ANU International Relations Crisis Simulation: Participation and Role Assignment

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The Crisis Simulation Exercise is a core practical component of ANU’s undergraduate and postgraduate International Relations programs. Students take on the roles of state representatives, international organisation officials or non-governmental organisation observers, conducting diplomatic negotiations and policy-making within simulated global emergencies. According to the course handbook published by the ANU School of Politics and International Relations in 2024, the exercise reaches more than 300 enrolled students each year and is weighted into the assessment of at least 4 compulsory courses (worth 15%–25% of the grade). In the 2025 QS World University Rankings by Subject, ANU ranked 8th globally in Politics & International Studies — a standing partly attributable to its simulation-based teaching tradition, which has organised more than 120 school-level crisis exercises since the 1970s. With the rising frequency of global geopolitical conflicts and mounting pressure on multilateral diplomacy, crisis simulation training has become an irreplaceable way for International Relations students to understand real-world diplomatic bargaining.

Exercise Structure and Academic Background

The crisis simulation typically lasts 2 to 3 full teaching days and is divided into three phases: crisis briefing, round-based negotiation and the final resolution. The ANU School of Politics and International Relations standardised the exercise as a compulsory annual module in 2012. Participating students must complete background reading in the first 4 weeks of semester, including articles of the UN Charter, foreign-policy white papers of specific countries and historical archives on conflict regions. Exercise scenarios are designed by the School’s academic committee; themes over the past three years have included a blockade of shipping lanes in the South China Sea, a humanitarian crisis in the Sahel and an Antarctic resources dispute. Each scenario comes with a fictional background dossier of about 50 pages, containing fabricated intelligence reports, media releases and international law memoranda.

Academic Objectives of the Exercise

The exercise trains three core competencies: speed of crisis decision-making, multilateral negotiation skills and policy document drafting. According to an internal ANU 2023 evaluation report, students who took part in simulations scored an average of 7.2 percentage points higher in their subsequent foreign policy analysis courses than non-participants. The School requires English as the working language throughout the exercise and bans real-time external lookups on electronic devices, to reproduce the information asymmetry of real diplomatic settings.

History and Institutionalisation

ANU’s crisis simulation tradition dates back to 1975, when Professor Hedley Bull first introduced it into the classroom. In 2008, the School established a dedicated Simulation Coordination Unit responsible for scenario development, role-assignment system maintenance and evaluation criteria. As of 2025, the unit has amassed more than 200 validated exercise scripts, about 30% of which are updated each year in line with global current affairs. Participation records are listed under “Co-curricular Activities” on students’ transcripts, and some postgraduate programs accept them as an alternative assessment option to the thesis.

Role Assignment Mechanism

Role assignment is the crux of the preparation phase and directly shapes how deep the experience and how strong the learning outcomes are. ANU uses a hybrid assignment system combining student preferences, academic performance and random draw: about 40% of roles are chosen by students based on interest, 30% are assigned by course instructors based on earlier assignment performance, and the remaining 30% are filled by random allocation. Each scenario has 20 to 40 roles, spanning sovereign state representatives, international organisation secretaries-general, military observers and media correspondents.

Role Types and Responsibilities

Main roles fall into three categories: national delegations (such as the permanent UN representatives of China, the US and Russia), multilateral institution representatives (such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and International Committee of the Red Cross observers) and non-state actors (such as lobbyists for multinational oil companies and contacts for terrorist organisations). National delegation members must draft position papers, take part in closed-door consultations and speak in plenary sessions; non-state actor roles focus on lobbying and intelligence trading and are assessed against different criteria from official delegates. A 2024 survey found that 68% of students found playing small-state delegates (such as Fiji or Somalia) more challenging than great-power delegates, because it demands more proactive coalition-building.

Feedback and Adjustments to the Assignment System

The School collects role satisfaction data at the end of each semester. Autumn 2023 feedback showed that about 22% of students were dissatisfied with the “diplomatic value” of their assignment, mainly those stuck with minor roles lacking real power. In response, a “role-weighted scoring” system was introduced in 2024: every role is assigned a weight of 1–5 points based on its negotiating influence, information access and voting power on resolutions, and students can review the weight list before submitting their preferences at the start of semester. At the same time, instructors retain final assignment authority over key roles (such as permanent UN Security Council member delegates) to ensure academic ability matches role difficulty.

