Making Agreements With Friends: Using an Analogy to Teach Informal Agreements and Bargaining in International Relations Courses

Abstract

The activity Making Agreements with Friends was developed to help students understand the complex concepts of informal agreements and bargaining. Specifically, this activity sheds light on the reputation costs and strategies (iteration, issue linkage, and coercion) that countries rely on to foster cooperation. To do so, the activity leverages a relatable analogy, in which students are tasked with deciding which of their friends they should (and should not) lend money to at a pub. This approach is valuable because although students do not have firsthand knowledge about creating informal international agreements, they have extensive experience with informal interpersonal agreements. That is, the logic and strategies students use to decide who they can trust in an informal interpersonal agreement are similar to the logic and strategies countries use when making informal international agreements. Anonymous student evaluations and results from a pre-and-posttest on the material provide evidence that this activity is a fun, engaging, and effective way to teach these concepts to undergraduate students.