Research Paper Assignment
INR 2002 PAPER ASSIGNMENT
Paper Basics
In the latter portion of the course we are going to consider a number of contemporary
issues in international relations. Some of them are extremely broad (international
political economics, war), others are just somewhat extremely broad (nuclear
proliferation, terrorism). Either way, we are only going to scratch the surface of these
issues. I would like to give you an opportunity to dig a little deeper into some issue in
contemporary international relations. In this assignment I ask you to pick a topic of
interest – it could be something like a specific event (a war between two countries, a
nonmilitary conflict like Iran’s potential nuclear weapons, etc.) or something broader but
thematic (climate change or cyberwarfare). The key is going to be picking a topic that is
narrow enough to deal with in a minimum 2000-3000 word paper (that’s roughly 8 to 12
pages). The topic must be contemporary. That means it must involve events that have
happened after 1989. I’d strongly prefer you not pick COVID as a topic, both because
I’ve read several hundred papers on it and because people end up writing about things
that have nothing to do with international relations. Once you have your topic, you
should use the paper to answer the following questions about it:
1) Give a BRIEF summary of your topic. What are the major relevant details about the
subject? This should be NO MORE THAN 750 WORDS. That’s why you need to narrow
your topic before you sit down to write your paper.
2) Are there any relevant international agreements about your topic? Has the United
Nations or other IGO’s dealt with your topic? What NGO’s are active in this area and
what are their goals?
3) Who are the (most) relevant countries? What are their interests or goals as regards
your topic? Go beyond just restating what you said in Question 1.
4) Analyze your topic from a realist. a liberal, and a constructivist perspective. How
would each approach explain the way countries and individuals have behaved in your
topic? For this question specifically you will not need and should not use any outside
research – the textbook and course videos are sufficient. I would like to see you apply
what you’ve learned about the theories to your topic. You should still make sure to cite
specific pages in the book/course videos but you should not cite outside sources just for
this one specific part of the paper.
5) What is the future of your topic?
Possible Topics
You can choose from the list below or choose your own. A list of possible topics might
include: relations between South Korea and North Korea, relations between the US and
Cuba, the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Iran (or North Korea) and nuclear proliferation, Brexit,
NAFTA/USMCA, Security Council reform, anything to do with the 2008 economic crisis
(i.e. not domestic) such as the European debt crisis, cybersecurity, global poverty,
development in the global South, AIDS or any other epidemic (but focus on the
international relations of it and not the science), the looming demographic crisis in
economically developed countries, immigration INTERNATIONALLY (i.e. not specifically
about the US), water access, climate change, etc. As a reminder, it must be a
contemporary topic, meaning it involves things that have happened since 1989 or later.
You can structure your paper any way you see fit, so long as you address the above
questions. I would suggest breaking your paper down into an introduction in which you
lay out what will be in the rest of the paper, five separate sections (each dealing with a
question) and a conclusion, to match the attached rubric. Make sure to read the rubric at
the end of the paper assignment for guidance on what each section should contain.
Please note that you should not just write a five paragraph essay with each of the above
questions being a paragraph. Generally each question should take you several/numerous
paragraphs to answer.
Formatting
The total length of the paper is 2000 to 2500 words. That is roughly 8 to 10 double-
spaced pages with normal font and margins. Please put the word count on the front page
of your paper. The word count does not include the works cited page. Pretty much every
word processing program has a way of automatically counting words for you. If you are
unsure how to do this, let me know and I will show you. Will I count all of your words to
verify your total? Probably not. Unless you hand in something that is clearly not the
length listed on the front page. I know most people start out by aiming for the minimum
number of words, but given the scope of this paper topic you will likely have no difficulty
meeting the word count. While you will lose points for being under 2000 words, if a
paper has less than 1500 words it will automatically fail the assignment.
Number of Sources
I am asked pretty much every semester some version of the question “how many
sources does my paper need to have?” This is a weird question to me, since the honest
answer is “how ever many you need to write a good paper”, but I get why students ask it.
A little guidance is always a good thing. Let me say this, then. It would be very hard to do
well on this paper with less than five academic sources (i.e. not Wikipedia, Investopedia,
and other encyclopedic sources). You probably will want more than that, but at a
minimum I’d be aiming for that. Once you hit five sources that doesn’t mean you are
done doing research – if three of your sources are all about one part of the paper then
you’re going to need more in total to write a compelling paper. The sources can be things
like academic journals or books, but they can also be government websites, U.N. and
other major international organization websites, reputable think tank/NGO websites
(though here you have to be a more critical of the sourcing) and reputable news sources
like CNN, the BBC, etc.
Citations/Plagiarism – Read this very, very, very
carefully
You should be using high-quality sources for this paper. That means that while you can
consult Wikipedia as a start, you should be using additional sources. This can include
academic journals and books but it can also include newspapers, government and
university websites, or any other high-quality, reliable source. If you are going to use
web-based sources, make sure (as always) to consider who the source of the website is.
Are they credible? Do they have expertise? What’s their angle or bias?
