Overview
Absolutely NO AI or plagiarized work; the teacher checks heavily.
Choose an international relations current event and correlate theories from the class to the current event to explain it.
Research Précis: Each student will write a (strictly enforced) 8-10 page (11-pt font, double- spaced, 1-inch margin) research précis paper. This assignment is designed to help students hone the skills that will be needed to conduct their own indepen- dent research efficiently and effectively.
A research précis is, succinctly, the preliminary identification of a research question in the field worthy of further development and investigation. It is important to note that this assignment is not a research paper in the traditional sense. Think of this project as the conceptual preparation for research—an intellectual blueprint. You ought to focus on clearly identifying a research question, contemplating questions of definition and operationalization, and situating your own work within the larger universe of existing scholarship, potentially including (but most certainly not limited to) selections appearing in this syllabus. In essence, this assignment is intended to simulate the first and most difficult stages of any significant research endeavor. Part of this assigned exercise is “technical” in nature, in that it tasks you with independently identifying and compiling a relevant foundation for your project in existing scholarship. The other part of the assignment, and perhaps the more important one, is “creative” in nature. Here, the goal is not simply to compile or repeat investigations conducted by others but to put together a convincing “pitch” for a project that could usefully contribute to this existing body of research. In short, the assignment will require students to practice the art of deploying the old to create the new.
Given the multitude of imaginable questions relevant to the field and methods available to answer them, there is no single “ideal-type” approach to composing this paper. Rather, you should aim to spend the majority of the allotted space addressing the most important issues entailed in answering your own particular question. To be a bit more precise, a successful précis will in some way (i.e., not necessarily in equal measure in terms of emphasis or “page-time”) accomplish four critical objectives:
« 1) Identify (and defend) a dependent variable, i.e., did you clearly and precisely describe a focal set of “potential outcomes” to be explained? Did you make an explicit case that this dependent variable is an important one and deserves further study?
« 2) Identify (and defend) at least two contending explanations for the value of your dependent variable—i.e., did you present a meaningful theoretical debate over why one should observe one of your potential outcomes over another? Did you make an explicit case that your focal explanations are compelling relative to other possibilities, and why?
« 3) Sketch (and defend) a preliminary strategy for adjudicating between these explanations using some form of empirical evidence—i.e., did you give some thought as to what real-world case, or cases, you could look at to assess the accuracy of your various candidate explanations (and the standards you would employ in judging between them)? To the extent others in the literature have performed comparable analyses, what would your study do differently?
« 4) Reflect a reasonably thorough understanding of existing scholarship related to the topic—i.e., did your background research on the issue consist of a few cursory Google searches one afternoon, or did you make a serious effort to familiarize yourself with a non-trivial sample of prominent existing scholarship on your chosen subject?