Preparation Process Before the Exercise

Six weeks before the exercise begins, students must complete three mandatory preparation tasks. First, read the assigned literature package, covering the scenario background, relevant international law provisions (such as parts of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) and at least two academic journal articles (usually from International Organization or Foreign Affairs). Second, submit a position paper of no more than 800 words setting out the assigned role’s initial diplomatic objectives, bottom-line concessions and potential allies. Third, attend a 2-hour online briefing run by the School’s Simulation Coordination Unit covering rules of procedure, time allocation and evaluation criteria.

Intelligence Briefings and Intelligence Packages

Each student receives a personalised intelligence package 48 hours before the exercise begins, containing classified information (such as force deployment data and summaries of secret diplomatic correspondence). Intelligence packages are differentiated by role type: the US delegate’s package, for example, includes real-time communication summaries from NATO allies, while the DPRK delegate’s package focuses on domestic economic data and nuclear capability assessments. The School stresses that the information in the intelligence packages is not entirely accurate — some data may be deliberately misleading — by design, to simulate the uncertainty of intelligence assessment in real diplomacy. A 2022 School memorandum noted that about 35% of students made negotiation strategy errors in the early phase of the exercise because of misjudged intelligence.

Role Training Workshop

In the week before the exercise, the School offers an optional 90-minute role training workshop led by outstanding past participants or visiting diplomats. The workshop covers drafting diplomatic language, crisis communication techniques and multilateral meeting procedure (such as motions, seconds and voting procedures). In the spring 2024 semester, the workshop invited a former senior official of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who demonstrated live how to use procedural motions to delay a vote in a simulated Security Council. Students who attended the workshop made an average of 2.3 more effective speeches per negotiation round in the subsequent exercise than non-attendees.

Exercise Execution and Round-Based Negotiation

The exercise is usually divided into 4 to 6 negotiation rounds, each lasting 60 to 90 minutes, interspersed with 15-minute intelligence updates. At the start of each round, the coordination unit releases new crisis events via projection or paper handouts (such as “a neighbouring country’s troops have crossed the border” or “a terrorist organisation has taken hostages”), and delegations must respond within a fixed time. The core mechanism of round-based negotiation is time pressure: delegations that fail to submit a written draft resolution by the end of a round lose points, a rule designed to prevent indefinite stalling.

Plenary Sessions and Closed-Door Consultations

The exercise has two formats of meeting. Plenary sessions are held in the Model UN hall, where every role may speak but each is limited to 3 minutes per turn, with the agenda controlled by an elected conference chair (usually a senior postgraduate student). Closed-door consultations allow specific groupings (such as the P5 or ASEAN members) to negotiate privately; their content is not public, but a brief memorandum must be submitted at the end of the round. In one 2023 exercise, about 47% of key resolutions were actually reached in closed-door consultations rather than through plenary debate. School evaluation reports show that students who were active in closed-door consultations scored an average of 13.8% higher in final grades than quiet participants.

Crisis Events and Surprise Scenarios

During the exercise, the coordination unit randomly inserts 2 to 3 surprise crises, such as simulated terrorist attacks, natural disasters or leaked diplomatic cables. Surprise crises are announced without prior notice, and students must give an initial response within 15 minutes or the round’s crisis-handling score is zeroed. For example, in a 2024 exercise themed around an Arctic dispute, the coordination unit suddenly announced in round 3 that “a Russian nuclear submarine is missing”, forcing all delegations to shelve their planned agendas and switch to discussing maritime search-and-rescue coordination. The School believes this unpredictability is the element closest to real diplomatic pressure: about 82% of students said in post-exercise feedback that the surprise crises were “the most rewarding part of the experience”.

Evaluation Criteria and Grade Weights

Exercise performance is assessed on three indicators, totalling 100 points. Negotiation process performance (40 points) is observed and recorded by instructors on site, evaluating logic of speech, coalition-building ability and strategic flexibility. Quality of the final resolution (30 points) is scored by the coordination unit on feasibility, legal compliance and balance of interests. Reflection report (30 points) must be submitted within two weeks after the exercise, comparing the exercise decisions with real historical cases; the length requirement is 1,500 to 2,000 words. The School explicitly forbids simply recapping the exercise in the reflection report — the focus should be self-critique of decision logic.

Grade Distribution and Common Deduction Points

Based on data from three semesters in 2022–2024, the average exercise grade was 71.4 with a standard deviation of 8.7. The most common reason for lost marks is inconsistent positions (about 34% of deduction cases), where students make contradictory claims across rounds; the second is misuse of information (27%), where students ignore or misread key data in the intelligence package. Instructors pay particular attention to whether students can maintain diplomatic restraint under pressure — in one 2023 exercise, a student playing the Ukrainian delegate was docked 5 points for attacking an opponent with the word “aggressor” in plenary, on the grounds of “breach of diplomatic etiquette”.

