100 Political Science Research Topics in 2022

In this Third Edition of Writing a Research Paper in Political Science, updated sample research topics come from American government, gender studies, comparative politics, and international relations. Examples of actual student writing show readers how others “just like them” accomplished each stage of the process. Social science research papers combine the presentation of both argument and evidence in response to a core question. It is common for such papers to have a literature review that considers the work others have done to address the core subject. Finally, if paper requirements do not say the opposite, one should not limit his/her choice of a topic to the domestic politics alone. Certainly, if the course is called American Federalism, the professor most likely expects students to stick to the United States in the research paper. Otherwise, comparing American political history or current tendencies to those of a different country is more interesting than discussing the United States in a vacuum.

Students are shown how to craft the right research question, find good sources and properly summarize them, operationalize concepts, design good tests for their hypotheses, and present and analyze quantitative and qualitative data. Even writing an introduction, coming up with effective headings and titles, presenting a conclusion, and the important steps of editing and revising are covered with class-tested advice and know-how that’s received accolades from professors and students alike.

The Tea Party: A Social Movement, Party Faction, or Third Party?

Additional guidance for writing abstracts and creating presentations helps students to understand the logic behind abstracts and prepares students for presentations in the classroom, at a conference, and beyond. A more detailed discussion of “fake news” and disinformation shows students how to evaluate and choose high quality sources, as well as how to protect oneself from being fooled by bad sources.

Like all social sciences, political science faces the difficulty of observing human actors that can only be partially observed and who have the capacity for making conscious choices, unlike other subjects such as non-human organisms in biology or inanimate objects as in physics. Despite the complexities, contemporary political science has progressed by adopting a variety of methods and theoretical approaches to understanding politics, and methodological pluralism is a defining feature of contemporary political science. Want your students to write their first major political science research paper with confidence? Author Lisa Baglione breaks down the research paper into its constituent parts and shows students precisely how to complete each component. The author provides encouragement at each stage and faces pitfalls head on, giving advice and examples so that students move through each task successfully.

Research methods

Practical summaries, located at the end of each chapter, guide students towards their goals. This is an engaging and well written book that seems geared to the level of the course – students writing their senior capstones. A reader will want evidence that you are exploring an important question or topic. Explorations of the unimportant (e.g., “Canada’s orange industry has been underappreciated”) will not entice any but the most insensate readers.

1. The process of referencing may appear minuscule as compared to writing a research paper.
2. It is a good idea to keep in mind that if everyone paid enough attention to it when in college, some of the current leaders would have never been elected.
3. Finally, Goodnow closed his address by expressing hope that political science could contribute to the public good.
4. Policy analysis projects evaluate existing or hypothetical policy proposals.

For an operation that was named PBSUCCESS, this doesn’t seem like success. Once you have focused on a particular question, the next task is locating relevant sources of information. If your research requires scholarly books or articles or news accounts, particularly if recent, you will probably want to try first on-line catalogues and bibliographic tools. example of a political science research paper These enable you to search titles, abstracts, and sometimes even full content by keyword. Subject searches tend to cast a wider net, but standard subject categorization (established by the U.S. Library Congress) often includes sub-categories that can narrow down the field. There are several kinds of questions that political science students tackle.

Preview this book

His understanding of political science, one finds, could hardly be broader, in that he concluded that “nothing” that has an impact on “human life” should be termed “foreign” to the discipline (p. 2). Wilson argued that the astute student of politics should demonstrate “a Shakespearian range” (p. 10). Although Wilson’s immediate influence on U.S. political science was limited (Ubertaccio & Cook, 2006), his explicit embrace of an expansive politics is illustrative of traditionalism’s lack of disciplinary specialization. In addition, a comparison of his approach with that of Goodnow is helpful in reminding students of traditionalism of the approach’s internal diversity.

The study of major crises, both political crises and external crises that can affect politics, is not limited to attempts to predict regime transitions or major changes in political institutions. Political scientists also study how governments handle unexpected disasters, and how voters in democracies react to their governments’ preparations for and responses to crises. In 2000, the Perestroika Movement in political science was introduced as a reaction against what supporters of the movement called the mathematicization of political science. Those who identified with the movement argued for a plurality of methodologies and approaches in political science and for more relevance of the discipline to those outside of it. While useful research solves problems, it is best to focus on questions where incomplete or flawed understanding impedes progress. Rather than tackle a big problem head on (“How to end the arms race?” “How to stop global warming?”), you will help make progress if you focus on aspects of arms races or global warming that we don’t fully understand. Otherwise, your paper may end up an exercise in exhortation (“If we could only all stop building weapons” or “If everyone would only just stop burning fossil fuels”) rather than in research.

Political Conflicts Research Topics

Postbehavioralism faulted behavioralism for not having acknowledged—and thus not having scrutinized—its own normative foundations and the ways in which those foundations shaped the direction of its research agenda. In later years, some scholars would come to regard postbehavioralism’s legacy as opening up possibilities of a more “eclectic” application of research methods to the study of political phenomena (Lane, 1990, p. 927). Once the topic is chosen, one should https://essayreply.com/ start searching for books and journal articles to broaden his/her knowledge and develop a deep understanding of the problem. If the topic deals with the current issues, using news articles is also inevitable. However, considering the amount of fake news and filter bubbles one faces these days, students should approach every news website with caution. Well-known and credible ones like BBC News, HuffingtonPost, CNN, and the New York Times are safe options.

1. For a fuller, more detailed understanding of traditionalism, one can look in greater depth at two examples of traditionalist political science.
2. Evaluate the context of scholarly material for its contribution to the understanding of the research thesis being studied.
3. Political science graduate students should be encouraged to earn master’s degrees in alternative and diverse fields, fields encompassing the humanities as well as hard sciences.
4. The final political science research paper writing tip is that it is always useful to ask someone to read the paper before submitting it.
5. Project MUSE. Full-text scholarly journals, usually just recent years.

As a general rule, articles from refereed journals and books from university presses are preferable to other sources, because they have been reviewed by other scholars prior to publication. Refereed journals and university presses vary in selectivity, with some having higher standards than others.

The Handmaids Tale Analysis

In similar theses, these would be the case study analysis sections, where the theory proposed earlier is applied and interacted with studied events or occurrences. Even seasoned scholars can be guilty of concluding their pieces with grand statements that are not supported by their data. Take care to identify the limitations of your findings or even some of the questionable parts of your analysis.

Project MUSE. Full-text scholarly journals, usually just recent years. Stock-taking projects primarily require finding the best and most complete published research on a particular question.

Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

It is also reasonable to check several news platforms for a specific event report to compare and contrast different opinions. It is the spot between the two opposite biases where one finds relatively true information. Contrary to popular belief, it is a way easier to compose a political science research paper writing when there is a specific topic/research question assigned. Knowing what to write about allows one to avoid spending time and efforts on searching for an adequate, not over-researched, not under-researched topic. However, more often than not, professors suggest their students choose a research question of their own that would deal with the course readings. In such cases, the broader the course is, the more difficult the task gets.

American Government has always been changing a game-changer international arena. Writing a research paper about it or other leading governments of the world is always a good idea. Choosing the right topic is imperative, and you can do so by digging a little deeper into politics. Politics have been going on for almost as long as society itself, in https://essayreply.com/ one shape or the other. From the triumvirate to the congress, there is a lot of material to go over and many different things you can tap into. Worry not – StudyClerk is your research paper helper and we have got your back, so we’ve prepared a couple of things to help you along the way – original, crisp, and interesting research paper topics.