POL 3: International Relations Term Paper: Topics and Instructions. I. List of Topics for Term Paper

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1 POL 3: International Relations Term Paper: Topics and Instructions This memo contains two parts. The first part is a list of topics for the term paper and the brief paper section assignments. Each student can select a topic for the section paper assignment and a different topic for the term paper. Students cannot write their section papers and their term paper on the same topic. Students who wish to choose topics that are not on the list should provide their TA with a topic and a one-page paper outline. Only after an explicit written approval of the TA can a student select topics that are not on the list below. The second part is a general outline of the structure of an academic paper and a brief note on the rules of citation. Students must follow these rules. Failure to do so will result in point reduction. I. List of Topics for Term Paper 1. The U.S. Policy toward Iraq from 9/11/2001 to the U.S.-Iraq War using the individual, state, and systemic levels of analysis. 2. Is the Obama Administration s foreign policy consistent with political realism? (Use examples to make your point.) 3. Why did the Wilsonian world order collapse: Theory and evidence. 4. Systemic Structure and World Order in the post-cold War Era? What is the structure of the current international system, and how does it shape the world s order? 5. Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and System Stability? What is the debate and what is the evidence for systemic structure and international conflict? 6. Is a Unit-Veto System Emerging? How does the current and immediate future process of nuclear proliferation affect systemic structure? 7. States Make War and War Makes the State. The effects of war on state formation. 8. Have the factors that shape national capabilities changed over time? 9. Paradoxes of power: Why do strong states sometimes lose wars against weak ones? 10. With power comes responsibility. Can the United States return to isolationism? 11. Who shapes foreign policy? Liberal and Realist theories and the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in Who shapes foreign policy? Liberal and Realist theories and the U.S. decision to intervene in the Vietnam civil war in The Legislature and Foreign Policy: Comparing the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament investigations into the intelligence reports of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq. 14. Presidential and parliamentary systems and their effects on foreign policy: can the chief executive be dismissed by the legislature due to foreign policy fiascoes? 15. Public opinion and foreign policy: public reactions to prolonged wars World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq (select two cases for comparison). 16. Civil-military relations in the Korean or Vietnam War. What can we learn from these relations about bureaucratic politics? 17. What happened to the military-industrial complex in the post-cold War era? 18. Compare the decision making process of the two Bush (senior and junior) Administrations in 1991 and 2003 with respect to the Iraqi crises.

2 Pol 3 Term Paper Topics Rationality in crisis situations: compare the U.S. decision making processes in two crises the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950 and the Cuban Missile Crisis. 20. Personality and foreign policy? Select two non-u.s. leaders and explain whether and how their personalities help explain their foreign policies. 21. Groupthink explain (using two case examples) why sometimes it happens and sometimes it does not. 22. Democratic Peace select a crisis between two democracies in the twentieth or twenty-first century and explain whether the theories of the democratic peace account for the behavior of the states in the crisis. 23. Why are big states more war prone than small ones? Select a major power and a minor power and explain their war involvement experience. 24. The diversionary theory of war: how does it account for war behavior of democratic states use a case study to illustrate your points. 25. Power transition and war: how does the long peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over the period support or refute this theory? 26. The effect of the end of the cold war on U.S. diplomatic practices Use two cases to illustrate your points. 27. A memo to the President: the principles of effective diplomacy in a complex world. How do we get what we want without using force? 28. A memo to the President: Effective mediation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How do we get the parties to Yes. 29. Alliance reliability in war what causes some states to fulfill their treaty obligations when push comes to shove and other states not to? Illustrate your arguments using two examples. 30. The collective good problem in alliance politics. How can the U.S. resolve this problem with NATO? 31. How developing nations can break out of the development trap? Use examples of successful and unsuccessful attempts at development. 32. Can terrorism succeed? Assess the relationship between the stragegy of a given terrorist group and the outcome of its activities. II. Paper Instructions The purpose of the term paper is to evaluate your competence in applying theoretical constructs and approaches in the study of world politics to the analysis of issues, processes, and events in the international system. General Structure of the Paper The paper is based on the application of a specific theoretical topic covered in the class discussions and the readings to one or more historical cases, issues, or aspects of international politics. A good structure of the paper is the following a. Introduction. The introduction lays out the specific research questions, the context of the paper (e.g., systems theory, domestic sources of foreign policy, diplomacy and negotiation, alliances and international organizations, etc.), and

