PSCI 4783: Global Issues (Honors)

Spring 2007: Governing Global Trade

Final Examination Guidelines & Assignment

**The final examination is due in my office by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 9^th**

Goals

The aim of the take-home final examination, which is worth 20% of your course grade, is to give you a chance to engage the general theme of “governing global trade” through a focus on the choices that governance entails.

Nuts and Bolts

Here are some of the nuts and bolts. Failure to respect these requirements will result in point deductions.

• You must have a title page (not included in your page total) which provides a descriptive title (something other than “take home final exam”) and your name. Your name should not appear anywhere else in the paper.
• Papers must be double-spaced, in 12-point font, with normal margins, paginated, and spell-checked.
• Papers must not exceed 10 pages in length, not including references and title page.
• Do not bind the papers other than with a staple at the top-left corner.

In terms of structure, the only requirements are as follows.

• You must have an introductory paragraph comprised of four elements: 1) mood music; 2) thesis/argument; 3) plan/outline; 4) implications. This should be very brief, certainly not more than a page.
• You must have a concluding section which summarizes the arguments and findings and identifies implications.
• You are otherwise free to structure your paper as you see fit, but let me emphasize that I strongly favor a logical and transparent structure (e.g., with subheadings).

Assignment

The notion of “forum shopping” can be understood, most generally, to concern the choice among alternative sites for or modes of governance with respect to a given problem or class of problems. In this take-home final examination, I want you to engage the problem of “governing global trade” through an application of the notion of “forum shopping”. The following is a suggestive (i.e., not exhaustive) list of possible manifestations of forum shopping for global trade governance that you might examine, either singly or in combination:

• The choice from among domestic (unilateral), bilateral, regional or multilateral governance levels;
• The choice of “institutional strategies” such as use, selection, change or creation;
• The choice from among economic/political/social/ecological/legal and/or other logics and modes of decisionmaking;
• The choice from among specific governance sites (e.g., NAFTA vs. WTO, WTO vs. other functional institutions);
• NB: you may not write substantially on any of the topics that you have already addressed in one of your four topical papers.

Among other things, your paper should address itself to the following questions:

• What is the nature of the problem, the nature of the alternative governance sites, and the nature of the forum shopping process that you examine?
• What kinds of consequences flow from the forum shopping process that you examine?
• What does your analysis tell us about the governance of global trade more generally?

You are free to define your own topic that will allow you to address these questions. I do not expect you to do a great deal of outside research, though of course you should cite whatever work you do draw from. Be sure to have a clear argument, to have a clear logical structure and to write as crisply and economically as possible. Be sure, too, to respect the structural requirements spelled out under “nuts and bolts”, above.

**The final examination is due in my office by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 9^th**

Good luck, and have a great summer!