How to Write a Senior Thesis (Second Draft) - Boston College

[Pages:176]How to Write a Senior Thesis:

A Very Brief Introduction to Social Science

Boston College Department of Political Science

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1

Acknowledgements

5

Introduction

6

The Purpose of this Handbook

6

The Organization of this Handbook

7

The Limitations of this Handbook

8

Part I: How to Do Social Science Research

10

Preface to Part I

11

Chapter 1: Asking the Right Question

12

Types of Research Questions

12

Descriptive Questions

13

Causal Questions

14

Normative Questions

17

Research Question Exercise

17

Policy Questions

19

Concluding Remarks

20

Suggested Readings

22

Chapter 2: Turning to Science

24

The "What" Challenges the "Why"

24

The Limits of a Single Case

25

Chapter 3: Choosing Your Research Method

28

The Three Basic Methods of Scientific Research

28

The Three Basic Types of Comparison

29

What's a Case?

30

Large-n vs. Small-n

31

The Single-Case Study

32

Choosing Your Cases

36

Concluding Remarks

36

Suggested Readings

38

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Chapter 4: Reviewing the Literature

39

What is "the Literature"?

39

What the Literature Review Should Do

41

The Structure of a Lit Review

43

Concluding Remarks

45

Suggested Reading

46

Chapter 5: Designing your Study

47

Case Selection

47

Concepts, Typologies, and Operationalization

49

Constructing a Thesis Statement

53

Suggested Readings

55

Chapter 6: Giving the Right Answer

57

Rational Choice

57

Culture

58

Structure

59

Examples of the Three Theories

59

Concluding Remarks

61

Suggested Readings

62

Chapter 7: Putting It All Together

63

1. Abstract

63

2. Introduction

63

3. Literature Review

64

4. Theory and Hypotheses

65

5. Main Body (Empirics: Case Studies and/or Data Analysis)

66

6. Conclusion

67

Paper Structure

67

Suggested Readings

68

Part II: A Brief Introduction to Social Science Literature

69

Preface to Part II

70

Chapter 8: Why Do Countries Become Democratic?

73

A. The Question

73

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B. A Brief Introduction to the Literature

73

C. The Sub-Questions

78

D. Essential Readings

78

Chapter 9: Why Do Revolutions Occur?

80

A. The Question

80

B. A Brief Introduction to the Literature

80

C. The Sub-Questions

85

D. Essential Readings

85

Chapter 10: Why Do Social Movements Emerge?

86

A. The Question

86

B. A Brief Introduction to the Literature

86

C. The Sub-Questions

90

D. Essential Readings

91

Chapter 11: What Explains the Religious Resurgence?

92

A. The Question

92

B. A Brief Introduction to the Literature

92

C. The Sub-Questions

97

D. Essential Readings

97

Chapter 12: Why Do Statebuilding Operations Fail?

98

A. The Question

98

B. A Brief Introduction to the Literature

98

C. The Sub-Questions

102

D. Essential Readings

103

Chapter 13: Why Do States Go to War?

104

A. The Question

104

B. A Brief Introduction to the Literature

104

C. The Sub-Questions

110

D. Essential Readings

110

Chapter 14: Why Do States Cooperate?

112

A. The Question

112

B. A Brief Introduction to the Literature

112

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C. The Sub-Questions

117

D. The Essential Readings

118

Chapter 15: Under What Conditions Does Deterrence Work?

119

A. The Question

119

B. Brief Introduction to the Literature

119

C. The Sub-Questions

124

D. Essential Readings

124

Chapter 16: Why Did the American State Expand?

126

A. The Question

126

B. Brief Introduction to the Literature

126

C. The Sub-Questions

132

D. The Essential Readings

133

Chapter 17: What Explains the Behavior of Congress?

134

A. The Question

134

B. Brief Introduction to the Literature

134

C. The Sub-Questions

141

D. Essential Readings

141

Appendix A: Glossary of Terms

143

Appendix B: Sample List of Theoretical Questions

145

American Politics

145

Comparative Politics

150

International Relations

152

Political Theory

153

Appendix C: Literature Review Samples

158

I. What is Transnational Terrorism?

158

II. What Causes Transnational Terrorism?

164

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Acknowledgements

This handbook was written for Boston College undergraduate students by Boston College graduate students in the Political Science Department. In many respects, its content is based on what those graduate students were taught by the faculty members in the Political Science Department, either through graduate seminars, private meetings, or never-ending email inquiries. It could not have been written without them. We would like to thank the following professors in particular, all of whom read drafts of the handbook and provided many helpful suggestions, more than we were able to incorporate: Kathleen Bailey, Gerald Easter, Kenji Hayao, and Peter Krause. Furthermore, Professor Easter's course, "Comparative Politics: Graduate Field Seminar," and Professor Krause's course, "Terrorism, Insurgency and Political Violence," were indispensable sources and authorities for much of what is said below. We also would like to thank the Office of the Provost and Dean of Faculties at Boston College for its financial support. This project also would not have been possible without a generous Teaching, Advising, Mentoring Grant that was awarded to the Political Science Department by the University Council on Teaching for the 2017-2018 academic year.

