What is a Political Science Dissertation?

Chapter 3

What is a Political Science Dissertation?

Dissertations in political science can perform seven principal missions. This gives rise to seven types of dissertation, one for each mission. Most dissertations perform several of these missions, and thus  are hybrids, but it is still usefull to consider possible ideal type dissertations.

1.     A theory-proposing dissertations advances new hypotheses. A deductive argument for these hypotheses is advanced. Examples may be offered to illustrate these hypotheses and to demonstrate they plausibility, but strong empirical tests are not performed.

2.     A theory-testing dissertation uses empirical evidence to evaluate existing theories. This evidence can take the form of large-n analysis, case studies,or both.

     Many dissertations are a blend of type 1 and . they do some theory-proposing and some theory-testing. However, a good thesis can focus exclusively on proposing theory, or on testing theory, as long as it contributes useful knowledge.

3.     A literature-assesing (or “stok taking”) dissertations summarizes and evaluates existing theories are valuable and existing tests are persuasive and complete.

4.      A policy-evaluative or policy-prescriptive dissertation evaluates current of future public policies or policy proposals. Are the factual and theoretical premises of the proponents and opponents of proposed policies valid or invalid? Will the policy produce the results that its proponents promise?

       It is often said that policy-prescriptive work is not theoretical. The opposites    is  true. All policy proposals rest on forecasts about the effects of policies. These forecasts rest in turn on implicit or explicit theoretical assumptions about the laws of social and political motion. Hence all evaluation of public policy requires the framing and evaluation of theory, hence it is fundamentally theoretical.

     Policy prescriptive work can focus on evaluating a particular policy on evaluating competing solutions to a given problem or on the policy implications of a political or technical development (such as, for example,the nuclear revolution or the collapse of the soviet empire)

5.     A historical-explanatory dissertation uses theory (academically recognized theory, folk theory, or”common sence” deduction) to explain the causes, pattern, or consequences of historical cases.                                                                                                         Such works often provide a good deal of description but focus on explaining what is described.

6.     A historical-evaluative dissertation evaluates the factual and theoretical beliefs that guided official or unofficial policy actors, and/or evaluates the consequences of the policies they pursued.

           Dissertations of types 5 and 6 are rare and little admired in political sience. This reflects a general bias in the field favoring the creation and testing of theory over the application of theory. However, this bias is misguided. If theoris are never applied, then what are they for? Theories have value only if they are eventually put to work to explain, assess, or prescribe.

Moreover, scholarship of types 5 and 6 lacks a friendly home in other disciplines, which leaves this work to political scientists. Some historians are averse to explicit explanation, instead preferring to “let the facts speak for themselves”. Others will elaborate a preferred explanation, but they rarely set contending explanations against one another, as one must to fully evaluate and expalanation. Historians are also (with some exception) generally averse to writing evaluative history. However, without explanatory historical work we learn little from the past about present and future problem solving. Henc some field should accept these tasks. i nominate political science.

7.     A predictive-dissertation applies theories to extrapolate the future world from current events or from posited future developments. A purely predictive dissertation is a risky project because the future is constantly happening, raising the danger that the project may be overtaken by events. Therefore, students should generally steer clear of dissertations of this sort. However, this warning isn’t iron-clad. Predictive work can be valuable and can take dissertation form.

These seven types of dissertation can be summarized as falling into four categories: theory-proposing (1), theory-testing (  ), theory-applying (4,5,6 and 7), and literature-assesing (3).

          Dissertations of type 1 and –theory-making and theory-testing have the most cachet in political science, but all seven types are legitimate if they are well done. Be clear in your own mind about which type of dissertation you are doing.

     Finally, some words on descriptive dissertations are in order. Such dissertations describe political circumstances. They comein two type; contempory descriptive (focusing on current development and condition) and historical descriptive (focusing on past events and conditions).

     A descriptive dissertation in an eighth possible type of political science dissertation, however, a purely descriptive thesis will be poorly received by other political scientists. They want authors to explain or evaluate the events, policies, or ideas they describe. Hence description should be combined with some making, testing, or application of teory. Description must often reced explanation or evaluation, however, since fenomena that have not been described cannot be explaned or evaluated. Hence students who seek to explain or evaluate fenomena that other have not fully described must first devote heavy attention to description, giving rise to largely descriptive dissertations. This is fine as long as the students also does some explaining or evaluating.

