POL 262: American Politics, February 2008

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Classroom: South 302.

Schedule: You should reserve the hours from 9-11 and 1-3, Monday through Friday, for class meetings. Class meets every morning and many afternoons. See Course Calendar & Assignments. On days when something is scheduled for the afternoon, you can be sure we will meet. On other afternoons we might meet depending on need.

Books: The following are available for purchase in the bookstore. You'll need both immediately.

Core Text: Thomas E. Patterson, We the People: A Concise Introduction to American Politics, 7th edition (McGraw-Hill, 2007)
Readings: Robert E. DiClerico & Allan S. Hammock, Points of View: Readings in American Government and Politics, 10th edition (McGraw-Hill, 2006)

Articles: In addition to the books above, you will have occasional assigned reading in the form of articles. I will send them to you by e-mail, so be sure to check your Cornell e-mail regularly this term.

Internet Resources: The Politics Department Web Site contains a wealth of valuable information including programs and requirements of the Department of Politics; information about Politics Courses including course syllabi like this one; information about graduate schools and careers, and research links for politics, government, and law.

Synopsis: This course offers a survey of the theory and practice of contemporary government and politics in the United States. It may be taken profitably as a first course in political science or following Politics 111. It is a prerequisite for most advanced courses in American Politics including: Campaigns & Elections; Congress & the Presidency; Environmental Politics; Wilderness Politics; Urban Politics; Race, Sex & the Constitution; Current Cases before the Supreme Court and Constitutional Law.

This course emphasizes the practical consequences of established institutions and procedures for policy outcomes. Who wins, and who loses? To whom is the American government responsive? Its objective is to provide each student with a reasonably sophisticated understanding of why the system produces the kinds of policies that it does without getting bogged down in minutia.

A variety of materials will be used to achieve this general objective.

Our core text emphasizes the political culture, fragmentation of authority, competing interests, individual rights, and separation of economic and political spheres that characterize American government. It also contains some readings.
Our reader is based on the debate model, pairing essays representing different points of view on important issues of American politics today.
American mass media provide a third important source of information for this course. Each student should make daily contact with the world of American politics. Most Americans get most of their political information from television, but this is the least efficient way to get the news. Reading remains the most efficient way to learn. Reading on line combines your most sophisticated data processing capacity with the world's most sophisticated communications technology. Why not use the best tools available? You can read hundreds of newspapers including the New York Times and the Washington Post. There are also free Internet News Services such as "Google News."

Each of these information sources should provide a foundation for discussion and debate. Reading materials will be supplemented by occasional videos. Taken together, these materials will provide a variety of ways to learn as well as competing viewpoints regarding what should be learned in an introductory American politics course.

See Course Calendar & Assignments for daily topics.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

ATTENDANCE: "Eighty percent of success is showing up." -- Woody Allen. Class attendance is not 80% of your grade, but it is important. I appreciate your letting me know by e-mail when you will not be in class.
STRUCTURED READING ASSIGNMENTS: Read the formal assignments in advance of the class periods for which they are scheduled. Read them carefully. Consult "Marking a Textbook v. Taking Notes," available on the Writing Studio' Resources page.
INDEPENDENT READING ASSIGNMENTS: In addition to the formal assignments, please be on the lookout for news articles pertinent to the day's assigned readings. I encourage you to share them with the class. You may occasionally receive a relevant news article by-email from me, and you will receive relevant news articles on a daily basis from your fellow students. [The Independent Reading and Reporting Assignment is described below.] You should treat news articles received from class members as a part of your required reading, and you should always check your e-mail at some point during the two-hour period prior to the morning class meetings.
CLASS PARTICIPATION: In addition to showing up and reading your assignments, I expect you to take an active and constructive role in class discussion.
EXAMINATIONS & QUIZZES: There will be no final examination. There will be four quizzes designed to test your mastery of the assigned reading and classroom learning. Consult the Course Calendar & Assignments for quiz dates.
POLICY PAPER: The research and writing component of Politics 262 is a policy paper described in excruciating detail under the heading Public Policy Paper Assignment below.

GRADING SYNOPSIS
Independent Reading	5%
Classroom Contribution	15%
Four Quizzes	40%
Policy Paper	30%
Policy Paper Rewrite	10%
Total	100%
Extra Credit [see below]	2.5%

Extra Credit Opportunity #1: Of course, this is a class devoted to politics, but it is also a class devoted to critical reading, cogent writing, and analytical thinking -- invaluable skills for living and for working in every field of endeavor. One way to improve your writing as you read is to become more conscious of the writing of others. With that in mind, I will provide you the opportunity to earn extra credit in my continuing contest for students enrolled in POL 262:

Extra Credit Opportunity #2: To encourage thoughtful participation in the polity, 25 extra-credit points will be awarded for each "letter to the editor" written by you about a question of public policy and published this term in an off-campus newspaper or magazine. Submit appropriate evidence.

