POLI 308 Research Paper
Summer 2020
Explaining the 2016 Election
Due
Date is listed on the syllabus
This is big and has very important information in it. For that reason, I’ve created a Table of Contents (linked to sections below) for you to use to find information you’re looking for. You should read this entire assignment, however. I guarantee you will wind up with a better grade if you do.
Rough Drafts (Optional)
Numbering Endnotes or Footnotes
Nitpicks and
Style Issue (or Helpful hints)
The 2016 election was unique in
number of ways. It was only the fifth time
a candidate won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote (1824, 1876,
1888, 2000, and 2016). Donald Trump had
never held any elective office before; the first that has happened in the
modern era for anyone who had not been a high-ranking officer in the US
military. Trump defied all expectations
and predictions in winning the Republican nomination and the presidency. He also had been a Democrat not very long ago
and switched to the Republican Party. His wining coalition included many voters
Democrats had relied upon and his political positions are a sharp break from
the standard liberal-conservative divide which has dominated US politics since
the end of WW II. In short, this may be
a seminal moment in American politics, a clear shift in American politics
marking the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just an anomalous blip caused when
both political parties nominated the two politicians who had the highest
negative ratings of any in the US.
Your research question is simple:
what explains the outcome of the 2016 election.
There are many theories about this and your paper will assess two of
those ideas. There are lots of theories. Some are better than others. Your job
will be to take two and consider how well they explain the outcome. This isn’t
easy and there is no right answer that I’m looking for. We may not get a good sense of the 2016
election until after we see election results over the next decade or so. Only
then will we really know if the 2016 election was part of a trend or an unusual
event.
A lot of the theories relate to the
thesis that the US is becoming a more and more politically polarized
nation. Republicans have become more
conservative; Democrats shave become more liberal. There are fewer people in the middle and
fewer and fewer people are “ticket splitting,” the old practice of voting for
one party at one level (Senate of President) and voting for another party at
another level (House or local election). Our voting patterns reflect that
sharpening polarization. But why is
there polarization and what does it have to do with Trump’s victory? Here are some theories about why there is
polarization. Some are better than others, but they are all part of the mix.
·
Polarization
is caused because of a divide between urban and rural areas. University towns vote like urban areas and
the suburbs are where the competition is.
·
Polarization
is caused by key cultural issues, notably abortion and same sex marriage.
·
Polarization
is caused by a religious divide. Evangelicals are the most solid supporters the
Trump candidacy and presidency
·
Polarization
is caused by Gerrymandering, in which state and House districts are drawn to
favor one political and consigning the other to minority status. Computing power
gives parties amazing accuracy in drawing districts to gain advantage. This
makes gerrymandering a science, not an art and increases polarization.
·
Americans
increasing vote based on identity. Because Americans are mobile, we move more
often than people in other nations, over the past forty years or so Americans
have sorted themselves. We no live in areas with people who are similar to us
in identity. That reinforces the identity and makes us think more like those
around us and less like those who live in other places. As we choose to live
with like-minded people, the identities are hardening and diverging. In blunt terms, someone who owns a gun,
listens to country music, and watches NASCAR has nothing in common with someone
who owns an electric car, listens to new age music, and watches experimental
theater. They live in different Americas.
·
Media,
particularly social media, increases polarization. The loudest voices dominate
the debate, placing everyone on fighting terms because we have come to believe caricatures
of people in the opposing party. Therefore we don’t see each other as Americans
trying to create a more perfect union in slightly different ways. We see
ourselves as patriots fighting our political opponents who want to destroy
America.
·
Negative
Partisanship relates to the above assessment. We don’t necessarily support our
own candidate or party, but hate the other party and the other candidate. We
have to defeat “them.”
·
Polarization
isn’t an accurate assessment of voting patterns. Elites are polarized; the
people are not. The negativity actually
decreases voter turnout. Those who do vote are the most committed to their
party and therefore the voting seems polarized. In reality, most Americans are
in the middle and disenchanted with their leaders.
These are nice theories and very
interesting ideas, but they don’t explain 2016. If the US is polarized, how
does a polarized America vote for Obama twice and then vote for Trump? They are very different types of politicians
with very different ideas. Something else is needed to explain the 2016
outcome.
In short, polarization may be the
starting point for your analysis. The American electorate is polarized and here
is why it voted the way it did in 2016.
Here are some of the theories. This is not a complete list, so feel free
to find others and use them for your paper. These are just some examples.
·
Turnout:
It’s all about turnout. The Republican Party was able to mobilize its voters
better than the Democrats. Why?
·
The
New Media: Candidates who are able to master the new form of media win elections.
Donald Trump was the master of social media and used it better than any of his
Republican or Democratic rivals.
·
Trump
and Star Power: Trump was a celebrity, a reality TV start and billionaire and
he turned that into star power. Even people who disliked him tuned in to watch
him. The networks covered him as if he
were a celebrity not a presidential candidate. New coverage of Trump set
ratings records and networks made billions of dollars off of that coverage. The coverage was so extensive that one
estimate calculated that if Trump had had to pay for his coverage on
television, it would have cost him about $2 billion dollars. This means that
Trump essentially got $2 billion dollars of free campaign coverage. None of his
Republican or democratic rivals got anything like that coverage. In the era of social media, attention and
exposure, whether good or bad, seems to be the currency of the realm. And no one gets attention better than Trump.
Therefore, he’s president.
·
The
Enthusiasm Gap: Republicans were more
enthusiastic about Trump than Democrats were about Hillary Clinton. The reverse
was true in 2008 and 2012 (enthusiasm for Obama was greater than enthusiasm for
McCain or Romney). Why?
·
Strategy:
Trump focused on the Midwest while Clinton did not. He won several states that
went for Obama in 2008 and 2012, states most people felt Clinton should win. It
is legendary now that Clinton did not visit Wisconsin during the general
election cycle in 2016, a state that Obama won twice. Trump did on several occasions. Clinton did
go to Arizona and Georgia, states that were long shots for her. Trump won Wisconsin. Why the strategy
difference? What did Trump know that Clinton did not?