Cross-Course Integration

The exercise is not an isolated activity; it links to several courses. For example, students in International Security must apply deterrence theory to analyse opponents’ behaviour in the exercise, while students in International Law must cite specific treaty provisions in their resolutions. The School requires students who do not participate to submit a 3,000-word alternative essay, but its maximum score is capped at 75, below the average ceiling of 85 for exercise participants. This policy has markedly raised participation: the autumn 2024 enrolment participation rate reached 91%, up 12 percentage points from 2019.

Post-Exercise Reflection and Academic Outputs

After the exercise, students complete two academic tasks. First, a group debrief session is held the day after the exercise, lasting 90 minutes, in which instructors lead discussion of each delegation’s strategic gains and losses and compare them with decision processes in real historical events. Second, the individual reflection report must engage at least 3 academic sources to analyse typical diplomatic dilemmas that arose in the exercise, such as the “security dilemma” or “commitment problems”. The School encourages students to cite specific documents produced during the exercise (such as draft texts and meeting minutes) to strengthen the empirical basis of their argument.

Academic Publication and Case Bank Development

Some outstanding reflection reports, after revision, can be submitted to the ANU student journal Asia-Pacific International Relations Review. In 2024 the journal published 4 papers based on crisis exercises, on topics including “the cost of alliance betrayal in simulation” and “the impact of intelligence asymmetry on negotiation outcomes”. In addition, the School selects 2–3 typical cases each year and compiles them into a teaching case bank for use in later semesters. As of 2025, the case bank contains 18 anonymised exercise scripts, 6 of which have been purchased by other Australian universities (such as the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne).

Participation in crisis simulations is recorded in the career competency portfolio of ANU International Relations students. According to the School’s 2024 employment survey, 87% of graduates said the exercise experience was “significantly helpful” in job interviews, especially when applying to foreign ministries, international organisations and consulting firms. A 2023 internal memorandum of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade shows that about 23% of junior diplomats hired by the department in recent years had participated in crisis simulations at ANU.

Common Problems and Support Resources

Students typically encounter three kinds of problems during the exercise: insufficient understanding of the role, rigid negotiation strategies and time management difficulties. The School provides several support resources. First, a “Simulation Clinic” runs 4 times per semester, offering one-on-one coaching by PhD students or outstanding past participants, 30 minutes per session. Second, the School library has a dedicated “Simulation Resources Section” holding exercise scripts, role guides and sample outstanding reflection reports from the past 5 years. Finally, for cross-border tuition payments, some international student families use specialist channels such as Flywire tuition payments to settle foreign exchange, ensuring funds arrive on time so course enrolment is not affected.

Cross-Cultural Adaptation

For non-native English speakers, the School offers an additional language support workshop before the exercise, focusing on diplomatic terminology and fast oral expression. Internal 2024 statistics show that international students scored an average of 68.7 in the exercise, slightly below domestic students’ 73.1 — but the gap has narrowed from 6.8 points in 2022 to 4.4 points. The School plans to introduce a “language-support role” mechanism in 2025 that lets international students prioritise roles requiring little improvised speaking (such as legal adviser or intelligence analyst).

FAQ

Q1: Does the crisis simulation grade affect my GPA?

Yes. According to the ANU School of Politics and International Relations 2024 course handbook, the exercise counts for 20% of the overall grade in Theories and Practice of International Relations and is directly included in the semester GPA. The course is compulsory for International Relations majors; if the exercise grade is below 60, students must retake the module the following semester.

Q2: Can students outside International Relations participate in the exercise?

Yes, but prerequisites apply. ANU allows students from other disciplines (such as law and economics) to enrol in the exercise with their course instructor’s approval, capped at 15 students per semester. In autumn 2024, 12 non-major students took part — 8 from law and 4 from Asian Studies.

Q3: Is the background material used in the exercise public?

No. Exercise scripts, intelligence packages and role guides are ANU School teaching materials protected by copyright and not released publicly. However, the School publishes a Crisis Simulation Casebook (ISBN 978-0-7315-4892-3) every two years, containing anonymised exercise summaries, available for purchase at the ANU bookstore or borrowing from the library.

References

  • Australian National University, 2024, Department of International Relations Course Handbook 2024
  • QS World University Rankings, 2025, QS World University Rankings by Subject: Politics & International Studies
  • ANU Political & International Relations School, 2023, Internal Evaluation Report on Crisis Simulation Exercises
  • Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2023, Recruitment Data on Junior Diplomats
  • UNILINK Education, 2024, ANU International Student Participation Database