PAPER PROMPT Political Science: National Institutions: Congress The purpose of the paper is to get you to think like a Political Scientist. In an attempt to hone your mind in on the basic processes involved in this analytical mindset, you will be developing a simple research proposal. Your paper can be up to 7 pages long. That said, your paper can be shorter than this limit. A basic floor that will be enforced, however, is that it must be at least 5 pages long. Understand that 4 pages plus a few sentences on the 5th page counts as 5 pages for the purpose of this class. A good paper will meet the following criteria: 1) It will point out and provide a basic background of some political phenomenon observed in the lectures, or possibly in the world of your own observation outside of the class. 2) It will provide a primary hypothesis attempting to describe the mechanics of the phenomenon being observed. 3) It will provide at least one counter-hypothesis to the primary hypothesis. Some of the subjects will lend themselves more readily to more than one counterhypothesis (though only one is required). Do not use straw-man hypotheses that are obviously set up for the sole purpose of being knocked down. This counterhypothesis can be thought of as a complementary hypothesis as well, as the counter-hypothesis needs not seek to undercut the primary hypothesis. It can simply approach the same subject from a different angle if you would like. 4) It must have at least a cursory review of some of the existing literature on the subject. This can be drawn from the supplemental readings, or something like a JSTOR or Google Scholar search. Wikipedia will not be accepted as a literature source. 5) It will provide theoretical tests that can be used to gauge the validity of the assorted hypotheses you propose. There is absolutely no expectation that you would know of concrete data sets to draw from, or particular [for example] polling methods that could be employed. You just need to demonstrate that you have some sense of how to get at testing your hypotheses. 6) It should provide a conclusion that would summarize your expectations of the outcomes of these theoretical tests. It could also explore how a difference in the observed political phenomenon might lead you to different hypotheses, and whether the tests you argue for would still be relevant to testing your hypotheses. If you are concerned about your literature sources, make sure you run them by me so we can be certain that you are not going off track. With these basic guidelines in mind you can select one of the following political puzzles or engage in an analysis of a political phenomenon or political question of interest to you. [NOTE: THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST. YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ELSE IF YOU WISH.] 1) Senators are (on average) ten percent more likely than their House counterparts to lose their re-election bids. How might the ends of House Members and Senators, and means to those ends, account for this? Can you think of basic mechanical differences between the two chambers that might account for this difference in reelection rates? What about differences between House and Senate members from one state as opposed to House and Senate members from a different state? Does this lower Senate re-election rate remain constant? In a broader sense how might the views of Mayhew and Fenno account for the overall high re-election rate of all members of Congress, both House Members and Senators? 2) Thinking about the role of parties in political campaigns, when might a candidate choose to identify herself with her party and how? When might a campaign opponent choose to “out” this person as being of one party or the other? How would we measure party identification? 3) In a similar campaign line of thought, what exactly is the value of a name in garnering votes? How might one attempt to calculate the number of votes a name draws compared to other resources such as money and experience? Do all names have the same power? For example, is an actor’s name as important as that of an athlete, or that of someone from an established political family? Does this power vary between House and Senate races? 4) How might interests groups use their money to influence policy outcomes in Congress? What effect does the timing and targeting of money have on their effectiveness? How exactly might we go about measuring such influence, in both contributions and results? 5) What affects legislators’ demands for committee positions? What in turn leads the parties to ultimately place these legislators in their ultimate committees? How much do things like seniority, party fidelity, immediate electoral security, things like redistricting in the House, and even the nature of the bureaucracies controlled by these committees come into play? When approaching these provided topics, realize that especially for the more involved ones mentioned there is no expectation that you should (or could) fully address them. You will likely only address one of the questions within bundles 1 through 5 listed above in the course of your paper. You are going to neither answer nor ask all the possible questions related to your topic within the spatial limits provided to you. It is highly unlikely that you could do such a thing were you allotted the space of a doctoral dissertation.