·
Digital/Computer
Revolution: The world in is the midst of an economic and technological
revolution in society as big as the shift from hunting-gathering to agriculture
or from agriculture to industrial society – the industrial revolution. These
economic and technological revolutions reshape societies fundamentally. We are just at the beginning of a new age and
our old industrial era institutions aren’t ready for these changes. We’re
beginning a long era of economic, social, and political instability. Donald
Trump was the only candidate to run against those institutions explicitly. His populist movement is the same type that
is sweeping Europe. Its greatest supporters are those who feel the
digital/computer revolution is leaving them behind. This may be simply the first in a series of
upheavals. Thirty years from now our political system might be completely
different – new parties, more than two parties, very different norms for
political behavior. Essentially, the old
parties and system have not adapted – we get polarization and gridlock – and
the US people want something different. Trump was the most different candidate
available.
·
Collapse
of Manufacturing and the Opioid Epidemic: These are two sides of an
argument. It goes like this. Traditional
US manufacturing has been declining for decades. Blue Collar factory jobs have been shipped
overseas or have been replaced by technology (robots). That has meant millions
of Americans are out of work in small towns throughout the Midwest in
particular. These were places that depended on factories and where people could
get good jobs right out of High School. That has ended. These are also the same
places where the opioid epidemic is centered. Massive job loss leads to
hopelessness and drug addiction. That’s a simplified version of it, but
essentially summarizes the argument. Trump campaigned on the themes of trade
and bringing manufacturing back. In
strategy terms, Trump understood the problem better than anyone else.
·
Evangelical
Mobilization: Donald Trump was able to get evangelical voters out to the polls
and they supported him like they have not supported any other recent candidate.
·
Cyclical
Backlash: After eight years of a Democrat, voters wanted change. Clinton, a veteran of the Obama
administration, was seen as four more years of Obama. Very rarely does a
sitting Vice President or cabinet member from a current administration actually
win the presidency (look it up; it’s surprising). This was just a normal part
of the way the US votes. Eight years of one party is enough.
·
Negative
Backlash: After eight years of the Obama administration, many Americans had had
enough of the “change” that was part of Obama’s governing philosophy. While it
can be argued that there was not as much change as Obama supporters wanted or
that Obama detractors perceived, there was a sense among enough people in the
electorate that Obama was too much change. The dislike of Obama’s health care
policies was crucial to this thesis.
People wanted smaller government.
·
Cultural
Backlash: Obama’s election was historic.
He was the first African-American president. After a quiet start his administration pushed
for the recognition of same-sex marriage.
It mobilized to end discrimination against transgender Americans. Obama
used some interesting legal maneuvers to implement his DACA program (allowing
legal protections for children brought to the US illegally by their
parents). The Black Lives Matter
movement had support from the Obama administration Justice Department as well.
Democrats then nominated the first woman to ever be the presidential candidate
for any major political party in US history.
Some scholars argue that this was too much change too quickly. The Trump Presidency represents about 30% of
the population slamming their feet on the brakes of the nation. In this sense, Trump led a coalition of
groups who felt the nation was shifting too far to the left.
·
Ideological
Change in the Republican Party: Many moderate republicans (supporters of Jeb
Bush or John Kasich, the candidates who were supposed to be the front runners
in 2016, but who were trounced by Trump) argue that conservative media since
the 1990s has redefined the Republican Party. Instead of the Party using media
to mobilize voters, conservative media (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News)
grew so powerful it took control of the ideology of the Republican Party. It
spread this ideology so well that it moved the Party away from traditional
Republicanism (small government, low taxes, strong internationalist foreign
policy, and free trade economics) toward a new Republicanism that is accepting
of more government intervention in the economy, more nationalist in its foreign
policy, protectionist on trade, but still for lower taxes. The new Republican ideology also accepts many
conspiracy theories as facts, such as the idea that Barack Obama was born in
Kenya (the issue that made Trump a serious political contender).
·
Voter
Suppression: In many states new rules for voter registration and eligibility
have been instituted. Scholars and
journalists and federal judges have pointed out that some of these rules have
the effect of decreasing voter turnout in minority communities and urban areas.
A number of these laws have been struck down in court cases on the grounds that
they unconstitutionally deprive Americans of the right to vote. In some states
where those laws have been implemented, there was a clear reduction in turnout
in Democratic-leaning areas. There is a
group of scholars who see the Pennsylvania and Wisconsin outcomes as being
primarily due to voter suppression.
Other groups of scholars disagree with that thesis.
·
Gender
or Race Gaps: Demographically, if you are white, you are more likely to vote
Republican than Democratic. If you are a
minority, you are more likely to vote Democratic. If you are a man, you are
more likely to vote Republican. If you are a woman, you are more likely to vote
democratic. These demographic divisions
have an impact on presidential voting patterns. But these were the same
patterns that elected Obama twice. What changed in 2016?
·
Coastal
Elite: Many Trump supporters and some media analysts suggested that the victory
of Trump and the continued underestimation of his chances of winning (both in
the primaries and the general election) were due to the bias of the coastal
elite: wealthy elites and media outlets who live, work, and only pay attention
to the east coast and west coast. These elites treat the rest of the nation as
“flyover territory,” parts of the country they never visit, don’t care about, and
generally ignore. The 2016 Trump victory represents a revolt by the people who
live in these areas who are tired of being ignored, and want to take back the
nation from the coastal elites who have been imposing their policies on the
rest of the nation.
·
Victory
of New Conservative Media: Since the 1990s, hyper-conservative media outlets
and pundits (Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Glenn Beck, and more) have been pushing
their own version of conservatism, much as in the 1950s publications like the National Review began to try to change
American conservatism. In both cases,
the media centers and individual commentators make an ideological argument and
then try to get the Republican Party to accept that argument. Trump’s victory represents the triumph of
that new conservative ideology. It became the ideology of the Republicans Party
even as elected Republicans and institutions like the Republican National
Committee fought the ideology. The birth
of the Tea Party was a grass roots movement fueled by conservative media which
often fought the traditional Republican Party and the elected Republican
members of the House and Senate. If you were an elected Republican and you
weren’t conservative enough in the eyes of this new conservative media, it
would turn against you and you would get a challenge in the Republican primary
(the birth of a new word: “primaried.”) There are two version of this
idea. In the first, the new conservatism
represents simply the evolution of conservatism. In the second, people
criticized aspects of this new conservatism because it seemed to go hand in
hand with a belief in vast conspiracies and a strong belief in “facts” that
simply aren’t actual truths. The Trump campaign spread many of these
falsehoods, picked up from these new conservative outlets and some bizarre ones
on the fringe, and re-popularized them. Trump himself made his name in politics
spreading the lie that Obama was born in Kenya.
