Spring 2018 Research Assignment

Pick one:

• If you are taking part in the legislative simulation, analyze your experience. Consider your role's relationship to the party system.  Even if you are playing someone who is not officially partisan, does the person's positions serve one party better than the other?  In this light, how well did your positions and goals match those of your real-life counterpart? What methods did you use? In the circumstance that you dealt with, would your counterpart have done the same? How did the simulation both resemble and differ from the real world?  
• Appraise President Trump's performance as leader of the Republican Party.  What are his goals for the party?  In light of political and institutional constraints, how well has he done?
• Analyze the use of "message votes" (Lee, ch. 6) in 2017. What challenges and opportunities faced each party in each chamber?  Who used these votes most successfully?  And how would you know that a message vote has succeeded?
• Pick any state legislature.  Has it become more or less polarized over the past decade?  Why?
• Write a postscript to chapter 6 of the Schier book.  Explain how the politics of the federal judiciary (e.g., litigation and judicial selection) since Trump's election either confirms or disconfirms the analysis in the chapter.
• Write on another topic of your choice, subject to my approval.

The specifications:

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than six pages long. I will not read past the sixth page. Please submit papers as Word documents, not pdfs.
• Cite your sources. Please use endnotes in the format of Chicago Manual of Style. Endnotes do not count against the page limit. Please do not use footnotes, which take up too much page space. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays (in Word format) to the Sakai dropbox for this class by 11:59 PM, Friday, April 6. Papers will drop one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.