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Time: T-Th |
Office Hours: Tues/Thurs
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Phone: 346-4880 |
Office: PLC-921 |
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Email: rmitchel@uoregon.edu |
Course web page: http://www.uoregon.edu/~rmitchel/iep/ |
PS477/577: International Environmental Politics
Increasingly, nations cannot solve their environmental problems through domestic policy alone. Governments, nongovernmental organizations, and editorial pundits frequently proclaim the need for international solutions to environmental problems ranging from preserving wetlands and wildlife to protecting the global atmosphere. In some issue areas, nations have reached international agreements, in others, treaties remain elusive. Although environmental problems certainly -- and, we hope, their solutions -- will continue to increase in number and importance in the future, solutions to many existing international environmental problems provide us with experience with which to better understand the types of solutions available, the processes by which they can be instituted, and how effective those solutions have been at solving environmental problems.
This course develops five perspectives on why environmental problems arise and how we can solve them. It then explores three processes of international policy development: identifying problems, designing and negotiating solutions, and implementing policies to change national behavior. We will use case studies to develop our understandings of these processes. We will ask questions such as: What conditions help countries negotiate treaties to resolve problems? What types of rules work best to induce compliance? How do we evaluate whether a treaty has been effective or successful? How do nations improve treaty effectiveness over time? In short, we want to identify the sorts of agreements that will help the nations of the world solve their environmental problems.
These questions require careful attention to causal analysis, i.e., to showing that one or more factors caused the outcome we observe and that absent that factor, the observed outcome would not have occurred. Thus, a major element of this course will require that you identify and skeptically evaluate all causal claims (your own, mine, and those of authors you read) regarding environmental problems. For example, this will require being initially dubious of claims that the International Whaling Commission has been in any way responsible for the decrease in the number of whales caught since the mid-1980s, that growing scientific knowledge was the real cause for signature of the ozone protection treaty, or that treaties ever have any influence on behavior. I require PS205: Introduction to International Relations as a prerequisite to ensure that you have some familiarity with causal analysis, counterfactuals, and rigorous empirical evaluation. I hope that developing your ability to think causally will be the most important contribution of this course to your education.
Word of warning: Almost all past students who have taken this course have found the course itself -- and particularly the final paper -- to be quite difficult. Most students also find the course, in the end, very rewarding. But you should be aware that the requirements to do well in the course are quite demanding.
·
Elizabeth R. DeSombre. 2002. The Global Environment and World Politics:
International Relations for the 21st Century.
·
Ken Conca and Geoffrey Dabelko. 2004. Green
Planet Blues: Environmental Politics from
· Online Course Pack: The class web page (http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rmitchel/iep/) has links to online readings. You will need to either be on-campus, dial-in through the modem pool, or use VPN software to access many of the readings.
If you must make choices, place higher priority on DeSombre and
the Online Course Pack, and less priority on GPB.
Come to class regularly and actively participate in class discussions. Asking questions or making comments during class does contribute to your grade. Unfortunately, shy people do not get a "pass" on this part of the grade - if you are a shy person, please make sure to speak up several times during the course of the term.
Read the websites on plagiarism and the full assignment pack and come in with any questions you have about either.
You must write two essays responding to a brief question regarding the reading and the material in lecture. One will be on the Tragedy of the Commons and the other will be on the Relative Effectiveness of Regimes
There are two assignments related to developing the argument of your final paper for the course. Their main value lies in providing you with feedback that will help you improve the final paper you write.
Students will complete a research paper of 20 double-spaced pages (25-30 for graduate students) that will evaluate whether a particular environmental treaty has been effective at improving the environmental problem that motivated its creation. For more details on this paper, see the more detailed assignment description.
I will give up to 10 extra points on the final paper (i.e., up to 4 extra points on the course grade) to students who identify a data set not identified on the course data webpage. I will grade all papers the same and then give up to 10 additional points for those who identify a new data source that meets the following criteria. Please see me if you have questions
Requirements and allocation of extra credit points:
· It CANNOT be an online source - it must be from a book or journal article. Use the library not the web.
· It CANNOT be simply a hardcopy of data available via the data links I provided.
· 2 points: Xerox copy of the data itself PLUS full, properly formatted citation of source.
· 1-2 points: 1 point if at least 10 years of data for at least 4 countries; 2 points if over 20 years of data for at least 4 countries or if over 10 years of data for at least 10 countries
· 3 points: Provide electronic version of data as Excel or Word file with source citation by email.
· 3 points: If dataset compiled from 3 different sources (e.g., compiling data from several annual reports).
I consider enrolling in this course as your agreement to abide by the University Policy on Academic Dishonesty. Read http://www.uoregon.edu/~conduct/sai.htm and http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/plagiarism/students/ and make sure you understand them. This is an ungraded requirement for the course -- you MUST complete this by the end of week 1. When you hand in an assignment, make sure that everything in it is your own work.-- otherwise, don't hand it in. Neither ignorance of these policies nor the lack of an intention to cheat or plagiarize will be considered a legitimate defense. Raise any questions and concerns you have with the professor before problems arise.
· Sustainable development means "treating the earth as if we intended to stay" -- (Robert Gray, 1993).
·
When asked whether he would like people in
· "The extinction of a species, each one a pilgrim of four billion years of evolution, is an irreversible loss. Death can be accepted and to some degree transformed. But the loss of lineages and all their future young is not something to accept. It must be rigorously and intelligently resisted ... Death is one thing, an end to birth is something else" -- (Gary Snyder, 1990).
