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Writing a Research Paper in Political Science A Practical Guide to Inquiry, Structure, and Methods

• Lisa A. Baglione - Saint Joseph's University, USA
• Description

Even students capable of writing excellent essays still find their first major political science research paper an intimidating experience. Crafting the right research question, finding good sources, properly summarizing them, operationalizing concepts and designing good tests for their hypotheses, presenting and analyzing quantitative as well as qualitative data are all tough-going without a great deal of guidance and encouragement. Writing a Research Paper in Political Science breaks down the research paper into its constituent parts and shows students what they need to do at each stage to successfully complete each component until the paper is finished. Practical summaries, recipes for success, worksheets, exercises, and a series of handy checklists make this a must-have supplement for any writing-intensive political science course.

New to the Fourth Edition:

• A non-causal research paper woven throughout the text offers explicit advice to guide students through the research and writing process.     
• Updated and more detailed discussions of plagiarism, paraphrases, "drop-ins," and "transcripts" help to prevent students from misusing sources in a constantly changing digital age.  
• A more detailed discussion of “fake news” and disinformation shows students how to evaluate and choose high quality sources, as well as how to protect oneself from being fooled by bad sources.  
• Additional guidance for writing abstracts and creating presentations helps students to understand the logic behind abstracts and prepares students for presentations in the classroom, at a conference, and beyond.  
• A greater emphasis on the value of qualitative research provides students with additional instruction on how to do it.

See what’s new to this edition by selecting the Features tab on this page. Should you need additional information or have questions regarding the HEOA information provided for this title, including what is new to this edition, please email [email protected] . Please include your name, contact information, and the name of the title for which you would like more information. For information on the HEOA, please go to http://ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html .

For assistance with your order: Please email us at [email protected] or connect with your SAGE representative.

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Supplements

“ Writing a Research Paper in Political Science is a helpful research and writing guide for students from various disciplines and undergraduate levels.”

“Lisa A. Baglione’s book is a highly accessible resource to help undergraduate students transition from writing about politics to writing about empirical political science research.” 

“With clarity and compassion, Lisa A. Baglione leads undergraduates step by step through the morass of empirical research.” 

“ Writing a Research Paper in Political Science is an essential text for every political science major.” 

This is an engaging and well written book that seems geared to the level of the course - students writing their senior capstones.

Excellent, in-depth review of how to do a research paper. Perfect for learning objectives of my course.

too focused on political science, not a good fit for urban planning.

NEW TO THIS EDITION: 

• A non-causal research paper woven throughout the text offers explicit advice to guide students through the research and writing process.
• Updated and more detailed discussions of plagiarism, paraphrases, “drop-ins,” and “transcripts” help to prevent students from misusing sources in a constantly changing digital age.
• A more detailed discussion of “fake news” and disinformation shows students how to evaluate and choose high quality sources, as well as how to protect oneself from being fooled by bad sources. 
• Additional guidance for writing abstracts and creating presentations helps students to understand the logic behind abstracts and prepares students for presentations in the classroom, at a conference, and beyond.
• A greater emphasis on the value of qualitative research provides students with additional instruction on how to do it.     

KEY FEATURES: 

• End-of-chapter recipes for annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, thesis formation, and more guides students step-by-step as they navigate common issues when composing a research paper. 
• Practical summaries , located at the end of each chapter, guide students towards their goals. 
• Sample material from student papers help illustrate in detail how students can craft and revise their content. 
• A natural progression of chapter topics guides students from finding a research question and distilling arguments, to revision and proper citation.

Preview this book

Sample materials & chapters.

CHAPTER 1: So You Have to Write a Research Paper

CHAPTER 3: Learning Proper Citation Forms, Finding the Scholarly

For instructors

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BUNDLE: Van Belle, A Novel Approach to Politics 6e (Paperback) + Baglione, Writing a Research Paper in Political Science 4e (Paperback)

Political Science

What this handout is about.

This handout will help you to recognize and to follow writing standards in political science. The first step toward accomplishing this goal is to develop a basic understanding of political science and the kind of work political scientists do.

Defining politics and political science

Political scientist Harold Laswell said it best: at its most basic level, politics is the struggle of “who gets what, when, how.” This struggle may be as modest as competing interest groups fighting over control of a small municipal budget or as overwhelming as a military stand-off between international superpowers. Political scientists study such struggles, both small and large, in an effort to develop general principles or theories about the way the world of politics works. Think about the title of your course or re-read the course description in your syllabus. You’ll find that your course covers a particular sector of the large world of “politics” and brings with it a set of topics, issues, and approaches to information that may be helpful to consider as you begin a writing assignment. The diverse structure of political science reflects the diverse kinds of problems the discipline attempts to analyze and explain. In fact, political science includes at least eight major sub-fields:

• American politics examines political behavior and institutions in the United States.
• Comparative politics analyzes and compares political systems within and across different geographic regions.
• International relations investigates relations among nation states and the activities of international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and NATO, as well as international actors such as terrorists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and multi-national corporations (MNCs).
• Political theory analyzes fundamental political concepts such as power and democracy and foundational questions, like “How should the individual and the state relate?”
• Political methodology deals with the ways that political scientists ask and investigate questions.
• Public policy examines the process by which governments make public decisions.
• Public administration studies the ways that government policies are implemented.
• Public law focuses on the role of law and courts in the political process.

What is scientific about political science?

Investigating relationships.

Although political scientists are prone to debate and disagreement, the majority view the discipline as a genuine science. As a result, political scientists generally strive to emulate the objectivity as well as the conceptual and methodological rigor typically associated with the so-called “hard” sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics). They see themselves as engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions. Based on these revelations, they attempt to state general principles about the way the world of politics works. Given these aims, it is important for political scientists’ writing to be conceptually precise, free from bias, and well-substantiated by empirical evidence. Knowing that political scientists value objectivity may help you in making decisions about how to write your paper and what to put in it.

Political theory is an important exception to this empirical approach. You can learn more about writing for political theory classes in the section “Writing in Political Theory” below.

