POL 422 - RESEARCH PAPER GUIDELINES
Research Paper and Oral Presentation
For the research paper, students will complete a 10-15 page case study of the quality of
democracy in a single country chosen in consultation with the instructor. Students will
make a brief oral presentation of their findings to the class. A typed proposal of 2-3
pages, with an annotated bibliography, will be due by Friday, February 20 at 12pm.
The final paper is due Tuesday, April 21 at 2pm. Further instructions regarding the
research paper assignment and oral presentation will be distributed later in the semester.
Topic Proposal (2-3 pages)
The purpose of this first assignment is to identify your topic and to provide a brief outline
of your paper. You must include an alphabetized (by author’s last name) and
*annotated bibliography with at least 5 scholarly sources you have accessed,
including both books and articles. You are required to search for sources from both the
Olin General Catalogue (to identify relevant BOOKS) and Rollins’ electronic databases
(Project MUSE, JSTOR, ProQuest, Lexis-Nexis etc., to identify relevant ARTICLES).
In terms of articles, the Journal of Democracy is particularly relevant. The first
assignment will be evaluated according to the quality of the sources you have identified
in your bibliography. *For an annotated bibliography, you should provide a brief one or
two sentence description of the source itself and the information it contains.
Final Paper (10-15 pages)
Your task is to evaluate the quality of democracy in a Latin American country of your
choosing. As much as possible, your analysis should focus on the current state of
democracy in the country and, as a general rule, should be limited to the period from
1991 to the present. Your paper should address the following three points:
1. Does your country meet the minimum qualifications of being a democracy or is it
better described as a semi-democracy? (Consider the MBP dataset, for example)
2. Next, how would you describe the quality of democracy in the country? How
robust is political participation? How competitive is the political arena? How
free are citizens in terms of basic human rights and civil liberties? Are vertical
and horizontal accountability meaningful? Is there a strong rule of law? Is the
law applied equally across different social strata? To what extent are citizens
politically equal? Are politicians responsive to citizens’ demands? Your analysis
section should rely on a mix of primary and secondary sources. Primary sources
include data from various databases we have discussed in class. For a summary,
see http://web.rollins.edu/~dboniface/classes/pol422/research.htm.
3. What can be done within the society to deepen democracy? Can the international
community contribute to improving the quality of democracy in the country?