Chapter 4

Helpful Hints on Political Science Dissertation

I often make the following suggestion to graduate students who are launching dissertation.

Topic Selection

     A good dissertation asks an important question. The answer should be relevant to real problems facing the real world.

     Hans Morgentaau once lamented that social scientist often hide in “the trivial, the formal, the methodological, the purely theoretical, the remotely historical- in short, the politically irrelevant. Such conduct is both a crime and a blunder. Being relevant is more fun, better for the world, and a good career move. Scholars who advance bold arguments win more praise than abuse if their work is sound. Research gains visibility largely by having college teachers assign it. Teachers assign work that frames debates. Hence work that boldly presents a side in an important debate or starts its own debate will be more widely assigned and thus more renowned. Its author will bask in academic fame and glory.

     How can good topics be found? Starting yesterday, keep a “Books and Articles That Someone Should Write” file. When you form a mental picture of something you want to read, but a share reveals that it doesn’t exist, record its hypothetical title and stash it in your books and articles file. many of these absen articles wont be  suitable projects for you, but some will. The rest are possible  topics for your friends and future students. You do a major service by devising projects they can execute.

     After each graduate school class, write and audit memo about the subject area of the course asking what wass missing. What important questions went unasked? What answers did you expect to find in the literature that never appeared? What research projects could provide these answers?

          Ph.D. qualifying exams offer another opportunity to audit the field for fillable holes. You have surveyed the field’s horizon: now write the memo on questions and answers that turned up missing in the literature and research that could provide the missing answers.

     Dissertation topics can also be found in public policy debates.

First, read up on a policy debate you care about. Then identify the key disputes of fact or theory that drive opposing sides to their opposites conclusions. Then devise a research project that addresses one or more of these disputes. This search method locates research questions that are unresolved and germane to important public policy questions.

Organizations

     A good dissertation has a thesis a main line of argument, or a set of related arguments. If your dissertation lacks a thesis, think it trough again. If your dissertation has too many these, consider ways to organize your ideas more simply.

Your dissertation prospectus

     Your dissertation prospectus support your applications for research support money. Your prospectus should be five to ten pages long. It should frame the question you will address, the reasons why these questions are worth exploring, your working hypotheses (the answers you expect to find), your methods of inquiry, and the reasons why you chose these methods.

     You should footnote your prospectus as you would a research paper. Good bibliographic footnotes to existing work on your topic are important.

     Before sending it out, circulate you prospectus among friends and collagues for their comments and criticisms.

Your introductory chapter

     The introduction and conclusion are the most-read part of most dissertations and the only-read parts of many, hence their design merits special attention.

     You should start your dissertation with a summary introduction mchapter. A summary introduction helps readers measure your evidence against your claims and arguments at the cutest. This makes your work more readable.

Your summary introduction should answer six question:

1.     What question or questions do you address? Spell them out clearly. A dissertation can propose theories,test theories, explain historical events, or evaluate past or present policies or policy proposals. It can summarize and assess a body of literature. It can describe contemporary circumstances or historical events. It can do several or all of the above. State clearly which of these missions your dissertation fulfills.

                    Frame your questions in terms that call for specific answers. Questions that begin “how can we understand” (how can we understand the meaning of the nuclear revolution by reading bob jervis”) technically qualify as answers. Focused questions are better: ”what are the consequences of the nuclear revolutions?”,or”what are the causes of nationalism?” questions that inquire about “cause “ or “consequence,” or that pose specific descriptive tasks (“how numerous were stalin’s victims?”) are better, since readers can more easily tell if you answer them.

2.   Why do these questions arise from what scholarly literature or real-world events? What previous literature has been written on these questions? What is the “state of the art” on the subject?

If your questions arise from an evolving scholarly literature, you should discuss that literature in the text of your introduction and note ancillary or related literature in footnotes. Note any controversies in this literature, explain their origins and evolution, detail the arguments made by both sides, and summarize their current status. Not the factual or theoretical crux of any continuing disagreements. Not also the holes in the current literature. What questions have not been explored? (let’s hope yours is among them). You also might interpret the motives that sustain continuing controversies. What, if any, political or methodological motives are driving the disputans apart? Are these disputants honest scholars or paid polemicists? In short, explain what’s been going on in the field you are entering.

