POLI
355 Research Paper
These
instructions explain in detail what I expect from you on the assignment. Read this carefully.
First,
the paper is due at the start of class
on the date indicated by the syllabus.
You have months to do the assignment, so there is no reason anyone
should feel the need to skip class to finish the paper. Papers that are not turned in at the start of
class will be considered late one day. My late policy in general is simple. 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
family or 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 a printer problem, no
problem, give me your disk and I will print up the paper, or come to my office
hours and we'll print up the paper at my office. 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. If you have any questions about any aspect of the
assignment or research methodologies or anything about the paper talk to me,
early and often.
Rough Drafts
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.
Topic
On
the date indicated on the syllabus you should turn in a one-paragraph outline
of your chosen topic. It should include the following:
The
purpose of this is to let me know what you are working on. This way I can help
steer you in the right direction, warn you about troubles you may encounter,
and generally deal with any questions you might have.
Of course, the big question is: what is the
assignment? You've got a lot of leeway here. What I want is for you to do some
real comparative politics. Pick two
nations and compare some political, social, or economic change within them. For the
given subject you picked, what are the similarities and differences between the
two nations and the causes of those similarities and differences. How do I define
Paper Requirements and Tips on Writing Good Papers
Below are several sections of
instructions and guidelines. This is important. It tells you a lot of
important things you can use for any research paper in any class. It also tells
you what I expect. Use what follows and
I guarantee that you will get a much better grade on your paper, and more
importantly you will learn how to do research and write an organized paper.
In particular, pay special attention to the section on sources (bibliographies
and references). If you choose to ignore what follows, you do so at your own
peril and risk everlasting doom. (Am I being subtle enough?)
Source requirements
·
You must use at
least ten sources.
·
At least two of those sources must be from the
web.
·
One source must be from a journal that you found in the library,
or on the web.
·
None of the
assigned readings for the class count as a source. You can use them, but they do not count as
part of the ten sources required.
·
You must use at
least one book though I would recommend more.
Books have knowledge; the internet has information. There is a difference. See below.
·
Wikipedia cannot
be used as one of the ten sources. It is
an encyclopedia and encyclopedias were off limits as research sources when you
were in High School.
A note on the internet: I
don't think I need to tell you much about the web. 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. The following is important. What is crucial
about any webpage is that you and I know who 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. Also, if
you find a website that deals with human rights in
A government document:
George
W. Bush. The National
Security Strategy of the
So, you must include the
following: author (if identified); title of article, essay, database, document;
organization that sponsors the posting of the information; web address (use
this form: Available at http://whatever); and date accessed (because
information on the internet is updated and frequently reedited or eliminated).
If you have questions about this, ask me. But, if you don’t ask me and you
simply give me the web address, I will take points off
your paper.
There
are excellent journals that you can use that deal with the range of issues
we’ll address in class. We have on line access to a lot of great journals and
there are hard copies of many as well on the second floor of the library. Use the Public Affairs Information Service or
ABC POL SCI indexes. Those are the hard
copy indexes, both located in the library reference section. You may use the on line ones instead. PAIS is also online. Ask a reference
librarian to help you find these indexes.
Of course, the on line library data bases are great as well. On any of them you can search under several
keywords (George Bush and Department of Homeland Security for the example
above) or under a subject and a journal title (to get the works on a given
subject from a specific journal that you have found useful, for example GHW
Bush and Asian Survey to get info on
GHW Bush policy toward China). If you
have problems getting the journals on line, let me know. Look up either a country or an issue and you
will find excellent lists of articles.
Use books too! For this assignment, books are your best resource. The web is nice, but again, it includes information, not knowledge. The difference is simple. Information is up to the minute data, piles and piles of facts and figures. Knowledge is data plus perspective, plus analysis. What does the data mean in the context of history, of theories about the issue you are studying, of the developments in that nation and the world? The internet does not contain books yet, and therefore it will tell you what happened yesterday, but not if what happened yesterday is typical, unusual, or fits a pattern that goes back 10,000 years. Everything on the internet is new and it has the perspective of newness – everything is happening for the first time. That is simply not true. The internet is also generally not peer reviewed. This means that what you see on the internet is generally not reviewed by anyone. I can post an essay on how to do brain surgery. It will sound very authentic (Dr. William W. Newmann), but I have a Ph.D. in Public Policy. I can tell the difference between a brain and a lung, but that’s not really enough to perform brain surgery. So if you like conspiracy theories, particularly about 9/11, notice how very few of the Professors who preach conspiracy theories are Professors of Political Science or International Relations. It tells you something, doesn’t it (I’m part of the conspiracy!). So, use books or journals. The answers may be there. Books and journals are reviewed by scholars before they are ever published, reviewed and reviewed and reviewed, so that every word and fact is checked and double checked. This is why it takes forever to publish books and journals, but they get the facts right and they ideas and examined. Sometimes this is not true these days. There are publishing house that specialize in right wing or left wing books, so they publish propaganda, not scholarship. Check to see who the person is. Is it a scholar attached to a university or a journalist attached to a newspaper? Those are generally good sources. Or is it a pundit, someone linked to a political party, whose job is to write books that use junk scholarship and junk science to perpetuate a political ideology.
Requirements
This paper should be 8-10
pages of text, with references (footnotes, endnotes, parenthetical references)
and a bibliography. The bibliography does not count as a page in the 8-10 page requirement.
For proper style of notes and
bibliography see Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers or the MLA
Handbook or some other recognized
resource on style, or copy the style used by one of the books you used for your
research. Pay attention t this! You must learn how to reference information properly,
and how to write a bibliography with the correct and complete information. 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 (footnotes/endnotes/parenthetical references). So make sure you
include all the important information in both notes and bibliography. 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. Most importantly, you need to get
used to doing things the proper way. In college I will take points off if you
do something the wrong way or don’t try to find out the proper way to do something.
In the business world your boss will simply fire you. This is particularly true
about finding information. In the business world you will be judged on the
quality of your knowledge, the information that you can provide to potential
clients or your boss. Everyone needs to be able to judge the quality of your in
formation and they can only do that if they know the source of the information.
Get used to this.
Quotes: Do not include long
quotes!!! You can quote actual participants in an event, but do this sparingly
if you feel it is necessary. You can use lots of quotes if you are examining
candidate rhetoric for example, but then your paper must be longer than 8-10
pages, and that’s not the subject of this paper. I’m looking for 8-10 pages of
your work. So 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. So, for example, if noted terrorist scholar
Reed Richards says in his book that “Al-Qaeda probably only consists of 10,000
people world wide.” Do not give me a
sentence in your paper that reads: Reed Richards says that “Al-Qaeda probably
only consists of 10,000 people world wide.”
Give me something that says: One scholar estimates that al-Qaeda only
has 10,000 active members globally. (Richards, 2003, p. 27). The book doesn’t actually exist, but in the
example, I’ve used a parenthetical reference, which gives the author’s name,
the year of publication, and the page number.
You can use footnotes or endnotes too.
The full bibliographic information will be in the bibliography at the
end of the paper. Or if Ben Grimm
concludes in his book (not a real book) that: “Al-Qaeda’s growth depends on
economic reform in the
As always, ask me questions, early
and often.
On Writing a Good Introductory Paragraph
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.)
Or another example:
The George W. Bush
administration’s decision to invade
So,
this paragraph tells me what you think, summarizes why you think that is true,
and explains how you will illustrate your point.
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:
On Writing a Good Comparative Politics Paper
So,
here’s an example:
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,
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
Use
this as a template if you want.
One last point: 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.
As always, ask me questions, early and often.