Note: this is a part of an e-mail that I sent my AP Comparative Politics teacher to explain an experiment/game I conducted/played this summer.
I had your class during third term of last year, and I remember being particularly intrigued by the ideas of governmental systems and processes. In fact, I believe I talked to you a little about ideas for a computer-based system for referenda that could keep track of who should vote for certain issues based upon who would be affected by the referendum.
During this summer, I ran across the idea of a game that allowed for changes in its own rules as a move, making it a simple model for a system of self-amendment. Games of this genre are referred to as Nomics. I was very interested in trying this as a kind of experiment to see how a government would develop with a group of high-school students, namely my friends.
On the Internet I developed a software application using some of my old ideas for online referenda at http://kylenomic.ath.cx/ and the game progressed for about a month (9 June to 12 July). I wrote up an initial ruleset (here) that, like a constitution, set up basic systems such as how rules were to be changed (by proposals ratified by a 2/3 majority with a 20% quorum), how to resolve issues with interpretation of the rules (a judge either agrees or disagrees with a claim about the rules, and there, for whatever reason, weren't provisions for judicial selection), and how to win (each passed proposal garnered points, and the fist to reach 100 won). The game was meant to begin simple so we wouldn't be stuck with a certain ideology.
The first proposals were in general very boring. They had to do with increasing points for passing a proposal (accepted), method for judicial selection (failed), legalizing buying votes (failed), increasing the power of the judicial branch (failed), and even the creation of an official holiday (failed). Some key things in the early stage was the creation of a points market (they could me traded or given as gifts), and 97 free points for everyone besides Jas Vinder.
Later, a new institution was created, that of a community-written story that was both pointless and sometimes comical. Each user could only write one non-consecutive sentence at a time. See The Story.
An odd change was made to the requirements of winning. Instead of surpassing 200 points to win, a person won if they had the 2nd highest score when someone reached 200 points. This reduced the danger of someone discovering a loophole to get all of the points they wanted as it would be against their best interests.
Various other proposals were accepted that changed little things about the workings of the game to make it run smoother, including a change in the way votes were cast. Instead of one-person, one-vote, it became one-point, one-vote, creating a sort of oligarchy. By this time Jas Vinder stopped voting because he felt under-represented. The funniest proposal in this period was Steven's attempt to pass a proposal to earn 102 points for himself. It didn't pass. I'm not even sure what he was thinking because those points would have made him lose. I believe he himself may have voted against this proposition when he realized this.
At this point in the game, we realized that the quorum was getting dangerously small as it was based on 20% of the recently active players. In fact, only two people needed to vote to pass anything (after a 3 day proposal period). With this in mind, we crafted a proposal disguised as a set of changes that would clean up a few problems with the proposal system. We did, in fact, rule changes that would streamline the system, but one was to our benefit. Right in the middle of the proposal (Proposal System Cleanup), we had this:
To make sure nobody gets around quorum:
205. The prescribed voting period — The prescribed voting period on a proposal is three (3) days, starting from the moment that the proposal is made in the proper way, or until accepted by quorum.
The key part was "until accepted by quorum." Since we only needed two people for quorum, we could change the game to our liking without bounds. We spent the next few days scheming and colluding, creating the rule changes that would be known as "The Night of Terror." We passed each of the 6 proposals in a carefully-calculated order over a timeframe of 15 minutes (if we did some things before others we would have created a paradox and the entire game would crumble). Basically, we had provisions for removing all checks in the system, gave ourselves supreme control of the legislative and judicial branches, and had a clause for "Mutually Assured Destruction" in that one could only win if and only if the other won. We had a slight scare because I accumulated a lot of points from all of the passed proposals, and therefore almost lost because of an oversight.
We left the game in this state for a while, to see how the other players would react to such a large change and reduction in rights. It was somewhat surprising how attached some got to the game, and treated it as if it were an actual governing body. After a few days, I gave Anant just enough points to give Anant more than 200 points and to tie for second with Steven at the same time. Our revolution succeeded (as it was much more than a coup), and there were a lot of unhappy people. A few people screamed that it wasn't fair play, but as far as we could tell we didn't break the rules.
We attempted to begin a new game afresh later in the summer, but too many were jaded from the first game, and there was a lot of bureaucratic work to do to make the game work, with which I was tired of doing.
This really was an interesting experiment, and really gave a taste of how the legislative, judicial, and executive processes work. It even showed that high-school students can run a stable democracy (that is until they get bored and look for loopholes to exploit).
This was our experiment in applied political science (albeit a simulation).