Democratization | Quick Homework Help

I’m stuck on a Political Science question and need an explanation.

PAPER GUIDELINES

I have chosen democratization as a topic and you might want to narrow it down. Here are professor’s guidelines

“Quantity: Three papers, 5-7 pages, not counting headers, footnotes, your name, the title of the course or the paper, or works cited. Each paper should be double-spaced with one inch margins and 12 point font. If you go over the page limit that won’t bother me but under the limit will garner you a big drop in your paper grade. For example, a paper that is 4.5 pages will automatically be assigned a C- grade.

Topic: Each paper should be written on the general topic of a particular section, of your choice. For example, if you choose to write a paper on Section IV, the topic for that week is democratization. Obviously, this is a big subject, so it will be best if you narrow your paper’s topic down—writing only on one country or region will help you do this, but please email me if you need more help with this, or with finding resources.

So, you might choose to write on Nigeria’s ongoing, seemingly never-ending efforts at democratization. Questions you could ask are: what are the reasons behind the inability of Nigerian democracy to consolidate? You might choose to focus on the problem of the Ogoni people in the Niger River Delta and the ongoing conflict there. Why did this conflict develop? How has the state handled the situation? What ramifications does the issue have for democracy in Nigeria? And so on.

Thesis: You absolutely need to have a thesis statement clearly stated in your introduction and then defended and elaborated upon throughout the rest of the essay. Therefore, I do not want papers that are exclusively fact-based; instead I would like you to take your topic, do some research on it, and then process that information into a paper that asks and then answers a question. Again, I want an argument, not just a statement, nor a question without an answer in the introduction, nor a “I will try to figure out what is going on…” Commit to an argument and defend it throughout the paper! The title of your paper does not count as a thesis—if I cannot discern an argument in your introduction your paper cannot get better than a B-.

Sources: You need at least three outside, written sources that are scholarly in nature, although having more than three sources is generally a good choice. If you give me less than three you will get a failing grade for the paper. For clues to this type of literature most of what we are reading are articles from peer-reviewed journals. You can find your sources in books and journal articles, as long as they are scholarly in nature and not “Democratization for Dummies,” or something like that. You need to find your three main sources outside of the material assigned in class, although you may use our readings as extra sources”