·
Great
Recession Anger: Trump’s victory represents the anger of the average person
over the Great Recession. Nearly ten years after the recession, the consensus
of the political class is that the US has recovered and everything is
fine. The average person, however, still
feels the impact of it, something that the political class does not notice. The
success of Trump and Sanders in 2016 represents a voter rejection of both
traditional parties, who have not responded to the Great Recession in a
satisfactory way. Voters are angry about
it. They want something different and Trump was the most different of the
candidates (not even a politician).
·
Third
Party Candidates: Small party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein received a
large number of votes in many states. In key states that Trump won, such as
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida, the difference between Trump’s votes and
Clinton’s votes is less than the number of votes for Johnson and Stein. In
other words, if the Johnson and Stein voters had voted for Clinton, Clinton
would be president. Two assumptions are
embedded in that. First, would those Johnson and Stein voters have voted for
Clinton if they hadn’t voted for Johnson or Stein? Second, would those people
have voted at all if they hadn’t turned out for Johnson and Stein? This idea is based on a theory from the 2000
election. During that election, Ralph Nadar, the Green Party candidate did very
well in some closely contested states. Nadar was to the left of Al Gore, the
Democratic candidate. Because of that ideology, it is easy to assume that a
Nadar supporter would not have voted for Bush, the Republican. They voted for Nadar, which stole votes from
Gore, and enabled Bush to win. Then the
question is this: can you confidently say that Johnson and Stein determined the
outcome of 2016? Stein, the Green Party
candidate, was to the left of Clinton, so Stein supporters are very unlikely to
have chosen Trump. But Johnson was a Libertarian; it’s much harder to predict
who his supporters would have voted for if he were not in the race.
·
For
a bigger examination of these ideas, you can read an essay
I wrote for the POLI Facebook page in 2016. It tries to explain Trump’s success
in 2016 through a number of lenses. It
was finished in October 2016 before Trump was elected.
Those are just some of the
theories. There are more. How do you research something like this? You
need ideas and you need data. The ideas you’ll get from doing research on this.
There are plenty of books and articles on how Trump won in 2016. Try to stay away from the conspiracy theory
stuff (Yes. Russia did interfere in the US election in 2016. That is a fact,
but it is difficult to imagine that Russian interference made that much of a difference
in the outcome). Read lots of articles
and they will begin to paint a picture of the demographic aspects of the US
election and the hypotheses about why we got the outcome in 2016.
Data: There are numbers for all
these demographic issues. For example, what was turnout in Milwaukee in 2008
compared to 2012 and 2016? Those numbers exist. If you want to make an argument
that turnout by Democrats in 2016 was lower than in 2012 or 2008 and that’s why
Trump won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, you can find those numbers on the
web. Here are some, but not nearly all
the sources of data:
·
Federal
Election Commission official results
·
New York Times
results that includes county results
·
New
York Times Interactive District map (This is very cool)
·
Dave Leip’s Atlas
of US Elections
(This is an outstanding cite; note that this site has red for Democrats and
blue for Republicans; it takes some time to get used to , but it’s worth it)
·
Some
demographic info based on exit polls and surveys
o
CNN
·
Introduction
(one paragraph to one page in length; summarize the paper and make sure you
state your conclusion)
·
Analysis
of Theory 1 (explanation and strengths and weaknesses based on your analysis of
the argument and your use of the election data from 2016) (4-5 pages)
·
Analysis
of Theory 2 (explanation and strengths and weaknesses based on your analysis of
the argument and your use of the election data from 2016) (4-5 pages)
·
Conclusion
(restate the question and your conclusion about which theory explains the 2016
the best. You might conclude one if better than the other. You might conclude
that the two theories need to be used together to really explain 2016. There is
no right answer here. There just needs to be an argument that explains why you
have come to your conclusion and it needs to have some data backing it up.
Up until the rough draft deadline indicated on the syllabus I will look at anything you’d like me to look at regarding the paper. Anything from outlines, bibliographic sources, or even completed drafts can be turned in for comment up until that date. I will go over what you have, mark it up, and if you like give you a hypothetical grade. You can then make revisions based on my comments.
There are
lots of sources out there. Some are better than others. That’s one of the
tricks of doing research—finding the good stuff.
Ignore this section on
books; since we can’t use a library, this is not possible. But I’m leaving it here because it might be
useful for you in other courses when we’re back on campus.
Books: Books are still the best sources out there, but your research
will not lean as heavily on books for this paper as it might for other
assignments. This is very current
research and books take a while to write.
You will still need some (see the requirements above). This means going to the library if you want
to use them. Use the Library: Really!!!! Here’s what I mean: Library.
The following is useful for this class or any other where you have to do
research.
·
Why are books important:
They will give you some context and context is everything. Whenever you read about an event or a trend,
you need to ask questions: Has this ever happened before? How often does this
happen? Is this typical or unusual? For
example, if Democrats take the House and/or the Senate in November 2018, is it a
revolution (unusual and important) or is it to be expected (a president’s party
usually loses seats the first midterm after a new president is elected). That
is context and context is everything. Books and good scholarly journal articles
provide that context. Newspapers usually
don’t and the web doesn’t remember yesterday.
The answer is that a president’s political party generally loses seats
in the first midterm after an election. In the 20th century, only
1934 and 2002 are exceptions. Cases where a president’s party lost both the
House and the Senate and the president then was reelected are not that unusual
(1946, 1954, 1994). For scholarly
journals start with google.scholar).
·
How do you find a good
book: You might go to the VCU Library website. Near the top of the page, you’ll
see a link for Academics. That will take you to a drop down menu. Click on
Libraries. Then you’ll see a search box. Don’t search yet. Below that click on
“Advanced.” You’ll get a set of search boxes where you can specify what
you’re looking for. So let’s say I’m looking for information on India’s nuclear
weapons capability. I can set the search for subject in one
field and type in “India.” The set the search for subject in
another field and type in nuclear weapons. Then hit search. That gives me
2300 sources. Too many. So on the left you’ll see filter options.
