REVOLUTION AND REFORM ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE—THE PERMUTATION CAN COMBINE THEIR CRITICISM WITH OUR CONCRETE PROPOSAL TO ADVANCE A MODEL FOR FUTURE DEMOCRATIC STRUGGLE
Michael Hardt &AntonioNegri, ‘4,Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire., pp. 289-290
Whenever a massive protestmovement explodes onto the social scene or whenever there is any organized critique of the global system, the first question asked by the media and sympathetic observers is always, what do you want? Are you just malcontents, or do you have concrete proposals to improve the system? There is, of course, no shortage of specific and concrete reform proposals to make the global system more democratic. Constructing such lists of demands, however, can sometimes be a trap. Sometimes focus on a few limited changes obscures the fact that what is necessary is a much more general transformationof society and the structures of power. This does not mean we should refuse to propose, evaluate, and implement our concrete demands; it means rather that we should not stop there.Every such real institutional reform that expands the powers of the multitude is welcome and useful as long as it is not sacralized as a figure of superior authority and posed as a final solution. We have to construct a method or a set of general criteria for generating institutional reforms, and, more important, we have to construct on the basis of them constituent proposals for a new organization of global society.
There is no conflict here between reform and revolution. 82 We say this not because we think that reform and revolution are the same thing, but thatin today's conditions they cannot be separated. Today the historical processes of transformation are so radical thateven reformist proposals can lead to revolutionary change. And when democratic reforms of the global system prove to be incapable of providing the bases of a real democracy, they demonstrate ever more forcefully that a revolutionary change is needed and make it ever more possible. It is useless to rack our brains over whether a proposal is reformist or revolutionary; what matters is that it enters into the constituent process. This recognition is widespread not only among progressives but also among conservatives and neoconservatives who see dangers of revolution in even modest reform proposals and respond with radical initiatives in the opposite direction. In some ways, the reactionary theorists of Washington, circa 2000, correspond to those of London and Vienna, circa 1800, from Edmund Burke to Friedrich von Gentz and Franz von Baader, in that they all recognize the emerging constituent power and believe that the forces of order must oppose it actively, posing against the possibilities of reform and revolution a violent counterrevolution.
Policy Simulations Good
They can’t solve – discussion of specific policy-questions is crucial for skills development---we control uniqueness: university students already have preconceived and ideological notions about how the world operates---government policy discussion is vital to force engagement with and resolution of competing perspectives to improve social outcomes, however those outcomes may be defined---and, it breaks out of traditional pedagogical frameworks by positing students as agents of decision-making
Esberg & Sagan 12 *Jane Esberg is special assistant to the director at New York University's Center on. International Cooperation. She was the winner of 2009 Firestone Medal, AND **Scott Sagan is a professor of political science and director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation “NEGOTIATING NONPROLIFERATION: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Nuclear Weapons Policy,” 2/17 The Nonproliferation Review, 19:1, 95-108
These governmentor quasi-government think tank simulations often provide very similar lessons for high-level players as are learned by students in educational simulations. Government participants learn about the importance of understanding foreign perspectives, the need to practice internal coordination, and the necessity to compromise and coordinate with other governments in negotiations and crises. During the Cold War, political scientist Robert Mandel noted how crisis exercises and war games forcedgovernment officials to overcome ‘‘bureaucratic myopia,’’ moving beyond their normal organizational roles andthinking more creativelyabout how others might react in a crisis or conflict.6 The skills of imaginationand the subsequent ability topredict foreign interests and reactionsremaincritical for real-worldforeign policy makers. For example, simulations of the Iranian nuclear crisis*held in 2009 and 2010 at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center and at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, and involving former US senior officials and regional experts*highlighted thedangers of misunderstanding foreign governments’ preferences and misinterpreting their subsequent behavior. In both simulations, the primary criticism of the US negotiating team lay in a failure to predict accurately how other states, both allies and adversaries, would behave in response to US policy initiatives.7By university age, studentsoften have apre-defined view of international affairs, such exercisesforce students to challenge their and the literature on simulations in education has long emphasized howassumptionsabout how other governments behave and how their own government works.8 Since simulations became more common as a teaching tool in the late 1950s, educational literature has expounded on their benefits, from encouraging engagement by breaking from the typical lecture format, to improving communication skills, to promoting teamwork.9 More broadly, simulations can deepen understanding by asking students tolink fact and theory, providing a context for facts whilebringing theory into the realm of practice.10 These exercises are particularly valuable in teaching international affairs for many of the same reasons they are useful for policy makers: they force participants to ‘‘grapple with the issues arising from a world in flux.’’11 Simulations have been used successfully to teach students about such disparate topics as European politics, the Kashmir crisis, and US response to the mass killings in Darfur.12 Role-playing exercises certainly encourage students to learn political and technical facts* but they learn them in amore active style. Rather than sitting in a classroom and merely receiving knowledge, students actively research ‘‘their’’ government’s positions and actively argue, brief, and negotiate with others.13 Facts can change quickly; simulations teach students how to contextualize and act on information.