THIS PART IS SUPER IMPORTANT. MAKE SURE TO USE IN-TEXT CITATIONS in your
paper. What do I mean by in-text citation? It means that any time you reword someone’s
ideas or information in your own words, or if you directly quote them, you let the reader
know right there in the body of the paper where you got that information from. You can
do this using footnotes or endnotes but the main way people do it these days is through
paranthetical citations at the end of sentences like so. (Fuerstman, 2023). This is
different from a Works Cited page – which you’ll also want to include at the end of the
paper. If you do not use in-text citations and only have a works cited page you will lose
10% on the assignment.
I don’t particularly care what format your in-text citations and your Works Cited page
are (MLA vs APA vs Chicago) just so long as (a) you stay consistent in the paper and (b) I
can figure out how to find each source myself if I so choose. If all of this sounds very
unfamiliar to you, I’d recommend checking out this page from ScribbrLinks to an external
site.. Scribbr is also a great source for helping you format citations.
Remember that whenever you use someone’s idea, either in a direct quote or reworded
yourself, you should use a citation. Using someone’s words or ideas without citation is
plagiarism and doing so will lead to a minimum of a zero on the paper and quite possibly
failure of the class.
Finally, and this bit is also very important, you are more than welcome to use any
AI/LLM (such as ChatGPT, Bing, Claude, Bard, etc.) to help you write your paper. If you
do, please know two things. First, in your Works Cited page you should include a short
paragraph just telling me how you used AI. No need to lie or anything – it’s 100% okay to
use it. Second, you need to independently verify and cite sources for any information
provided to you by the AI. Remember, these models do not know things in the way that
we use the term. They will absolutely make stuff up and state it confidently. If you use it
to generate text that says “on January 15, 2014 the United States bombed Latvia”, you’d
better have a citation to a non-AI source for that right there in your paper (and not a
citation to the AI itself since, again, it could be hallucinating).
A final note on citations, and this is a weird one. You SHOULD NOT be using outside
sources in Question 4 about the theories. You SHOULD include specific references to
the course textbook and course videos, but for this question I want to see you
specifically apply what you’ve learned about the three major theoretical perspectives to
your chosen topic.
For more information on citations, see the page in the Research Paper Module titled
“Citations and Plagiarism”.
Two Stages of the Assignment
The absolute hardest part is finding a good topic. After that it’s just a matter of finding
some relevant primary and secondary sources and then writing the stupid paper (I hate
that part, too). The assignment is going to be done in two parts.
First Assignment
The first deadline is going to be for you to submit to me one or two topics that you are
interested in doing. These topics should be directly related to international relations and
should be suitable for answering the five questions in the larger research paper
assignment. Don’t just send me a list of topics though. For each of the topics also tell me
what kinds of sources you’d imagine looking for to help you answer the questions. You
can read more about how to find sources in the very next page after this one titled
“Finding Resources for Your Research”. This part of the project should probably be a
page or so in length, but I’m really grading this based on quality (signs that you’ve put in
some thought and didn’t just write it five minutes before the deadline). You can earn up
to 40 points for this portion of the assignment.
Second Assignment
This is what it has all been building towards. Write the paper and submit it. The rubric is
as follows:
Paper Rubric
Section of the Paper Percent of Total Points:
Introduction 7
Question 1 13
Question 2 13
Question 3 13
Question 4 15
Question 5 13
Conclusion 3
Grammar/Spelling 10
Citation Quality/Accuracy 10
Paper Length 5
Total 100%
Paper Rubric
No Points Up to 50% Up to 85% Up to 100% Total
Introduction
No
Introduction
Small
introduction
with minimal
information
Introduction
that briefly
mentions
what will be
covered in
the rest of
the paper.
Good
introduction
that lays out
for the
reader the
structure of
the rest of
the paper
Grammar &
Spelling
Frequent
grammatical
and/or
spelling
errors
Many
grammatical
and/or
spelling
errors
Some
grammatical
and/or
spelling
errors
Few to no
grammatical
and/or
spelling
errors
Paper Length,
including word
count on title
page
Less than
1500
words:
Fails
Assignment
1500-2000 More than
3500 words
2000-3500
words
Citation
Quality/Accuracy
Is either
lacking in-
text
Has only a
few in-text
citations or
Somewhat
regular and
consistent
Regular and
consistent
use of
citations,
uses non-
credible
sources, or
is lacking a
Works Cited
page.
uses some
less-than-
credible
sources.
use of
proper
citations in-
text, along
with a
Works Cited
page. Uses
credible
sources.
proper
citations in-
text, along
with a
Works Cited
page. Uses
credible
sources.
Questions 1-5
Fails to
address a
relevant
question
Answers
question but
does so in a
cursory or
factually
inaccurate
way
Answers
question
accurately.
Hits relevant
points.
Does
everything in
previous
category
with addition
of something
distinctive
Conclusion
No
conclusion
Small
conclusion
with minimal
information
Good
conclusion
that sums up
all the
information
Covers all in
the up to
85% range,
plus includes
an analysis
of what the
student
learned from
the
assignment