Click on that and you’ll get several ways to limit the search: Just books
and media or just peer-reviewed articles are two of
the ways to do this.
·
A Book’s Bibliography is
a Search Engine: Best of all, books have bibliographies listing dozens of other
sources on the issue, high quality sources used by the authors to write their
books. In the case of the student researching India’s nuclear weapons, he
now had two books that listed over 100 sources on the Indian nuclear weapon
program. Instead of a google search that takes hours to sift
through poor quality information that takes days, the student was now holding
all the information he needed and a source that would help him find more
sources. Magic!
·
Library Shelves are
Search Engines: Once you find one book on a subject, you’ll go into the shelves
of the library and find out that the book is shelved with all the other books
on the same subject. So if you needed into on India’s nuclear weapons
program, all the books on that subject will be sitting on the shelf next to
each other. Once you find one, you’ll find the others.
·
Citation Tracing: Don’t
forget one of the best ways to find good sources. Say you found a great article
or book on exactly the issue you’re researching. That article will have
footnotes, endnotes, parenthetical references, in addition to the
bibliography. Find those articles and books. Use them. They
are almost guaranteed to be useful because the author of the great article you
just read must have found them useful. In the case of the student
researching Indian nuclear strategy, he read a paragraph on India’s “no first
use” doctrine (India would not initiate the use of nuclear weapons in a conflict;
it would only respond to a nuclear attack; a policy currently under review). He
was interested in that in particular. He read the three or four pages on that
then looked at all the books and articles and government documents the author
cited on the issue and compiled a list of over 20 sources just on that
idea. Cool.
Search Engines: Be careful of
a google search for scholarly research: Remember that you
can google something easily and get a list of 39,000 sources in under
one second. But how good are those sources? That’s unclear. You’ll get
everything from a scholarly book to a government report to a scholarly article
to a web site to a blog written by someone who thinks fluoride in the water is
a plot by North Korea to make us all sterile! The Internet is filled with
conspiracy theories and lies and insanity. Finding the good information is
difficult.
Scholarly Articles: There are lots of different sources of information for you. The
best ones for scholarly research (what you’ll do in college) are scholarly
articles. These are articles that take a long time to write; they are fact
checked and reviewed by maybe a half a dozen people before they are
published. The information is accurate and the analysis is thoughtful.
That’s where you’ll find your best information. How do you know what the
scholarly articles are? Use scholar.google.com. That is a specific search
engine that only gets scholarly work. It eliminates websites and newspaper
articles and magazines. Remember that the web is very good for several
things: information on what happened yesterday; instant opinion on what
happened yesterday; instant disinformation (propaganda and outright lies about
what happened yesterday); and databases on obscure things. How else would I
know that in 1943 Washington quarterback Sammy Baugh led the NFL in touchdown
passes, interceptions, and punting. On November 14, against the Lions, he
threw four touchdown passes and intercepted four passes. I know this from
ProFootballreference.com. That’s fun. That’s the Internet. But scholarly
research should start with scholar.google.com.
·
To find good journals: Just about every Political Science and
Public Policy journal will be a potential source for you. We’re talking about several hundred. The key for you is recognizing what is a
scholarly refereed journal (articles written by scholars, reviewed by scholars,
and fact-checked) vs. journalistic sources (good for what happened when, but
not as concerned with balanced analysis and not concerned with theory at all).
This link will take you to a list of refereed Political Science
and Public Policy journals. It is not exhaustive, but it’s a good place to
start.
·
How do you find a good
article at the VCU Library: Go to the VCU Library website. Near the top of the
page, you’ll see a link for “Academics.” That will take you to a drop down
menu. Click on Libraries. Then you’ll see a search box. Don’t search yet. Below
that click on “Advanced.” You’ll get a set of search boxes where you can
specify what you’re looking for. So let’s say I’m looking for information on
India’s nuclear weapons capability. I can set the search for subject in one
field and type in “India.” The set the search for subject in another field and
type in nuclear weapons. Then hit search. That gives me 2300 sources. Too
many. So on the left you’ll see “filter options.” Click on that and
you’ll get several ways to limit the search: just peer-reviewed articles
is one of the options.
News Magazines: Here is a link
to a list of the best news magazines that cover politics (weekly and
monthly). That is a good place to start. These have good analytical pieces and
often publish excerpts or short articles based on larger scholarly or
journalistic work. The big difference between these sources and scholarly
journals is that they often have a political slant. It’s
very important to know when you’re reading something that is slanted to the
left or slanted to the right. Not
everything is partisan (leaning toward one party or the other), but a lot of it
is. There is more just plain old,
non-partisan analysis than people think and that is, of course, the best to
use. More liberal analysis or more
conservative analysis is very useful as long as you know that it has a
perspective. For instance, The Nation leans left. It’s a good
magazine, but remember that it leans left.
The National Review is a good
magazine, but remember that it leans to the right. Also, newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall
Street Journal are good traditional non-partisan newspapers. They want to get the story right and you can
trust their reporting. They can get stories
wrong, but it’s not because they have a bias, but because sometimes they get a
story wrong. Their editorial pages,
however, do have a perspective (center-left for the Times and Post);
center-right for the Journal.
Remember that when you use any newspaper.
Good newspapers believe in what they call the separation of church and
state, meaning the separation between the reporters covering events and the
editorial pages of the paper, which is designed to state an opinion.
Keywords: For any kind of search keywords are important. You may have to
do a few searches before you find the right keywords that get you all the good
sources. Always try a few combinations to see what you get. If you were
looking for books or scholarly articles on political polarization or the 2016
election, you might use several combinations of these:
·
“polarization”
·
“2016 presidential
election”
·
“US voting behavior”
·
“Trump election”
·
“2016 electoral college”
·
“red and blue states”
The Internet: Be careful of the internet.
There is good information and there is bad information. Scholarly work and journalism are still
better sources for information that a lot of web sites which are just
propaganda or poorly researched opinion pieces. Remember that the primacy
purpose of the Internet is advertising (even what passes for information is really
advertising its information). The web tells you that everything you on the web
is absolutely accurate and truthful. That is not true.