· "I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world" -- (Margaret Mead, 1964).
· A serious research study is "a study by someone whose mind could conceivably have been changed by the evidence" -- (Paul Krugman, 1993).
PS 477/577: International Environmental Politics
REQUIRED ASSIGNMENT (before this class session): Read websites on plagiarism (see p.2 of syllabus) and read whole assignment packet at end of this syllabus. This will clarify expectations of the course and its level of difficulty.
"Three Decades of Global Environmental Politics" in GPB ch. Intro.
Mitchell, Ronald B.
2002a. International environment. In Handbook
of International Relations, edited by Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and
Beth Simmons, 500-16. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. On-line
Mitchell, Ronald B. and
Thomas Bernauer. 1998. Empirical research on international environmental
policy: designing qualitative case studies. Journal
of Environment and Development 7 (1):4-31. On-line
Sheila Jasanoff , "Skinning Scientific Cats" in GPB ch. 16.
Skim the IPCC Executive Summary. On-line
DISCUSSION PAPER: "Tragedy of the Commons" due at beginning of class (< 1500 words – provide a word count): Write a paper that includes the following four sections.
1) Description: describe/define a Tragedy of the Commons (ToC).
2) Examples: describe one international environmental problem and show how it involves a ToC and another international environmental problem and show how it DOES NOT involve a ToC.
3) Causes: what causes a ToC to arise?
4) Solutions: what strategies can those caught in a ToC use to avert the outcomes we expect in such situations?
Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," in GPB ch. 03.
Susan J. Buck, "No Tragedy of the Commons," in GPB ch. 04.
William Ophuls, "The Scarcity Society," in GPB ch. 05.
We will simulate the Tragedy of the Commons online during class. Prepare your strategy before class. Start by playing the "Optimizing a Private Farm" game on the course website. During the in-class game, you will decide how many cows you want to put on a commons to which all others in the community have access. Your goal is to maximize the milk your cows produce (so you can share that milk with homeless people in your community). What strategy will you use to ensure that you and the rest of the class do not overgraze the commons? How will you convince other class members to adopt your strategy? What should you do in the meantime to make sure you still can give milk to homeless people this year?
Donella H. Meadows, et. al., "Limits to Growth," in GPB ch. 01.
Ken Conca, "Rethinking the Ecology-Sovereignty Debate," in GPB ch. 06.
Lyuba Zarsky, "Stuck in the Mud? Nation-States, Globalization, and the Environment," in GPB ch. 07.
Reitan, Eric. 1996. Deep
Ecology and the Irrelevance of Morality. Environmental
Ethics 18 (4):411-24.
On-line
TREATY ASSIGNMENT #1: due beginning of class.
Tesh, Sylvia N. and
Bruce A. Williams. 1996. Identity politics, disinterested politics, and
environmental justice. Polity
18:285-305.
On-line
Haas, Peter M. 1989. Do
regimes matter? epistemic communities and Mediterranean pollution control. International Organization 43
(3):377-403.
On-line
Clark, William C.,
Ronald B. Mitchell, David W. Cash, and Frank Alcock. 2002. Information as
influence: how institutions mediate the impact of scientific assessments on
global environmental affairs. Faculty Research Working Paper RWP02-044.
Cambridge, MA: Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. On-line
Lubchenco, Jane. 1998.
Entering the century of the environment: a new social contract for science. Science 279:491-7. On-line
Vitousek, Peter M.,
Harold A. Mooney, Jane Lubchenco, and Jerry M. Melillo. 1997. Human domination
of earth's ecosystems. Science 277
(5325):494-9.
On-line
Kates, Robert W., et al. 2001. Sustainability Science. Science 292 (5517):641-2.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/292/5517/641?ijkey=MUU8kNHodD.22&keytype=ref&siteid=sci.
On-line
World Commission on Environment & Development, "Towards Sustainable Development," in GPB ch. 22.
Larry Lohman, "Whose Common Future?" in GPB ch. 23.
Class discussion on writing the final paper and how to conduct a good causal evaluation of a treaty's influence. Re-read Mitchell and Bernauer from previous class session, think about causal questions and feedback from professor, and come in with questions prepared. This should help you prepare over the weekend for the next assignment of Outline and Graph of DV, and get started on your paper.
Paul Wapner, "Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics" in GPB ch. 11.
Mary L. Barker and Dietrich Soyez, "Think Locally, Act Globally? The Transnationalization of Canadian Resource-Use Conflicts," in GPB ch. 10.
Ethirajan Anbarasan, "
Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Peoples' Organizations
of the
TREATY ASSIGNMENT #2: due beginning of class. This should involve graphing your data and making an initial effort to explain what you see.
United Nations Environment Programme, "Multilateral Environmental Agreements: A Summary," in GPB ch. 12.
James Speth, "Perspective on the
Henri Acselrad, et al., "Excerpt from the Jo'burg Memo," in GPB ch. 15.
Sprinz, Detlef and
Tapani Vaahtoranta. 1994. The interest-based explanation of international
environmental policy. International
Organization 48 (1):77-105. On-line
Nancy Lee Peluso, "Coercing Conservation," in GPB ch. 33.
Mitchell, Ronald B.
2002b. A quantitative approach to evaluating international environmental
regimes. Global Environmental Politics
2 (4):58-83.
