Rank brazil china france germany japan mexico nigeria russia south africa united kingdom & north ireland according to the Dahl/Polity/Vanhanen scores of most democratic to least democratic

Here is already some additional information about the upcoming term paper. As always, let me know if you have questions!

What
: 8 to 10 page termpaper (Times New Roman, font 12, double-spaced)

I am not super strict about the length of the paper. However, I think that a paper shorter than 8 pages cannot address the topic correctly but I also do not want you to write a work of 25 pages because that is not necessary either.

When
: Friday August 1st, 11.30 PM Pacific Time

Where
: Course space on Angel – Assignments – Term Paper: please submit a short post with the title of your paper and your name and then attach your paper as a Word document thought ‘attachments’. Make sure that your name is in the Word document as well (preferably in the file name for instance: [your first and last name]_Termpaper_PolS 102_summer 2014.doc)

How
:

Chapters 16 through 23 are case studies of countries:

·
       
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

·
       
France

·
       
Germany

·
       
Japan

·
       
Russia

·
       
China

·
       
Mexico

·
       
Brazil

·
       
Nigeria

·
       
South-Africa

You have to rank all of these countries on these three measures:

·
       
Dahl’s measure of polyarchy

·
       
The Polity project rankings

·
       
Vanhanen’s Index of Democracy

Please see the other instructor notes in this forum for full explanation of these measures.

I do not expect you to come up with perfect scores, but what I do expect you to be able to do is to read the text information carefully, and to imagine how each of these authors/projects would classify the different countries.

As far as I am concerned, you are welcome to include additional information that can be gleaned from such sources as: the New York Times, the Economist Magazine, the online CIA World Factbook (
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
), and others.

Also feel free to browse other websites as well such as 
http://www.democracybarometer.org/links_en.html
 
http://www.prio.no/Data/Governance/Vanhanens-index-of-democracy/
 
http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htmhttp://www3.nd.edu/~mcoppedg/crd/datacrd.htm

As long as you make clear where you received your information from, I am fine with you using these sources. I also recommend you to think about discussing it with others in the course online, through email or through the ‘questions for instructor’ discussion board in which I will open a topic.

I will be grading you according to how well you explain and justify the rankings that you assign each country. Thus it is not sufficient just to produce a set of rankings, but you must include a written articulation of why you decided upon those rankings.

Your paper should be neatly presented, well-written, and checked for errors of syntax and grammar. The standard that I always use is that you should not send in your paper until it is something that you are proud of. If it does not reflect the best of which you are capable, then you should probably think about spending a bit more time on it.

The paper is worth 50 points.

Note that the deadline of this paper is beyond the course timeframe (see course schedule for due date). Since this last week requires a lot of reading and writing I want to make sure that you have enough time to finish your paper. You are of course always welcome to hand in your paper early.

Writing tips
:

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