Case Centre resources

In August 2021, Manty Tarawalli, Sierra Leone’s Minister of Gender and Children’s affairs, was trying to convince members of Sierra Leone’s hung parliament to vote for her ministry’s signature Gender Empowerment bill. The bill featured a 30% quota for women in parliament, public bodies, and private companies and had been received coldly by many representatives from Sierra Leone’s major parties.

The proposal followed decades of campaigning by Sierra Leone’s women’s movement, years of intense debate, and repeated promises by successive governments. But even though the bill was based on the government’s election manifesto, conversations with stakeholders, and a detailed policy paper, parliamentarians still asked her to conduct yet another round of national consultations. It was clear to her that the bill and the 30% quota were on the verge of being rejected: ‘Go out, go and do consultations. That is one way of derailing something’, Tarawalli remembered. As Tarawalli gathered herself, she had to consider her next steps. How could she overcome the resistance and usher the bill through parliament? Which negotiation strategies could she use to break the impasse?

In the autumn of 2022, the UK government faced critical decisions regarding adult social care reform in England. The adult social care sector was under severe strain, with record-high staff vacancies, financial instability among care providers, and growing demand for services. Meanwhile, the NHS was also stretched, with hospital discharges delayed due to limited social care capacity. A long-promised reform to cap lifetime care costs, based on the 2011 Dilnot Commission’s recommendations with an aim of preventing catastrophic care costs, was set to be implemented in 2023. But in November 2022, economic pressures – exacerbated by post-Covid-19 challenges and recent market instability – meant the Treasury was reassessing its £3.6 billion funding commitment for the policy reform amidst wider budget cuts. Local councils called for a delay given their difficult financial position, while advocacy groups like Age UK, which represented older people, urged immediate action, warning not to kick the decision into the long grass, like successive governments had before them. The Treasury, the office of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and the Department of Health and Social Care had to decide what to do.

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In October 2023, officials in Mongolia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to decide whether to invite Russia’s president Vladimir Putin to attend a major state celebration, which, in previous years, had served as an occasion for important diplomatic meetings. But in March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) had issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest over alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine. The ICC expected its state parties, including Mongolia, to comply with the warrant. Yet some international law experts disagreed as to whether Mongolia had a duty or even the right to arrest Putin due to longstanding rules around the immunity of heads of state. For Mongolia, positioned between Russia and China and the region’s only democracy, these conflicting legal interpretations were joined by crucial policy implications.

Since leaving the Soviet Union in 1990, Mongolia had sought to balance its two neighbours’ influence and ensure independent survival orging ties with new, democratic partners. Inviting Putin and not complying with the arrest warrant could jeopardise Mongolia’s international standing. On the other hand, not inviting the president could threaten its crucial relationship with one of its two major economic partners.

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The 2024 presidential elections upended the traditional political status quo in Sri Lanka. As happened around the world that year, the incumbents were voted out and a new party – the National People’s Power (NPP) – secured the presidency. The elections came hot on the heels of a political and economic crisis in Sri Lanka. Facing massive nationwide protests, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned and fled the country, bringing to an end years of Rajapaksa family influence. Yet, many Sri Lankans were also dissatisfied with the main opposition party. Instead, many turned to the NPP, which had only been established in 2019, and which had campaigned on an anti-corruption, anti-establishment platform, promising systemic reform.

However, the NPP performed relatively poorly in areas with large minority populations, particularly among Sri Lankan Tamils. As the parliamentary elections loomed, the NPP was seeking to attract a more diverse vote without alienating its base, hoping to secure enough of a majority to deliver constitutional change. In this case study and discussion, participants consider how social and political cleavages, especially those related to ethnicity, have structured politics in Sri Lanka and how political parties have related to, embedded, or reshaped this ethnic alignment.

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Can four rival mayors overcome politics, competing interests, and scarce resources to transform healthcare in Bahia, Brazil? This multi-issue, multi-party negotiation role-play puts participants into the heart of one Brazilian state’s ambitious health regionalisation agenda. For years, medium-complexity care such as CT scans and specialist consultations had been concentrated in the state capital, creating deep disparities in access, with rural patients often delaying or missing vital care. To close this gap, the state introduced regional polyclinics managed by consortia of mayors and the state government. Participation, however, is completely voluntary, and a few regions have yet to join.