On-line
Victor, David G. 1999. "Enforcing International Law:
Implications for an Effective Global Warming Regime." Duke
Environmental Law and Policy Forum 10:1, 147-184. On-line
DISCUSSION PAPER: "Relative Effectiveness" due at beginning of class (< 1200 words – provide a word count): Compare the experience of the whaling and ozone protection regimes. Which regime has been more effective at influencing behavior? Which has been more effective at achieving its goals? What was the relative difficulty of the tasks the two regimes faced? In evaluating the relative effectiveness of these two conventions, which regimes accomplishments strike you as more impressive? If you see one regime as more effective than the other, to what do you attribute its success? If they were equally effective or ineffective, to what do you attribute the similarity in these outcomes?
Peterson, M. J. 1992.
Whalers, cetologists, environmentalists and the international management of
whaling. International Organization
46 (1):147-86.
On-line
Walsh, Virginia. 1999.
Illegal Whaling for Humpbacks by the Soviet Union in the Antarctic, 1947-1972. Journal of Environment and Development 8
(3):307-27.
On-line
Grundmann, Reiner. 1998.
The strange success of the Montreal Protocol: why reductionist accounts fail. International Environmental Affairs 10
(3):197-220.
On-line
Clapp, Jennifer. 1997.
The Illegal CFC Trade: An Unexpected Wrinkle in the Ozone Protection Regime. International Environmental Affairs 9
(4):259-73.
On-line
Online readings:
· Graph of Montreal
Protocol CFC Consumption and requirements - On-line
· Graph of
Whaling Convention quotas and kills - On-line
· International
Convention for the Regulation of Whaling text - On-line
· International
Whaling Commission Secretariat - On-line
· Vienna Convention for the
Protection of the Ozone Layer text - On-line
· Montreal Protocol on Substances
that Deplete the Ozone Layer text - On-line
· Ozone Secretariat - On-line
· Illegal
Trade in Ozone Depleting Substances (UNEP 2001) - On-line
Thomas Homer-Dixon, "Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases," in GPB ch. 27.
Daniel Deudney, "The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security," in GPB ch. 28.
Adil Najam, "The Human Dimensions of Environmental Insecurity" in GPB ch. 29.
Somaya Saad, "For Whose Benefit? Redefining Security," in GPB ch. 30.
Pacific Institute list of water-related conflicts since 1500
AD: On-line
João Augusto de Araujo Castro, "Environment and Development: The Case of the Developing Countries," in GPB ch. 02.
Sharachchandra M. Lélé, "Sustainable Development: A Critical Review," in GPB ch. 24.
Bjorn Stigson, "The Business Case for Sustainable Development" in GPB ch. 25.
Alan Durning, "How Much is Enough?" in GPB ch. 26.
TREATY ASSIGNMENT #3: due beginning of class.
Tony Juniper, "Presentation to the World Trade Organization Symposium," in GPB ch. 17.
Daniel Esty, "Environment and the Trading System," in GPB ch. 18.
Vaughan, Scott.
2003. "The Greenest Trade
Agreement Ever? Measuring the Environmental Impacts of Agricultural
Liberalization." In NAFTA'S Promise and Reality: Lessons from
Hufbauer, Gary Clyde, Daniel C. Esty, Diana Orejas, Luis
Rubio, and Jeffrey J. Schott. 2000. NAFTA and the Environment: Seven Years
Later.
Commission for Environmental Cooperation of
Frances Seymour and Navroz Dubash. "World Bank's
Environmental Reform Agenda," in GPB
Ismail Serageldin and Andrew Steer. "Expanding the Capital Stock," in GPB ch. 20.
World Bank Inspection Panel. "Report and Findings on the Qinghia Project," in GPB ch. 21.
Gita Sen, "Women, Poverty, and Population: Issues for the Concerned Environmentalist," in GPB ch. 34.
United Nations Population Fund. "Footprints and Milestones," in GPB ch. 35.
Also, follow up on some of the links provided at http://www.cnie.org/billion and be
prepared to discuss issues of population raised in class. On-line
UNFCCC text: On-line
Kyoto Protocol text: On-line
UNFCCC Secretariat page: On-line
FINAL PAPER DUE at the beginning of class on March 10th. NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED!
HOMEWORK DEADLINES
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Date
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Assignments
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Tues.,
Jan 18
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TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS: Provide a discussion paper (< 1200 words) – see below. |
Tues.,
Jan 25
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TREATY ASSIGNMENT #1: See assignment packet. |
Thurs.,
Feb 3
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TREATY ASSIGNMENT #2: See assignment packet. |
Thurs.,
Feb 10
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RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS: Provide a discussion paper (< 1200 words) – see below. |
Thurs.,
Feb 24
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TREATY ASSIGNMENT #3: See assignment packet. |
Thurs.,
Mar 10
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FINAL PAPER due at beginning of class. NO LATE PAPERS ACCEPTED! |
Some hints for success in this course and, in particular with the final paper. [This was sent to me by a student who did quite well in the course in 2003-2004.]
· Make sure you pick a single treaty for all 3 treaty assignments and the research paper. This will improve your success rate in the class tremendously. You should take all the treaty assignments seriously, including the early ones. If you do those first assignments well, then the work that goes into those first assignments will be very beneficial to you for the final paper.
· You should pick treaties that have been studied by other authors. For example, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty would have been very difficult to write the research paper on because of the lack of literature on it. Choose treaties from the list of suggested treaties on the website.
· The books on reserve in the library are "golden tickets" to a successful research paper. These sources are incredibly useful. You should also seek out the help of Tom Staves and/or Ted Smith, the government document librarians in Knight Library -- they are extremely helpful. Make sure to set up a meeting with them early in ther term to discuss your topic. At the end of the term they will be swamped with other students.
