PS410: International Regimes
Prof. Ronald Mitchell
Homework #2: 4 page draft of paper
Due Wednesday, May 1st, beginning of class
Assignment:
Based on Homework #1 and the feedback you received on that homework, pick
one of your three causal questions to be the topic for your paper. Begin
writing your paper by completing a four (4) page double-spaced description of
various elements of your paper including a 1 page description of your research
topic, a 2 page discussion of the theories you expect to evaluate regarding
why your regime formed or did not form, succeeded or failed, or similar thing
to be explained (dependent variable) and 1 page identifying what evidence you
will use to observe variation or change in your dependent variable (your
indicator that a regime was formed or that it was effective and the source of
that data), explaining how you will use that data to evaluate the formation or
effectiveness of your treaty. If using quantitative data, especially for
regime effectiveness, you should include a graph of the data you plan to use
to demonstrate how the treaty caused a change (or did not cause a change) in
whatever indicator of effectiveness you are using. If using qualitative data,
you should include a table that clearly shows evidence of variation or change
in the formation of the regime.
Research topic description (notice these are simply further development of
the issues from Homework #1):
What is the large theoretical version of the question you are
interested in? That is, rephrase your question in a way that it could be
answered by studying some other treaty and some other indicator of formation
and effectiveness. Essentially, this should be a statement of the variable or
variables whose causal influence on formation or effectiveness you are going
to evaluate in your paper.
Your paper should identify
 | A research question that is important to the international relations
research community, |
| Cases of a treaty or treaties that exhibit variation (over time or across
cases) in the independent variable identified in that research question, |
| If doing effectiveness, a data set of indicators of effectiveness for at
least ten years that provides information on variation in the dependent
variable identified in that research question. If doing formation, some
evidence of the variation in formation that you will be evaluating. |
| NOTE: if you are missing any of these three elements, you cannot
successfully complete this research paper, so make sure you have these three
things in order NOW!! |
What treaty (or treaties) are you investigating? When was it signed?
What is your DV (thing that you observe which you want to explain)? For
example, what elements of a treaty do you want to explain? What timing of the
formation of a treaty do you want to explain? What behavior did treaty signers
establish as the goals for the treaty?
What are your potential IVs (explanatory variables)? Discuss problem
structure, contextual factors, treaty features, features of the international
system, country-level factors, etc. that scholars say help explain the
variation you seek to explain.
What impact do you expect your IV to have on your DV, and when do you
expect that impact to occur?
What evidence is visible from your data that your independent variable had
an influence on your dependent variable?
What are two alternative explanations of any change you see in your
dependent variable. For example, in explaining the effectiveness of the
whaling regime, the decline in number of whales killed after implementation of
the whaling moratorium might be explained by either a) the near-extinction of
the whales making it much harder to hunt and kill them or b) whalers reducing
their whale catch because of a lack of demand for whalemeat in the marketplace
because citizens were boycotting whalers products.
Grading criteria:
Good choice of treaty and research question with good choice of data to
allow analysis.
Thoughtful analysis of expected relationship between independent
variable (causes of effectiveness) and dependent variable (observed level of
effectiveness relative to counterfactual and objective).
Careful interpretation of whether data supports expected relationship.
Careful development of plausible rival explanations of any observed change
in the dependent variable.
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