·
A Warning about the Internet: I
don't think I need to tell you much about the Internet. In college I wrote
papers on a manual typewriter and I took my SATs on stone tablets. But if you
do have any questions about it let me know. An important note about Internet
sites: what is crucial about any webpage is that you and I know what the source
of the information is. All information on the web is not equal. Before you
trust any information on the web you must know who runs the websites. Who is
the source of the information? The US Nazi Party has many websites. Their
information is probably not a source you want to use for research on Israeli
foreign policy, for example. If I’m researching Russian foreign policy, I
need to know if the source is from the Russian government or a scholarly
source. Their views might be very different. There is a ton of propaganda on
the web. Many governments in the world are not Democratic. They don’t have
freedom of the press, but they do have a huge presence on the Internet where
they disseminate propaganda that tries to influence the world’s judgment of
their actions. China, Russia, or North Korea are good examples of nations
that use propaganda on the internet as part of their “influence operations”
that try to make their governments look warm and fuzzy while they imprison
government critics. Even in Democracies you need to be careful of the sources.
The Republican Party and the Democratic Party both have their own web presence
that is designed to make them look good and make their political opponents look
bad. Media often has a perspective as well (left, right, center, celebrity,
sensationalist, scandal…whatever). In short, always be mindful of where
the information comes from. The web is a smorgasbord of conspiracy
theories. That’s one of the most difficult aspects of our information
environment. There are so many sources of information and many of them
are just garbage. Remember that on the web you can find a lot of information on
these topics, NONE OF THE FOLLOWING ARE TRUE!!!!!
o How President George W. Bush launched the September
11 attacks so he could repeal the 2nd Amendment (Not true)
o How George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 to steal all
Iraq’s oil and prevent Saddam Hussein from disclosing that the Bush family had
been controlling global oil prices for decades in league with the Saudi Arabian
royal family (Not true)
o How Barack Obama was born in Kenya and sneaked into
the US at an early age so he could become President; he was doing this under
the orders of al-Qaeda (Not true)
o How the Affordable Care Act (that created near
universal health care in the US) had a section allowing a small government
committee to decide who would live or die when they reached old age (the “death
panels”). Not true)
o Again: NONE OF THESE ARE TRUE, but there are sadly
way too many people who believe this stuff because it is on the Internet.
o Oh and there was an Italian website about fifteen
years ago that linked me to the Kennedy assassination. I am not kidding. I had
just turned two when Kennedy was killed. If I was involved in the plot, I don’t
remember.
·
How do you tell what is
good and what is bad? That’s difficult, but here are some keys to it:
·
Beware of “news” sites
where all the articles are designed to frighten you about the dangers of this
or that
·
Especially be wary of
“news” sites which try to frighten you and tell you the sky is falling then
move to a commercial break and try to sell you something that will save your
life when the sky does fall. These are essentially infomercials masquerading as
news.
·
Beware of “news” sites
where everything comes from one extreme perspective -- all the problems of the
world are caused by a specific politician, or a specific political party, and
there is never any middle ground or alternative perspective. Many legitimate
news sites are accused of that by their competitors; if you actually read
those news sites, you find that the accusation is false.
·
News organizations get
things wrong from time to time. That doesn’t mean bias. That means that
journalists are human. The difference between real news and “fake” news is
simple. Fake news is propaganda designed to push a political agenda by making
you believe something that is false. Real news is an attempt to get to
the truth. Sometimes that doesn’t always happen. Journalists can use a bad
source or forget what they learned in journalism school because they are so
excited to get a scoop. Journalists can make honest mistakes and there are bad
journalists who may make bad mistakes. The difference is this: when a good
newspaper or website gets it wrong, they fix the mistake and they often fire or
demote the reporter. They also have multiple reporters working on any
sensitive story because they want to make sure they have a lot of eyes on the
subject. Bad newspapers or websites tell a story and when someone proves
that it is wrong, they don’t care. They continue to push the story because they
aren’t interested in getting it right; they are interested in selling the story
to achieve a political goal. That’s not news; it is propaganda.
Read this. Pay attention to it or
face everlasting doom! Failure to pay attention to this will likely result in a
grade of D.
The
following is not just because I want to annoy you or because I like to have
things done my way. The following is because
this is a class where you will do social science research and the rules of
social science research are different from the rules of English composition or
journalism. Learning how to write for
different audiences and in different styles is part of the university
experience.
You
must use an established format for citations and your bibliography. You need to learn how to reference
information properly, and how to write a bibliography with the correct and
complete information before you leave VCU. This is easy to do, but more
important than you think. Whether you go into academia or business you will be
judged on the quality of your information, and that means people will want to
know where you found your information. They will judge you at first, before
they read your text, on your bibliography and citations. If you do it wrong
while at VCU, you’ll get a deduction from your grade. If you do this in graduate school or
government or the business world, you will be asked to go home and not come
back (as in “you’re fired”).
It
does not matter to me what format you use, as long as you use an established
standard format for the social sciences. You can use footnotes or endnotes or
parenthetical references, but you must learn to do it correctly. Here are web resources that will teach you to
do this:
The
Evils of In-Text Citations
In the
social sciences, particularly Political Science, do not use in-text citations.
That may be good for English or journalism, but not for scholarly social
science. What I mean is the following. Let’s say you used a book by
Gabriel Weimann called Terror on the Internet for
your research and you want to cite some information from it.
Since I
have instructed you to pay attention to notation and bibliographic style, and
have provided you with a specific place to look for the proper styles, I will take points off of your paper if you
do not do this in the correct manner. This is simple. If you do not do
it correctly it means one or both of the following: 1) you are not taking the
assignment seriously or are too lazy to do the paper correctly; and/or 2) you
are doing the paper at the last minute. Both of these are good reasons why you
will not get the grade you are able to earn.
The
bibliography is a list of your sources. Alphabetize it by the author’s last name
or by the title of the article or book if there is no author. Some
important aspects of it follow.
·
In
a bibliography you don’t need to list page numbers when you cite a book. You
may have used one page. You may have used 70 pages. Whatever you use, just
cite the book and don’t include any page numbers.
·
In
a bibliography, you do need to cite page numbers for a journal article. You
cite the full range of page numbers for the article (first page to last
page). The exact page numbers only need to be included for the citations
in the paper when you are citing the exact page where you found the
information. In the bibliography, cite the page range of the entire
article.
