PSCI 7142 (Fall 2006)

Seminar in Institutional Theory

Research Paper Assignment

You will undertake a substantial (ca. 25 page) original research project for the class. You will be required to submit a paper topic, outline, draft and final copy per the schedule below. I will not accept late submissions at any stage.

Element	Grade%	Date Due
Paper Topic	5%	20060913
Paper Outline	5%	20060927
Paper Draft	10%	20061115
Final Paper	40%	20061218

The primary goal of this exercise is to get you doing and writing up your own research. In the context of this class, your research must focus on institutions in some way. Institutions can serve as independent, intervening or dependent variables. You may focus inter alia on questions of institutional origins, persistence, change or effects. You may address these or similar issues in the context of any subfield, substantive topic, or theoretical program, and using any methods, that you choose. The goal, again, is to get you doing and writing up institutional research.

Paper Topic

Your paper topic reflects your initial characterization of the paper. In 1-2 pages (not more!), you must identity and introduce the question that you will be addressing in the paper; briefly identify the relevant literatures (e.g., at a broad level of generality such as “theories of legislative organization”); identify the hypotheses that you will test; provide the broad contours of your research design; and discuss implications of your findings for our understandings of the question in play and institutional theory more generally.

Paper Outline

Your outline will lay out, in less than two pages, the anticipated structure of your paper. You will have had a week since the return of your paper topic to think concretely about the structure of the paper. Spell it out in the outline.

Paper Draft

Your draft will be a substantially complete initial version of your paper. Minimally it should contain a full introduction, a full literature review, full specification and operationalization of your hypotheses, and initial discussion of data/results and implications. The more you can get done at this stage, the better off you will be. It may take me two weeks to return these drafts, so you should plan on continuing data collection/analysis and write-up in the interim.

Final Paper

The final paper will have all the qualities of a paper that is conference-ready. It should have a title page, be paginated, be formatted with normal fonts & margins, and fully sourced and written. Imagine that you would have to send this paper to a senior figure in the field – make it good, and plan on revising it for presentation and eventual publication as soon as possible after the semester.