HOW TO WRITE A POLITICAL SCIENCE PAPER[1]

 

When writing a political science paper, begin with a clear, punchy thesis: a first sentence giving your main argument, which must be provable. It could be something like, “U.S. television advertising makes viewers cynical and indifferent and leads to low voter turnout.” If your thesis cannot be proved, it is a bad thesis. Your thesis is more definite than what the paper is “about.” This, for example, is no thesis: “This paper is about U.S. policy toward Iran.” This is a thesis: “U.S. policy toward Iran was doomed by overreliance on the shah.” Your thesis paragraph should be about as long as this one.

 

Supporting Elements

“Well, that’s what I think” isn’t good enough. You must bring in evidence to back up your thesis, say, three to five supporting elements. Use subheads like the one just above to separate them. This helps you structure your ideas and makes the paper easier to read and understand. If you can’t support your thesis with facts, numbers, quotes, or just plain reasoning, abandon or change it: “Back it up or back off.” Accordingly, you will probably not come up with a thesis until you’ve done some reading and thinking on the subject. When you’ve done enough reading to develop a thesis, make an outline of the main points your paper will make, like this:

 

Thesis:     Bush’s environmental policies created a backlash.

I.     What Bush said about the environment

            a.   1988 campaign statements

            b.   statements after coming to the White House

II.    What Bush did about the environment

            a.   budget cuts for EPA?

            b.   people appointed to head EPA

            c.   scandals and criticism of EPA

Ill.   Backlash

            a.   quotes from environmentalist groups

            b.   moves on Capitol Hill to help environment—did they vote any more money for              EPA?

            c.   public-opinion polls on environment

IV.    How did Democrats use this?

            a.   statements in 1988 and 1992 elections

            b.   Dems play issue big or not so big?

            c.    Did it work for them?

 

Each Roman numeral is a supporting element that then becomes a subhead. If your paper is five pages, make your thesis not more than half a page long, each supporting element one to two pages long, and finish with a half-page evaluation.

 

Sources

Sources—where you get your facts, data, quotes, and ideas—are very important, one of the first things an instructor checks. Good sources are from specialized books, scholarly articles, or respected periodicals. Bad sources are ones that appear commonplace or dubious, such as textbooks (never use your current text as a source), encyclopedias, dictionaries, and the popular press (such as your hometown newspaper). Be careful with Web sites; many are advertising or propaganda. Scholars divide sources into two types, primary and secondary.

A primary source is direct material unfiltered through the mind of another. In the example, it might be a 1992 quote from President Bush (Jones, 1992). A secondary source is another’s synthesis and views. In this case, it might be an article in a magazine of opinion about Bush’s environmental policy (Smith, 1989). To use a football analogy, which is better—your personal observation of the game (primary source) or the sportscaster’s description of it (secondary source)? Instructors usually like primary sources. An article may include as a primary source numbers from official documents, such as EPA budget cuts under Bush (Williams, 1992). Instructors are impressed if you have lots of good sources, say ten in a five-page paper. Just noting the same source twice doesn’t make it two sources (Thompson, 1991, p. 247). Where needed, note page number. A source means a different book or article. In the library’s reference section there are ways to get started fast, most on computer.

 

New York Times Index

Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature

Social Sciences index

Public Affairs Information Service

Facts on File

 

For anything to do with executive-legislative relations (Congress, the White House, new laws, budgets) there’s something so good it’s almost like cheating, the Congressional Quarterly, which puts out a weekly, an annual, and best of all, a Congress and the Nation for each presidential term. For foreign countries, there’s the magazine Current History and the Country Study series of books published by the Library of Congress.

 

Conclusion

Now, physically, your paper should look about like this. By the end you should have proved your thesis with evidence to the satisfaction of the instructor. Thesis is to evidence as head is to body; you can’t have one without the other. Below is how you do sources from a newspaper, a magazine article, a book, and a scholarly article. Sources are alphabetical, by author’s last name. Your paper, of course, will be longer and have more sources. For more information, consult the student writing center at www.prenhall.com/polisci.com.

 

Sources

Jones, Robert. March 4, 1992. Bush Announces Environment Program. New York Times.

Smith, Paul. June 20, 1989. Bush Against the Environment. New Republic.

Thompson, Earl. 1991. George Bush and the Environment. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Williams, Charles. The EPA Budget Under Bush. 1992. Ecology Quarterly, 17: 417. [last

numbers are volume and pages]

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The following questions are designed to help you develop your project.

What is your working title? (A working title should be descriptive and should show the chronological and geographical limits of your project.)

What is the specific question that you wish to address in your essay? How does this relate to a more general question that will be of interest to a broader public?

What are the sources that you will use in your paper? Have you located these sources?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of your sources in terms of your question? What biases are present in your sources? How can you refine your question in the light of your available sources?

Who are the most important scholars who have worked on questions similar to your own? What are the major issues related to your project? How does your project address these issues?

Which methods will you use in analyzing your sources?