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Question: The role of the United Nations in international politics
This task requires you to examine the theories under review in this course (Constructivism), and make an argument that it is the best approach and the best theory that explains the role of the United Nations in International Politics
The exercise is designed to assess your ability to understand and apply theories to case
Criteria:
Demonstrate an understanding of the theory and knowledge related to the question.
Identify and express a defensible position using evidence to justify your view.
Show your ability to introduce your argument in the introduction and a summary in conclusion.
Make sure you includes page numbers in the in text references.
Required texts for the course
Robert Art and Robert Jervis (eds.), International Politics: Ensuring Concepts and Contemporary Issues, 11th edition, Pearson, 2012.
Sample
Essay writing guide
Writing an essay: the basics
What are the main problems markers encounter with essays?
– Too descriptive (ie little evidence of a well-defended argument)
– Too much argument not demonstrated by evidence
Essay writing is therefore a trade-off between what you want to say and what is feasible or defensible within the word limit.
Other problems
– Poor structure with thoughts not organised coherently
– Poor written expression
– Lack of understanding of the question or the topic
– Lack of research
What do you need to demonstrate to us?
– Your knowledge of events
– Your knowledge of theory
– Your knowledge of the literature
– Your ability to analyse (ie to evaluate evidence and make a coherent and well-defended argument)
– Your ability to answer the question
If you adopt the above as a list of priorities – or as a structure – your essay will be descriptive, passive, lacking in analysis, incoherent, and will fail to have a central argument
It is wise to focus instead on TWO of these:
– Your ability to answer the question
– Your ability to analyse and construct an argument
If you do this, knowledge of events, theory and scholarship is required anyway
After reading and researching, ask yourself ‘what is my answer to the question’? In other words, what is the evidence telling you?
Then ask yourself ‘what do I need to do in order to show that my answer is persuasive’?
You will need to:
– State what your argument is (obviously)!
– Locate your argument in the discourse (ie show it fits in existing scholarship/debates. This is easier than it sounds since virtually everything in IR is contested)
– Break up your argument into themes, factors or cases where you can use evidence to help you demonstrate your case
Presto: you now have an introduction!
‘This paper examines whether [China will be a threat in the Asia-Pacific/The Global North is responsible for poverty in the Global South/whatever]. To do so, I evaluate three key issues that shed light on the debate over [whatever]: xxxx, yyyy, and zzzz. I argue that aaaa. This is because bbbbb, ccccc, and dddd. Before doing this, however, it is necessary to identify why this question is significant, given that there are several main points of contention in the literature on the topic. It is to this that I now turn’.
Presto: you now have a sketch of your essay! A clear introduction will help ensure that (a) your argument is stated at the outset; (b) that the key components of your response in the body of the text are identified; and (c) that your essay will be well structured, coherent, and logically ordered.
Hints and tips / dos and don’ts:
Make your OWN argument the focus of the paper, not someone else’s. Avoid writing in a passive or descriptive style, retelling history or merely stringing together the opinions of others. Make your point FIRST, and then use evidence/quotes to back it up. Marker’s don’t like to see ‘According to Professor X’ at the start of every paragraph!
Always make sure you include ‘signposts’ to show where your essay is going next – and why it is logical to do so. Subheads can be helpful, but don’t overuse them.
Use short quotes rather than lengthy ones
PROOFREAD YOUR ESSAY BEFORE SUBMITTING IT. Poor written expression, poor sentence construction, missing words and typos lose lots of marks very quickly. Avoid annoying the person marking your essay!
Never start with a quote
Never end with a quote
Use only scholarly sources, especially for definitions. The Macquarie Dictionary is out. So is Encarata, World Book Encyclopedia, and especially Wikipedia.
Use internet sources with caution. Ask ‘is there editorial control over this site? Can I be sure the facts/figures presented here are authoritative’?
Use news sources/papers for facts, not opinion.
Do not quote from literary classics, religious texts, plays, poems, sitcoms, the Simpsons, South Park, Neighbours, or The 7pm Project.
Never cite lecture notes or quote lectures
AVOID EMOTIONAL PROSE. You may feel strongly about an issue, but if you use ideological rants or emotional prose it will lose marks. Be dispassionate in your analysis and let the evidence speak for itself. Avoid adjectives. Avoid intensifiers. Burn your thesaurus. Avoid metaphors and imagery. This isn’t a class in creative writing.
Avoid vague/tentative writing, eg ‘to some extent this is an important issue’. It weakens your argument.
Avoid overly strong language that is obviously disproven, ie ‘this event was the most important thing to happen in human history’.
Use gender-neutral language, and do not use derogatory terms
Avoid conspiracy theories
Avoid chronological structures. They tend to be descriptive and produce ‘Agatha Christie’ essays, where the argument appears for the first time only in the conclusion. We want to know the butler did it at the start of the paper, not the end. This is because we are interested in how you know justify that claim.
What you say is nearly as important as how well you substantiate/justify it
Keep background or context to a minimum. In politics units we tend to assume you know your history as well as the background. We’re much more interested in how you marry evidence to theory, or interpret facts.
Authors do not ‘opine’, ‘lament’, ‘demand’, or ‘purport’. They state, assert, claim, argue, and observe. Remember about the thesaurus? Go and get some matches.
You may well think that something or someone is good, bad, evil, nasty, horrendous, wonderful, terrible or brilliant. But none of these words should ever appear in your paper. Instead opinions can be correct, accurate, appropriate, poorly constructed, flawed… etc.
Re-read your work and pretend that you are taking the exact opposite position to the one you articulate. Ask yourself whether it stands up to scrutiny. If not, fix it.
Sometimes you will think that the evidence points one way and then discover you’ve changed your mind. Don’t panic. Arguments can often be revolved – even 180 degrees – with minimal rewriting.
Advanced tips
Try and take a stand rather than sitting on the fence or trying to amalgamate opposing viewpoints
Try and pre-empt criticism from those who disagree with you (ie other sides of the debate) by showing how your essay invalidates their case, or how the logic of their argument is flawed. Markers look for evidence that the writer has done so when thinking about awarding the highest grades. For example: ‘Critics of this approach, such as @@@ and *** would argue that this is not the case because of $$$ and %%%. This, however, is [an oversimplification/inaccurate reading of the problem/whatever] given that ##### and ^^^^.’
Evidence of wide reading wins points, but only when it is obvious you know what you are talking about!
A critical review of the literature shows wide reading and sharpens your argument.
Focus and depth score more highly than essays that survey the question from many different angles. We know you can’t answer a question conclusive in only a couple of thousand words. So why not try narrowing your answer to focus on a key issue? Or a case study? But be careful: make sure you justify WHY this is a useful path to take at the outset.
Attacking the question can be a very useful tactic to demonstrate sophisticated understanding, provided your reasons for doing so are well justified and clear to the reader.
A reference list comprised solely (or mainly) of articles from the reader/text will most likely not score highly.
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