Overview
Your paper should have a thesis. Don't use this thesis, but here's an example: The United States should intervene in the internal affairs of Mexico to destroy the drug cartels.
How would you test whether your thesis is a good idea or not? Here are four ways of examining whether this policy would be a good policy, in relation to the non-usable example thesis.
I. We need to investigate whether it is legal according to international law to intervene in a sovereign state to battle drug trafficking.
II. We need to examine case studies where countries have intervened in other countries to curtail drug trafficking and see how those case studies turned out.
III. We need to investigate how the American public and the Mexican public feel about such interventions.
IV. We need to analyze the problem through the lens of a cost/benefit analysis and determine if an intervention into the internal affairs of Mexico is the most cost-effective way of addressing harms associated with drug trafficking and political instability in Mexico. Are there different levels of intervention and is anyone of them an optimal choice?
V. Conclusion: wrap up what you discovered, answer the question you posed with your thesis, and point toward the direction your conclusions lead and where more research could be pursued
Where do you get your resources? Usually, books printed by university presses are good sources of information. Articles that are published in academic journals are helpful as well. You should use a good number of articles and books to make your paper as strong as possible. When you are reading you may want to keep a word document open and write notes into that document under the headings where you might use the material you are reading about. For example, if you come across the principle of sovereignty of states in international law, you might want to put that under category I. above.
Excellent work will have a thesis, strong organization, use high-quality resources, display strong analytical skills, and come up with mature and logical conclusions about the topic you are investigating.