Case Centre resources

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.

Coming soon

It is July 2021 and more than 4 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.

Coming soon

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?

Coming soon

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.

Coming soon

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?

Coming soon

Guyana in 2024 was a country on the cusp of a major transformation. The world’s largest non-state oil company, ExxonMobil, had discovered sizeable oil fields off the coast of Guyana in 2015. The discovery had the potential to make Guyana one of the world’s richest nations on a GDP per-capita basis.  The country’s president, Mohamed Irfaan Ali, in office since 2020, believed the oil could be ‘an important tool … in the building of a prosperous Guyana and a sustainable Guyana.’  

But the discovery of oil also raised a host of political, economic, and environmental questions. This mini case study is set as Ali’s first term in office was drawing to a close. Ali needed to determine how to navigate the oil opportunity with a view towards the long-term interests of the Guyanese people and the planet, whilst also managing voters’ shorter-term expectations.

Coming soon

Even though Estonia was well known as a leader in digital public services, some government departments had been less successful than others in their digitalisation efforts. In particular, the social insurance board had struggled to get their digital platform for social protection benefits off the ground: between 2017 and 2022, the project had eaten up €23 million and achieved only a quarter of its intended goals. 

This case study centres around the decision of whether to discontinue or try to salvage an unsuccessful digitalisation project. By analysing the social insurance board’s challenges to digitalisation, the case will be used to evaluate factors that contribute to unsuccessful digitalisation efforts, and in doing so, identify how governments can build up the skills to successfully digitalise.

This case study focuses on the phenomenon of pens’ blackout in Brazil where efforts to reduce corruption and increase the authority of control bodies have caused civil servants to avoid taking decisions for fear of being penalised. The case can be used to teach concepts such as how laws and control institutions can backfire by deterring honest civil servants; the role of legal uncertainty and audit; the relationship between executive and control authorities; and how to protect and promote discretion and innovation in the public service.

In June 2022, four Senators, two Republican and two Democrat, gathered in the basement of the US Senate to negotiate the details of what they hoped would become the US’s first national gun safety legislation in decades. Such bipartisan negotiations had long seemed impossible. Debates of gun-related legislation had historically been dominated by the influential National Rifle Association (NRA), which vehemently defended the right to bear arms through a large grassroots base and direct pressure on politicians. Gun safety advocates, on the other hand, had failed to convince politicians to support their mission, struggling to amass enough funding and grassroots support to influence political campaigns – even when the majority of Americans supported stricter gun laws. But gradually over the 2010s, a few large gun-safety activist groups emerged and pursued new strategies, and by the 2020s, they were seeing some political victories at the local and state level.

This had given hope to Democrat Senator Chris Murphy who had supported gun safety since 2012. But now his colleague, Republican Senator John Cornyn, threatened to walk away from the negotiations over the inclusion of ‘red flag laws’, a tool to remove guns from individuals deemed to be at extreme risk to themselves or others. The provision was championed by gun safety groups and derided by the NRA. Murphy did not want to lose this potential moment for change, and he had to figure out if he could hold the coalition together.

In November 2012, in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution, opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei faced a pivotal decision on his role in supporting the new democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Though ElBaradei and other liberal and secular figures had previously supported the Brotherhood during the revolution, they were wary of the Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda. Their primary concern was the makeup of the constituent assembly responsible for drafting Egypt's new constitution, which they believed failed to represent Egypt’s diversity. Many liberal figures were threatening to boycott the assembly in protest. 

With the assembly on the brink of collapse, Morsi sought dialogue with ElBaradei and other opposition figures to reach a consensus on the constitution draft. However, ElBaradei doubted the sincerity of Morsi’s intention to form a more representative assembly. Accepting Morsi's olive branch would symbolically legitimize his government and conservative agenda, while refusing could delay constitution drafting, leaving Morsi with unchecked powers and the country vulnerable to a military takeover. As fault lines deepened between Islamists and secularists, ElBaradei grappled with the decision to accept the invitation.