You should answer each part of each question below; where you are asked for brief explanations, they need not be more than a sentence or two. Your goal should be to be clear and to explain your thinking, not to compose formal arguments or meet the writing requirements of a formal essay.
(1) Choose and identify a political research topic that has caught your interest recently.
You might start with an event that has been in the news lately or something you have learned about in a class or in your own reading, etc. If you are thinking about a current event, you should begin by defining a general topic that it fits within.
E.g. you might be interested in what is happening to people trying to flee Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover. If so, you should identify a general topic of research that this might fall under, such as:
The treatment of citizens in regimes where the government is taken over by militant groups
The evacuation of refugees from fallen states
The moral and/or legal obligations allies of the former Afghan government have to those fleeing the Taliban
Briefly explain your interest to indicate why you have chosen the topic you have identified.
(2) Given the topic that you have chosen, frame possible examples of:
a) 1 broad descriptive question
b) 2 analytical research questions
c) 2 policy questions
d) 1 evaluative question
e)A narrower, focused and clear version of one of your examples from (b), (c) or (d) that would be an appropriate basis for a 10-12 page research paper you could write for a hypothetical undergraduate class.
f) A research puzzle using the formula “why x despite y” that might conceivably emerge for your topic
To identify a real research puzzle, you would need to do extensive reading and research in the topic area you have chosen; this is not required for this assignment, so speculate here on something that might emerge as a research puzzle that would fit the required formula.
(3) Given the focused research question you provided in (2)(e), conduct a mini search and review of scholarship that you could use in your hypothetical paper.
Use Jstor or other digital databases available through Lakehead’s library to find, read and identify three scholarly articles that would help you to answer your research question. Based on your reading of the articles, provide a brief explanation for each one of what it is about, and how it could help you to answer your research question.
You can choose the topic. Just ensure that it is one that is well-known, current and that has lots of information can be found about it