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Introduction

The Purpose of this Handbook

This handbook is intended to help you write your thesis during your senior year at Boston College. Its goal is to provide you with some of the tools you need in order to complete a welldesigned, well-researched, and well-written thesis. Its hope is to do so in an easily accessible and simplified manner. But why, exactly, is this handbook needed in the first place?

The general reason behind this need is the fact that, contrary to common expectations, your senior thesis is not simply a much longer term paper. It is not simply an independent project carried out under the general guidance of an advisor. It does not simply require more research, more evidence, and more writing. Rather, your thesis requires more methodology. In a nutshell, that is what this handbook is meant to provide.

To this end, there are several things that this handbook is not. It is not a handbook on the nuts and bolts of writing a thesis at Boston College. It will not discuss what requirement writing a thesis fulfills, or how to go about picking an advisor, or how many pages a thesis should be, or what the best note-taking methods are, or how to format a bibliography. While neither unimportant nor unproblematic, these issues will not be discussed in this handbook.

Up until this point, your coursework has largely focused on what the social sciences discuss. You have learned a great deal about what many social scientists have said on a great variety of topics. But you have learned less about how social science research is actually done.

Learning about how social science is done entails learning about key aspects of social science methodology, also known as research methods. And, in brief, without knowledge of these key aspects, writing your senior thesis will be a difficult and frustrating task. Thus, this handbook is a very short introduction to what the social science process looks like, from beginning to end.

There are two supplementary purposes to this handbook, both of which are closely related to the primary one of introducing you to social science methodology.

First, in addition to providing you with theoretical advice on how to correctly design a study for your thesis, this handbook will also provide you with some practical advice on how to write a good thesis. Generally speaking, we want to show you the ideal, or the standard, by which you should judge the methodological strength of your own thesis project. But achieving that ideal, of course, is very difficult, for anyone. Thus, we will also discuss some alternative, more manageable, approaches that you can adopt, approaches which are less than ideal but far from senseless. In short, we will discuss how not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

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That our aim is to provide practical advice means that nothing in this handbook should be understood as a requirement for your thesis. Your thesis is unlikely to reflect every aspect that is discussed below. Thus, communicating with your thesis advisor is still absolutely essential. This handbook should supplement, but not supplant, that relationship. Meeting the expectations, and following the advice of, your thesis advisor is more important than writing a thesis that incorporates every lesson of this handbook.

Second, this handbook covers key aspects of social science methodology not simply to help you conduct your own work, but to help you read the works of other social scientists. Understanding how social science books are written and organized will help you to better navigate the literature. Such knowledge will help you to determine whether a book's theoretical question is relevant to your own work; to identify the core arguments of the book; and to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. In short, this handbook is meant to benefit you as both a producer as well as a consumer of social science.1

The Organization of this Handbook

This handbook is divided into two parts. Part I is a brief introduction to the key aspects of social science methodology, and it is the more important part of this handbook. Part II is a brief introduction to some of the major theoretical questions that social science tries to answer.

Part I, "How to Do Social Science Research" is divided into 7 chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the different types of questions that social science tries to answer, and it provides you with some guidance as to what kind of question your thesis should attempt to answer. Chapter 2 qualifies the account of Chapter 1, paving the way for Chapter 3, which discusses the type of method you will employ to answer your thesis question. Chapter 4 gives an overview of what a literature review is. Chapter 5 will dive more deeply into some of the details of social science methodology. Chapter 6 discusses the different types of answers that social science generally provides when answering the questions discussed in Chapter 1. And Chapter 7 brings everything together, providing a fairly straight-forward and typical outline of what your thesis should, or could, look like.

Part II of the handbook, "A Brief Introduction to Social Science Literature," contains individual chapters that discuss some of the major theoretical questions in social science. The "Preface to Part II" will explain in greater detail the purposes of these chapters. But very quickly, Part II is meant to illustrate what was talked about in Part I by providing some concrete examples from social science literature. It is also meant to introduce you to some theoretical questions that your

1 Royce A. Singleton and Bruce C. Straights, Approaches to Social Research, 5th Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 2.

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