Political Economy Essay

This is the instruction from my theacher

This assignment requires you to use themes from the readings and debate critically the meaning, scope, and/or practices.  Critique does not simply mean your opinion; it must be well-reasoned and backed up by reconstructing the arguments and ideas from the readings.  You may be surprised by the readings, think they are interesting, or incredibly boring.    In these shorter essays, you are expected to make a strong argument about a specific week’s readings, and to support this argument with theoretical and empirical evidence.  External sources are not required for the short papers.  Your sources for these papers are class readings.

Paper Questions: Pick one, DONT respond to all three

1.    European expansion was due to the skilled exploration efforts of key individuals.  Agree or disagree with this statement.
2.    From the reading, identify what you believe is the principal cause for the downfall of the Soviet Union.  When explaining this cause, discuss one lesson that we can take from the experience of the USSR.
3.    Does the period of parallel development count as a form of globalization?  Take a position, yes or no.