· “How is the world different with the treaty than it would have been otherwise” is in many ways the motto of the class.
· Make sure you go to Professor Mitchell's office hours early in the term to make sure you are on the right track. Make sure you spend time finding a good data set early, using the course resources. If you do not use one of the course-approved datasets (from the website), make sure you have your data in hand by the first assignment. Once you pick your treaty, make sure you sign up for office hours to discuss an appropriate data set before Treaty Assignment #2 is due.
· To better understand dependent and independent variables read Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science, chaps. 1 & 2 which is on reserve in Knight Library. This will be very enlightening for the students who had never worked with research design.
· Read the example paper on the course website to get an idea of how to write a good paper. This will help a lot in understanding Professor Mitchell's expectations.
Start by reading the assignment for the final paper. Writing the paper for this class is challenging! It will be very helpful if you start early and spend a bit of time to do each of the assignments rather than doing them in five minutes and then struggling with the final paper. Basically, think of each of the assignments as parts of an initial draft for your paper. In particular, make sure you have good data sources at the beginning of the term so you can develop questions and hypotheses on topics for which you are going to be able to acquire data to write a paper. Remember that you will also need to find data on a topic and graph it as part of your final paper.
As you begin, look deeply into and think carefully about two things:
1) What
EXACTLY does the treaty require? Go
beyond posing vague questions like "did implementation of the Great Lakes
Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA) improve the water quality of the
2) Equally important, ask yourself whether you can (even conceivably, let alone practically) get data that would indicate an influence of the treaty? This requires careful thought, too. Thus, in the GLWQA example, saying that you will look for an "improvement in water quality after implementation of the agreement" is way too vague. What is "water quality" and how would you observe it changing? Would you use emissions from chemical factories or pesticide runoff from farms - if the latter, do you think there is reliable information on that (and can you find it by week 7 of the term??)? Similarly, how would you know how many species are protected by the Convention on Intl Trade in Endangered Species? In the endangered species case, recognize that you could look at trade in endangered species rather than the number of species that went extinct (or didn't go extinct). Reducing trade in endangered species might be movement in the right direction but also think about that process - how likely is it that the data on trade in endangered species (which CITES bans) will be reliable - perhaps as reliable as the trade statistics on cocaine and heroine. We know there is a lot of trade going on but you may not put much faith in knowing how it changed over time simply because the amount of trade in illicit drugs that we know about is likely to have little, if any, relationship to the actual, underlying amount of trade in illicit drugs.
These points, in general, suggest that you should really try to work carefully on your research plan VERY early on in the term to make sure you have a treaty for which you understand what its rules are and whether data is available that would allow you to evaluate the influence of those rules. Students in previous years have been quite frustrated when they assumed they could figure these problems out and only started working on it in week 6 or 7. Start now and it will be MUCH easier.
Finally, I would STRONGLY recommend (I won't require it but I should) that all of you stop by early in the term during office hours to discuss your research topics. I know a fair bit about many of these treaties and can point you toward good literature on some and steer you away from others that are unlikely to be fruitful (thus, e.g., there isn't to my knowledge good consistent data on deforestation, so that would not be a good treaty to work on). I am happy to help - I want your papers to add to my knowledge as well as yours.
Choose an environmental treaty from the IEA database. Choose one for which there is a secretariat listed and for which you can find the text of that treaty on that website (and all its protocols and amendments). If you cannot find the treaty on the secretariat website, choose another treaty. For this assignment you should not need to read anything but the treaty - for question 8, you can find the answer for most treaties at www.ecolex.org or on the website you have identified for the treaty secretariat. Make sure to cite the relevant sections of the treaty, and answer the questions in your own language, quoting only when doing so is essential.
Before completing this assignment: Make sure you can identify an appropriate environmental "indicator" for this treaty that could be used as the basis for evaluating the treaty's effectiveness and evaluating progress toward the treaty's goal. For many agreements, there are data indicators on the course website. Remember, however, that you can receive up to 10 extra credit points on your final paper (4 extra credit points toward your final grade) by identifying and providing a copy of a new data source, not identified by me, with a copy of the data and full citation information in line with the requirements laid out in the syllabus.
· Graph Your Data! - follow this link to a program that will graph your data. This replaces treaty assignment #2 and will be due on Thursday, Feb 5 rather than Tuesday, Feb 3. What you must hand in is:
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A graph of the data you will use. You may
want to create multiple graphs (to do so and save them, add different letters
to the end of your last name Smitha, Smithb, Smithc)
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You can look at graphs you previously made or those of other students
- click on the file with the .html extension for full page.
·
The source of the data - you MUST have a clearly
identified source for the data. To see the proper format for citations, follow
this link: Citation Formatting
·
Spend at least two paragraphs, but hopefully
more, explaining how you will interpret the data that you have found.
That is, describe how you will use the information in your graphs to evaluate
whether the agreement/treaty you are examining had an effect or not. Make
sure you do some careful thinking on this! This will be the main part
that is graded.
Using the environmental treaty you used for the first assignment, or if necessary, a new treaty, answer the following questions.
Using the environmental treaty you used for the first assignment, or if necessary, a new treaty, answer the following questions.
This is really a first draft of your final paper, so think about it carefully. The outline for your final paper should use the following categories as a basis, but should provide details specific to the paper you are going to write.
· Introduction
· Definitions and background (this section should be VERY brief, max of 1 page in final paper)
· Theoretical argument and hypothesized relationships of IVs and DVs – make sure to read the "word on theory" at the end of the Final Assignment description.
