POL2532G -- Essay Proposal and Annotated Bibliography Guidelines On February 7th, 2025, you must submit an Essay Proposal and Annotated Bibliography. (a) Essay Proposal: An essay proposal is a one-paragraph statement of what your essay will be about. In the proposal, you must select one of the topics below, outline at least two questions your research seeks to answer, discuss the topic/issue to be examined, and present a tentative thesis. The proposal should contain eight to ten sentences. Essay Topics: 1. What are the conditions that determine whether a war is just? In responding to this question, discuss and assess the concept of jus ad bellum (i.e., just cause, proportionality, last resort) with reference to a specific war (e.g., Israel-Hamas war, Yemeni war, Russian invasion of Ukraine, 2006 Lebanon War, 2003 invasion of Iraq). 2. How are human rights protected in the international system? What role do institutions (i.e., ICC, UN) and laws (i.e., 1948 Declaration, 1966 Covenants) play in protecting human rights? In responding to these questions, make reference to a specific case (e.g., Sudan and Darfur, Myanmar, Iran) and discuss whether the international system is effective at protecting human rights. 3. What are the main sources (i.e., treaties, customary practices, natural law) of international law? Do states comply with international law? Why or why not? In responding to these questions, make reference to realism or liberalism (or another IR theory) and the role sanctions play in the enforcement of international law. 4. What is the legacy of imperialism (i.e., a positive or negative phenomenon)? How did colonialism create discontinuities in formerly colonized states/regions? With reference to a specific case (e.g., India, South Africa, Sri Lanka), discuss the impact of colonialism on the development of the colonized society/state. Example Essay Proposal: What impact do great powers have on the international system? What is the relationship between a rising power and an existing great power? With reference to a rising power, this essay proposes to explain how the international system shapes the interactions and behaviour of states. This essay will focus on the rise of China as a superpower and its relationship with the US as the sole great power in the international system. Specifically, the essay will research whether China’s rise can be peaceful or if conflict (and/or confrontation) with the US is inevitable. It will explore these questions by outlining China’s economic rise and its geopolitical expansion in recent decades. The paper will then examine China’s efforts to expand its influence and the implications of those efforts for the US and its great power status. The tentative argument is that because China’s rise will undermine US economic and military hegemony, its rise will inevitably lead to confrontation and conflict with the US. (a) Annotated Bibliography: The annotated bibliography should include at least five academic sources. 2 What is an annotated bibliography and why is it useful? A bibliography is a list of sources (e.g., books, journal articles) one has used for researching a topic. A bibliography normally includes only the bibliographic information (i.e., the author, title, publisher, date, etc.). An annotated bibliography includes a summary and/or evaluation of each of the sources. Writing an annotated bibliography is excellent preparation for a research project. Just collecting sources for a bibliography is useful, but in writing annotations for each source, you are forced to read each source more carefully. You begin to read more critically instead of just collecting information. Your job in writing an annotation for each source is three-fold: 1. Summarize the source and lay out what topics are covered and identify the main arguments. 2. Evaluate the source: You may answer questions including: Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective? What is the goal of this source? 3. Reflect on how the source fits into your proposed research topic, and how you will use this source in writing your essay. How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography: For each source, provide bibliographic information, formatted according to Chicago style. See here: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/c... atting_and_style_guide/general_format.html Then write one or two short paragraphs that outline the information listed above. In total, the paragraphs should be approximately 200 words in length. Example Annotation: Mearsheimer, John J. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. In The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer evaluates the behaviour of great powers and argues that they are rarely content with the current distribution of power. Indeed, great powers face constant pressure to change it in their favour, and since no state is likely to achieve global hegemony the world is condemned to perpetual great-power competition. It is here that Mearsheimer presents his theory of offensive realism. Like other variants of realism, the idea is rooted in anarchy, rational actors, survival, and the state as the primary unit of analysis. Offensive realism assumes that states “gain power at each other’s expense.” In laying out the key components of this theory, he identifies the conditions that make great power conflict more or less likely and concludes that bipolar systems are the most stable, and 3 that multipolar systems containing potentially hegemonic states are the most dangerous. This analysis makes important contributions to our understanding about why great powers sometimes can avoid war for substantial periods of time (for example, 1816-4852 and 1871- 1913) because of a preference, where possible, for "buck-passing" and because of the attributes of countries (especially the United States and United Kingdom), which have acted as off-shore balancers. Here some examples attached below:
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