If your questions arise from historical or contemporary events, detail these events, explain their significance, and explain why they give rise to the question or questions you address. Also mention any existing literature on the subject you address, and note holes in that literature.

3.   What answer or answers will you offer? Clearly suumarize your conclusions in your introduction. Your summary should offer enough detail to let readers grasp the main elements of your argument by reading your introduction alone. It should run several pages al least.

The opposite strategy, of seducing readers by withholding conclusions until late in the document, merely tries readers’ patience. Moreover, your argument is lost on the many readers who won’t read past your introduction.

4.   What competing explanations, arguments, interpretations, or frameworks will you reject or refute? Clearly identify the books, articles, and ideash that you demolish.

Connect your dissertation to all the debates and literatures that it speaks to. If it speaks to several debates or literatures, flag this so participants in each debate will realize that your work matters to them. This helps them and also you: they will site you and make you famous.

5.   How will you reach your answers? Say a few words about your methodology and sources. If you are doing case studies, explain how you selected your cases. If you are doing archival research, say so, and identify the archives and sources you used. If you are doing a large-n statistical study, explain the origins and construction of the data basis you are using, and explain your method of analysis in terms comprehensible to the many among your readers who have forgotten their statistics. If you are using other evidence, for example, press accounts, explain is nature. If your approach is largely deductive, explain this.

If there are methods or sources that readers might expect you to use, but that for some reason you did not use, you might note this and explain your decisions. Evidence that provide to be unavailable and lines of research that provide infeasible might be mentioned. If there are important questions that you did not answer them. Instead cf writing your way around gaps in your research, explain them honestly in your introduction. (but do your research in a way that doesn’t require lame excuses)

6.   What comes next? Provide a roadmap to the rest of the dissertation: “ chapter 1 explains how I begin my live of crime; chapter *details early arrests; chapter 3 describes my road to death row; chapter 4 offers general theoretical conclusions and policy implications.”something of that short

Subjects 1(“what is your question?”),*(“why does this question arise?”), and 3(“what is your answer?”) are the most important. Make sure you cover these with care.

Summary introductions of this sort reduce confusion about what your dissertation does and does not say. They also serve a diagnostic purpose for the author. The act of drafting a summary can alert you to internal contradictions or other flaws in the structure of your argument. This helps you flag problems that need fixing.

Your introduction should be the first chapter you draft and the last chapter you finish. Since it summarizes your dissertation you can’t complete it until the other chapters are done and you know what they say. So don’t spend effort polishing it until the rest of your dissertation is written.

Your concluding chapter

In your conclusion you may want to summarize your questions and answers, if your summary introduction was cursory. However, I recommend that you recapitulate your research only briefly and then explore its implications at greater length. What policy implications follow from your discoveries? Which general theories does it call into question, and which does it reinforce? What broader historical questions does it raise or settle? What further research is called for by your discoveries? This is the place to discuss the larger significance of your research.

Study Design and Presentation: Observe Cumulative Knowledge Norms

Political science is often criticized because few questions are ever settled and the same issues are revisited over and over. Things will improve if social scientist follow practices that foster the accumulation of knowledge. So please follow these injunctions:

1.  Have a research design before you start your research. This platitude is too often honored in the breach.”the main purpose of the (research) design is to help to avoid the situation in which the evidence does not address the initial research questions. Those who proceed without a research design risk being marooned on a mismatch between their questions and their evidence.

2.   Frame your argument clearly. Knowledge accumulates only if your readers know what you have said.

If your dissertation proporses, tests, or applies theories. If your hypotheses cannot be roduced to arrow diagrams, then you writing and probably your thinking are too muddy. Think your project through again. This advice applies to explicity theoretical work and to policy-prescriptive writing frames these theories clearly.

If your dissertation is largely descriptif or historical, your main discoveries should be clearly summarized at least once in the dissertation, preferably at the outset.

If your dissertation tests theories or explanations, clearly frame their predictions (or”observable implications”) before presenting evidence. Theories and explanations are tested by inferring predictions from the explanation and then asking if the predictions are comfirmed or discomfirmed by the evidence. You should explicate this process for your readers by clearly framing the predictions your evidence tests. (most authors omit this step but that doesn’t make it wise)

Fram all predictions that flow from your theory, including those that are falsified by the evidence or prove untestable. Failed predictions should be identified and their failure confessed. If some predictions are comfirmed and some fail, say so and offer interpretation.