· Values of the dependent variable and the empirical puzzle involved
· Values of the independent variables and their power to explain
· Evaluate rival theories of the cause of variation in your dependent variable
· Conclusion
Students must complete a research paper of 15-20 double-spaced pages (25-30 pages for graduate students) developing a causal argument that evaluates the effectiveness of a particular treaty or treaties. The length matters less than that you do a full and complete assessment of the treaty's effectiveness, i.e., how much did it contribute to solution of the problem it addressed and how different were things with the treaty than they would have been otherwise? Each of you will investigate whether a treaty or several treaties have "been effective" at improving the environmental problem that motivated their creation. Papers that are historical narratives or are interesting, but non-causal descriptions of problems will not be acceptable. Unlike the earlier assignments, you should write this analysis as a coherent paper, rather than as answers to individual questions. You should use information from previous assignments, but make sure it is presented in a way that makes sense for this paper.
Your topic must be framed in terms of a theoretical statement that is not related to any specific environmental example. You must ask a question that goes beyond simply "was this treaty effective?" It should ask whether some particular feature of a treaty or some condition in which the treaty had to operate (i.e., some independent variable) made it more or less effective. That is, you should provide a clear causal question that could refer to a large number of environmental problems as well as the specific version of that question that applies to your cases. For example, you might ask "Are sanctions more effective than rewards at promoting compliance?"; "Is monitoring a necessary part of any treaty for it to be effective?"; or "Is there more environmental improvement if there are specific targets and timetables or if there are vague norms and goals?"
Once you identify a good research question, you must also identify a data set of environmental or behavioral indicator for at least ten years that provides information on variation in the dependent variable identified in that research question.
The main goal is to engage yourself in rigorous causal analysis, making the strongest possible argument you can regarding what explains the success or failure of the treaty or treaties you have chosen to study. You should, at a minimum, show that some factors (independent variables) can be excluded as the cause of the change in the dependent variable. Presumably there are things your treaty does well and things it does less well. In answering this question you will want to note both its accomplishments and its problems. You will also want to ascertain why it has done well or poorly at the various aspects of environmental protection or state action it attempts. Your paper should get at what sorts of things are likely to make a treaty work well or poorly and under what conditions (scientific consensus? type of environmental problems? underlying interests and economic activities of states?) we can expect the most effective environmental treaties.
Bare minimum requirements are as follows (see final checklist for more on this):
· Make sure to read and follow the instructions contained in the attached memos on "Structuring your paper" and "Checklist for writing a good paper,"
· Conduct original research directly addressing a theoretical question and its empirical application to a specific case,
· Include AT LEAST 5 CITATIONS beyond those articles and books on the course syllabus,
· Make sure you do not plagiarize - read http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/plagiarism/students/ again to make sure you understand what plagiarism is,
· Format professionally with proper use of in-text citations,
· Create a full bibliography of those articles referenced,
· Include a title page with ID number (not name),
· Spell-check and insert page numbers, etc.
Papers will be graded based on the degree to which they develop a clear and well-structured argument. See my handout on how to write a professional paper before proceeding. I will discuss paper topics and ideas frequently during the course of the term. If you have any questions regarding your paper, I strongly encourage you to come to my office hours to discuss your questions and clarify the assignment and any problems you may encounter.
A WORD ON THEORY: You are not expected to develop your own theory for this paper. Rather, you are expected to summarize theoretical arguments already made by other scholars about the influence of particular independent variables in contributing to a treaty's effectiveness. You then will test those theories through your empirical research. The theoretical section of your paper should clarify your dependent variable first and then have separate sections on the major independent variables that scholars have pointed to as important determinants of change in that dependent variable (e.g., why states are willing or unwilling to comply with a treaty). For example, if you are looking at the impact of the International Tropical Timber Agreement on deforestation in developing nations, timber exports would be an example of a reliable and measurable dependent variable, and things that may effect exports (e.g. independent variables) would be population, forest coverage, world market timber prices, etc. Some of this review should be "generic" discussion of variables raised in the general literature on the influence of international environmental treaties and international environmental regimes, but the rest of it can be very specific to the particular treaty you are researching.
If you divide the theoretical literature review into a DV section, and then some 3-7 or so IV sections, that sets you up well for the empirical sections to follow in which you evaluate which of these IVs really explain the variation in the DV you observe. Doing this gives your research an excellent chance of identifying factors that are alleged to make a difference but which really didn't have much influence in the case or cases you are looking at. That, therefore, leaves a relatively few IVs as the likely 'culprits' for the variation you observe. Eliminating some of the IVs that theorists think are important in general by showing they are NOT important in the case you are looking at allows you to help policy makers focus their limited attention and resources on the IVs that are really the source of the problem in that area.
To: Students in my courses
From: Ronald Mitchell
RE: Structuring your paper
DT: December 20, 2004
As guidance for your final paper, I wanted to provide some ideas for a generic structure. Many of you will find other ways to structure your paper. You are welcome to use another structure. However, those of you who have not yet decided on your structure or who are unhappy or uncertain about your structure are well-advised to try to follow the structure given here. All students, regardless of whether you use the following structure or some other, should make sure to cover the same major points as in the outline below.
Overall, you should make sure that your paper has a major argument. In doing so, make sure you also follow these rules:
· Make a causal argument. Take time to select a theoretical argument that interests you. You may find it easier to read some of the theoretical readings in the book and reader first to identify interesting theories already out there. Then see if you can clarify the causal argument implied by those theories, using independent and dependent variables. Think through how you would observe the values of these variables in a real world case and think about what cases would help you know whether the theory was true or not.
