The research paper should be 8-page long (12-point font, double spaced), not counting cover page and bibliography. For this paper students will select one country (other than the countries covered in O’Neil, Patrick H., Karl Fields, and Don Share. Cases in Comparative Politics. (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017: U.S., China, Russia, Japan, India, Iran, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa, Great Britain, France, and Germany) and one critical political issue in that country and conduct research throughout the semester. In your paper, you need to show evidence that you are able to critically analyze a political issue. Critical thinking is characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion.

The paper will include the following parts:

a) an introduction to the country in terms of major demographic and geographic features, brief history, and a description of the current political system,

b) description of an important political problem that the country is facing currently (this section will include how major political forces relate to the political problem and what events have taken place creating the problem),

c) what scholarly research says about your political issue,

d) implications and consequences: what the likely outcome for the political problem is given the balance of politics and resources.

Students must consult academic books and scholarly articles in addition to Internet sources and include proper citations and a reference list. I recommend using the Chicago Manual of Style. Please see more on that @