This simulation focuses on one of these regions, Ventura. In Ventura (fictionalised for teaching purposes), four municipalities must decide if they will at last form a consortium, and, if so, what health services to offer. Participants role-play as mayors and state representatives negotiating the terms of the collaboration. The stakes are high: success promises improved health outcomes and potentially reduced costs for the region, but, with politics, priorities, and resources varying widely between municipalities, each party is striving to achieve the best outcome for their own constituents.

In 2018, Ghana’s Minister of Education Matthew Prempeh was reconsidering the language of instruction (LOI) policy for primary schools. In a country with more than 80 local languages yet a national language of English, the LOI policy stated that Grades 1 through 3 should be taught in one of 11 select Ghanaian languages, with Grade 4 onwards taught in English. While international evidence showed that students learnt critical skills best when taught in their first language, Prempeh saw many implementation challenges to the existing LOI policy, such as providing teaching materials in the 11 different languages. Moreover, Prempeh viewed English as a global language that could unlock opportunities. Should he improve the implementation of the current LOI policy, introduce English earlier, or move to English-only instruction altogether?

It is January 2025, and Ukraine is facing a military threat to its survival from Russia. Almost three years have passed since Russia had marched on Kyiv and more than 10 years since Russia occupied Crimea. While a stalemate has fallen on the battlefield, the political landscape is shifting. For years, the Russian government has been demanding that Ukraine give up claims to the Russian-occupied regions, and recognise them as part of Russia, as well as halting any attempt to join NATO – demands which have long been rejected by Ukrainians. Yet, the war has taken a heavy toll on Ukraine and a new US administration has entered office with a dramatic shift in policy towards Ukraine, potentially forcing Ukraine to reconsider its position. With it seeming increasingly likely that Ukraine will soon be handed terms of a ceasefire agreed between Russia and US, how could the country ensure that it responded in such a way that would best protect its security in short- and long-term? 

In this case study, participants consider how to prepare President Zelenskyy for a potential ceasefire deal over a 90-minute discussion-based class.

In the 2020s, the Japanese government was taking major steps to revitalise its semiconductor industry. But this renewed investment came amidst a changing geopolitical landscape, marked by growing tensions between the US, Japan’s major security ally, and China, Japan’s largest economic partner. Alleging that China was using advanced US chips to modernise its military, the US implemented wide-sweeping export controls to prevent China from accessing advanced chips and the equipment needed to make them. The US wanted Japan to align with its export controls to make them more effective and, after nearly a year of talks, Japan introduced a limited set of export controls in 2023, though it did not name China as the target. China responded by circumventing restrictions and redoubling efforts to build domestic capacity.

Then, in late 2024, the US pressured Japan to tighten restrictions even further, including for some equipment and chemicals of which Japan was the leading producer. Japan worried about the potential impact on Japanese businesses, as well as retaliation from China, and had to weigh up the short-term and long-term consequences of tightening restrictions or resisting US pressure.

By the 2020s, Rwanda faced a learning crisis: while almost all children were in school, learning outcomes remained poor. Determined to improve education quality, the government had prioritised education in its national budget. Now, the Ministry of Education was under pressure to deliver. For the past year, Dr. Bernard Bahati, a director general in the ministry, had led a task force to reform teachers’ performance contracts and explore whether incentives could be linked directly to student learning. The team launched an adaptive trial of a promising pay-for-performance model, previously successful in a smaller pilot, to test its effectiveness at scale.

However, six months into the trial, a new minister was appointed. Although some early signs were encouraging, the results were still preliminary, with no statistically significant gains in learning – and implementation had proven difficult. Despite these concerns, the new minister, eager to address the crisis, pushed to roll out the performance contracts nationwide within the year. Caught between political pressure to act quickly and researchers urging caution, Bahati faced a critical decision: whether to scale an unproven program in hopes of immediate impact, or to delay and risk losing momentum and political support.

It is July 2021 and more than four million people across the world have lost their lives to Covid-19. With the pandemic still raging, mass vaccination programmes have been rolled out in many countries as one essential strategy to combat the virus. However, access to vaccines is highly uneven around the globe: while rich countries have vaccinated large proportions of their populations, some low-income countries have vaccination rates of under 1%. 

In this multi-issue, multi-party negotiation role play, participants representing governments from the Global North, governments from the Global South, and pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers must work together to improve access to vaccinations. And although all parties share a common interest in seeing vaccination rates rise globally, individual and national interests diverge and finding an agreement on the best route to achieve the desired goal is extremely challenging. In the negotiation, participants must navigate shifting alliances and competing interests and must, fundamentally, develop an understanding of how to negotiate for the public good.