Prof. Ronald Mitchell Time: Thurs 2:00-4:50pm Office Hours: T/Th 11:30am-1pm (stop by, but sign ups given preference) Phone: 346-4880 Office: PLC-921 Email: rmitchel@uoregon.edu Website: via http://blackboard.uoregon.edu/
Goals of course Political scientists include people who ask questions regarding a wide range of phenomena and use a variety of methods to answer those questions. Rather than introduce you to the different questions political scientists ask and the answers they find, this course focuses on introducing you to the variety of methods and approaches that political scientists use to answer whatever questions may interest them. In short, the goal is to provide you with an initial familiarity regarding the research methodologies, approaches, and paradigms of political science. Though it is impossible to even come close to mastering this breadth of material in 10 weeks, I hope you will leave the course with a general sense of how political scientists come to know things about the world.
Required books are at the bookstore - although expensive, you should consider making these part of your permanent library. The books also will be on 4 hour reserve in Knight Library - please respect your colleagues by returning them within four hours. Readings MUST be completed before that day's class for a good discussion.
• Scott, Gregory M., and Stephen M. Garrison. 2001. The political science student writer's manual. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Requirements
Due: Every class session
This is a small seminar class with no lectures, so I expect each of you to participate actively throughout the term. The small seminar format allows good discussion only if all of us read and think through the material beforehand. Strong Recommendation: There may be informal weekly or bi-weekly meetings hosted by various faculty and graduate students on qualitative methods, formal theory, comparative politics, or political theory. All students are encouraged to go to one or more of these seminars or "brown bag" meetings.
Due: Start of whatever class session for which you sign up (sign-up available first week of class).
You must write short papers to prepare for two class sessions. Your paper should be a practical "how-to" of the methodological steps for that week's approach, drawing on all readings for that week. Note that the "Positivist Case Studies" week is not an option because the readings all-but-provide such a recipe. The Mitchell/Bernauer article (posted on the website) is a model of what I am looking for in your response paper, though yours will be shorter.
Part 1 (1000 words or less) due: Start of class in Week 4 (Elements 1 and 6 below) - 10% of grade Part 2a (2000 words or less) due: Start of class in Week 8 (Elements 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 below) - 15% of grade Part 2b due: Start of class in Week 9 (Comment on Lit review & Research proposal of 2 students) - 5% of grade Part 3 (3000 words or less) due: Start of class in Week 10 (Elements 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 below) - 25% of grade
Writing a literature review is a central aspect of most research in political science. Literature reviews serve as a means by which scholars examine previous research on a topic and summarize, categorize, and MOST IMPORTANTLY structure that literature in a way that makes sense to them and thereby allows them to "place" their own research in relationship to what has gone before. Scholarship can be thought of as "asynchronous communication" or an ongoing dialogue between people over months, years, decades, and in some cases centuries. Your research will be an effort to engage such a dialogue with other scholars. A literature review is your effort to identify the set of ideas that you want to have a conversation about. It should NOT be a listing of the authors that you want to have a conversation with. Put differently, a lit review does something like the following: "I want to answer the research question of .... I will present here the previous research that seems relevant to my efforts to answer that question and do that in a way that structures and organizes this diverse and often unsystematic research on a topic -- as well as a variety of other research that hasn't previously been connected to my topic but which I think is germane -- into a clear and coherent framework of ideas that I can subsequently use to understand and analyze the research question I am interested in." This lit review is of a quite specific nature.
methods, one of which must be different than the ones used in the articles you have chosen; 6) A properly formatted list of references to the articles used.
Due: Via email by 5 pm, Monday, December 7, 2009 (first day of final exams week)
This paper should compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of 4 of the following 6 methods/ approaches to research in political science: Political Theory, Quantitative Methods, Formal Modeling, Simulations, Experiments, Positivist Case Studies, and Interpretivist Case Studies. Your paper should do the following:
All assignments should be written using a "template document" which has a cover page with your name, title, date, and email address; page numbers; headings and subheadings; footnotes and endnotes in same font as text; decent margins; spell-checked; bibliography on new page; etc. - in short, professional in appearance. Learn how to use your word processing program's "style sheets" so that producing consistently professional-looking work actually takes less time than producing sloppy work. It may help to work together on this part so that you can learn from each other. You should begin building a bibliography that formats citations in a consistent format. The best alternative is to buy a bibliographic database program like EndNote, RefMan, or ProCite and learn how to use that (if you are interested in International Relations, I will even give you my database of all articles that I cite, if you like). If you can't do that, you should create a document that is an alphabetized listing of all references you ever cite, which can become an ongoing bibliography for your use throughout your graduate career (but Endnote is far superior).
By enrolling in this course, you agree to abide by the University’s Student Conduct Code. You must read http://studentlife.uoregon.edu/StudentConductandCommunityStandards/ConductCode/tabid/69/Default.aspx, http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/plagiarism/students/ & http://www.uoregon.edu/~eherman/writing/Plagiarism.htm. Reading and understanding these documents is an ungraded requirement for the course that you MUST complete by the end of week 1. Everything in your assignments must be your own work. Neither ignorance of these policies nor the lack of an intention to cheat or plagiarize will be considered a legitimate defense. Raise any questions you have with me before problems arise. I will flunk any student who plagiarizes and will report them to University authorities -- I have done so at least twice in the past few years.
Noted without comment: "Michael Hand 'earned' a Ph.D. in counseling psychology at New Mexico State
University in 1982. In the Fall of 1987 an anonymous tipster sent to the University a copy of two scholarly
sources that Hand had plagiarized in his dissertation. In April 1988, the University rescinded the Ph.D. it
had awarded to Hand. Hand v. Matchett, 957 F.2d 791 (10thCir. 1992)" [Ronald B. Standler. 2000.
Plagiarism in Colleges in USA Available at: http://www.rbs2.com/plag.htm, downloaded 20060615]. I also urge you to read all of Standler, “Plagiarism in Colleges in USA”, 2000 at http://www.rbs2.com/plag.htm as an interesting set of facts and opinions on plagiarism in institutions of higher education.
WEEK 1: WHAT IS A DISCIPLINE? WHAT IS EPISTEMOLOGY?
WEEK 2: WHAT IS THEORY IN POLITICAL SCIENCE? WHAT IS EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS?
Clarify during class: Expectations for Methodological Recipe papers; 1/2 hour on templates and Endnote
WEEK 3: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Clarify during class: Expectations for Part 1 of Lit Review/Research Proposal
Due: Part 1 (Elements 1 and 6) of Lit Review/Research Proposal
WEEK 5: QUANTITATIVE METHODS
WEEK 6: MODELING, SIMULATIONS, EXPERIMENTS
WEEK 7: POSITIVIST CASE STUDIES
Note: Heavy reading this week, but these approaches are those that many of you are likely to use in your careers, so it will be worth making the time, perhaps in previous weeks!, to do all these readings.
Due: Part 2 (Elements 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6) of Lit Review/Research Proposal
Due: Part 2b due - Comment on Lit Review/Research Proposal of 2 other students Clarify during class: Expectations for Part 3 of Lit Review/Research Proposal
http://www.holycross.edu/departments/gradstudies/website/proposewrite.htm
Due: Part 3 (ALL Elements) of Lit Review/Research Proposal Clarify during class: Expectations for "Comparison of Research Methods" assignment