Pick an ongoing political topic related to the themes from week 3 to week 15. Clearly identify a research question and the hypothesis or hypotheses you want to test (try not to examine more than three hypotheses).
Here is one example. Research question: why has North Korea developed nuclear weapons? Hypotheses: 1) due to fears about the power of the US; 2) because it driven by domestic factors. You will test the validity of those hypotheses by examining their logic and empirical evidence available. Your conclusion will be: a) Hypothesis 1 seems correct, b) Hypothesis 2 seems correct, or 3) argue that none of those hypotheses are correct.
Literature review
Read at least three academic references about the topic so that you can triangulate several opinions about it.
Approach
The argument can be based on a theory or not. For instance, in the North Korea example I gave above, you can use realism and liberalism to support hypotheses 1 and 2, or you can just look at hypotheses 1 and 2 without any reference to theory. Not all of you took IR theory before so I want to give the same chances to everyone. For those of you who want to follow theory, please let me know if you need more references, especially in the case of eclecticism, which I didn’t include in week 2 readings.
Methods
Briefly explain what kind of data validates the argument that you support.
Structure
Ideally the essay would be organized like this: 1) “Introduction” (topic, research question, hypotheses, summary of your explanation), 2) “Literature review”, 3) “Theory and Methods” or just “Methods” (according to your approach being theoretical or not) 4) “Analysis” (a big chapter where you examine the validity of the hypothesis or hypotheses), 5) “Conclusion” (review your findings, write a bit about their implications to the future, and if you want feel free to propose some solution to the problem).
Form
Choose any citation style from here:
https://www.citethisforme.com/guides
Please use footnotes rather than endnotes.