TEACHING COMPANION / NO ACCOUNT NEEDED
Protection, Inc.: The Price of Power
You bought protection. What happens when the boss changes?
State formation, extraction & institutional continuity · 45–55 min · planning estimate
Learning goals
- Distinguish personal bargains from continuing institutional arrangements.
- Explain extraction, enforcement and continuity.
- Separate compliance or payment from evidence of legitimacy.
Before the activity
No advance preparation. Work through the offers and continuing records.
Syllabus description
Bargain for a community, then face a replacement leader. Compare who pays, who enforces and which promises survive. Find the point where a personal deal becomes an institution. Students produce bargaining, institutional comparison and explanation report.
Discussion prompts
- Which term survived the leadership change, and what sustained it?
- What would you need to know before calling the arrangement legitimate?
What to assess
Look for an explicit mechanism, accurate comparisons and a distinction between payment, enforcement and legitimacy.
Limitations
The designed cases isolate institutional features. Payment alone cannot establish consent or legitimacy.
Credit & permissions
Created by Yoav Duman. Free educational use, sharing and hosted embedding; software rights reserved. Software, artwork, branding and third-party materials are separate; see the full reuse information.
Suggested citation: Yoav Duman, “Protection, Inc.: The Price of Power: Teaching companion,” Possible States, https://possiblestates.com/teaching/protection-inc. Include your access date.
ASSESSMENT & SUBMISSION
Grade the explanation.
The interface has no opinion.
Set an endpoint, ask for the activity’s readable report, and use your existing LMS. Students can use Print / Save as PDF where a separate download is not offered. A progress backup is for restoring work, not grading it.
A suggested 10-point rubric
For each criterion: 0 = absent, 1 = partial, 2 = clear and supported. Adapt the weighting to your course; this is guidance, not automatic scoring.
- Concepts / 2
- Use the relevant political concept accurately.
- Evidence / 2
- Support a claim with a specific record or comparison.
- Mechanism / 2
- Explain how the rule or arrangement produces a consequence.
- Revision / 2
- Address a rival account or explain a change of mind.
- Limits / 2
- State what the model or evidence cannot establish.
Say this before they begin.
- Choose For class and follow the instructor’s endpoint.
- Save a progress backup before moving devices or changing website address.
- Open the readable report and check the required responses.
- Upload it to the course assignment. Check the LMS submission confirmation.
Switching from exploration keeps the current work, but skipped class responses may still need completing. A local report cannot establish authorship or make an activity tamper-proof.
Make it an assignment.
Edit this text, then copy it into your LMS. These edits stay in this tab.
Syllabus description & discussion prompts
Syllabus description
Bargain for a community, then face a replacement leader. Compare who pays, who enforces and which promises survive. Find the point where a personal deal becomes an institution. Students produce bargaining, institutional comparison and explanation report.
Questions for a discussion board or class debrief
- Which term survived the leadership change, and what sustained it?
- What would you need to know before calling the arrangement legitimate?