·
Notice
also that the bibliographic format and the footnote/endnote format are almost the
same. The only differences are the page numbers you need for one vs. the other
and that in a bibliography the author’s last name comes first and in a
footnote/endnote it is first name, then last name. That is important because it
means that you can cut and paste to make a bibliography cite into a
footnote/endnote cite and vice versa.
·
See
my examples for all of this.
·
Single
space the citations and add a space between each citation.
Footnotes,
endnotes and parenthetical references are the three ways to cite
information. On formats, see the above
links. This section describes why and
when you cite information. What do I need to cite? That’s a question students
ask all the time. In doing research there are three basic types of things you
must cite: quotes, specific information, and other people’s ideas.
·
Quotes:
This is a small paper. Do not quote. Some people think that you only need
to cite quotes. You would need to cite them if this was a larger paper
where quotes might be appropriate, but you absolutely need to cite much more
than quotes in social science. There are more warnings about quoting
material below.
·
Specific
Information: When I say specific information, what I refer to is any
information which is not general knowledge. For example, you would not
need to use a citation if you state that Henry Kissinger was Richard Nixon’s
National Security Adviser in Nixon’s first term (general knowledge). But you would have to cite the fact that
Kissinger met with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai on July 9, 1971 and any details
of the meeting. Another example: you would not need to cite that Chinese
economic reforms were first announced at the Third Plenum of the 11th
Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, but if you included
information on why Hua Guofeng’s attempt to establish his own Mao-like
authority had failed in part because his economic reform plan was not
farsighted enough and why this failure allowed Deng to push his reform plan
through the Central Committee, you’d need to cite the source (Schram 1984, 417)
or use a footnote[1]
or endnote[i]
·
Other
People’s Ideas: If you’re doing research and you’re thinking about the issue
you’re researching, any idea that is not yours absolutely must be cited. Take
the issue of Indian nuclear strategy mentioned above. If one author says that
Indian nuclear doctrine has changed drastically since India’s decision to build
a full-fledged arsenal in 1998, that idea has to be cited.
If you are referring to specific information that you found on a specific page in a source (if the source has page numbers, unlike some web sources), you must include the page number where you found the information. Let’s say you found information in a book that is 450 pages long. Citing the book and not the page number is not very helpful for anyone who thought that the information was interesting and wanted to learn more about it. You’re forcing that person to scan through 450 pages of text to find the info. Instead, cite the page number and then the reader can just turn to that page number. This is the established method of citation. This is true even for parenthetical references. If you are citing the main point of an article or book or something as background information, you don’t need the page number, but if it is specific material it does need a page number. If you do not cite page numbers, the earth will spin off its axis and plunge into the sun and you will be responsible for it.
You may use endnotes. You may use footnotes, but then the paper must be a bit longer since some of the page will be taken up by footnotes. In the social sciences, footnotes and endnotes are numbered consecutively. The first note is number 1; the second is number 2, etc. Microsoft Word will do this for you. You can use a source more than once in your paper. There are specific citation formats for the first citation and for the second citation. You can also put more than one source in a specific note. See my article for examples for all of this: Endnotes/Footnotes. A short reference follows:
·
Footnotes
and endnotes are numbered consecutively (1, 2, 3, 4…) (Please don’t use the
natural sciences-style that merges the bibliography and citations. This format lists the sources in a
bibliography and numbers them, then cites information in the text by listing
the number of the source used in the bibliography. That format is for natural sciences and I
have never seen it used in any Political Science journal. Since this is Political Science, you should
learn how Political Science works.
This
is the key to writing a good paper so I am providing detailed instruction on
this. Political Science has a specific style of writing, especially when it
comes to introductory paragraphs. It
mirrors the style of government memoranda.
In short, the introductory paragraph should summarize the paper and that
includes giving the reader a summary of you conclusions. If you don’t do this, even a great paper,
becomes a grade of B.
A
good introductory paragraph should include the following:
In
other words, the introduction should provide your reader with a "road
map" that explains exactly what you will say during the paper. This is not
as difficult as it sounds. Basically, what you need to do is write the outline
you have for your paper in sentences in the first few paragraphs of the paper.
Your opening paragraph (or couple of opening paragraphs) should also give the
reader some reason to be interested in your topic and in your argument. Tell
the reader why this subject is important. Here is an example of an opening
paragraph: (I’ll use a topic that won’t overlap with anyone’s potential topic.)
This
paper will analyze the origins, objectives, and doctrines of al-Qaeda
(AQ). AQ is currently the world’s
largest and most active terrorist organization – global in activity,
recruitment, and mission. It is a
curious mixture of 21st century technology and medieval
ideology. (That’s the topic.) Its origins date
back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 when militants from all over
the Middle East and Asia came to Afghanistan to fight the “infidel”
invaders. Its goals are diverse, but
call for the alteration of the political landscape of the Middle East and an
end to US influence in that region. The doctrines are a mixture of radical Islamic
ideas (indeed in many ways very un-Islamic) and Arab nationalism. (That’s how you will explain your issue—by
discussing three sub-topics: 1)
initial origins; 2) its goals; and 3) doctrines.) Overall,
the goals don’t sound very realistic, or very negotiable. While AQ can launch terrorist activities
around the world, its ability to actually control territory or capture a nation
state is limited. However, it may have
the ability to harass, damage, and attack the targets for decades to come. (Those
are your conclusions.)
You can
use lots of topic headings and subheadings to correspond to the points on your
"road map" -- they'll help you organize your thoughts, and they'll
help your reader clearly identify where he is on the "road map." The
above paper might have five main sections:
Here’s one that is specifically comparative:
This essay examines the levels of media freedoms in Indonesia and Malaysia. For each nation, levels of government interference in print, television, and internet media are compared. In particular, special attention will be given to the changes in news media freedom during the recent political transitions: from dictatorship to democracy in Indonesia since 1998 and from the leadership of Mahathir Mohammed to Abdullah Badawi then Najib Razak in Malaysia. Both nations are experiencing more press freedom than they have in the past. In particular, Indonesia’s courts are striking down governmental attempts to sue media centers for reports critical of the government. In Malaysia, internet news is making attempts to censor the press nearly impossible. However, after improvement in press freedoms under Prime Minister Abdullah, the government of Prime Minister Najib has implemented many policies that inhibit media freedoms. At its most basic level, the difference between the two nation’s media environment is the difference between a nation becoming more democratic (Indonesia) and a nation still clinging to some authoritarian traditions (Malaysia).