Building theories

Since theory-building serves as the cornerstone of the discipline, it may be useful to see how it works. You may be wrestling with theories or proposing your own as you write your paper. Consider how political scientists have arrived at the theories you are reading and discussing in your course. Most political scientists adhere to a simple model of scientific inquiry when building theories. The key to building precise and persuasive theories is to develop and test hypotheses. Hypotheses are statements that researchers construct for the purpose of testing whether or not a certain relationship exists between two phenomena. To see how political scientists use hypotheses, and to imagine how you might use a hypothesis to develop a thesis for your paper, consider the following example. Suppose that we want to know whether presidential elections are affected by economic conditions. We could formulate this question into the following hypothesis:

“When the national unemployment rate is greater than 7 percent at the time of the election, presidential incumbents are not reelected.”

Collecting data

In the research model designed to test this hypothesis, the dependent variable (the phenomenon that is affected by other variables) would be the reelection of incumbent presidents; the independent variable (the phenomenon that may have some effect on the dependent variable) would be the national unemployment rate. You could test the relationship between the independent and dependent variables by collecting data on unemployment rates and the reelection of incumbent presidents and comparing the two sets of information. If you found that in every instance that the national unemployment rate was greater than 7 percent at the time of a presidential election the incumbent lost, you would have significant support for our hypothesis.

However, research in political science seldom yields immediately conclusive results. In this case, for example, although in most recent presidential elections our hypothesis holds true, President Franklin Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 despite the fact that the national unemployment rate was 17%. To explain this important exception and to make certain that other factors besides high unemployment rates were not primarily responsible for the defeat of incumbent presidents in other election years, you would need to do further research. So you can see how political scientists use the scientific method to build ever more precise and persuasive theories and how you might begin to think about the topics that interest you as you write your paper.

Clear, consistent, objective writing

Since political scientists construct and assess theories in accordance with the principles of the scientific method, writing in the field conveys the rigor, objectivity, and logical consistency that characterize this method. Thus political scientists avoid the use of impressionistic or metaphorical language, or language which appeals primarily to our senses, emotions, or moral beliefs. In other words, rather than persuade you with the elegance of their prose or the moral virtue of their beliefs, political scientists persuade through their command of the facts and their ability to relate those facts to theories that can withstand the test of empirical investigation. In writing of this sort, clarity and concision are at a premium. To achieve such clarity and concision, political scientists precisely define any terms or concepts that are important to the arguments that they make. This precision often requires that they “operationalize” key terms or concepts. “Operationalizing” simply means that important—but possibly vague or abstract—concepts like “justice” are defined in ways that allow them to be measured or tested through scientific investigation.

Fortunately, you will generally not be expected to devise or operationalize key concepts entirely on your own. In most cases, your professor or the authors of assigned readings will already have defined and/or operationalized concepts that are important to your research. And in the event that someone hasn’t already come up with precisely the definition you need, other political scientists will in all likelihood have written enough on the topic that you’re investigating to give you some clear guidance on how to proceed. For this reason, it is always a good idea to explore what research has already been done on your topic before you begin to construct your own argument. See our handout on making an academic argument .

Example of an operationalized term

To give you an example of the kind of rigor and objectivity political scientists aim for in their writing, let’s examine how someone might operationalize a term. Reading through this example should clarify the level of analysis and precision that you will be expected to employ in your writing. Here’s how you might define key concepts in a way that allows us to measure them.

We are all familiar with the term “democracy.” If you were asked to define this term, you might make a statement like the following:

“Democracy is government by the people.”

You would, of course, be correct—democracy is government by the people. But, in order to evaluate whether or not a particular government is fully democratic or is more or less democratic when compared with other governments, we would need to have more precise criteria with which to measure or assess democracy. For example, here are some criteria that political scientists have suggested are indicators of democracy:

• Freedom to form and join organizations
• Freedom of expression
• Right to vote
• Eligibility for public office
• Right of political leaders to compete for support
• Right of political leaders to compete for votes
• Alternative sources of information
• Free and fair elections
• Institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference

If we adopt these nine criteria, we now have a definition that will allow us to measure democracy empirically. Thus, if you want to determine whether Brazil is more democratic than Sweden, you can evaluate each country in terms of the degree to which it fulfills the above criteria.

What counts as good writing in political science?

While rigor, clarity, and concision will be valued in any piece of writing in political science, knowing the kind of writing task you’ve been assigned will help you to write a good paper. Two of the most common kinds of writing assignments in political science are the research paper and the theory paper.

Writing political science research papers

Your instructors use research paper assignments as a means of assessing your ability to understand a complex problem in the field, to develop a perspective on this problem, and to make a persuasive argument in favor of your perspective. In order for you to successfully meet this challenge, your research paper should include the following components:

• An introduction
• A problem statement
• A discussion of methodology
• A literature review
• A description and evaluation of your research findings
• A summary of your findings

Here’s a brief description of each component.

In the introduction of your research paper, you need to give the reader some basic background information on your topic that suggests why the question you are investigating is interesting and important. You will also need to provide the reader with a statement of the research problem you are attempting to address and a basic outline of your paper as a whole. The problem statement presents not only the general research problem you will address but also the hypotheses that you will consider. In the methodology section, you will explain to the reader the research methods you used to investigate your research topic and to test the hypotheses that you have formulated. For example, did you conduct interviews, use statistical analysis, rely upon previous research studies, or some combination of all of these methodological approaches?

Before you can develop each of the above components of your research paper, you will need to conduct a literature review. A literature review involves reading and analyzing what other researchers have written on your topic before going on to do research of your own. There are some very pragmatic reasons for doing this work. First, as insightful as your ideas may be, someone else may have had similar ideas and have already done research to test them. By reading what they have written on your topic, you can ensure that you don’t repeat, but rather learn from, work that has already been done. Second, to demonstrate the soundness of your hypotheses and methodology, you will need to indicate how you have borrowed from and/or improved upon the ideas of others.