Thus your overall format should be (a) frame your theory/ explanation; (b) infer predictions from it;(c) perform tests; and (d) offer interpretation.

3.  Be definitive. Your dissertation should reflect a comprehensive survey of literature and evidence relevant to your subject. Your footnotes should provide a compherensive bibliography to the important literature relevan to your topic. This requires that you gain mastery off all aspects of your subject.

4.  Document all sources and statement of fact. This requires a good personal system for storing retrieving your evidence. One of my rules of thumb: when in doubt, make photocopies. Copy everything you might use or cite in your dissertation.this eases data retrieval and documentation of sources.

5.  “argue against yourself.” Acknowledge counterarguments that might be raised by skeptical readers and briefly address them letter in the text. Concede what you should to these arguments and explain why you want concede more. This shows readers that you have given due thougt to possible objections or alternate interpretations. It also forestalls baseless criticism of your work.

6.   Do plausibility probes as the first phase of your research. In other words, find out the answer before doing your study. The experimental science model proceeds from question to hypothesis to prediction to experiment to conclusion. This mechanistic program seldom works for us. Instead we go from question to hypothesis to prediction to data exploration (plausibility probe) to revised hyputhesis to prediction to larger data exploration to conclusion. In short, we often “work backward” from answer to proof. We must do this to narrow the range of possible answers we fully investigate. Otherwise we would waste energy doing full-dress tests of hypotheses that a cursory look at the data would refute.

7.   Clearly identify works that your dissertation revises, contradicts, or supersedes. If your dissertation is theoretical or policy prescriptive, identify by name those authors whose works you refute. Is your dissertation is descriptive or historical, identify exactly which previos accounts you are revising. This may annoy the superseded authors, but otherwise your readers will continue to quote outmoded work.

How can you sharpen your methodological skills? Reread works you admire, keeping an eye on how the authors executed their projects. Form an attitude on what they did right and wrong and not the methods and sources they used. Consider whether similar methods or sources might be appropriate for your possible dissertation project.

Writing

          A well-written dissertation is more likely to be published, assigned, and quoted. So bear the following points in mind:

1.  That which is simple is also good. Your dissertation should make a single main point or handful of related points. It should have a clear, simple structure.

                    Avoid cluttering your dissertation with extra ornaments and gargoyles (as students often do). Just because you researched something doesn’t mean it belongs in the manuscript. Cutting is painful “I sweated hours over this!” to bad! In the word of research, half your work is done to be thrown away or saved for a later project.

                    The logic of presentation varies from the logic of discovery, but your write-up should follow the logic of presentation. This mean it should move simply and clearly from your questions to your answers. It is seldom wise to present your discoveries in the same order in which you made them.

Pitch your writing at a level appropriate for collage under graduate readers. Do not write at a level that only your faculty supervisors can understand. Scholarship that isn’t use in the collage classroom has little impact; hence you should take pains to address the average student.

2.  The following structure is often appropriate for dissertation chapters:

a.     Your argument

b.     Your supporting evidence

c.      Counterarguments, qualifications, and limiting conditions of your argument

d.     Brief concluding remarks, which my include comments on the implications of your argument, or may note questions they raise

3.     Start each chapter with several paragraphs summarizing the argument presented in the chapter  ou may cut these summaries from your final draft if they seem reduntdant with your summary introduction but include them in your first drafts. They will help your supervisor and friends to read and comment on individual chapters. You may also want to keep these summaries in if they seem to fit. Finally, forcing yourself to summarize your argument in each chapter is a good way to make yourshelf confront contradictions or shortcomings in that argument.

          Often these chapter summaries are best written after your write the chapter but don’t forget to add them at some point.

4.  Start each paragraph with a topic sentence that distills the point of the paragraph. Later sentences should offer supporting material that explains or elaborates the point of the topic sentence. Qualifications or refutation to counterarguments should then follow. In short, paragraphs should have the same structure as whole chapters.

                    A reader should be able to grasp the thrust of your dissertation by reading only the first couple of sentences of every paragraph.

5.  Break chapters into numbered sections and subsections. More subsections are better then fewer; they help your readers follow your argument. Lebel each section or subsection with a vivid section heading that communicates the meaning of the section.

6.  Write short, declarative sentence. Avoid the passive voice. (passive voice:”the kulaks were murdered”-but who did it? Active voice:”stalin murdered the kulaks.”)

