Hamiltonia: A State and Local Government Simulation

Students in state and local politics courses frequently have low levels of prior knowledge about the topic and even lower levels of engagement. Hamiltonia: A State Government Simulation promotes experiential and active learning by boosting engagement and making the content memorable and meaningful. By putting themselves in the driver’s seat of creating state and local government institutions, students understand how variations in the rules of the game drastically affect the outcome in state politics and the policy areas they care about, like education, criminal justice, health care, and the environment.

This new text and simulation provide a full grounding in the basics of state and local government while also giving students an opportunity to apply what they have learned by building their own fictional fifty-first state from the ground up. Students will write a state constitution that gives shape to the institutions and rules, then engage directly with what they built - participating in an election, addressing pressing policy issues, and experiencing the challenges and opportunities of state-level political leaders. Hamiltonia brings political science concepts alive, provides the context for students to more fully understand state and local politics and feel more empowered to influence politics and policy where they live.

Features of this exciting book include:

• An out of the box, class-tested simulation, ready to use in multiple settings and in a full range of course sizes
• A full package of instructor resources available at rowman.com, including an instructor manual, lecture slides, a test bank, and downloadable support materials for the simulation
• Pedagogical aids like learning objectives, key terms, and suggested discussion questions to ensure students understand the basics before they jump into the simulation
• Policy chapters on education, criminal justice, environment, and health to show the real-world implications of state and local government institutions and processes

Kaitlin N. Sidorsky is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ramapo College of New Jersey. She specializes in domestic violence policy and laws, state government, and women in appointed roles. Sidorsky is the author of All Roads Lead to Power: The Appointed and Elected Paths to Public Office for U.S. Women and co-author of Inequality Across State Lines: How Policymakers Have Failed Domestic Violence Victims in the United States. She has been teaching with simulations her entire career.

Kelly B. Smith is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stetson University. She specializes in the relationship among state legislative politics, bureaucratic politics, and democratic governance. Her current work examines the ways in which bureaucratic networks facilitate policy learning among bureaucrats and legislators during the diffusion of policy and its consequences for states as laboratories of democracy. She, too, has been teaching with simulations in her state politics course for years.