By referring to what other researchers have found on your topic, you will have established a frame of reference that enables the reader to understand the full significance of your research results. Thus, once you have conducted your literature review, you will be in a position to present your research findings. In presenting these findings, you will need to refer back to your original hypotheses and explain the manner and degree to which your results fit with what you anticipated you would find. If you see strong support for your argument or perhaps some unexpected results that your original hypotheses cannot account for, this section is the place to convey such important information to your reader. This is also the place to suggest further lines of research that will help refine, clarify inconsistencies with, or provide additional support for your hypotheses. Finally, in the summary section of your paper, reiterate the significance of your research and your research findings and speculate upon the path that future research efforts should take.

Writing in political theory

Political theory differs from other subfields in political science in that it deals primarily with historical and normative, rather than empirical, analysis. In other words, political theorists are less concerned with the scientific measurement of political phenomena than with understanding how important political ideas develop over time. And they are less concerned with evaluating how things are than in debating how they should be. A return to our democracy example will make these distinctions clearer and give you some clues about how to write well in political theory.

Earlier, we talked about how to define democracy empirically so that it can be measured and tested in accordance with scientific principles. Political theorists also define democracy, but they use a different standard of measurement. Their definitions of democracy reflect their interest in political ideals—for example, liberty, equality, and citizenship—rather than scientific measurement. So, when writing about democracy from the perspective of a political theorist, you may be asked to make an argument about the proper way to define citizenship in a democratic society. Should citizens of a democratic society be expected to engage in decision-making and administration of government, or should they be satisfied with casting votes every couple of years?

In order to substantiate your position on such questions, you will need to pay special attention to two interrelated components of your writing: (1) the logical consistency of your ideas and (2) the manner in which you use the arguments of other theorists to support your own. First, you need to make sure that your conclusion and all points leading up to it follow from your original premises or assumptions. If, for example, you argue that democracy is a system of government through which citizens develop their full capacities as human beings, then your notion of citizenship will somehow need to support this broad definition of democracy. A narrow view of citizenship based exclusively or primarily on voting probably will not do. Whatever you argue, however, you will need to be sure to demonstrate in your analysis that you have considered the arguments of other theorists who have written about these issues. In some cases, their arguments will provide support for your own; in others, they will raise criticisms and concerns that you will need to address if you are going to make a convincing case for your point of view.

Drafting your paper

If you have used material from outside sources in your paper, be sure to cite them appropriately in your paper. In political science, writers most often use the APA or Turabian (a version of the Chicago Manual of Style) style guides when formatting references. Check with your instructor if he or she has not specified a citation style in the assignment. For more information on constructing citations, see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Although all assignments are different, the preceding outlines provide a clear and simple guide that should help you in writing papers in any sub-field of political science. If you find that you need more assistance than this short guide provides, refer to the list of additional resources below or make an appointment to see a tutor at the Writing Center.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Becker, Howard S. 2007. Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article , 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cuba, Lee. 2002. A Short Guide to Writing About Social Science , 4th ed. New York: Longman.

Lasswell, Harold Dwight. 1936. Politics: Who Gets What, When, How . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Scott, Gregory M., and Stephen M. Garrison. 1998. The Political Science Student Writer’s Manual , 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Turabian, Kate. 2018. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, Dissertations , 9th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Undergraduate Journals

• The Brown University Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (JPPE) is a peer reviewed academic journal for undergraduate and graduate students that is sponsored by the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Brown University.
• Submissions due by  March 5, 2023

Carleton Undergraduate Journal of Humanistic Studies

• Students from any undergraduate academic institution, including those who have graduated within the past year, may submit papers.
• Students must choose only ONE paper they would like to submit for the upcoming issue. While there is no page limit, there is a maximum suggested length of 30 pages

Chicago Journal of Foreign Policy

• Articles and papers may be submitted either for our seasonal publication or for our continuously published online publication. All submissions should be emailed to  [email protected] .
• Content pertaining to the period from 1945 to the present is preferred. Content that reflects on historical, economic, political, etc. developments within nations other than the United States that bear relevance to policy issues, explores relationships between the United States and other nation(s),  analyzes American foreign policy concerns, or analyzes developments in international organizations and structures, is preferred.​​​​​​
• Print journal submissions should run at an approximate maximum of 15 double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman, regular margin pages (not including bibliography), though this limit is flexible and dependent on the volume of pieces received for any particular journal.

Columbia University Journal of Politics and Society

• The Journal provides a forum for young scholars to contribute to the global dialogue on a diverse range of issues, including problems of politics, economics, public policy, social phenomena, international relations, and law.
• Using standard margins and font size, the suggested length is 20–50 double-spaced pages. Shorter works are rarely publishable, though all submissions will be considered. A shorter paper must have a particularly well-focused and more narrowly defined thesis. Longer works are also welcome, but should include clearly delineated sections. If you wish to submit a chapter or chapters of a longer paper, please submit the entire paper and indicate which sections could stand alone.

Columbia Undergraduate Research Journal

• Papers should be submitted in 12 point Times New Roman font. They should be no longer than 10 pages single spaced.
• To submit, please see this link:  https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/curj/about/submissions

Cornell International Affairs Review (CIAR)  

• Manuscripts must pertain to an aspect of contemporary international affairs and international relations (defined as events, trends, and issues occurring, emerging, and/or concluding within the last 40 years to date), but may not substantially address current events (defined as topics related to discrete events that are either ongoing or began within the last two years to date)
• Manuscripts must be original research papers between 8,000 to 15,000 words in length and written in English. This word count excludes the abstract, as well as all references, diagrams, and appendices.
• Spring 2023 final submission deadline is March 14th , 2023

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

• The Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs is a student-run journal that publishes integrative work from undergraduates once a year in the Spring towards the end of the academic year.

Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs

• The Journal welcomes original social science research papers written on issues relevant to politics, security, economy, culture, and society of contemporary Asia, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. 
• The journal welcomes policy viewpoints (1,000-3,000 words) as well as peer-reviewed research articles (5,000-7,000 words) written by both young and experienced scholars from around the world. 

Georgetown University: Democracy & Society

• Democracy and Society is a student-led journal and blog that covers world affairs and themes from the democracy and governance field.

