POLI/INTL 105
International Relations
Citation Assignment
The purpose of this
assignment is to familiarize you with some of the basics of research and the
citation of that research in a formal scholarly paper. This is the type of
thing you will be doing a lot of during your time at VCU. It is absolutely
critical for your success as a student to learn some of these basics. It is
even more critical for you to learn these skills now while you’re in college.
When you’re out in the world, either in business or government, you will start
your career in an entry-level job. Your job will likely depend on making
sure your boss has the information your boss wants. That means making
sure your boss has high quality information from high quality sources. Your boss
will also want to know exactly what the sources of the information are. That
way your boss can judge the quality of the information and get more information
if the boss wants more. The bottom line is this: in college and in your job,
the quality of your work is dependent on the quality of the information you
present to your professor or your boss. You need to find good sources of
information and you need to be able to show your professor or boss where you
found that information. All sources of information available to you are not
equal in quality. That is especially true of the Internet.
That means making sure
you cite that information correctly in your classes now. If you don’t
take this seriously while you are in college, you are likely to get a C on a
paper. If you don’t take this seriously when you are out of college in your
job, your boss will send you home; you’re fired.
The assignment is
simple:
· Write one paragraph on a topic related to
international affairs. Anything. Whatever you’re interested in, use
that as the topic of the research.
· Use three sources
o One book that you found in the library. That means that books
you found on line are not acceptable for this assignment. I want you to
go to the library and see all the books that are there, much more than you can
find on line.
o One peer-reviewed journal
o One web site
· Include a bibliography with sources in a
standard and accepted bibliographic format. Any standard form is acceptable
(MLA, APA, Chicago). The bibliography should be on a separate page.
· You must cite the book twice in the paragraph
(because there are different formats for a first citation and then all
subsequent citations).
· You must cite the refereed article twice in the
paragraph (because there are different formats for a first citation and then
all subsequent citations).
· You must cite the web site twice in the
paragraph (because there are different formats for a first citation and then
all subsequent citations; I won’t be too nitpicky on the second citation format
because the standard format here is very flexible; lots of ways of doing this
are accepted).
· For these citations you will use an accepted
standard citation format (MLA, APA, Chicago).
· Don’t use Ibid even if it is appropriate (when citing
a single source consecutively). I want you to use the full second citation
format.
· Here’s the catch: you must hand in two versions of the
paragraph:
o One will use footnotes as the citation method
o One will use parenthetical references as the citation
· Nitpicky stuff
o Use one inch margins
o Double space the paragraph
o Single space the footnotes
o Use 11-point font for everything and you probably can fit on one
page.
o Have a header like the header on the examples I provide
· I’ve asked for footnotes and not endnotes. You
might wonder why. The format for footnotes and endnotes are the same. The
difference is where the citations go in the paper. Footnotes go at the bottom
of the page. Endnotes go at the end of the document. You don’t need
to practice both because most word processing programs allow you to convert
endnotes to footnotes and footnotes to end notes with one click. If you’d
like to know how to do that on your program, play around with it or ask me and
I can show you.
Samples
I have done written
sample paragraphs for you. These provide a template for what I want from
you. Just click the links.
· Sample paragraph with footnotes
· Sample paragraph with parentheticals
As you can see, the
point here is to give you some experience in citing material in different ways.
The assignment is worth
10% of your grade. It is a unique assignment because you will either get a 100
on the assignment or a zero. The point of this is to make sure you get it
right. For that reason you will have multiple chances to turn in
the assignment, as many as you need. The due date for the assignment is on the
syllabus. You will turn in your two paragraphs and one bibliography. I
will check it. If you’ve done it correctly, you get a 100. Woohoo.
If not, I will mark it up, hand it back to you, and you will make your
corrections, and hand it in again. If you’ve got it the second time, you
get a 100. Woohoo!! If not, I will mark it up, hand it back, and you
will make corrections, and turn it in again. We’ll keep this up until you’ve
got the format down. In the end, everyone gets a 100. The final date for
turning in the paragraph is on the syllabus as well. If you don’t have it right
with that final version, you will get a zero. Do not wait until the
last minute on your revision. Everyone who takes this assignment even
half seriously will get a 100. The only people who will get zeros are those who
make no effort. No effort should get you a zero.
Since citing information
and finding information may be a new thing for you at the college level.
