Comparative Political Systems
In a paper of approximately 8-pages (double-spaced, 12-point font, numbered, not including bibliography), please present a complete research design based upon an issue of your choosing from the field of comparative politics. This paper should seek to explain the research question that you have chosen to investigate, explicate your plan for answering that question, and define the methods of political science that you will employ to find your answers utilizing the concepts and approaches discussed in the first three chapters of the Caramani volume.
To provide an appropriate structure to your research design, please provide the following information in your papers:
Title: Please attempt to boil you research question (and potential answer) down into a compact, concise, interesting phrase?
Introduction: Please provide a brief introductory paragraph that present the general puzzle that you’ve uncovered and the types of concepts that it may entail.
Research Question: Please lay out the specific question that you seek to answer in this study?
Hypothesized Answer/Potential Alternatives: Please explain the most likely answer to your research question may be. Please consider other potential alternative hypotheses that could be considered. Please define the key variables (independent, dependent, intervening, contextual) in the proposed study and how they are linked.
Research Plan: Briefly explain how you would acquire the information to successfully answer your question, support your hypotheses and disprove alternative arguments.
[Specifically, in this section, you want to address questions of method (how would you acquire the data that you need to describe and explain the phenomena you’re examining?) and measurement (how would you actually measure key concepts and variables?) to explicitly frame your analysis. What type of resources would you need (polling data, historical analysis, etc.)?
Discussion/Evaluation: The “meat” of your analysis. Briefly explain why your hypothesized answer is superior to potential alternatives. Even if you haven’t “fully answered” your research question, you should be able to explain why you think your answer is the most persuasive. Provide support for your views and analysis. Engage the evidence (historical, statistical, etc.) that you have gathered in a clear, concise, and (if the paper is to be successful) persuasive fashion.
[This is where you really show the work that you’ve put into the project and should be the largest component of the paper!]
Conclusion: Briefly review the relevance of the project. Why is this project important? What contribution does it make to political science? How could it be useful to practitioners of politics and policy? Specifically focus on implications of your research to both theory and practice. How does your study engage the theoretical concepts we have examined so far (ideology, state/society relations, structures, institutions, elections, political participation, political economy, allocation of resources, etc.)? How could it actually inform candidates or policymakers confronting difficult decisions today or in the future? Why is this project interesting?
Sample Solution
The research question I would like to investigate is: what are the effects of religious diversity on national unity? This question will address a topic in comparative politics by exploring how different societies handle varying levels of religious diversity, and what implications this has for their politics, social cohesion, and ultimately the unity of their nation-state.
To answer this research question, I will employ both qualitative and quantitative methods. For my qualitative analysis I plan to use ethnographic accounts from interviews with political leaders as well as newspaper articles from countries with various levels of religious diversity. Through these sources I hope to gain insight into how certain nations have succeeded or failed in managing religious difference within one state. To further supplement my qualitative data collection, I also plan to conduct an extensive literature review on the subject matter in order to identify any relevant theories that could help explain my findings.
In addition to my qualitative methods, I also intend to utilize quantitative approaches such as surveys and content analysis. My survey aims collect primary data from individuals living in various multi-religious countries about their experiences related to issues concerning national unity and identity formation; specifically looking at how religion influences public opinion on such topics (Caramani 2018). Content analysis will be conducted on nationally representative media outlets’ coverage surrounding similar issues so that a comparison can be made between public discourse regarding communities with differing levels of religious diversity (Caramani 2018). Ultimately, through analyzing both primary and secondary data sources utilizing both qualitative and quantitative techniques can gain meaningful results that more accurately reflect the effects of increasing religious pluralism on national cohesion.