Gettysburg College Headquarters

• The  Gettysburg College Headquarters  is an open access, peer-reviewed, undergraduate research journal that publishes pieces from specific fields in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Visual Arts.
• For all submissions, regardless of discipline, we ask that the author’s paper follow traditional academic standards of their field. For papers from the Social Sciences and Natural Sciences, we ask that your paper be clearly structured. Please use subheadings that clearly indicate the introduction, methods, discussion, conclusion, and references. Authors are asked to submit a 150 - 250 word abstract with their articles, regardless of discipline. Research articles must be between 5,000 to 10,000 words in length.

Illinois State University: Critique: A Worldwide Journal of Student Politics

• The journal provides a forum for graduate and undergraduate students of political science to express and exchange diverse ideas and to imagine new possibilities for democracy and justice. 
• Welcome submissions year round from graduate as well as undergraduate students. All submissions will be considered for publication, and will be refereed by the editors prior to publication.  Submissions received over the summer break will be reviewed during the following fall semester and authors will be notified of their status then.
• Submissions should not be longer than 10,000 words in length

Inquiries Journal

• Inquiries Journal  is an open-access academic journal focused on publishing high-quality original work across a range of disciplines. In particular, our focus falls on the social sciences, arts, and humanities but we also consider pieces with broad cross-disciplinary appeal.
• Submissions to  Inquiries Journal  are accepted on a rolling basis .
• There are no formal length requirements, however it is unlikely that we will accept submissions below 1,500 words. Most submissions are between 2,500 and 7,000 words. Longer submissions are considered although we may request revisions to abbreviate particularly long papers.

International Affairs Forum

• The Center for International Relations (CIR) welcomes submissions for its online journal as well as its associated biannual publication, International Affairs Forum.
• Editorials should be approximately 700 to 1000 words. Longer essays should be no longer than approximately 3000 words in length. 

London School of Economics: Undergraduate Political Review

• The LSE Undergraduate Political Review (LSEUPR) is an online platform that aims to encourage and facilitate an engagement in high level political research by undergraduate students from universities around the world. The LSEUPR invites the application to politics of a range of disciplinary perspectives, both within and without the social sciences, both empirical and theoretical. 
• Research articles  must describe the outcomes and application of unpublished original research. These should make a substantial contribution to knowledge and understanding in the subject matter and should be supported by relevant figures and tabulated data. Research articles should be no more than 8,000 words in length.

Northwestern Undergraduate Law Journal

• The Northwestern Undergraduate Law Journal aims to promote intellectual discourse on a variety of subjects pertaining to the legal field. We publish undergraduate works that demonstrate the critical application of legal concepts to a diverse set of multifaceted issues.
• Submissions for the NULJ Forum should be double-spaced in a Microsoft Word Documents, 12-point font and in Helvetica. Word limits for Essays are 1800 words, excluding references. Longer papers should be shortened to fit this word limit before submission. Papers should utilize Chicago citation style and include a bibliography and endnotes.
• Submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis.

NYU Journal of Politics & International Affairs

Pitch to the Journal your original essay or thesis:  Works that are published by the print Journal tend to be longer than 5,000 words or 20 pages, double-spaced. Submissions are vetted based on their originality, academic strength, and syntax. Works that are chosen are then polished by several staff editors. The Journal is published every December and May. Submissions from NYU students of any school are welcome. 

Pitch to JPIA's digital op-ed forum:  Short blogs are often around 500 words and feature unique, and creative insights into political issues, current events, and international affairs. We also welcome long-form pieces. These are typically 1,000-2,000 words, allowing writers to explore more complex topics with heavier research or original reportage component than the blogs. When pitching please keep your idea to a general abstract, and offer us an example of your written work.  

Occidental College: Critical Theory & Social Justice Journal of Undergraduate Research (CTSJ)  

• A peer-reviewed journal that is seeking undergraduate articles and other work that offer interventions and reinventions in the field of critical theory with a special—though not exclusive—interest in work that brings critical theory to bear in a way that pursues liberation and social justice. 

Ohio State University's Journal of Politics & International Affairs

• Seeks to publish high-quality papers that address current events and relevant subjects in the area of politics and international affairs.
• Full academic papers with original research based on new primary data or literature review with strong argumentative input (no more than 6000 words not including bibliography, abstract, or appendices)
• Policy analysis or evaluation (no more than 2000 words not including bibliography, abstract, or appendices)

Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics  

The  Journal  welcomes submissions from undergraduates of any class or major; submissions from Pi Sigma Alpha members are especially encouraged. The Editorial Board routinely receives honors theses, senior seminar projects, capstone projects, and research methods papers. We strive to publish manuscripts of the highest quality in all areas of political science. 

Submissions deadlines are  September 15,  for the Fall issue and  February 15,  for the Spring issue

Submitted manuscripts must include a short abstract (roughly 150 words), and citations and references should follow the  APSA  Style Manual for Political Science . The maximum page length for submitted manuscripts is 35 double-spaced pages. This page length includes everything – main body text, references, tables, figures, charts, and appendices.

Sigma Iota Rho Journal of International Relations  

• Submissions must come from current students; must be original and previously unpublished; may include research in topics relevant to international relations such as economics, political science, history, and area studies; must be between 2,000 and 6,000 words in length; must use citations according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition; must be submitted in .docx format; and must include a cover page with the author's first and last name, telephone number (cell number preferred), physical address (to mail a copy of the journal), email address (functioning at least one year after publication), and bibliography, the article's title, and a 200-word abstract. Please send all submissions to [email protected]

Southern California International Review

• Submissions: The topic must pertain to international relations. We accept a wide range of subjects including security studies, foreign trade relations, global economics, and foreign policy. 

Must be between 3,000-10,000 words.