Below is a primer on sources and citations.
Of course, if you have
questions on this, come to office hours and say: “I have no idea what you’re
talking about! What is this stuff!?! Who are you anyway?” I
will walk you through all of it.
The Paragraph
The topic of the
paragraph and the content of the paragraph are not important in this
assignment. I’m not looking for a well-written theme or introductory paragraph
that could be used for a larger research paper. The key parts here are the citations
and the sources. Your intro paragraph is just about stating five facts that can
be cited. I have sample paragraphs above of exactly what this should look
like, but here is an example of how basic this can be. I’ll choose an example
that won’t likely be something that anyone wants to choose. This
paragraph won’t include actual citations or information because it is just to
show you how basic this can be. This would be the parenthetical version.
Belgium is part of the European Union (EU). Some economists
believe it has grown steadily because of that EU membership (citation).
Others say that EU membership has stunted the growth of the
Belgian economy (citation). Belgium’s GDP has grown at a rate of XX%
since the 2008 global recession (citation). Its
unemployment rate has been XX% in the same period (citation). The
government of
Belgium has no current plans to leave the EU (citation).
That is basic.
To Find Sources
Books: Here you will need to go to the library.
Use the Library: Really!!!! Here’s what I mean: Library. Books are still the best source for information.
· Be wary 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 god information is difficult.
· Books are better: They are written over years
and the authors of scholarly books (the ones in the library) are fact checked
and read by probably half a dozen people before they are put in print.
Here’s a story that highlights the point. I had a student writing a paper on
Indian nuclear strategy. He came to me saying that he had spent a week on
the web googling every key word he could think of and he still
couldn’t find anything that was useful. He had dozens of web sites, but they
just didn’t have enough information. He said: I’m lost! What do I do? I
walked across my office and picked up two books: George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (610 pages
long) and Ashley Tellis, India’s
Emerging Nuclear Posture (427 pages long) -- 1,000 pages with
everything the student wanted to know. He had never even thought of using
a book, so he wasted a lot of his time.
· For this assignment, I want you to go into the
library! The book must be something you found in hard copy in the
library. Many of you want to rely on books that are on line. That’s great if
you can find what you are looking for. But remember that books you can
find on line add up to much less than 1% of the books available to you in the
library. In research for other classes, if you decide only to use books
available on line, you have decided not to find the best sources of information
because you don’t feel like getting out of your chair. That’s lazy and lazy
doesn’t get a good grade and outside of college lazy gets you fired.
· 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.
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.
· How do you find a good journal at the VCU Library:
The VCU library web site is a good place to start if you want to find specific
journals. Let’s say you’re interested in Asia or China. 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 “journal finder” and you’ll
get another search box. Type in “Asia” or “China” or the “Middle East” or
whatever. You’ll get a list of the journals on the subject you want.
· How do you find a good article at the VCU Library:
This is similar to what I described above, but a more specific search. 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 peer-reviewed articles is one of the
options.
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 Indian’s nuclear
weapon strategy, you might use several combinations of these:
· “India”
· “nuclear weapons”
· “nuclear strategy”
· “nuclear doctrine”
· “ICBM” (intercontinental
ballistic missile)
· “SLBM” (submarine launched ballistic missile)
Then you might learn a
bit about India’s nuclear weapons while you do the search itself. You’d
learn that India’s ICBMs are called the Agni, so you might add that
to the keyword search. Then you might learn that India’s SLBMs are in a
series called K (named after APJ Abdul Kalam, the scientist considered to be the father of India’s
nuclear program). As of 2018, India is developing its K-4 and K-5 systems, so
you might add “K-4” and “K-5” to the keywords.
The Web: You cannot do this type of research only on
the web. Do not expect to be able to sit in front of your computer and
find all the information you need. 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 need is on
the web. That is not true. It is especially not true when it comes to
scholarship.
· A Warning about the Web: 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. 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
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
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
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”
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 the 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.
· Good sources on the web: At the very end of this
document is a set of links to think tanks. These are scholarly research
institutions that produce good information on international affairs. Some have
a left or right lean to them so be careful of that. Opinion that is
conservative or liberal is fine as long as you recognize that is has a specific
analytical perspective and not an attempt to sell you liberal or conservative
facts. Facts are not liberal or conservative. They are simply true whether they
fit a liberal or conservative perspective or not. Anyone who believes that
there are alternative facts based on liberal or conservative perspectives is a
propagandist and you should ignore what they say. They are the political
equivalent of snake oil salesmen and they are lying to you. Most cites are
clear about their orientation, so look for that.