You will then have a paper with subheadings such as this:
· Introduction
· Media freedom under Suharto in Indonesia
· Media freedom under Mahathir in Malaysia
· Media and the Democratic Transition in Indonesia
· Media and the Post-Mahathir Governments
· Conclusions: Media Freedom in Indonesian Democracy and Malaysian Soft Authoritarianism
As you
make the points that support your argument, you'll probably be aware of the
places in which your argument is controversial or in which a reasonable person
might disagree with you. Preempt those controversies in your text. Point out
what those opposing arguments might be, and why you think your point of view is
more accurate or reasonable.
1.
Use
quotes sparingly. I want your writing, not anyone else’s. If there is a great quote from a direct
participant in the event, a phrase, or word, that you think really adds to the
paper then a quote may be appropriate here or there. But if you have a paragraph-length quote in
an eight page paper, that would be bad.
I’d be sad and after you see your grade, you’ll be sad too.
2.
Don’t
quote general information that you found in a scholarly article and don’t quote
the conclusions of other scholars.
Paraphrase the information or the idea in your own words and then cite
the source.
3.
Do
not give me a sentence in your paper that quotes that information directly from
the source. For example, don’t quote
like this: “The United States included 20,000 troops.” It is basic factual
information and does not need to be quoted, but it does need to be cited. Even if it is an analyst’s opinion, it does
not need to be quoted. Just paraphrase
it in your words and cite the source.
4.
Reserve
quotes for direct participants: candidates and their staffers, or a voter. The exact words matter in these cases. In general though, go easy on quotes.
5.
Too
many quotes means that you’re just cutting and pasting, not writing. A
research paper is not a series of quotes rearranged the way you like. It doesn’t teach you anything and your
grade will suffer horribly, terribly, and painfully.
6.
So,
for example, if noted terrorist scholar Reed Richards says in his book that
“Al-Qaeda probably only consists of 10,000 people worldwide.” Do not give me a sentence in your paper that
reads: Reed Richards says that “Al-Qaeda probably only consists of 10,000
people worldwide.” Give me something
that says: One scholar estimates that al-Qaeda only has 10,000 active members
globally (Add the citation here which cites Richards’ book and the page number
in it where the information is found). The full bibliographic information will
be in the bibliography at the end of the paper.
Or if Ben Grimm concludes in his book that: “Al-Qaeda’s growth depends
on economic reform in the Middle East.
Elimination of poverty is not the biggest problem. Rather it is the
ability of the middle class to gain social and economic mobility.” Don’t quote that, but say: Grimm’s
conclusions suggest that economic reforms designed to allow the middle class to
grow and prosper will be the key to battling al-Qaeda in the future (Add the
endnote here which cites Grimm’s book and the page number in it where the
information is found).
7.
In
a larger paper, but not in this one, sometimes quotes are useful. A good quote is this: According to Osama
bin-Laden, “for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands
of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its
riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its
neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through
which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples” (Add the endnote here which
cites Bin-Laden’s fatwa and the page number in it where the information is found
or the internet URL). This is an excerpt
from the 1998 fatwa of OBL. Bin-Laden is
a participant, a historical figure. His
exact words are important.
8.
In
any case: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever cut and paste anything from a
source into your document unless you place it in quotes and cite the source of
the quote. And generally in a paper that
is under a few dozen papers, there is never a need to quote anything that is
not an official source. Why quote
anything unless the exact works are crucial?
So quoting a President or Foreign Minister or a witness to an event is
useful, but quoting a scholar or journalist is not.
First, never, ever,
ever, ever, ever, ever cut and paste anything from a source into your document
unless you place it in quotes and cite the source of the quote. And generally
in a paper that is under a few dozen papers, there is never a need to quote
anything that is not an official source.
Why quote anything unless the exact works are crucial. So quoting a President or Foreign Minister or
a witness to an event is useful, but quoting a scholar or journalist is
not. For the purposes of this paper,
there is no reason to quote anyone. The paper is too short for quotes.
This
is really not a fine line. Did you write
the sentence or not? Did you come up with the idea or not? When in doubt, it’s relatively simple: never
include something in your paper that you did not write unless it is quotes and
then it also must be cited. Anything
that is not your idea must be cited. Plagiarism is a violation of the VCU Honor
Code and I will not hesitate to charge someone with a violation if I catch
plagiarism. If you have questions about
what is plagiarism, ask me or see VCU’s Writing
Integrity Workshop.
But
just because someone else has already written an idea that you agree with 100%
doesn't mean you can't discuss it in your paper. Just point out whose idea it
is; paraphrase it in your own words, cite the source of the idea, and expand
upon it. Generally, that is how Political Science works. 90% of all Political Science
articles and books do the following (I give you another example that is not
topically relevant to the class):
There
are various explanations for the Moscow coup in August 1991. Stan says the
military instigated the overthrow (Stan 1994, 1-34). Kyle disagreed, saying the
military prevented the coup from being successful (Kyle 1997, 17-29). Cartman
says the coup failed because its leaders were inept (Cartman 2000, 307-332).
However, all three authors understate the impact of public opinion; the coup really
failed because of the Russian people's yearning for Democracy.
The article would then outline the theories of Stan, Kyle, and Cartman, criticize each one, and then develop the fourth theory. There is no problem as long as Stan, Kyle, and Cartman get credited with developing their theories, and the fourth theory is yours. If the fourth theory belongs to a fourth author (Kenny? Timmy? Professor Chaos?), the reader must be told that the fourth theory is Kenny's and your article will show why his theory is superior to the other three. The point here is that you may find sources which have different opinions on an issue. For example, one source may say that Hizbullah has ties to Syria and another may say it doesn’t. You need to decide who’s right. State that there are differences of opinions. Cite the sources. Who says there are ties? Who says there aren’t? Then you can, if you want, suggest what you think based on your research. Or you can simply say that a dispute exists and leave it at that.
