alongside other methodologies and archival data sources.…”

Section: Why Wargames?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They believe large—often convenience—samples playing multiple game iterations allow for statistical analysis that overcomes generalizability issues and enables replication. Other scholars and practitioners, however, believe convenience samples limit the conclusions of games (Oberholtzer et al, 2019). Specifically, non-experts may lack the technical or policy knowledge needed to make realistic decisions that mirror those that might play out in the real-world.…”

Section: An Agenda For Wargaming Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…IR scholars, however, have increasingly turned to larger online and student convenience samples for empirical studies. While this approach allows for repeatable statistical analysis that overcomes the fundamental problem of causal inference and enables the study of public preferences, convenience samples may yield limited insights about government decision-making if subjects are not representative of actual policymakers (Dietrich et al, 2021; Oberholtzer et al, 2019).…”

Section: Why Wargames?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wargaming for International Relations research

Lin-Greenberg

Pauly

Schneider

2021

European Journal of International Relations

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Political scientists are increasingly integrating wargames into their research. Either by fielding original games or by leveraging archival wargame materials, researchers can study rare events or topics where evidence is difficult to observe. However, scholars have little guidance on how to apply this novel methodological approach to political science research. This article evaluates how political scientists can use wargames as a method of scholarly inquiry and sets out to establish a research agenda for wargaming in International Relations. We first differentiate wargames from other methodological approaches and highlight their ecological validity. We then chart out how researchers can build and run their own games or draw from archival wargames for theory development and testing. In doing so, we explain how researchers can navigate issues of recruitment, bias, validity, and generalizability when using wargames for research, and identify ways to evaluate the potential benefits and pitfalls of wargames as a tool of inquiry. We argue that wargames offer unique opportunities for political scientists to study decision-making processes both in and beyond the International Relations subfield.

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Preparing for War: wargaming the NATO-Russia confrontation in the Baltics

Regnier

2023

Critical Studies on Security

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The recent literature has inquired how media, official discourses, popular culture, or even sports and toys, can shape political imaginary into thinking that military intervention is the only relevant course of action. In this endeavor, the role of wargaming in justifying further militarization remains largely understudied. By building upon the RAND Baltic 2014-2015 wargame and the subsequent NATO decision to deploy troops in the Baltics and Poland, I propose that certain wargames can legitimize the use of force in three ways: by reflecting the security community's concerns in the storyline of the game, by designing the game in such a manner that preparation for war becomes the only well-founded means of tackling the issues posed by the game, and by enhancing its circulation in the defense field, notably by presenting the wargame as having the same level of credibility as science. Drawing upon assemblage theory, I propose that wargaming encompasses more than the individual experiences of its players. It encompasses the extensive sociotechnical assemblage of practices, technologies, networks of actors, and resulting emergent properties that together can amplify the conditions of possibility favourable to military deployment.

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Applying wargames to real-world policies

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Re‐Assessing Elite‐Public Gaps in Political Behavior

Re‐Assessing Elite‐Public Gaps in Political Behavior

Wargaming for International Relations research

Preparing for War: wargaming the NATO-Russia confrontation in the Baltics

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