Tufts Hemispheres Journal of International Affairs

Hemispheres: Tufts University Journal of International Affairs  is excited to announce its 46th edition, 2023 issue : Old Questions, New Answers- The international system pivots on certain recurring questions.  For this issue of Hemispheres, students will identify and assess answers surfacing in global affairs. We welcome and encourage a broad interpretation of the theme. Potential research topics include but are not limited to the following:

New alliances and strategic/geopolitical partnerships, the resurgence of far-right politics, revivalism, proxy wars, cyber warfare and technology, Asia in the international system, international versus regional institutions, capitalism, democracy, sovereignty, government transitions or obstinacy, historical memory, religion and the state

West Point Undergraduate Journal of Social Sciences 

Yale Review of International Studies

• YRIS seeks interesting, diverse and compelling scholarship on international questions broadly understood: the relations between countries, trends or challenges of transnational or global scope, and the interaction of people and ideas from different countries.
• Submissions should be papers  under 40 pages  double-spaced; for longer pieces, can suggest portions to excerpt.

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Research Papers on Political Science

Political science is the study of governments, systems, political processes, public policies and political behavior. Students and professional related to the field of political science prepare research papers on this subject. Writing a research papers is a challenging task which many people consider difficult. Researchomatic is offering thousands of political science research papers prepared by highly qualified professionals. These research papers will help individuals in writing their own political science papers.

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A Political Science Guide

For students, researchers, and others interested in doing the work of political science.

Research Papers

Writing a class research paper.

Writing a research paper is one of the most important things you can do as a student. The skills involved–including writing, critical thinking, research strategies, time management–are all likely to be useful after college.  This website is intended to facilitate your learning of these key skills.  On this page, you can find  a quick guide to the core steps in the research and writing process, and ideas of where to go for information on more advanced skills.

The Quick Guide

Next steps for the more advanced research paper writers.

If you have a decent amount of experience with writing political science research papers and wish to further refine your argumentative and analytical skills, you might want to consider investigating the nature of experimentation in general as well as identify and embellish analytical concepts that may be present in your paper but you were not aware of. As such, with this website you should

• Think more critically about how the knowledge you run into in your books is created. Therefore, you should check out the Experiments and Quasi-Experiments , Comparative Methods and Case Studies , and Concepts and Measurements sections.
• Head over to the Process-Tracing, Scenario-Building, Historical Analysis , and C ounterfactuals sections to introduce yourself to these slightly more advanced concepts.

Regardless of what you plan to do it is always important to be in touch with your primary advisor and/or course instructor.  They may have advice or instructions that vary from those presented here.  This website is meant to be used as a general guide, to supplement — not replace — what they provide.

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Writing a Research Paper in Political Science: A Practical Guide to Inquiry, Structure, and Methods

Student resources, welcome to the companion website.

Want your students to write their first major political science research paper with confidence? With this book, they can.  Author Lisa Baglione breaks down the research paper into its constituent parts and shows students precisely how to complete each component. The author provides encouragement at each stage and faces pitfalls head on, giving advice and examples so that students move through each task successfully. Students are shown how to craft the right research question, find good sources and properly summarize them, operationalize concepts, design good tests for their hypotheses, and present and analyze quantitative and qualitative data. Even writing an introduction, coming up with effective headings and titles, presenting a conclusion, and the important steps of editing and revising are covered with class-tested advice and know-how that’s received accolades from professors and students alike. Practical summaries, recipes for success, worksheets, exercises, and a series of handy checklists make this a must-have supplement for any writing-intensive political science course.

In this Third Edition of Writing a Research Paper in Political Science , updated sample research topics come from American government, gender studies, comparative politics, and international relations. Examples of actual student writing show readers how others "just like them" accomplished each stage of the process.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge Lisa Baglione for writing an excellent text and developing the ancillaries on this site.

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POLSC101: Introduction to Political Science

Research in political science.

This handout is designed to teach you how to conduct original political science research. While you won't be asked to write a research paper, this handout provides important information on the "scientific" approach used by political scientists. Pay particularly close attention to the section that answers the question "what is scientific about political science?"

If you were going to conduct research in biology or chemistry, what would you do? You would probably create a hypothesis, and then design an experiment to test your hypothesis. Based on the results of your experiment, you would draw conclusions. Political scientists follow similar procedures. Like a scientist who researches biology or chemistry, political scientists rely on objectivity, data, and procedure to draw conclusions. This article explains the process of operationalizing variables. Why is that an important step in social science research?

Defining politics and political science

Political scientist Harold Laswell said it best: at its most basic level, politics is the struggle of "who gets what, when, how". This struggle may be as modest as competing interest groups fighting over control of a small municipal budget or as overwhelming as a military stand-off between international superpowers. Political scientists study such struggles, both small and large, in an effort to develop general principles or theories about the way the world of politics works. Think about the title of your course or re-read the course description in your syllabus. You'll find that your course covers a particular sector of the large world of "politics" and brings with it a set of topics, issues, and approaches to information that may be helpful to consider as you begin a writing assignment. The diverse structure of political science reflects the diverse kinds of problems the discipline attempts to analyze and explain. In fact, political science includes at least eight major sub-fields:

• American politics examines political behavior and institutions in the United States.
• Comparative politics analyzes and compares political systems within and across different geographic regions.
• International relations investigates relations among nation-states and the activities of international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and NATO, as well as international actors such as terrorists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and multi-national corporations (MNCs).
• Political theory analyzes fundamental political concepts such as power and democracy and foundational questions, like "How should the individual and the state relate?"
• Political methodology deals with the ways that political scientists ask and investigate questions.
• Public policy examines the process by which governments make public decisions.
• Public administration studies the ways that government policies are implemented.
• Public law focuses on the role of law and courts in the political process.

What is scientific about political science?

Investigating relationships

Although political scientists are prone to debate and disagreement, the majority view the discipline as a genuine science. As a result, political scientists generally strive to emulate the objectivity as well as the conceptual and methodological rigor typically associated with the so-called "hard" sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics). They see themselves as engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions. Based on these revelations, they attempt to state general principles about the way the world of politics works. Given these aims, it is important for political scientists' writing to be conceptually precise, free from bias, and well-substantiated by empirical evidence. Knowing that political scientists value objectivity may help you in making decisions about how to write your paper and what to put in it.

Political theory is an important exception to this empirical approach. You can learn more about writing for political theory classes in the section "Writing in Political Theory" below.