3 Pol 3 Term Paper Topics 3 provides a brief overview of the paper. In general, it is a good idea to write the introduction at the end after you have finished the research and spelled out your findings and conclusions. This way, if the paper has a central theme, it is useful to point it out at the outset. b. Theory. This section lays out the theoretical framework that guides the case study. It discusses the relevant theoretical literature and derives from it a set of hypotheses that are researched in the next sections. Note: A hypothesis is a statement that entails an expectation of a relationship between two or more factors that needs to be proved or refuted by an empirical analysis. c. Narrative of the Historical Case/cases. Brief description of the facts and the historical processes you are studying. Be sure to discuss the actors, the problems, and the facts that are relevant to your analysis, and not provide unnecessary information. d. Analysis. This section applies the concepts, approaches, ideas, and methods entailed in the theory you are using on the historical case/cases. Be sure to relate the analysis of the case to specific hypotheses that you had specified in the theory section. The key question here is whether and how the facts of the case support or contradict the hypotheses. Also, it is useful to say something about if and how the theory helps explain seemingly inexplicable aspects of the historical case. e. Conclusion. This section summarizes your findings and whatever other conclusions you derived from the research. You can also point out shortcomings or advantages in the theory on the basis of your study of the case. If there are policy implications, please mention them. f. Bibliography. List all of the sources you cited or relied upon in the paper, and only those sources that are referenced in the paper. If you used additional sources that were not explicitly referenced in your paper, do not list them in the bibliography. Style. Spend some time thinking on how to organize your paper, how to present your arguments, how to support them, and how to conclude. A well written paper makes for a better grade than a poorly written one. Questions. I encourage creativity in writing, but to be on the safe side, check with your TA any ideas that you think are not really of a standard form that you want to put in your paper. Feel free to discuss your paper with the TA as you engage in research and writing. Rules of citation a. Citing sources in the paper. The general rule for citing or referring to sources in the paper is to use the author s (or authors ) name/s, the date of publication and

4 Pol 3 Term Paper Topics 4 the page numbers in parentheses next to the argument that refers to a particular source. Note the use of commas in the parentheses. There are two ways of doing that, spelled out in the following examples. i. Example 1: Organski and Kugler (1980, ) argue that the challenger s dissatisfaction with the status quo affects its propensity to initiate war against the leading power. ii. Example 2: The paradox of power and conflict outcomes suggests that there are quite a few cases in which strong states lose wars to considerably weaker adversaries (Ray, 1996, 230). b. References to authors who have more than one publication (that you are using in your paper) during the same year would be listed by (author, yeara, pp.) and (author, yearb, pp.) etc. For example, if you are using two articles published by, say, John Smith in the year 2003, then when you refer to the first one cite it as (Smith, 2003a) and when you refer to the second one cite it as (Smith, 2003b). c. Footnotes (or endnotes). Footnote/endnote material should reflect issues that are not essential parts of the argument in the text. They may consist of both parenthetical comments or of useful but not essential references. Consider the following examples. i. Organski and Kugler (1980, ) argue that the challenger s dissatisfaction with the status quo affects its propensity to initiate war against the leading power. 1 ii. The paradox of power and conflict outcomes suggests that there are quite a few cases in which strong states lose wars to considerably weaker adversaries (Ray, 1996, 230). 2 d. Bibliography. The bibliography should list all the sources referenced in your paper in alphabetical order. The rules for citing in the bibliography are the following. i. Books. Author s last name, author s first name and middle initials, year of publication, book title (in italics or underlined), edition (if more than first), city of publication, publisher. Example. Joshua S. Goldstein and Jon C. Pevenhouse International Relations (7 th Edition). New York: Pearson Longman. ii. Articles from journals. Author s last, first MI, year of publication, title of article, title of journal (in italics or underlined), volume no., issue no., pages of the article in journal. Example. Michael Watkins Negotiating in a Complex World, Negotiations Journal, 15(3): iii. Articles from edited books. Author s last, first MI names, year of publication, title of article. Editor s first, MI, last names, (ed.), title of 1 However, it is important to note that they do not offer a specific strategy for measuring dissatisfaction with the status quo. 2 Others, however (e.g., Rosecrance, 2001; Johnston, 2004) argue that the number of such cases is so small as to make this paradox a negligible issue.

5 Pol 3 Term Paper Topics 5 iv. book (italics or underlined), place of publication, publisher, pages of article in book. Example. Azar Gat and Zeev Maoz Global Change and the Transformation of War. In Zeev Maoz and Azar Gat (Eds.). War in a Changing World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp Internet sources. Use only sparsely and make sure that the sources are credible ones. Provide source author (if available), year of publication (if available) and URL. Make sure the URL is clickable and that a click will bring up the source. Example. Farr, Warner D The Third Temple Holy Of Holies: Israel s Nuclear Weapons, the Counterproliferation Papers, Future Warfare Series (No. 2). Maxwell AL: US Air War College. Available online at Good Luck!!!!