A paper of about 10 pages (roughly 20,000 characters incl. spaces) is
due on Wednesday, automatically run
through the Turnitin plagiarism test. I set a relatively late deadline after
the final, which
leaves no room for extensions.
You should pick a
current, narrow issue in international political economy and discuss it analytically,
combining a case study with some of the issues and problems discussed in class.
For research, you can
use articles, books and internet sources of assured quality (i.e. no Wikipedia).
The paper must apply
the scientific method. Choose a research question that is relevant to your topic, develop
more than one hypothesis (at least you need to contrast your hypothesis with a null
hypothesis), then test them against the evidence that you collected in your
research. Do not
overload your paper with details, but bolster your arguments with relevant facts.
Try to answer your
research question in your conclusion, but if the evidence does not allow you to arrive at a
clear answer, perhaps because different IPE schools arrive at different answers, just say so.
That is better than a conclusion that is not sufficiently backed up.
You can also conclude
your paper with your personal opinion, but only after having developed plausible
evidence-based arguments. In the core of the paper, there is little room
for opinions.
Over the years, I
have received research papers that suffered from two major flaws: They were either pure
opinion pieces where the author had made up his/her mind before starting to research, or they
were just a presentation of facts without any sound analysis. Try to avoid both pitfalls.
The paper proposal
should be more than an outline. It should state the research question, outline the relevant
facts that you will research, possible lines of arguments and the way you want to test your
hypotheses, and give a detailed list of appropriate literature.
Suggestion from Professor- is that you either look at the EU, which is
currently trying to formulate its response to the US-China tensions (Macron and
von der Leyen in Beijing) or, even better, look at Brazil as China’s main
trading partner in Latin America.
With this case study, you can start to test your
hypothesis. I only doubt the practicality of hypothesis
II: Countries often do not have the means to boost R&D and investment
sufficiently to make up for a loss of trade. And regarding Hypothesis I: Are
there any good alternatives to US and China? Can’t a country like Brazil rather
take advantage of these tensions, but attracting more Chinese trade and
investment and offering itself as an alternative to China as a relatively cheap
production location?
The last idea could also work for Mexico, which is best placed to replace China
as the industrial machine for the US market.
So perhaps the best research question is: Are
there ways for emerging countries to take advantage of the growing US-China
trade tensions?