Building theories

Since theory-building serves as the cornerstone of the discipline, it may be useful to see how it works. You may be wrestling with theories or proposing your own as you write your paper. Consider how political scientists have arrived at the theories you are reading and discussing in your course. Most political scientists adhere to a simple model of scientific inquiry when building theories. The key to building precise and persuasive theories is to develop and test hypotheses. Hypotheses are statements that researchers construct for the purpose of testing whether or not a certain relationship exists between two phenomena. To see how political scientists use hypotheses, and to imagine how you might use a hypothesis to develop a thesis for your paper, consider the following example. Suppose that we want to know whether presidential elections are affected by economic conditions. We could formulate this question into the following hypothesis: "When the national unemployment rate is greater than 7 percent at the time of the election, presidential incumbents are not reelected".

Collecting data

In the research model designed to test this hypothesis, the dependent variable (the phenomenon that is affected by other variables) would be the reelection of incumbent presidents; the independent variable (the phenomenon that may have some effect on the dependent variable) would be the national unemployment rate. You could test the relationship between the independent and dependent variables by collecting data on unemployment rates and the reelection of incumbent presidents and comparing the two sets of information. If you found that in every instance that the national unemployment rate was greater than 7 percent at the time of a presidential election the incumbent lost, you would have significant support for our hypothesis.

However, research in political science seldom yields immediately conclusive results. In this case, for example, although in most recent presidential elections our hypothesis holds true, President Franklin Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 despite the fact that the national unemployment rate was 17%. To explain this important exception and to make certain that other factors besides high unemployment rates were not primarily responsible for the defeat of incumbent presidents in other election years, you would need to do further research. So you can see how political scientists use the scientific method to build ever more precise and persuasive theories and how you might begin to think about the topics that interest you as you write your paper.

Clear, consistent, objective writing

Since political scientists construct and assess theories in accordance with the principles of the scientific method, writing in the field conveys the rigor, objectivity, and logical consistency that characterize this method. Thus political scientists avoid the use of impressionistic or metaphorical language, or language which appeals primarily to our senses, emotions, or moral beliefs. In other words, rather than persuade you with the elegance of their prose or the moral virtue of their beliefs, political scientists persuade through their command of the facts and their ability to relate those facts to theories that can withstand the test of empirical investigation. In writing of this sort, clarity and concision are at a premium. To achieve such clarity and concision, political scientists precisely define any terms or concepts that are important to the arguments that they make. This precision often requires that they "operationalize" key terms or concepts. "Operationalizing" simply means that important – but possibly vague or abstract – concepts like "justice" are defined in ways that allow them to be measured or tested through scientific investigation.

Fortunately, you will generally not be expected to devise or operationalize key concepts entirely on your own. In most cases, your professor or the authors of assigned readings will already have defined and/or operationalized concepts that are important to your research. And in the event that someone hasn't already come up with precisely the definition you need, other political scientists will in all likelihood have written enough on the topic that you're investigating to give you some clear guidance on how to proceed. For this reason, it is always a good idea to explore what research has already been done on your topic before you begin to construct your own argument. (See our handout on making an academic argument.)

Example of an operationalized term

To give you an example of the kind of "rigor" and "objectivity" political scientists aim for in their writing, let's examine how someone might operationalize a term. Reading through this example should clarify the level of analysis and precision that you will be expected to employ in your writing. Here's how you might define key concepts in a way that allows us to measure them.

We are all familiar with the term "democracy". If you were asked to define this term, you might make a statement like the following: "Democracy is government by the people". You would, of course, be correct – democracy is government by the people. But, in order to evaluate whether or not a particular government is fully democratic or is more or less democratic when compared with other governments, we would need to have more precise criteria with which to measure or assess democracy. Most political scientists agree that these criteria should include the following rights and freedoms for citizens:

• Freedom to form and join organizations
• Freedom of expression
• Right to vote
• Eligibility for public office
• Right of political leaders to compete for support
• Right of political leaders to compete for votes
• Alternative sources of information
• Free and fair elections
• Institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference

By adopting these nine criteria, we now have a definition that will allow us to measure democracy. Thus, if you want to determine whether Brazil is more democratic than Sweden, you can evaluate each country in terms of the degree to which it fulfills the above criteria.

What counts as good writing in political science?

While rigor, clarity, and concision will be valued in any piece of writing in political science, knowing the kind of writing task you've been assigned will help you to write a good paper. Two of the most common kinds of writing assignments in political science are the research paper and the theory paper.

Writing political science research papers

Your instructors use research paper assignments as a means of assessing your ability to understand a complex problem in the field, to develop a perspective on this problem, and to make a persuasive argument in favor of your perspective. In order for you to successfully meet this challenge, your research paper should include the following components: (1) an introduction, (2) a problem statement, (3) a discussion of methodology, (4) a literature review, (5) a description and evaluation of your research findings, and (6) a summary of your findings. Here's a brief description of each component.

In the introduction of your research paper, you need to give the reader some basic background information on your topic that suggests why the question you are investigating is interesting and important. You will also need to provide the reader with a statement of the research problem you are attempting to address and a basic outline of your paper as a whole. The problem statement presents not only the general research problem you will address but also the hypotheses that you will consider. In the methodology section, you will explain to the reader the research methods you used to investigate your research topic and to test the hypotheses that you have formulated. For example, did you conduct interviews, use statistical analysis, rely upon previous research studies, or some combination of all of these methodological approaches?

Before you can develop each of the above components of your research paper, you will need to conduct a literature review. A literature review involves reading and analyzing what other researchers have written on your topic before going on to do research of your own. There are some very pragmatic reasons for doing this work. First, as insightful as your ideas may be, someone else may have had similar ideas and have already done research to test them. By reading what they have written on your topic, you can ensure that you don't repeat, but rather learn from, work that has already been done. Second, to demonstrate the soundness of your hypotheses and methodology, you will need to indicate how you have borrowed from and/or improved upon the ideas of others.