The maximum number of extra-credit points that may be applied to your course grade is 50. The deadline for submission of applications for extra credit is noon on the penultimate day of the course. All submissions must be in writing. Click the flaming text for full details.

INDEPENDENT READING AND REPORTING ASSIGNMENT

In order to create linkages between your assigned class readings and what's going on in the world of contemporary American politics, you have reading and reporting responsibilities that go beyond the assigned texts. Everyone should be on the lookout for these connections on a daily basis, but the responsibility for making this linkage in a formal way will rotate among members of the class. Each of you will have this responsibility once. On the first day of class, we will create a calendar of who is responsible when. The calendar is here.

The Course Calendar identifies the major discussion topics in boldface for each day of the course. When the responsibility has been assigned to you, here's what you do:

Carefully read all of the formal assignments for the day.
Find an article in a newspaper or a news magazine (a) that has been published within the last year, (b) that exceeds 1000 words, (c) that is interesting to you, and (d) that amplifies, explains, or illuminates some topic or theme from the assigned reading for that day.
Paste your article into an e-mail and send it to all members of the class at least two hours before the class is scheduled to begin.
When called upon in class, you should introduce your article to the class by title, author, author's affiliation, publisher, and the date of publication and provide the class with a clear synopsis. In addition, you should explain clearly how this particular article amplifies, explains, or illustrates some topic or theme from the assigned reading for that day. All of this will probably take about five minutes, although it is entirely possible that your presentation might provoke a considerably longer discussion.
Note: Our classroom conversations will sometimes lag behind the reading assignments. Don't worry about it; just be prepared to contribute when your time comes.

Here are some hints to get you started:

Google News is an excellent source for articles that have been published within the past month. It has two major limitations. The first is that Google News is relatively awkward to use with respect to archival materials more than one month old. The second is that many Google News links expire because many of the indexed sources delete articles from their websites on a regular schedule.
Cole Library subscribes to two proprietary databases of newspapers and magazines: LEXIS-NEXIS Academic and EBSCOhost Newspaper Source.
- LEXIS-NEXIS Academic: The default "easy search" page pre-selects "Major US and World Publications" and a timeframe of two years. At a minimum, you will want to reset the timeframe to one year. If "easy search" lacks the specificity you desire, shift over to "power search."
- EBSCOhost Newspaper Source: You will want to adjust to the default search parameters. Select full text. Select your one-year timeframe. Select newspaper for publication type and article for document type. You will probably want to check the boxes to include synonyms and plurals and to search the full text of articles.
If you would like to avoid information overload, you might want to consider searching specific newspapers such as the Washington Post or the New York Times.
The fastest way to find individual newspaper websites is to consult newspapers.com.
The fastest way to determine whether a specific newspaper or magazine is available through Cornell College databases is by consulting JournaLocator on the Cole Library website.

PUBLIC POLICY PAPER ASSIGNMENT

"He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that."
--John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), chapter 2

OBJECTIVES: This assignment has three major objectives. The first is to increase your familiarity with an issue of public policy importance and the arguments that surround that issue. The second is to increase your familiarity with relevant sources of information like professional journals and government documents. The third is to help you improve an important intellectual skill: writing a clear and convincing argument supported by reliable evidence. This is a complex and difficult assignment, and I would like each of you to do it well. To that end, I have broken the assignment down into pieces and provided explicit instructions about how you can maximize your success. Please read all the information that follows, and do your best to master this task one step at a time. I have tried to answer the most obvious questions here in writing, but obviously I have not answered all the possible questions. Please feel free to ask me for help along the way.

ASSIGNMENT: Your job is to write a public policy paper of 1,500 to 2,000 words exclusive of title page, abstract, illustrations, notes, bibliography, appendices, etc. Your paper must deal with a matter of public policy within the Constitutional power of some officer, agency or institution of the United States federal government. If in doubt, ask me.

PUBLIC POLICY & POLICY PAPERS: A "policy" is a clear course of action. (E.g., it is the policy of Cornell College to issue grades each term.) A "public policy" is a policy adopted by a government. (E.g., it is the policy of the United States to intervene militarily wherever America's national interests are threatened.) A "public policy paper" is a written document that (1) recommends a public policy and (2) argues for the adoption of that policy. Your public policy paper will be developed through four stages. Consult the Course Calendar & Assignments for deadlines associated with this project.

Stage I -- RESEARCH QUESTION & BIBLIOGRAPHY: Send an e-mail attachment (with a copy addressed to Tonnie Flannery) stating your research question and providing a properly documented working bibliography for the investigation of that question.

