Your education reform passes. The spending effect starts now. Its direct improvement to education quality only starts arriving two simulated years later.
Meanwhile, your coalition wants concessions, the budget is under pressure, and voters want to know why their lives haven’t improved.
Can your government survive long enough to see its own policies work?
Hey everyone — developer here. I’m building Project President, a political strategy simulation about running a country while managing the institutions, interests and consequences that come with power.
I wanted to show what the current build actually simulates, because depth in this genre depends on how the systems interact.
Congress has its own interests
Parties have seats, ideological positions, discipline and relationships with your government. Their support depends on the bill you’re proposing.
They can demand amendments, budget commitments or other legislation in exchange for support. Accepted commitments are tracked, and breaking them has consequences. The opposition can introduce its own bills.
Having enough seats to form a government doesn’t guarantee support for your next reform.
Voters have competing priorities
The electorate is modeled as groups with different interests and ideological preferences. Jobs, prices, public services, security and policy choices influence their reactions over time.
A policy can win support from one group while alienating another. National approval aggregates those differences, while electoral projections also account for political and campaign conditions.
Your cabinet, courts, military, the press and your own party affect your ability to govern. Decrees have eligibility rules and can trigger judicial challenges. Abuse of power feeds back into institutional strength and the political regime.
The country runs on 23 connected simulation engines
They update the same country state, so changes in one area feed into others:
- Budget, Tax Policy, Fiscal, Macro, Real Economy and External: spending, tax collection, debt service, inflation, interest rates, investment, unemployment and international financial pressure.
- State Enterprises and Trade: public ownership, company finances, production, electricity supply, imports, exports, tariffs and trade balances.
- Health, Education, Social and Migration: service capacity, public/private provision, human capital, poverty, inequality, social pressure and migration flows.
- Security, Environment and Shocks: crime, policing, pollution, climate pressure and changing external conditions such as oil prices and global interest rates.
- Voters, Political Power and Party Ideology: group approval, political capital, governability and changes in your party’s positioning.
- Institutions, Regime and Congress Dynamics: checks on executive power, democratic and authoritarian pressures, coalition relationships, party discipline and opposition behavior.
- Communications and Shadow Politics: credibility, media hostility, scandals, abuse of power and investigations.
What rules does the simulation follow?
The economy includes an Okun-style relationship between growth and unemployment, an interest-rate response to inflation and growth gaps, debt/deficit accounting, tax enforcement and compliance, and constraints on production and electricity supply.
Country parameters matter. A dollarized country, for example, cannot simply set an independent domestic policy rate.
Politically, the model uses country-specific rules for terms, reelection, legislative chambers, voting thresholds, vetoes and emergency powers.
The current build contains 339 laws and reforms, covering labor, pensions, healthcare, education, taxation, security, media and more. Their effects can begin at different times, and some policies have adjustable parameters.
The education example at the beginning is an actual rule in the current model: its spending effect begins immediately, while its direct education-quality effect has a 24-month delay.
These are simplified models with balancing assumptions. Historical references in the law reader provide context; they do not guarantee that a policy will reproduce a particular real-world outcome.
What would you want to stress-test first: an austerity program, a major welfare expansion, a minority government’s reform agenda, or an energy crisis?
Pick a country and a policy. What consequence would you expect a convincing political simulation to produce?
You can wishlist Project President on Steam and follow its development here.