By referring to what other researchers have found on your topic, you will have established a frame of reference that enables the reader to understand the full significance of your research results. Thus, once you have conducted your literature review, you will be in a position to present your research findings. In presenting these findings, you will need to refer back to your original hypotheses and explain the manner and degree to which your results fit with what you anticipated you would find. If you see strong support for your argument or perhaps some unexpected results that your original hypotheses cannot account for, this section is the place to convey such important information to your reader. This is also the place to suggest further lines of research that will help refine, clarify inconsistencies with, or provide additional support for your hypotheses. Finally, in the summary section of your paper, reiterate the significance of your research and your research findings and speculate upon the path that future research efforts should take.

Writing in political theory

Political theory differs from other subfields in political science in that it deals primarily with historical and normative, rather than empirical, analysis. In other words, political theorists are less concerned with the scientific measurement of political phenomena than with understanding how important political ideas develop over time. And they are less concerned with evaluating how things are than in debating how they should be. A return to our democracy example will make these distinctions clearer and give you some clues about how to write well in political theory.

Earlier, we talked about how to define democracy empirically so that it can be measured and tested in accordance with scientific principles. Political theorists also define democracy, but they use a different standard of measurement. Their definitions of democracy reflect their interest in political ideals – for example, liberty, equality, and citizenship – rather than scientific measurement. So, when writing about democracy from the perspective of a political theorist, you may be asked to make an argument about the proper way to define citizenship in a democratic society. Should citizens of a democratic society be expected to engage in decision-making and administration of government, or should they be satisfied with casting votes every couple of years?

In order to substantiate your position on such questions, you will need to pay special attention to two interrelated components of your writing: (1) the logical consistency of your ideas and (2) the manner in which you use the arguments of other theorists to support your own. First, you need to make sure that your conclusion and all points leading up to it follow from your original premises or assumptions. If, for example, you argue that democracy is a system of government through which citizens develop their full capacities as human beings, then your notion of citizenship will somehow need to support this broad definition of democracy. A narrow view of citizenship based exclusively or primarily on voting probably will not do. Whatever you argue, however, you will need to be sure to demonstrate in your analysis that you have considered the arguments of other theorists who have written about these issues. In some cases, their arguments will provide support for your own; in others, they will raise criticisms and concerns that you will need to address if you are going to make a convincing case for your point of view.

Drafting your paper

If you have used material from outside sources in your paper, be sure to cite them appropriately in your paper. In political science, writers most often use the APA or Turabian (a version of the Chicago Manual of Style) style guides when formatting references. Check with your instructor if he or she has not specified a citation style in the assignment. For more information on constructing citations, see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Although all assignments are different, the preceding outlines provide a clear and simple guide that should help you in writing papers in any sub-field of political science. If you find that you need more assistance than this short guide provides, refer to the list of additional resources below or make an appointment to see a tutor at the Writing Center.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing the original version of this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout's topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Becker, Howard S. 1986. Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Cuba, Lee. 2002. A Short Guide to Writing about Social Science , Fourth Edition. New York: Longman.

Lasswell, Harold Dwight. 1936. Politics: Who Gets What, When, How . New York, London: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, inc.

Scott, Gregory M. and Stephen M. Garrison. 1998. The Political Science Student Writer's Manual , Second Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.

Turabian, Kate L. 1996. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers , Theses, and Dissertations, Sixth Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

• DOI: 10.12677/ass.2023.125290
• Corpus ID: 258670551

Research on Humanistic Care and Path of Ideological and Political Education of College Students

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Political Legitimacy Research Paper

Sample Political Legitimacy Research Paper. Browse other  research paper examples and check the list of research paper topics for more inspiration. If you need a research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our research paper writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Legitimacy is a critical but often vexing concept in politics and political science. It is critical because it goes to the very heart of any normative claim made by a government, a state, or a power that it should be willingly obeyed or respected. As such, the concept of legitimacy is closely interwined with a network of other normative and empirical concepts in political science—power, authority, rights, obligation, sovereignty, consent, institution, and the state. Legitimacy is vexing because of the difficulty of disentangling the normative bases of compliance or respect from any number of other possible motivations for obedience or deference. As with most critical and vexing concepts, the definition of legitimacy has itself been the subject of extensive debate and discussion. No single and universally acceptable definition of legitimacy exists. However, it is possible and useful to provide a discussion of its various meanings and the consequences of adopting one of them.

Perhaps the most fundamental divergence over the meaning of legitimacy is between a normative and an empirical approach to the concept. The normative approach is used by political philosophers to identify the standards by which a regime or action must be judged if it is to be regarded as legitimate. Political philosophers and the general public, for instance, might be interested in trying to answer the question: Why should the government be obeyed? And thus they might want to identify those conditions under which an authority is legitimate—the reasons why citizens ought to obey. A Lockean would argue, for instance, that consent is the central criterion that makes government authority legitimate (Simmons 1979). Without consent, there is no moral compulsion for citizens to obey.

In contrast, the empirical approach to legitimacy is not concerned with normative standards per se. Instead, it wants to explain why or when people do obey, respect, or show allegiance to a particular government, regime, state, policy, or institution. Or, conversely, why or when do they revolt, disobey, or act disloyally? Thus, the empirical approach is more concerned about whether the normative standards people hold—however defined—are met, than in debating what standards should hold. Political philosophers have sometimes criticized the social scientific approach to legitimacy as relativistic, and consequently, as potentially complicit in tyranny (Schaar 1981). The Nazi regime, so the argument might go, is deemed legitimate as long as its subjects regard it as such. As both Rodney Barker and David Beetham argue, however, the normative and the empirical approaches to legitimacy simply have different purposes and should not be regarded as antithetical (Barker 1990, Beetham 1991).

1. Max Weber’s View Of Legitimacy And Its Legacy

The German sociologist Max Weber provided social science with its most enduring empirical approach to legitimacy. Weber linked legitimacy to the willingness to comply with a system of rule (‘legitimacy orders’) or to obey commands (‘imperative control’). An administrative staff, for instance, may obey commands because of custom, affectual ties, or material incentives. He argued, however, that compliance or obedience also typically requires a belief in the legitimacy of the system of rule or command. Every ‘system of authority,’ he argued, ‘attempts to establish and to cultivate the belief in its ‘legitimacy’ (Weber 1947, p. 325). Compliance or obedience based on custom or expediency are unlikely, according to Weber, to be stable. It is worth noting here the similarity between Weber’s concept of legitimacy and Marx’s notion of ideology (Barker 1990, p. 59).

