Comparative Politics Paper (Level 1)

As mentioned in Comparative Politics in Transition class, your paper for the prelims period will focus on the first two reasons why we compare.  This trains you with foundation skills in a developmental succession.  A good comparative politics paper is in depth and original work.  You will not be merely repeating what information is in textbooks but rather produce data using the comparative method.  In this case, you will be describing contextually and classifying (raw) data.

LOGISTICS:

Date of Submission:  August 26, 2014

Place: In Class

NO COVER PAGE 3-4 PAGES:

NEW FORMAT: upper part of page 1.

 NAME OF COUNTRY

Creative Title

A Single Country Comparative (Contextual Description / Classification) Study of (insert Political Object of Study in the Country)

Researcher: Name of Student (Surname, First name)

Professor: Ronald M. Castillo

1st Semester 2014-2015

Your paper's text beginning with the Introduction immediately follows.

Follow the capitalization, boldface, center.  Times New Roman size 12.  1.5 spacing.  1.5 right margin, .5 left margin 1.0 top and bottom margins.  Justified paragraphs.  Appropriate indention.  No extra spaces.

GRADING:

Metric: 

1-2 (1-3) submitted the wrong work

3-4 (4-6) substantial flaws (unproven claims, simply reported common knowledge that can be gained from general references)

5-6 (7-9) average work, several common errors, accomplished the task and nothing more.  No student insight. 

7-8 (10-12) very good work, very minimal (1-2) errors, there is insight in student's ideas.  

9-10 (13-15) Excellent (added something new to the study of comparative politics)

Grade Categories:

Format - 10 (creative impeccable overall output)

Bibliography - 10 (rich and well documented + note: plagiarized automatically fails)

Contextual Description - 15 [described in detail and orderly (high level of abstraction if not multiple instances of comparison) + citation)] OR Classification - 15 [typologized data into correct data containers (high level of abstraction if not multiple instances of comparison) + proof/samples)

TOTAL of 35 pts.

CONTENT WRITING GUIDE:

First what you definitely need:  Secondary (if not primary) literatures (sources) that provide details (not just general/overview) discussions on the topic.  Most common are news (print, audio, video), and documentaries.  There are also several country studies in book form at our library.  Again, prefer to use sources that are in depth.

Just like any paper, this must have the basic 3 main headings.  For this paper, it will be: Introduction, Discussion and Conclusion (you will have an analytic conclusion even if it's description or classification, see below).

So what are we writing?

There must be a research direction.  Yes, you already have a country.  But as defended in the cosplay, you must focus on one particular political phenomenon.  Take for example: the Republic of Nonamia, I'm writing about the struggle of LGBT interest groups.  Hence, what I'll be contextually describing is this struggle of the nonamians.  I'll answer the question of which institutions did the interest group lobby with?  How did they lobby?

The data will also have to reflect on the sources type.  An example is a political event, which must be sourced from the news, and other books with narratives.   A political system on the other hand will be sourced from the constitution (primary source).  Another source for a political system are country studies (secondary source).  Be mindful that if you use country studies, then pick the best (which must be info rich).  If the country profile is not info rich, you'll need other sources to depict the dynamics of that system (again sourced from the news or related data source).

If it’s too basic that anyone with an encyclopedia can answer it, then why write the paper?

For the Introduction, you are given only one - two paragraph/s to give a background. This should 1) make the reader want to read, 2) inform the reader about the basics of your country, and 3) let the reader know what to expect in the discussion (is it description or classification?  What means did you use do it?).

For the Discussion you may choose either to do a contextual description or classification.

Generally comparison finds out things that are “most similar” or “most different” between objects being studied.  Both can be used whether you are doing description or classification.  But the question is what object are you studying?  This helps determine whether you will use description or classification.  You also need to ask what particular characteristics are your objects of study similar or different?  Sometimes, you need to find something deeper than what is obvious, not just simply relying on the objects as being both elections or they are both leaders, or they differ in time or differ place (though location can be a factor/variable in some studies).        

A contextual description will be a detailed “narrative”.  It can be one or more of the following.  1) Tells a detailed story of a political event.  2) Explains the roles and powers a political actors and/or institutions.  3) Tells the dynamics between political actors and/or institutions. 4) Described in detail the behavior of a political actor, institution or group of people.  A paper that used contextual description must provide a paradigm or conceptual framework that illustrates what was described.  Your research must produce “concepts” or general ideas that surfaced as you have dug deep in order to describe the politics of your chosen country.

A paradigm is a diagrammatized idea.  Using symbols or drawings, you will make an abstract idea more concrete, or at least help create a picture in the mind of the reader.  Variables in your paper must appear in the diagram along with a way to show relationships or dynamics between the variables (see Figure 1).  The size of your paradigm, table or matric will range from 1/4 - 1/2 of a page.

A paper focusing on classification explains both 1) how and 2) why you placed a certain political phenomenon, behavior, actor, or institution under a certain category or “data container”.  If you chose to do classification, you must provide one data treatment tool that you used to classify.  The common way is by using a table or comparative matrix.  The table or matrix must contain highlights of indicators (qualities) or measures (quantities) that your variables exhibit showing an easier way of comparing or classifying (see table 1, table 6, and matrix 1).  Your research must produce either typologies or sub-typologies of political events, behaviors, actors, or institutions.

For your conclusion, you are to simply sum up your new concepts or new typologies while briefly explaining the scientific method that you used to accomplish such.  It tells the reader what you found out while doing your research and how you were able to find out such information.