Ask and answer a single, clear question that is interesting to you.
Ask and answer a single, clear question that is interesting to you.
I. CHOOSING A PAPER TOPIC
What you want to develop is a carefully-crafted, well-defined, precise and interesting question that you can subject to research and analysis. You may submit just your question, or you may submit it with a summary of your research to date, the next step in your plans, etc.
The subject matter can be historical or current; comparative, case-study or thematic; qualitative or quantitative; policy-relevant or not. You should anticipate that you will use a number of books and journal articles (say, not less than 10 total, to be sure, and possibly 20 or more) as your key sources. You might rely most heavily on just a few, but your preparation should include many more. In addition to academic literature (books and journal articles, etc.), your sources might include government or private archives, interviews, think tanks, or your own field work.
Examples of good questions:
– What’s Next for Charter Schools? Examining the Writings of Betsy Devos, 1996-2016
– How should the FAA and FBI treat drones?
– Who votes for third-party candidates: Understanding Utah in 2016
– Who drives Washington’s economy? Interviews of 25 immigrant Uber drivers
– Sanctions or nation-building: how do the lessons of Keynes’ Economic Consequences of the Peace drive US foreign policy today?
– How did private economic considerations drive Japan toward Pearl Harbor?
– How do countries respond to natural catastrophes: comparing Iran 1998 and Pakistan 2006 (or Japan 1996 vs. Katrina 2005, or Katrina 2005 vs Sandy 2012, etc.).
– Why did Al Gore lose his home state of Tennessee in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election?
– What explains recent changes and current trends in recycling IT hardware?
– What are the effects of international election monitors in developing democracies?
– After the Washington Consensus: what is shaping changes to the mission, goals and means at the IMF?
– how has the meaning of “democracy” evolved since World War II, with specific attention to transitioning democracies?
– other specific examples like this related to our course topic(s)
Examples of insufficiently precise or interesting questions, for our purposes:
What caused World War II?
What will Ivanka do?
Why did Kennedy beat Nixon?
Why did Trump beat Clinton?
What explains the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Who will be inaugurated January 20, 2021?
What will happen after Castro dies?
What went wrong in Iraq?
What causes immigration?
What was the sub-prime mortgage crisis and who cares?
What is democracy?
Each of these has potential as a topic, but not a narrow or interesting analytical focus: too broad, “done”, speculative, imprecise, unfocused, etc.
