The purpose of the paper assignment is to show off what you know about the course materials in one of two ways.

I. Political Science Meets Fantasy. This paper should illustrate a variety of the theoretical concepts learned during the semester. This paper is conceptualized as building upon the story of a hypothetical world known as "Transitive City". Chapter 1 of that story can be found HERE. This chapter lays out the groundwork for TRANS CITY (short for Transitive City) and two characters, Erik and the Gatekeeper (modelled after Kafka's Gatekeeper or the Gatekeeper in the Wizard of OZ). It illustrates one conception of rationality, based on consistency of preferences, that we discussed during the first two weeks of class.

Your paper is limited only by your creativity. You may make up new characters, a form of government for a town based on rational principles, crises to be solved, a history, etc. so long as you spend a considerable portion of your story illustrating concepts relevant to this course. Do not use simple extensions of class examples (e.g., sheep herding rather than cattle grazing on a commons).

II. Political Science Meets Empirical Reality. This version of the paper applies the theoretical concepts learned during the semester to a real world public policy issue. You may apply rational choice theories to plitical phenonema ranging from the 2008 Presidential election canmpaign to the current debates over the use of the world's oceans or the global environment. (You may not use turn in the same paper for both this class and another class such as Campaigns & Elections or Environmental Policy.)

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