· Analyze the articles and books you read. Avoid providing summaries of the readings or stringing together long quotes from articles you read. Do not simply describe the problem or the solution.
· Use logic not assertion to support your argument. Avoid unsupported statements of your view. Build a logical argument for why the reader should accept that view. It may help in doing this to avoid taking on topics on which you already know the answer! The goal should be to learn during the research and writing process, not to confirm the beliefs you had before you started.
· Mix case accuracy with theory generalizability. The goal of your study should be to develop some theoretical generalizations applicable to a wide range of cases based on accurate analysis of one or two cases. This requires careful case selection (to control for most independent variables so they are the same for both cases) and attention to how the specific facts of your case fit into more general values of theoretical variables.
Make sure you clearly explain your major causal claim. If you phrase this as a "what caused. . ." question (e.g., "What caused oil companies to comply more with MARPOL's equipment regulations and not with the discharge regulations?"), make sure to follow this with the answer that you arrived at after researching and writing your paper. You can either just state your causal claim or have your causal claim be the answer to the question. In either case, make sure you have the causal claim in the introduction. That means adding this to the introduction after writing the rest of the paper. In this case, it might mean saying "The greater transparency of the equipment regulations caused higher compliance levels with those regulations than with the less transparent discharge regulations."
Fully define all concepts and terms that are important to your argument. Make sure you clarify to the reader what the independent and dependent variables of the research are. What are the variables, e.g., DV=compliance level; IV=transparency level? What values can they have, e.g., DV=High compliance or Low compliance; IV=More transparent or Less transparent? Make sure that you define what you mean by your dependent variable, especially if "success" is your dependent variable! You should make some statement like: "For the purposes of this paper, I define success (or other value/variable) to mean that behavior conformed more with treaty rules than it would have otherwise."
On background, keep it very short. One page maximum. If possible, eliminate this section altogether and bring in the necessary facts as part of your analysis.
This section should lay out the general theoretical literature on the topic you are investigating. You should describe the literature of prior political science scholars who have worked on the topic and have proposed and/or tested the hypothesized between the independent variables and dependent variables you are planning on studying. In essence, this is the "who said what to whom" on factors influencing treaty compliance and effectiveness section of the paper. You should be able to "place" your research in the context of other scholars who have worked on this issue, thereby showing how your research will contribute to our understanding of how to do better at managing international affairs. The best way to think about writing this section is to use the examples of the theoretical sections that are provided by many of the articles you are reading for the course.
In this section, provide the evidence that you believe demonstrates that the dependent variable has the value you claim it does in each of your cases. For example, this means providing the evidence that tankers actually did comply with the equipment regulations. It also requires that you provide the evidence that the dependent variable would and could have had a different value. For example, you should show here not only that all tankers complied with the equipment regulations but also that they did NOT comply with the discharge regulations. If you are comparing two treaties, provide the evidence that shows that the two treaties had different values on the dependent variable, that one succeeded and one failed (remembering your definition of success from the previous section).
Here you would want to lay out the various independent variables that you believe could possibly have caused the variation in your dependent variable. In the example, this would involve the variable of "level of treaty transparency." However, it would also include enforcement by a hegemonic state and growing environmental concern.
For EACH variable, you would provide evidence of the value of the independent variable and how variation in the value of that independent variable could have produced the variation in the value of the dependent variable. Thus, for example, you would want to show that the equipment rules were "More transparent" and that the discharge rules were "Less transparent" (see definition section above). You would then want to provide a causal narrative showing how "More transparency" could lead to "More compliance" by making identification and prosecution of violations easier.
You want to do the same analysis for other independent variables. So you would also want to see how growing environmental concern affected your dependent variable - in this case, the level of environmental concern was the same under both rules and so can not explain the variation in compliance. In most cases, you will find that other variables also could explain your dependent variable. That is fine. The main point is to honestly assess which of the several independent variables you have chosen to look at could explain variation in your dependent variable. Do not feel like you have to exclude all variables but one. I might have found that greater transparency and hegemonic enforcement both contributed to compliance with the equipment regulations. But at least I could have concluded that growing environmental concern had nothing to do with the difference in compliance levels. Note that this last statement does not mean "growing environmental concern is unimportant in environmental treaties," it simply says that differences in level of environmental concern cannot explain the observed differences in discharge and equipment compliance levels because there was no variance in the level of environmental concern across my cases: the level of environmental concern with the discharge rules was the same as the level of environmental concern with the equipment rules.
To the extent that the previous section has not already done so, spend a paragraph or two describing and honestly assessing whether some other independent variable might explain the variation in the dependent variable. For example, here you might want to evaluate whether the price of oil explains why the equipment rules had higher compliance than the discharge rules. If you can exclude this variable from consideration, good going. But if not, acknowledge that this alternative theory may have also contributed to the variation in the dependent variable.
Provide a nice summary of the argument you have made. Restate what causal claim or claims you have provided supporting evidence for and what causal claim or claims you have shown do not hold true in your case or cases. If appropriate, you should provide some sense of why what you have learned about the cause of variation in your dependent variable is important. You may want to make policy suggestions something like "This study shows that environmental treaties can cause greater compliance if they incorporate more transparent rules." However, make sure that these recommendations clearly stem directly from your research.
Do NOT spend more than three sentences, anywhere in the paper, telling me how awful some environmental problem is or describing how much damage humans are doing to the environment. If you write a well-written analytic paper you will get an A even without such a section; if you write a poorly written paper with no causal analysis, including a long and eloquent section on the horror of the environmental problem, you still will not get an A.