Citations and
Bibliography
How do you know proper
format? That’s a tricky one, but not that tricky. There are several ways
to do it.
· Find a scholarly article or a book and copy the
style that it uses. We have several books assigned for this class. Any
one of them can serve as a template for how to cite information.
· Endnotes (and footnote style). This is an article that I
wrote which has endnotes that you can use as a template. It also includes
a bibliography that you can use as a template. Endnote and footnote
citation style are the same. The only difference is where you place them in the
text. Microsoft word allows you to choose endnotes or footnotes and to
switch one to the other if you like. Ask me if you have questions on how
to do this.
· Parenthetical References This is a link to an article I wrote which can be used as a
template for citing using parenthetical references. Note in the citations that
the author’s name and publication date is within the parentheses (and page
numbers if available). You may have to sign in to get the article.
· Web-based resources: These are tutorials or
serves that will actually put the citation together for you.
· Easy
Bib
· Chicago Style Citation Format (not Chicago Style Pizza; no deep dish citations)
· Bibme
· Purdue OWL (Online
Writing Workshop)
· scholar.google.com: Let’s say you found an
article on this page (or even if you didn’t you can look it up on
scholar.google.com anyway by typing in author and title). Once you get the
article in the list of sources, you’ll see underneath the source a large
quotation mark. Click that and you’ll get a list of different versions of the
correct citation for the source. You can cut and paste. This doesn’t work for
books; the citations they have for books are not quite correct.
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.
· Never write a sentence like this: Gabriel Weimann, a Professor of
Communications at Haifa University, states in his book Terror on the
Internet that the internet enhances terrorist power to organize and
recruit.
· Also avoid writing a sentence like this: According
to Weimann, terrorists use the Internet to
recruit.
· Instead write a sentence like this: The Internet enhances terrorist power to organize and recruit (Weimann, 2006, p. 312) or add the footnote or endnote
for Weimann there. The citations are
there so you don’t have to include the author’s info in the text. That
just takes up space, clutters up your writing, and is not scholarly.
· Please don’t do this. My head will explode and that
will make a mess on your draft.
Citing Information
There are a range of
issues about when to cite and how to cite. Here are some of them.
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 tiny 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.
· 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.
· 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.
Page numbers
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.
Numbering Endnotes or
Footnotes
· Number citations consecutively: In the social
sciences, footnotes and endnotes are numbered consecutively. The first
note is number 1; the second is number 2, etc. Even if you use a source
more than once, the keep the citations numbered consecutively. A source may be
cited as footnote number 3 then again as footnote number 7.
· 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.
· A web address is never enough for a citation from
the web.
· The footnote or endnote should come at the end of
the sentence, except in cases where you have several ideas in one sentence,
which come from different sources and you think it is important to identify the
sources very specifically.
· When you have cited something specific information
from a source you must cite the exact page number where you found the
information. This way if you cite information that you found in
a 450 page book or a 30 page article, the reader knows where to look
if he/she wants more information on the issue. Just citing the entire source is
not very helpful. Who wants to scan through 450 pages to find the
information? (Hey. He said this already, a few paragraphs above,
maybe it’s important.)
· The only time you do not need page numbers is if
they are unavailable (as in the case of some web sources) or if you are citing
an entire book or article. This is done in cases where you may be citing
background information on a subject. That won’t be the case here.
The Bibliography
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.
Web resources
Think Tanks (A cite with links to a number of think tanks is found by
clicking here)
· International Crisis Group: https://www.crisisgroup.org: This is the best thing that exists on current
international crises.
· American Enterprise Institute (AEI): leans conservative, but is not too ideological
· Arms Control Association (ACA): Non-profit organization that watches over
world military trends; it has a decidedly pro-arms control attitude
· Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
(BSCIA): The Kennedy School of Government (Harvard University) does some
of the best analyses of international affairs and national security and
publishes the best journal on international affairs, International
Security, which can be accessed online through the VCU online journal
systems.
· Brookings Institution: Non-profit organization that watches over
world political trends and also includes many former government officials
· Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs: Focuses on Human Rights issues.
· Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace:
One of the biggest and best. It is a non-profit organization, which studies
international affairs and has a huge number of programs. It sponsors scholarly
research on everything form non-proliferation to
building civil society. See the list of "Programs" on the home page.
· Carter Center: Former President Carter established this Center to examine
international issues, host conferences, and mediate international conflicts.
· Cato Institute: Right of center think tank that conducts
research on foreign policy, national security, and economic policy, as well as
domestic political issues.
· Center for American Progress (think tank with links to the Democratic Party)
· Center
for National Policy (non-partisan
center which does some national security work)
· Center for Non-proliferation Studies (CNS) at the Monterrey Institute of
International Studies, which is one of the best sources on information on the
spread of weapons of mass destruction
· Center for Strategic and International Affairs (CSIS): attached to Georgetown University. It
produces reports on national security, and is filled with ex-government
officials
· Coalition to Reduce
Nuclear Danger: A center-left
organization that focuses on US and international nuclear weapons policy.
· Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO): Columbia University’s compilation of papers,
journals, web sites, and other resources on international affairs. It’s no a think tank itself, but collects information from think
tanks, government, and other academic circles on international affairs and
national security. You may need to use your VCU password and login to get into
this system. It has a specific link to Working Papers from various think tanks and scholarly institutes.
· Council for a Livable
World: Center-left in its
ideology and focuses on ways to reduce the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and reign in US defense expenditures and deployments.
· Council on Foreign
Relations: The most prestigious
non-profit organization that examines foreign affairs and national security. It
publishes the journal Foreign Affairs
· Federation of American Scientists (FAS): Non-profit organization that watches over
world military trends
· Global Security.Org (excellent resources for international diplomatic, military,
and political issues)
· Heritage
Foundation: Right of center think
tank that conducts research on foreign policy, national security, and economic
policy, as well as domestic political issues.
· Hudson
Institute: Center-right think
tank that conducts research on foreign policy, national security, and economic
policy, as well as domestic political issues.
· Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA): Non-profit think tank that does a lot of work
for the US government on national security issues. Much of its research is
available online.
· Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis (IDSA): A think tank that looks at many international
security issues, particularly east and South Asia. It is an Indian institute
based in New Delhi.
· International Republican
Institute (Republican
Party-affiliated organization that analyzes world affairs and supports programs
that help nations make the transition to democracy)
· National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (Democratic Party-affiliated organization
that analyzes world affairs and supports programs that help nations make the
transition to democracy)
· National Endowment for Democracy: A private, non-profit organization that is funded by the US
Congress. Its goal is to foster democracy around the world through
programs and research
· National Security Archive: This is a non-profit organization that gets the US government to
declassify documents relating to US foreign affairs (through Freedom of
Information Act requests) then makes those documents available to the public.
Some are available on line. All are available at the Archive itself (In George
Washington University’s library. You can contact the Archive and make an
appointment to go there.) Some are also available to purchase in sets.
· Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): Non-profit organization that watches over
world military trends
· New
America Foundation (centrist
think tank that looks at domestic and international issues)
· Nixon Center: Non-Profit organization that studies foreign and national
security policy, leans toward republican ideas
· Nuclear Threat Initiative (non-profit, non-partisan group that
analyzes and lobbies on nuclear proliferation issues)
· Project for a New American Century: New think tank that espouses and develops neoconservative views.
· Project on Defense Alternatives (center-left)
· Rand Corporation: US government funded think-tank, but its
reports are designed to analyze government policy, not justify it. (In other
words, it is honest analytically)
· Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute (SIPRI):
Non-profit organization that watches over world military trends
· Henry
L. Stimson Center: Non-profit
organization that watches over world political and military trends, in
particular United nations peace operations
· Western
States Legal Foundation:
A pro-arms control group watching over US defense expenditures and deployments
and their impact on the public among other things.
· Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: Supports scholarly research on a number of
international topics. In particular, its Cold War International History Project provides support for scholars using
declassified documents to understand what was really going on in Washington and
Moscow during the Cold War.
· Union of Concerned Scientists: Center-left in its ideology and focuses on ways to reduce the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and reign in US defense expenditures
and deployments.
· United States Institute for Peace (USIP); Funded by the US Congress, it is a
non-partisan organization that sponsors and published research concerning
conflict prevention and conflict resolution