If
paraphrasing an idea: make sure to change the verb you use so it is different
from the verb used in the source. Make
sure you change everything but the proper nouns. So let’s say, you’ve read this
in your source: “The President phoned the Prime Minister immediately after he
received the news.” That may be the
point you want to make in your paper, but you shouldn’t quote that and can’t
copy it (or you’d be plagiarizing). The
only words you really can use here would be “President” and “Prime
Minister.” These are the proper nouns.
So put it into your own words. How
about: “Once the President had been informed, he contacted the Prime Minister.”
And then cite the source of the information.
That would not be a quote problem or a suspicion of plagiarism
And never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever cut and paste anything from
a source into your document unless you place it in quotes and cite the source
of the quote. (He said it again! And in
italics! Must mean something!) (And it’s in bold, and italics, and red; maybe I
should pay attention to this.)
1. Margins and Font Papers should be doubled-spaced with one-inch margins, and reasonable sized font (11 point). Shorter pages with wide margins and large print size font will be penalized.
2. Subject and Verb Make sure you have a subject and verb in every sentence. (You would be surprised how many important journals and books allow non-sentence sentences). This is non-fiction, not fiction. So you need to observe the basic rules of grammar. A long sentence is not necessarily a better sentence -- each sentence should express only one thought. Don't be afraid to break up a long sentence into two or three shorter ones. It will usually flow better that way.
3. Official Titles Provide someone’s title in the text the first time you mention them if they are an elected official (Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia) or an appointed official (Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Paul Nitze). Thereafter, you can refer to them as Kaine or Nitze. So for the first mention, you’d say: “National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger told his assistant to.…” From that point on, you can simply say “Kissinger told his assistant to…” When you mention a senator or representative, say: Senator John Warner (R-VA) to introduce and after than you can just say Warner or Senator Warner.
4. Keep a Copy Make a copy of the paper for yourself before you hand it in to me. There are two reasons for this. If you have a copy, you don't have to worry about me losing a copy. I have never lost anyone's paper, but just in case you should always make sure that you have a copy of your paper with you, in any class, not just this one.
5. Back up WHEN YOU TYPE YOUR PAPER ON A COMPUTER MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP DISK WITH THE PAPER ON IT. AS YOU TYPE THE PAPER SAVE THE FILE TO THE BACKUP DISK EVERY TEN MINUTES OR SO. Don’t just leave it on your hard drive and hope it will be safe. A super safe way to deal with this is to use your own, already built-in cloud system. Email the drafts of your paper to yourself and then you know it will be safe on the VCU system and you can access it from anywhere on the planet. Also, remember that if you type on the university computers be careful. Putting your paper on the hard drive in the computer lab is risky – they sweep the hard drives of files at night. Keep a backup copy for yourself. I have several backup copies of anything I write. You don't ever want to lose work because you didn't back it up.
6. No Wikipedia Do not use Wikipedia or any other web-based encyclopedia. It is unreliable and you should have stopped using encyclopedias for research in elementary school.
7. Reliability of the Internet Be careful about internet sources. Make sure the source is reliable. Remember that anyone can post anything on the internet. There aren’t necessarily any editors or fact checkers. For example, there is a website that links me to the Kennedy assassination; I was two years old. Ask me if you have questions about this (internet sources, not if I was involved in the Kennedy assassination; I wasn’t).
8. The use of “I”: Try to avoid using “I” in non-fiction. Instead of “I will discuss three problems…” say “This essay addresses three problems…”
9. The use of a semicolon: Semicolons connect two complete sentences that are related to each other. For example: “I went to the pizzeria to get a pie; it was closed so I had Chinese food instead.” You could also write them as two separate sentences if you wanted. The following would be an incorrect use of a semicolon: “I had six very tasty pizzas last week; except for that crappy one from the big chain store.” That should be a comma, not a semicolon. The test is this: If the two sentences you are connecting with a semicolon could stand alone as complete sentences then use a semicolon. So it becomes obvious: “Except for that crappy one from the big chain store” is not a sentence.
10. The use of “however”: This trips everyone up. It’s a bit similar to semicolons. “I went to the pizzeria; however, when I got there, it was closed.” Notice the semicolon, not the comma. That’s because “When I got there, it was closed” could be a complete sentence by itself. Also, this sentence is like the use of a semicolon. You are connecting two complete sentences. In this case, you’re connecting two sentences that are related, but related in a very specific way. The second sentence is adding the “however” to show a different expectation than the first sentence implies. The first sentence implies you were going to eat pizza. The second sentence says you didn’t. On the other hand, look at this example: “I went to the pizzeria. Upon arriving, however, I found out it was closed.” The “however” is surrounded by commas. That’s because “upon arriving” is not a sentence by itself. Here’s another aspect of this. “I went to the pizzeria, the one with the best pizza in the world.” There is a comma there because “the one with the best pizza in the world” is not a sentence by itself. These are the non-fiction rules. In fiction, you can do anything you want.
11. Some useful rules:
1. Numbers under 100 should be written
as out. So you would not have this
sentence. “President Bush met with 3
advisers.” It would be “President Bush
met with three advisers.”
2. When you have an acronym, such as
NSDD-75 or UN. First write out the name
in full: National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 75, or United Nations
(UN). After that first use of the term, use the acronym.
Papers are due at the beginning of class on the date indicated in the syllabus. After about 10 minutes of class has passed, your paper is one day late. I will mark late papers down ONE GRADE for each day late. That means that an almost perfect paper -- one that I would give 98 points to -- becomes an 88 if one day late, 78 if two days late, etc,... all the way down to 8 points if nine days late, and zero points if ten days late.
Talk to me if you are having some medical, family personal problems. If there is a serious need to get an extension on the paper, I will give you an extension. I do realize that there are more important things in life than this class and this assignment. So if you run into a problem, talk to me. Computer problems do not count as a problem that warrants an extension. If you are writing your paper at the last minute and you have a problem, the moral of the story is that you should not have been writing your paper at the last minute. If you have some kind of computer problem, and you are not writing your paper at the last minute, let me know. Maybe I can help.
[1] Stuart Schram. “Economics in Command? Ideology and Policy since the Third Plenum, 1979-1984.” The China Quarterly 99 (September 1984): 417.
[i] Stuart Schram. “Economics in Command? Ideology and Policy since the Third Plenum, 1979-1984.” The China Quarterly 99 (September 1984): 417.