Do NOT spend more than three sentences describing all the reasons why humans should take better care of the environment. Also avoid recommendations that you would have made before you even started the paper. For example, do not end by saying something like "We all need to care more about the environment." You could have said that on the first day of class!
Enrolling in this course is considered to constitute acceptance of the University Policy on Academic Dishonesty. Read http://www.uoregon.edu/~conduct/sai.htm and http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/plagiarism/students/ and make sure you understand them. Plagiarism is intellectual theft and violates the student honor code. Exact quotations must have quotation marks and the appropriate citation. Paraphrases, even if not exact quotations, must have appropriate citations. Submitting a paper written by someone else, whether "borrowed" from a friend or purchased from a "service", even if updated, constitutes plagiarism. If you have any doubts, give credit to the source. If you have any questions, come see me.
In case intellectual integrity and honesty is not reason
enough to make you avoid plagiarism, note the following. Note the times on the emails: plagiarism on a
paper handed in
From: 'John M. Meyer' <john.meyer@vuw.ac.nz>
Subject: a bit of detective work...
To: gep-ed@igc.apc.org
I wonder if anyone is interested or able to help me w/a bit of detective work. I have a student paper that, for a variety of reasons, I am quite sure is plagiarized. However, I have no real proof of the matter at the moment, as I cannot identify the source of the plagiarism, which the student is adamantly denying. It occurred to me to include an excerpt from the paper, which perhaps a list member will recognize (perhaps as their own?), and be able to point me toward the source of it. Any help would be much appreciated, but probably most appropriate off list.
I suspect that the original source would have been published around 1990-2, since the opening sentence reads:
"The difficulties of ecological awareness and action in the late 1980s has lead to a proliferation of international environmental agreements among nation-states."
The conclusion reads as follows (excerpts):
"The environmental community's tacit or explicit support of coercive conservation tactics has far-reaching consequences. First, local resistance to what are perceived as illegitimate state claims and controls over local resources is likely to heighten, and may lead to violent response, sabotage of resources and degradation. Second, the outside environmental community may be weakening local resource claimants who possess less firepower than the state.
Thank you.
John
Meyer, Department of Politics,
From: Ken Conca <KCONCA@bss2.umd.edu>
Subject: Re: a bit of detective work...
To: gep-ed@igc.apc.org, 'John M. Meyer' <john.meyer@vuw.ac.nz>
Regarding the plagiarism inquiry--the text you quote is taken verbatim from the chapter 'Coercing Conservation' by Nancy Peluso, to be found in Ronnie D. Lipschutz and Ken Conca (me), eds., THE STATE AND SOCIAL POWER IN GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS (Columbia U. Press, 1993). The two passages you cite are the very first and very last paragraphs of this 22 page chapter. Much of the middle is devoted to case studies of Kenyan parks and Indonesian forests as examples of coerced conservation. Interestingly, this enterprising student did screw up some of the punctuation while copying Peluso's words.
Ken Conca, Assistant Professor of Government and Politics,
To: Students in my courses
From: Ronald Mitchell
Subject: Checklist for writing a good paper
Date: December 20, 2004
Obviously, the crucial parts of your paper are the intellectual content - so focus on them first. That said, to make sure that your excellent intellectual work is presented in the most professional manner, I also wanted to provide the following checklist of things you should make sure to do before you hand it in. Do them in the following order and check them off as you go and it will be difficult to go wrong.
___ Re-read the assignment: Re-read the assignment and grading criteria for the paper. Make sure you understand what the goal for the paper is and what things the professor will be looking for.
___ Writing the intro and conclusion: Make sure that both your intro and conclusion entail brief summaries of the major thread of your argument, including the theory or theories you will be evaluating and your empirical findings regarding that theory's validity for whatever cases you studied.
___ Frontmatter: Have a nice cover page with your paper title, date, and ID # but do NOT include your name or any other contact information on it. All of this should be in a template file that you use for all your college papers.
___ Headings: You can improve the logic and readability of your paper by using headings such as Introduction, Definitions and Background, Theories of Free Trade, Evidence from NAFTA, Conclusion. Headings and subheadings should appear every three pages or so.
___ Page Numbers: Always have your computer put page numbers somewhere on the page. That ensures that you don't hand in a paper with missing pages and allows people grading the paper to be able to reference pages when making comments.
___ In-text citations (not footnotes): See attached sheet on 'Use and Formatting of In-Text Citations and References'
___ References: See attached sheet on "Use and Formatting of In-Text Citations and References"
___ Spellcheck: Always, repeat always, run spell-check as the last step before printing out the final version of a paper. In the age of computers, there is no excuse for misspelling - if you used a word processor to write it, then you can run spell-check in less than three minutes.
___ Proofread: In addition, proof your paper to avoid missing words and other errors that spell-check will not catch. Spell-check can Miss man an err or that a careful proof-reading will knot miss. (Translation: Spell-check can miss many an error that a careful proof-reading will not miss.)
Use and Formatting of In-Text Citations and References
Ronald B. Mitchell
December 20, 2004
Use footnotes sparingly and only to add text that you feel is important to the argument but would break up the flow of the argument if included as text. For all citations, use the in-text citation method described here.
1) By this point your paper should have at least seven different articles, chapters, books, etc. that you will use as references. These must include at least three articles from journals. I strongly encourage you to provide me with ten or more references, since by now the research for your paper should be well underway.
2) You are required to use the following guidelines for formatting your references. Do not use any other style of references. If you type your references into a document now, you won't have to retype them for your paper later.
