V53.0912: Junior Honors
Professor R. Morton
Fall 2002

Basic Course Information:
Office:                                                 435C 715 Broadway                                                          
Phone:                                                  212-998-3706
(I check my voice mail Tuesday and Thursday mornings)

Office Hours:                              T, TH 11 am to noon or by appointment                        
email:                                                     rbm5@nyu.edu
(I check my email mornings, Monday through Friday)
fax:                                                            319-335-3400

Using Email and this class:

Please feel free to email me if you have questions during the semester while studying for exams or working on your papers at rbm5@nyu.edu.  I will try to respond to email questions received during weekdays (Monday through Friday only) within 48 hours.

IMPORTANT:  Do not submit your assignments to me via email.  Assignments submitted via email will not be accepted.  Part of each assignment is attendance and participation in class on the day the assignment is due.  If you are unable to attend class on an assignment due date then a paper copy of the assignment (non-electronic) will be accepted if accompanied with a documented excuse for your absence.

Course Description

The purpose of this class is to provide you with the background for doing original modern research in political science.  It is required of Honors Majors as a prelude for writing their Honors Theses.  Students are expected to have completed Doing Political Science or to be registered in it concurrently.  The goal of the class is to teach you to assess the state of a scholarly literature, identify the interesting questions, formulate strategies for answering them, acquire some of the methodological tools with which to conduct the research, and understand how to write up the results so that they can be published.

Books

The texts for the class are available at NYU Bookstore: 

Morton, Rebecca, Methods and Models: A Guide to the Empirical Analysis of Formal Models in Political Science, Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Katznelson, Ira and Helen V. Milner, eds, Political Science:  State of the Discipline, W.W. Norton, 2002.

Grofman, Bernard, ed., Political Science as Puzzle Solving, U of Michigan Press, 2001.

There will also be assigned readings during the semester as discussed below in the assignments. 

Course Grades

Course grades will be computed on a 100 point scale as follows:

Research Note and Other Written Assignments	70%
Attendance & Participation in Class	30%
Total	100%

Research Note

In the research note you will write a first draft of a paper that could potentially be the beginnings of your honors thesis.  That is, the research note is a discussion of what your current thinking about your thesis will be and how you plan to carry out the investigation.  While it is not THE thesis, it should represent a genuine effort to provide a start on the thesis and a guide on your plans for the thesis.  It will be due on December 13^th at noon.  It should be between 10 and 20 pages long. In the research note you need to take into consideration the following thesis guidelines:

A. Normative-theoretical

If your thesis is a project in normative theory, then you should demonstrate the justificatory grounds for your normative argument (e.g., I will justify abortion rights based on a utilitarian defense of rights, etc.), making explicit the logic connecting these grounds with your normative claims. Your work should also demonstrate awareness of the competing normative arguments and anticipate key objections that could be leveled against your claims on behalf of these arguments.

B. Positive-theoretical

If your thesis is an examination of some empirical question, then the following expectations apply:

B1. Question

Your thesis should propose an open question (e.g., do term-limits for elected official improve the quality of electoral representation?) or aim at an explanation of an already observed phenomenon that you believe requires an explanation given the generally accepted background understandings (e.g., successful collective action in relation to some issue against the background of collective action problems).

B2. Primary explanation and the empirical hypothesis

You must articulate a logically coherent explanation for the phenomenon of interest, starting with the generally acknowledged premises. If the empirical question you are asking does not have a generally acknowledged answer, you must supply that answer, carefully specifying the procedure that yields it, and offer an explanation for the results your receive.

Example: One common understanding of claims made on behalf of democratic theory is that politicians who do not expect to seek re-election are less responsive to the demands of their constituents. On the basis of this understanding you could argue that, subject to caveats, in the states and localities in which term-limits have been imposed, office-holders are likely to pursue more independent policy agendas, thus lowering the quality of electoral representation. Since this is not obviously the case, you would need to formulate an empirical hypothesis, arguing that it is a good representation of the inference in your explanation, and then test it, using either available data or data you gather yourself.

B3. Competing explanations

As far as possible, your thesis should examine and reject competing explanations.

Example: it is possible that terms limits are correlated with greater policy independence because they tend to be adopted in the electoral locales in which voters - perhaps on the basis of past history - are particularly mistrusting and so are unlikely to give benefit of the doubt to their elected officials. Anticipating the inevitability of ambiguous decisions and so short office tenure, the elected politicians choose to pursue their own preferred policy agenda "while they can."

B4. Literature review

Your thesis should review the relevant academic literature concerning your primary and competing explanations. This section should set your work in the context of other research on your question: e.g., research on term-limits in other contexts, on the nature of the motivation of the elected officials whose behavior you are analyzing, etc.

