TEACHING COMPANION / NO ACCOUNT NEEDED
The Order Was Given
The order is clear. Whose cooperation does it actually secure?
Authoritarian control, meaningful competition & causal reasoning · 50–60 min
Learning goals
- Distinguish a public official’s venue control from an organization’s own implemented resource decision.
- Explain how meaningful competition can persist within a seriously unequal authoritarian setting.
- Separate resources and speaking opportunity from individual votes and electoral victory.
- Isolate one access rule’s direct effect, revisit a forecast and transfer an explanation conditionally.
Before the activity
Self-contained political setting, definitions and model rules. Suitable before reading Levitsky and Way; preserve the final comparison, revision and transfer.
Syllabus description
Organize a legal opposition transport campaign in authoritarian Lydora. Publish two promises, approach four independent organizations and learn from three rounds of replies. Then change one public-venue access rule and explain what it changes, what it leaves in place and what you still cannot know about votes. Students produce evidence report with original forecasts, explanations, a controlled access comparison, revisions and a transfer argument.
Discussion prompts
- Which part of Ari’s order took effect directly, and which outcomes depended on other actors’ decisions?
- Did shared terminal access remove the ruling party’s other advantages?
- What did the access-only comparison hold fixed, and what remains unknown about votes?
- What would you need to investigate before predicting whether the sports club can refuse the new mayor’s order?
What to assess
Assess a concrete actor, decision and resource/time consequence; use of one revealed terminal decision and one organization reply; the scope of the controlled comparison; thoughtful reconsideration; and two conditional transfer predictions. Completion checks presence and length, not reasoning. Recruiting everyone, maximizing reach or preferring a party is not the correct answer.
Limitations
Lydora, its people, decisions and numerical rules are fictional. The organizations’ practical independence tonight is stipulated; it does not demonstrate weak state capacity, unreliable coercion or ruling-party fragmentation. The comparison holds all organization choices fixed. No election result is generated. The game primes questions before the assigned article, rather than teaching its full explanation.
Credit & permissions
Created by Yoav Duman. Free educational use, sharing and hosted embedding; software rights reserved. Software, artwork, branding and third-party materials are separate; see the full reuse information.
Suggested citation: Yoav Duman, “The Order Was Given: Teaching companion,” Possible States, https://possiblestates.com/teaching/order-was-given. Include your access date.
ASSESSMENT & SUBMISSION
Grade the explanation.
The interface has no opinion.
Set an endpoint, ask for the activity’s readable report, and use your existing LMS. Students can use Print / Save as PDF where a separate download is not offered. A progress backup is for restoring work, not grading it.
A suggested 10-point rubric
For each criterion: 0 = absent, 1 = partial, 2 = clear and supported. Adapt the weighting to your course; this is guidance, not automatic scoring.
- Concepts / 2
- Use the relevant political concept accurately.
- Evidence / 2
- Support a claim with a specific record or comparison.
- Mechanism / 2
- Explain how the rule or arrangement produces a consequence.
- Revision / 2
- Address a rival account or explain a change of mind.
- Limits / 2
- State what the model or evidence cannot establish.
Say this before they begin.
- Choose For class and follow the instructor’s endpoint.
- Save a progress backup before moving devices or changing website address.
- Open the readable report and check the required responses.
- Upload it to the course assignment. Check the LMS submission confirmation.
Switching from exploration keeps the current work, but skipped class responses may still need completing. A local report cannot establish authorship or make an activity tamper-proof.
Prepare an assignment to share.
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Syllabus description & discussion prompts
Syllabus description
Organize a legal opposition transport campaign in authoritarian Lydora. Publish two promises, approach four independent organizations and learn from three rounds of replies. Then change one public-venue access rule and explain what it changes, what it leaves in place and what you still cannot know about votes. Students produce evidence report with original forecasts, explanations, a controlled access comparison, revisions and a transfer argument.
Questions for a discussion board or class debrief
- Which part of Ari’s order took effect directly, and which outcomes depended on other actors’ decisions?
- Did shared terminal access remove the ruling party’s other advantages?
- What did the access-only comparison hold fixed, and what remains unknown about votes?
- What would you need to investigate before predicting whether the sports club can refuse the new mayor’s order?