Teaching policymaking with games. Introduction to the special issue

Understanding how policy decisions are made is a vital skill for students and practitioners in public administration. Yet policymaking remains a complex, dynamic, and often opaque process—where ideas compete, interests clash, and change is hard-won. This special issue examines how digital serious games can teach policymaking in a manner that is both theoretically grounded and experientially rich. This introductory article addresses the unique challenges of teaching policymaking—a subject that lies at the intersection of the technical and procedural aspects of public administration and the conceptual focus of policy process theories. Teaching policymaking carries both practical and democratic value. It helps students develop strategic agency by learning how actors frame problems, build coalitions, overcome opposition, and design pathways to policy reform. At the same time, it fosters democratic competence by encouraging students to recognise the pluralistic nature of public decisions, understand power asymmetries, and resist simplistic or populist narratives. The article also argues that addressing complex policy problems requires not only sound evidence but also knowledge of policymaking, i.e. a deep understanding of how evidence is framed, contested, and mobilised within the policy process. The introductory article discusses how serious games can effectively integrate these dimensions into the classroom. By simulating real-world dynamics, games allow students to experience policymaking first-hand. This experiential approach fosters critical thinking, soft skills, and a realistic understanding of the complexity of policy decisions. The articles in this special issue expand on these themes, presenting insights from the use of the P-CUBE digital game across diverse policy fields, including social inclusion, scientific decision-making, and urban policy, and offering practical guidance on game design, classroom strategies, and learning outcomes.