General guidelines
Limit your proposal to 10-12 double-spaced pages, excluding your bibliography. Use Times New
Roman, 12pt, with minimum 1 margins. Please take these guidelines seriously. Write concise and
focused.
Include a bibliography according to the citation style that you chose for your paper. Quality of the
sources you use is more important than quantity. Still, seek to include at least 10 academic sources.
The following sections are for your orientation. A good proposal will be structured in a way that best
serves your research question and structure, and does not have to follow each point here word for word.
However, it should be structured according to these broad guidelines and include the mentioned
information.
Introduction/Research Problem
Introduce the topic you are studying. Identify in which field of political science it is situated, and to
which general area it connects. Here you should create a narrative and catch the readers attention. We
want to be motivated to continue reading your paper. Why did this topic puzzle you and why is it relevant
today, for science, for policy?
For example, if you are looking at protest patterns in Israel, this may be connected to social movements
more generally, to the study of Israeli politics and history, or even to the Arab Spring depending on
the direction of your research.
Research Question
This can be embedded in your introduction or an individual section. Develop and clearly state the
question you intend to answer with your study. This may be a large question, or it may be divided into
smaller questions (often in more qualitative studies) that all come together to form a lager theory.
Make sure your questions are direct and present something that can be answered. You are not asking
about general themes, but rather something to which you can make a clear argument. Make sure your
questions do not lead you to a yes / no answer, and rather allow you to develop a larger argument.
If your question seems to be too detailed think about ways to increase the Generalizability. It might
help to think about the universe of cases your theory applies to.
Theoretical Argument
This can be embedded in the Literature Review section. Present your tentative argument, your proposed
answer to your research question. The theory must directly answer your research question/s. You do not
need to go into too much detail about how everything is defined in your study; rather, present your
argument in a way that guides the reader to understand how and why you are going to be researching
the way you intend.
Literature Review
This is the backbone of your theoretical argument. Present the ideas that have already been done
regarding your question(s). Often these are different theories people have developed regarding what
influences the dependent variable (the outcome), while you are proposing that the dependent variable is
actually influenced by something else (your suggested independent variable). Present what has been
done so far, and why you are adding something new (e.g. something has been overlooked or
understudied).
For example, if you are exploring what leads to particular types of ethnic conflict, and your argument is
that education levels are the independent variable that determines the type of ethnic conflict, then your
literature review should look at other theories that suggest that the type of ethnic conflict is a result of
economic situations, repression, etc. You are going to present what they said, and argue that their theory
does not sufficiently answer the question, and thus you are proposing your own explanation.
Do not summarize author by author and what each one has said. Synthesize arguments and present them
as theories you are arguing against; or use a series of existing research to frame your new, novel, theory.
Methodology/Research Design
Outline and explain how you are going to conduct the study. This section can include sub headlines for
hypotheses; data; operationalization; and the method. It does not necessarily include the information in
exactly this order and can be adjusted for your research topic.
Testable Hypotheses: These are smaller parts of the theory that you are testing, which, if
supported, confirm your theory (H1, H2, ). The hypotheses can also be articulated in your
theory section. Please, decide with regard to your proposed research project.
Data: Here you can describe the dataset you use, how many cases it includes, what is the unit
of analysis, in which timeframe do you look at the data. Did you have to add variables do the
dataset? Who collected the data if not you? In this section it can also be possible to describe
how you selected your cases for a qualitative study. Be transparent about the way you chose
your cases and account for biases in your study (if you focus only on a specific region etc.)
Operationalization: Define the concepts and relate them to a measurement. What do your
concepts mean to you and what variable (in quantitative studies) or which indicators (in
qualitative work) are you looking for as evidence? Nominal definitions (when I say x I mean)
and operational definitions (in order to measure x I will look at changes in). You must justify
your definitions!
Research Design/Method: Which methods are going to be used and why? Justify your choice
of method and why it is the right way to answer your research question.
Contributions/Conclusion
This will be the last section of your proposal. As you do not have results (because you are not actually
doing the analysis), conclude your proposal by laying out how this study would contribute to the body
of scientific literature. Is this going to increase our understanding of a specific case? Of a type of conflict
or parliamentary system? Is it aimed at helping to develop policy? Are you coming up with a new
methodology?
below dragged document is an example !!! should not be used