For more advice on writing see William strunk jr. and E. B.white, the elements of style,3d ed. (new York: macmillan,1979), and Teresa pelton Johnson, “writing for international security: A contributor’s guide,” international secuirity 16 (fall 1991): 171-80.

7.  If you are doing case studies: it often works to write detailed chronological hisrories of the case before doing the case study. This helps you gain mastery of the case. Then reorganize your material into a case study.

style

   

          acquire the manual on style (citation format, bibliography format, and so on) recommended by your department or university before you start your research, and check the sections on documentation and bibliografhy. This insures you will collect all appropriate citation information as you do your research. Otherwise you may have to waste time later retracing your step to collect the required the information.

Three general style formats are common: (1) the university of Chicago format, which puts references to sources in footnotes or endnotes; (  ) the modern language association (MLA) format, which incorporates references parenthetically within the text; and (3) the American psychological association (APA) format, which also puts references parenthetically in the text but varies in other ways from the MLA format. The Chicago format is the most reader-friendly; the others clutter the text with references. Use Chicago iy your department allows it.

The Chicago style rules are distilled in kate L. turabian, a manual for writers of term papers, theses, and dissertatiouns, 6^th ed.,rev.jhon grossman and alice bennet (Chicago: university of Chicago press, 1996). Slavishly ober her instructions. Style mistakes make your manuscript look unprofessional.

Vetting

When you finish some dissertation chapter, circulate them to several friends for comments and criticism. Don’t be shy. The first law of scholarship is “two heads are better than one.” Vetting will improve your work.

If you chapters are really half-baked and early dissertation chapters usually are quite terrible do show some caution. It is probably best not to show them to complete strangers, who may conclude from them that you are brain-dead, and that your respirator should be turned off. Do, however, show them to friends who can be trusted to know that you are not brain-dead, even though the condition of your chapter suggests otherwise, and who will have you kick them into shape.

          Conversely, when others ask you to vet their work, you should take the task seriously. Helping others improve their written work is an important professional obligation. In carrying out this obligation, show mercy and compassion if your collague’s work in dicates early brain death while also making clear that there is significant room for improvement, and offering specific feasible suggestions.

Do not look solely to your professors for vetting or criticism. Your friends should play and equal, perhaps even larger, role.

          Graduate students sometimes view their fellow students are competitors to be kept at a distance and left unhelped. This is a serious error, for two reasons.          First, it is not menschlike. You should axiomatically, in your personal and professional life, aspire to be a mensch. The world needs more mensches: so be one. Your mother and I both hope that you take this appeal to heart. We will be proud of you if you do. And mensches help their fellow students and colleagues. Second, aloofness from your fellow students is a career management blunder. The history of social science lies in the record of triumphs and discoveries by scholars who formed empowering communities of mutual help and thereby outperformed their atomized colleagues. Those who act like piranhas often sink to the bottom, while those who help one another excel and prosper. Yes, Virginia, there is not conflict be tween collegial conduct and the imperatives of professional success. (on this matter study carefully Robert axelrod’s evolution of cooperation,pp. 63-66, which summarizes the keys to success in academy life.)

Your abstract

At an early stage, write a one or two page abstract that provides a clear, cogent summary of your dissertation. Circulate this abstract when you circulate draft chapters to help your readers grasp the general drift of what you are doing.

You should also include a provisional table of contens with chapter titles when you circulate draft chapters. This helps your readers see the big picture.

Dealing with your Dissertation Committee

Your adviser owes you a thoughtful reaction to your dissertation proposal and some reaction as you produce chapters. However, this is your dissertation not your adviser’s. your name goes on the cover. If you are really stuck as you will be from time to time ask for help, but don’t expect anyone to hold your hand trhough the whole process. Your adviser has the right to expect you to solve most of your problems yourself and to seek your own solutions before asking others to get involved.

Your committee members owe you one but only one careful reading of your dissertation chapters. Do not expect iterated readings. A loving adviser may give you more then one but don’t expect it. Hence you should carefully choose when you want your committee members to read your drafts.

Edit chapter drafts before showing them to your committee far longer to read very rough drafts, and they are less able to make useful comments. So neaten everything up before sending it around. (if you want early mid course correction from your committee, ask your adviser to react to a detailed outline not a half baket draft.)