B5. The tests of explanations

As far as possible, your thesis should set up a test of the competing explanation. E.g., you could examine the history of representation in the locales that have adopted term-limits.

While testing explanations and the hypotheses that they imply is much easier when one is dealing with data which can be quantified and analyzed statistically, not all explanations can be so tested. Even if the explanations you are working with do not lend themselves to statistical tests, you may be able to consider the counterfactual arguments that can be adduced in support of these explanations as well as the fit of the additional inferences that can be made from them with the available evidence and conceptual premises accepted generally and/or implied by your explanations.

Your thesis should report the results of your tests, along with the appropriate level of confidence that you have in those results (e.g., confidence levels in statistical analyses, the number of observations that were available for testing your explanations, the quality of data, including coding used, etc.).

B6. Conclusion

Your thesis should conclude with a discussion of the significance of your work, the limitations of your work, and its implications for further research.

Other Written Assignments

The other written assignments are described below in the preliminary schedule of lectures. 

Class Attendance and Participation

You will be expected to attend class regularly.  Attendance will be checked every class.  Absences from class will be excused for documented reasons and until you provide such documentation absences will be considered unexcused. 

For each class several students will be assigned to be ìdiscussion leadersî such that each student will get to lead discussion for two classes.  Discussion leaders will be expected to prepare a list of questions for class discussion and to make sure that all other students participate in the discussion of the readings.  Leaders will be expected to make sure that the discussion stays ìon topicî ñ the assigned readings for the class day.  We will divide up the class days on the first day of class. 

Preliminary Schedule of Lectures and Material Discussed

This is a preliminary schedule and may change as the semester progresses.

Date	Material Covered (KM denotes Katznelson & Milner, M denotes Morton, G denotes Grofman)
Friday Sept. 6th	Introduction to Class & Social Science Research, Discussion of Research Interests, divide up classes by discussion leaders.
Friday Sept. 13th	Some history of political science, KM, pages 1-26 M, Chapter 1 ñ Be prepared to discuss the readings in class. Discussion Leaders:________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ Written assignment due ñ write a short three page history of one of the following aspects of political science research: 1)         On the use of statistical methods (You might answer the following questions: When did political scientists begin to use statistical estimation procedures to test theories?  Who were the first political scientists who did so?  What research questions did they ask?) 2)         On the use of laboratory experiments (You might answer the following questions:  When did political scientists begin to use laboratory experiments to test theories?  Who were the first political scientists who did so?  What research questions did they ask?) 3)         On the use of case studies (You might answer the following questions:  When did political scientists begin to use case studies?  Who were the first political scientists who did so?  What research questions did they ask?) 4)         On the first couple of political science departments at a university in the United States (You might answer the following questions:  Who were the members of these departments?  What research did they do?  Why were the departments created?) Make your essay short and concise and be prepared to discuss your research with the class.
Friday Sept. 20th	A discussion of how political science is done, M (chapters 2-4), G (pages 1-11) Discussion Leaders:________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________
Friday Sept. 27th	More on how political science is done, KM (pages 630-721) Discussion Leaders:________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ Written assignment due ñ In 2 pages describe a puzzle of politics that you would like to know more about.  Make two copies, one to turn in and one to give to a fellow student.
Friday Oct. 4th	Even more on how political science is done, KM (pages 722-832) Discussion Leaders:________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________
Friday Oct. 11th	Evaluating Puzzle Solving, G (pages 13-84) Discussion Leaders:________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ Written assignment due ñ In 3-5 pages describe how you would model the puzzle of politics that your fellow student has given you and how you would go about testing that model empirically.  Make two copies, one to turn in and one to give to a third student.
Friday Oct. 18th	Faculty Presentations
Friday Oct. 25th	Faculty Presentations
Friday Nov. 1st	Class Discussion of your own puzzle solving Written assignment due ñ In 3-5 pages critique the proposed model of the puzzle of politics that your fellow student has given to you.  Make two copies, one to turn in and one to give to give back to your fellow student.
Friday Nov. 8th	Faculty Presentations
Friday Nov. 15th	Evaluating Puzzle Solving, G (pages 85-130) Discussion Leaders:________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ Written assignment due ñ In 3-5 pages discuss how you would address one of the research projects presented by the faculty (your choice) if you were hired by that faculty member as his or her research assistant.
Friday Nov. 22nd	Readings from KM to be determined Discussion Leaders:________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________
Friday Dec. 6th	Readings from KM to be determined Discussion Leaders:________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ Written assignment due ñ A one page outline of your research note.