3) For EACH reference, provide a sentence or two laying out the main variables that the author(s) of that article or book argue are most important in explaining the dependent variable they are seeking to explain.
IN-TEXT CITATIONS are the components of author, year, and page that you insert in the text of the document. General rules for IN-TEXT CITATIONS are:
· Use page numbers for citations whenever citing a specific quote.
· All in-text citations use the following form (Author Year, pages ) or (Author, Author, and Author Year, pages).
· Do not put a comma between author and year but do put one between year and pages.
· Punctuation sequence is (there is NOT a period within the quotation marks):
no period- close quote-space-open parenthesis-author last name-space-year-comma-space-page number-close parenthesis-period
· Two citations are separated by a semicolon.
· You must include a page number if you are using an exact quotation, and you should use a page number if the idea being cited does not constitute the overall theme of the book or article, but is a specific subpoint.
· Examples:
· Direct quote: "Call me Ishmael" (Melville 1978, 1).
· Paraphrase: All unhappy families are different (Tolstoy 1954, 1).
· Argument summary: Many authors rank Melville as the best American author (Smith, 1962; Jones, 1978).
REFERENCES are the full description of an article, chapter, book, website, etc. that are placed as entries in the "Works Cited" or "Bibliography" section at the end of your paper. They clarify the IN-TEXT CITATIONS that are placed in the body of the paper. General rules for REFERENCES are:
· All reference types use the following order: Author (last name first) – Year – Title – Source.
· In multi-authored references, second and subsequent author is first name first.
· Journal articles: include volume number, issue number, date, and pages – yes, you need them all.
· Parts of titles in quotes are capitalized like sentences, parts of titles italicized are formatted with all significant words capitalized.
· In websites, make sure to include date of document if available, but always date accessed.
· Punctuation rules: Periods inside (not outside) quote marks of title. Period after author(s), year, title, source.
Keohane, Robert O. 1986. "Reciprocity in international relations." International Organization 40:1 (Winter), 1-27.
Jacobson, Harold K., and Edith Brown Weiss. 1995. "Improving compliance with international environmental accords." Global Governance 1:2 (June), 119-148.
Litfin, Karen T.
1994. Ozone Discourses: Science and
Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation.
M'Gonigle, R.
Michael, and Mark W. Zacher. 1979. Pollution,
politics, and international law: tankers at sea.
Katzenstein,
Peter, ed. 1996. The Culture of National
Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics.
Haas, Peter M.,
Robert O. Keohane, and Marc A. Levy, eds. 1993. Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International
Environmental Protection.
Young,
Axelrod, Robert,
and Robert O. Keohane. 1986. "Achieving cooperation under anarchy:
strategies and institutions." In Cooperation
under Anarchy, ed. Kenneth Oye.
Trexler, Mark C.
1989. "The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Fauna and Flora: political or conservation success?" Doctoral
dissertation.
UNFCCC
Secretariat. 1997.
Ramsar Convention
Bureau. 1996. Management Guidance
Procedure Report Issued for
When completing your paper, you are likely to spend considerable time trying to complete your footnotes and bibliography of references. This memo is simply to suggest a way to avoid some, if not all of that pain. The major message is simply to be organized in keeping track of your references as you go along. DO NOT tell yourself "Oh, I will worry about getting the citations later, I have to get this written now." It WILL take you ten times as long to find the source and page number later as doing it then and there.
Major Steps to an
Easy Completion of Footnotes/Endnotes and References:
1. Create a new file in your computer today called 'references.doc'
2. Whenever you start to read a book, article, or government document, open references.doc and type in the full citation including all the information noted earlier in this memo.
3. Take the time now to format the citation properly as well. You have to do it sometime, why not now. After awhile, you will get used to the formatting style and do it automatically.
4. Whenever you take notes, make sure that you keep track of the exact page number from which you are taking notes, even if you are not taking exact quotes.
5. Generally, it is better to carefully right down the full and exact quotes rather than to paraphrase. If you keep the full quote, you can paraphrase later without re-looking at the source; if you paraphrase now, you will need to re-find the source to get the exact quote.
6. Once you start writing, make sure you include appropriate citations as you go along, including page numbers. It really will be a hassle later (trust me) if you don't do this now.
7. Check with your advisor to see what the expectation is, but many of you may find that in-text citations with a bibliography at the end is acceptable. If so, that is by far the easiest way of doing your citations.
8. If you keep a properly formatted bibliography of all your potential sources going from the beginning, then your bibliography is done when your note-taking is done. If you keep good citations as you write, then your footnoting/endnoting is done when you finish your writing. Much easier than saving them to the end.
Making it even
easier:
Everyone should follow the steps above. In addition, however, you may want to look into some commercial footnoting programs. I use Endnote, but ProCite and RefManager are also good programs. These programs allow you to type a citation into a database once and then use it as an integrated part of your word processor when doing citations. I find it to be well worth the $100 you spend on the software.
Major advantages of using the software are:
1) Don't have to type in many of your citations, since you can connect directly to Socrates and download any source in Socrates directly to your database.
2) Makes finding a reference easy, since all of them are in your database.
3) Makes putting in a citation easy because you toggle to your database, type the first few letters of the authors name, and then type one keystroke to insert the name and year of the source directly into your Word or WordPerfect document.
4) When you are done, a couple of keystrokes generates a properly formatted bibliography quickly and easily. It goes through your whole document and generates a reference list of only those sources you have cited. It make sure book titles are underlined, journal articles are italicized, etc., without you having to do it.