Assignment outline:

The first step towards completing this assignment is to identify an interesting political question that you’d like to investigate further. You might use your own country or your “adopted country” as a source of inspiration for this question, but it is not necessary that you do so. You will use this to generate a more general research question that will apply across multiple countries. 

Your next task is to write a critical essay of no more than 2500 words in which you compare and contrast a pair of academic papers attempting to answer your question. You must clearly explain the specific question each of these papers is attempting to answer, and the main argument from each piece. Taking into account the quality of the theoretical argument, methodological approach, and value of statistical findings, you will decide which of the arguments you find most convincing, and explain why you arrived at that conclusion. Finally, you will find and clearly state two possible objections that might be raised against your preferred piece. This may involve criticism of the theory, methodology, or statistics used in the piece.

Grading criteria:

Your responses will be graded based on the quality of your research question, the thoroughness of your research efforts, the quality of your research analysis, and the quality of your writing.