Selecting a research question requires that you identify a topic appropriate for inquiry and susceptible to a public policy recommendation.
So what's a good topic?
- One that is consistent with assignment: n“Your paper must deal with a matter of public policy within the Constitutional power of some officer, agency or institution of the United States federal government.”
- One that is interesting to you.
- One where you have no preconceived bias to blind you.
- One that is narrow enough to allow relatively thorough research.
- Exactly how narrow more art than science.
  - If your topic is too broad, your research will be unfocused and superficial.
  - If your topic is too narrow, you won’t find the information you need to proceed.
  - You need to strike a balance based on preliminary exploration of your topic.
  - In this wired world, it is probably easier to be too broad than too narrow.
- Here are some topics that are too broad:
  - Endangered species
  - Environmental protection
  - National park policy
  - Yellowstone National Park
  - Federal wolf management
  - Ranchers' rights
  - Threats to livestock
- And here's one that has something to do with all of the topics above but is appropriately narrow:
  - Whether the Yellowstone wolves should be protected when they leave the park.
- Notice that the formulation above is more than just a topic: it is a research question. Should they be protected or shouldn't they? Let's go examine the evidence and reach a conclusion. Doing the hard work of answering your policy question will result in the policy recommendation required in Stage II.
- Before submitting your research question, make sure that it begins with the word whether and includes the word should with respect to some specific issue.
Your bibliography will continue to evolve throughout your research and writing, but the working bibliography you submit at this time should demonstrate that you have located and have access to high-quality information relevant to your research question. In most cases your working bibliography should include some mix of scholarly books, articles in scholarly journals, and primary sources such as laws, court cases, census data or polling results. If the sources you can locate are primarily secondary and non-scholarly, i.e., journalistic, seek help in finding better sources or choose a new research question.
Choose one of the approved style sheets and label your working bibliography to indicate which one you have chosen.
This assignment is not graded, but failure to complete it in a timely fashion will negatively affect your class participation grade.

Stage II -- POLICY RECOMMENDATION & CONTENTIONS: Send an e-mail attachment stating your policy recommendation and setting forth an outline of the contentions you intend to make for it.

The policy recommendation is the paper's thesis. The outline of contentions previews your paper's anticipated structure.
Please note that articulating a good policy recommendation requires that you have done the research required to answer your research question with some specificity. For example: "The wolves that have been introduced to Yellowstone National Park should have the full protection of the Endangered Species Act as they spread beyond the park's boundaries."
Remember your policy recommendation must be within the legal power of some officer, agency or institution of the United States national government.
This is the point at which trouble most often arises, so before you submit your policy recommendation and contentions, examine them carefully using the criteria set forth in Getting from Research Question & Bibliography to Policy Proposal & Contentions.
Before you organize your contentions into an outline, consult A Good Argument Is a Hierarchy of Contentions.
This assignment is not graded, but failure to complete it in a timely fashion will negatively affect your class participation grade.

Stage III -- POLICY PAPER: Send an e-mail attachment presenting your recommendation and supporting arguments in a formal paper with appropriate manuscript format, proper citations, etc. Remember, you are being asked to take a position and make a case for it. A good policy paper consists of a clear policy recommendation supported by strong arguments supported by unimpeachable evidence. A good policy paper will be:

Persuasive: You must state a conclusion and back that conclusion with reasoned argument. Your mission is to persuade the reader, and the better the argument, the higher the probability of success.
Well Researched: Your arguments must be firmly rooted in careful research. You must have a command of the relevant facts. You must understand your own position, the positions of those with whom you disagree, and the relationship of the facts to each.
Concise: A good policy paper is not always brief, but it must be concise. That means no padding and no B.S. The typical audience for a policy paper is a judge, a corporate executive, or a high government official. If your policy paper does not get to the point quickly and move the argument forward relentlessly, you are unlikely to get and hold the attention of your target audience. If you want to persuade a busy person, do not waste her time. The assigned length of your paper is short in part to force you to be concise. If you don't have to struggle some to reduce your arguments and evidence to 2,000 words, you probably have not done the research you should have done.
Hierarchically Organized: It will organize the arguments to be made into the strongest possible hierarchy of contentions. Refer again to A Good Argument Is a Hierarchy of Contentions.
Appropriately Documented: Documentation is important for both ethical and practical reasons. Ethically, documentation gives credit where credit is due. Practically, documentation enhances the credibility of your work by demonstrating its reliance on and relationship with credible sources of information. I expect you to use one of the approved styles of documentation and to follow it with care throughout your paper.
Well Written: I will be looking for clear organization of the ideas and arguments; effective use of paragraphs, and subheadings if you like, to orient the reader; good transitions from one part of the text to the next; a conclusion that is both substantive and relevant; and sound grammar, punctuation, spelling and usage.
Professionally Presented: I will also be looking for a paper that has all its component parts appropriately formatted, in proper order, and in the form of a single e-mail attachment.

Consult POLICY PAPERS: How to Succeed for more detailed instructions.

For a sample of a real policy paper written by a real Cornell student that earned a grade of A, please click here.

Stage IV -- REWRITE: After receiving a written critique of your policy paper, you will rewrite and resubmit the paper as an e-mail attachment making as many improvements in substance and presentation as you can manage.

The rewrite should be better than the original paper. After all, you will have had the benefit of expert editorial advice.
As a practical matter, a conscientious effort to address the technical problems that have been identified in your paper will preserve your grade. More substantive improvements will enhance your grade.