A clear thesis statement is due Monday, October 15, the date of the midterm exam. This should consist of one to four sentences and present a clear thesis statement or research question around which the paper will be organized.
A rough draft of the paper is due Wednesday, November 14, the last day before thanksgiving recess. This draft should be at least two pages and should consist of an outline or an introduction which is sufficient to show the reader the thesis main arguments expected to be a part of the final draft.
The final draft of the paper is due Friday, December 7. 2% will be removed from your grade for each day it is late up to December 12. Papers turned in after December 12 will not be graded.

Thesis statement/research question

One way to frame a thesis statement, which can be useful for the first one or two paragraphs of a paper, is to present the broad area of research and the purpose of the paper (for instance, the politics of social security reform in 1991/1992). Then tell the reader the purpose of the research (for instance, this paper examines the how and why of proposals for reform in 1991/1992). Then present the research question (for instance, how did the Ross Perot presidential campaign change the debate about social security and what permanent policy and political effects did that have?) This format may not always work, but it is useful for you to think about whether or not your research topic is interesting (what is the broad area of research) and is specific (does it asks a question that can be answered).

Rough draft

In order to assess your progress, I am asking that you turn in a rough draft of your work about 3 weeks before the final paper is due. I assume you will already have some work done, and you should feel free to send me whatever you have, so long as it meets the minimum criteria of being two pages long and being sufficiently well-formed to express the structure of the paper or how you are going to answer the questions.

Final draft

Format

A good paper should be as long as it needs to be. It should include the number of charts and tables that it needs. It should include the number of references that it needs. If your paper is very different from these guidelines, that may be because writing a good paper about your topic requires some adjustment, but it may be a sign that there is a problem. That said, I expect the paper to be between 5 and 15 pages 2x or 1.5x spaced. If you go long, that is fine, but if you go over 20 pages, let me know in advance and tell me why. It may be the case that you should focus more and we might discuss that.

I expect you to use at least 3 academic sources or primary data sources in your main argument. The data of your paper is likely to be the existing research, and the data should consist at least in a substantial part in works outside of the popular press. That doesn’t mean you can’t use popular press, but official or academic publications should be used to ensure some degree of rigor and impartiality. By main argument, I mean that these sources should be used to support your argument, not merely as a part of a review of existing literature.

Some information is best presented as a chart or table and I encourage the use of charts and tables.

Structure

Make things easy on the reader. Use section headers. Don’t write run-on sentences or over-long paragraphs. Your paper should follow the principle of, “In the first part I tell ’em what I am going to tell ’em; in the second part—well, I tell ’em; in the third part I tell ’em what I’ve told ’em.” That is, an introduction and conclusion section should be included.

On top of that, there should be a literature review section near the beginning of the paper and a discussion section near the end. The literature review should discuss recent, similar papers or articles in the academic and possibly popular press. The discussion may include your opinions on the meaning of what your found, policy implications, and/or new questions your research uncovered.

The main body of your paper will likely include the facts of the issue and how those facts inform your research question. It may include a discussion of the model used to address the question (for instance, you may discuss a social science approach or a way of organizing data). It may also include a discussion of how you chose and found your data (for instance, if you are comparing and contrasting a set of policies, how did you chose those policies and how did you come up with principles used to compare them).