Reference no: EM132191802

Expectations:

You are to write a professional styled literature review. For the purposes of this project, you will only need to include an introduction and the literature review sections of the paper.

However, if you are discussing a topic that is not something that a normal political scientist knows about, you will want to include a brief section explaining exactly what it is you are looking to examine (no more than two pages). For instance, you may decide to write about ethnic relations in Uganda, or a very specific policy to address the zebra mussel invasion. If this is the case, you need to provide a little background.

Your literature review can be on any topic you choose, so long as it could generally be considered applicable to your training Because you are not actually expected to complete this project for this class, you have the freedom to flex your intellectual muscle.

This means that you cannot ask questions that have already been examined to death (e.g. does religion influence an individual's party identification?).
You are expected to use proper citations.

The format that is preferred is APSA-style. APSA-style is very similar to Chicago-style. If you have any questions, please consult the APSA Style Manual on Moodle. If you need to cite something that is not listed here, use Chicago-style. Proper citations include in-text citations as well as a reference list at the end of your review.

If you have any questions on how this should look, please consult virtually any article printed in a respectable journal. When in doubt, cite. I shouldn't have to ask where you found some specific argument.

However, if you are talking about something that is common sense (e.g. party ID influence voting behavior), you do not have to provide a citation unless you want. Again, when in doubt, cite.

Introduction:

The introduction is your opportunity to explain to the reader why they should bother reading your paper.

A good introduction will include several important qualities, all of which are intended to be briefly outlined only to be explained in more detail later.

Generally, you will provide the obligatory who, what, when, where, and most importantly who cares.

• Explain what it is you want to examine. (Who/What)

• Explain where it fits in the literature (Where/When).

o Nobody has ever looked at this topic

o Nobody has looked at this topic from this perspective (you choose to apply a theory nobody has applied before)

o Previous attempts to examine this topic have omitted something important (you can think of an explanatory variable or two that could explain your phenomenon, but nobody has ever tested it before)

• Explain why it is important to examine this topic (Who Cares)

• Explain, in one paragraph, where you will take the reader by summarizing the different segments of the paper (you will need to mention here that there will be an examination of some sort and a discussion of the results even though you are not actually writing these sections).

Specification: 1-2 pages (no more than 2 pages)

Literature Review:

The literature review should be used to place your paper within the existing literature. It is not a good thing if you are doing something that is so abstract that you cannot find literature that is even tangentially related. Tangentially related literature will work, so long as you are able to clearly explain why it is appropriate.

For instance, I have a paper that examines public opinion, but I rely heavily on literature from comparative politics and state politics and policy. None of this literature is usually associated with public opinion research, but I'm making the argument that we should be willing to apply alternative theories to public opinion. I suggest, test, and find that characteristics of the state in which we reside influences our opinion formation, which is consistent with what research in the other areas would suggest.

Normally, your topic should fit nicely within existing research. A trick to get you started is to pay careful attention to the literature review of another paper. If they cite some paper heavily, you should probably read it, and cite it too (presuming it applies to your paper). Never presume that if someone cites a paper, that their interpretation of that paper was correct. Sometimes a paper summarizes another paper in a manner that is technically correct, but also in a manner that is only correct in the way they used it.

In other words, don't presume that the general statement made in reference to a paper is general enough to use it in the manner you want. I've seen people rely on other papers to build their literature review, only to find out after the fact that a citation they copied from someone else specifically said that their research shouldn't be used in the manner this person tried.

If they had bothered to read the original paper, they would have known this. In short, let someone else point you in the right direction, but make sure that each and every citation you make says exactly what it is you want it to say. Do not copy a literature review because that would be plagiarism. If you rely on another paper to get you going, make sure you add to what they did. Most likely, there have been more recent articles addressing the topic. Try to stay as current as you can.

Here are some basic goals that you should try to achieve with your literature review:

• Place your research soundly within existing research. Let the cumulative work of previous research simplify your work by providing justifications for what you want to do. If previous research says that something is important, you can simply rely on their justification instead of you trying to make the argument. There ought to be a theory that applies to your research, but this may not be obvious, so don't worry too much if you can't identify an official theory name.

• A good literature review should provide a general justification for everything you want to do.

• With a good justification for everything else, you can focus your argument on whatever new thing you are introducing. At this point, you will need to be a bit more creative to justify using a new theory, adding a new variable, or explaining why an issue that had never before been studied fits within the literature.

• DO NOT dedicate an entire paragraph to a single article.

• DO NOT explain the entirety of someone else's study. If I want to know the details, I can read the article based on the citation you provide.