Weber identifies three types of ‘pure’ legitimate authority: rational-legal authority rests ‘on a belief in the ‘‘legality’’ of patterns of normative rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands’; traditional authority rests ‘on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of the status of those excercising authority under them’; and charismatic authority rests ‘on devotion to the specific and exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him’ (Weber 1947, p. 328). At other points in his analysis, Weber also describes a value-rational legitimacy, which holds ‘by virtue of a rational belief in its absolute value’ (Weber 1947, p. 130). Barker argues that value rationality ought to be included as a fourth type of legitimacy (Barker 1990, p. 49).

Legitimacy is at the heart of Weber’s sociology of domination. Its centrality grows out of his fundamental claim that social scientific explanation ought to be based on the way in which individual action is subjectively and meaningfully oriented towards the actions of others. By arguing that different modes of domination depend on different patterns of authority, and that authority depends on whether people believe it to be justified (i.e., legitimacy), Weber sought to make legitimacy central to our understanding of social institutions and political order. This is readily apparent in his famous definition of the state, which Weber argued was ‘a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’ (Weber 1946, p. 78). Moreover, the concept of legitimacy is central to Weber’s broader analysis of social and political change. His well-known argument about the emergence of modernity in the West claims that traditional and charismatic authority is progressively replaced by rational-legal authority.

Those following in the Weberian tradition have continued to emphasize the importance of legitimacy while refining it as an empirical tool. David Beetham has sought to reformulate Weber’s description of legitimacy while maintaining its role at the heart of social scientific inquiry. The problem with Weber’s definition of legitimacy, Beetham argues, is that Weber conflated belief and legitimacy. ‘A given power relationship,’ he writes, ‘is not legitimate because people believe in its legitimacy, but because it can be justified in terms of their beliefs’ (Beetham 1991, p. 11). Consequently, argues Beetham, we can analyze the legitimation of power in terms of three criteria. Power can be said to be legitmate to the extent that: (a) it conforms to established rules, (b) the rules can be justified by reference to beliefs shared by both dominant and subordinate actors, and (c) there is evidence of consent by the subordinate to the particular power relation. Conversely, a breach of rules leads to illegitimacy, a discrepancy between rules and supporting beliefs or the absence of shared beliefs leads to a legitimacy deficit, and a withdrawal of consent leads to delegitimation. (Beetham 1991, pp. 18–20). Beetham argues that legitimacy, by helping to promote compliance and cooperation, can enhance the order, stability and effectiveness of regimes (Beetham 1991, p. 35).

Rosemary O’Kane has challenged Beetham’s claim that legitimacy is a critical concept in explaining regimes and regime change. While she approves of Beetham’s attempt to refine Weber, she poses three general kinds of objections to his reformulation: (a) the definition of legitimacy in terms of moral beliefs is circular, (b) it is difficult in practice to disentangle acquiescence or compliance attributable to belief from that deriving from other factors, and (c) the focus on legitimacy leads to misleading assessments of the direction of causality (O’Kane 1993). She suggests that we limit criteria for judging legitimacy to ‘legal validity’ (the easiest criterion to evaluate empirically) and otherwise shift our focus from legitimacy to support. ‘Investigation directly into the nature of support,’ she argues, ‘might prove the more rewarding for an understanding of the workings of political systems’ (O’Kane 1993, p. 476). In fact, ‘support’ approximates a rational choice conception of legitimacy put forward by Ronald Rogowski, who defines a ‘rationally legitimate’ government as one that maximizes the expected utility of its citizens (Rogowski 1974, p. 43).

Beetham has replied to O’Kane that the distinction between legitimacy and support is essential if we are to grasp different logics of regime crisis and transformation (Beetham 1993). Thus, a military regime might enjoy temporary support based upon its performance, but it might have a high probability for instability in the longer term because of its lack of legitimacy. Beetham’s argument recalls Seymour Martin Lipset’s distinction between legitimacy and effectiveness. Legitimacy, according to Lipset, is ‘the capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for the society.’ Effectiveness, in contrast, ‘means actual peformance, the extent to which the system satisfies the basic functions of government as most of the population and such powerful groups within it as big business or the armed forces see them’ (Lipset 1963, p. 64). While legitimacy is an ‘evaluative’ concept, he argues, effectiveness is an ‘instrumental’ one.

2. From Legitimacy To Legitimation

Part of the problem with the term ‘legitimacy’ is that it suggests a static property of a regime or institution. Yet, it is obvious that many regimes and institutions are constantly striving to shore up their claims to legitimacy. In this sense, the terms ‘legitimation’ and ‘delegitimation’ imply the more active processes by which legitimacy is created and maintained or eroded and lost. Focusing on the process calls attention to the two-sided nature of legitimacy. On one side, legitimacy is about beliefs in the moral rightness or goodness of a regime or institution. On the other side, regimes or institutions make claims about their moral rightness or goodness. Barker has emphasized this two-sidedness, arguing that legitimacy ‘ … is both a belief held by subjects, or by some subjects, and a claim made by rulers’ (Barker 1990, p. 59).

In their treatise on the sociology of knowledge, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann have emphasized that legitimation is a process of explaining and justifying the validity of an institutional order. They argue that four different levels of legitimation can be distinguished. The first (‘incipient’) level of legitimation is the creation of language that is implicitly legitimating. The second level of legitimation entails the articulation of a set of rudimentary claims or maxims. At a third level of legitimation, an explicit ‘theory’ based on an autonomous body of knowledge is developed. Finally, a ‘symbolic universe’ develops that integrates disparate symbolic meanings into a ‘totality’ (Berger and Luckmann 1967, p. 96). Thus, legitimacy claims can be seen as varying in terms of their explicitness and integration.

Obviously, regimes and institutions may make highly explicit and integrated claims and still be regarded as illegitimate. Yet it is also plausible that the justificatory claims of a regime will significantly influence the beliefs of the regime’s subjects, particularly if coercion or instrumental incentives are effectively used to transform these beliefs. This point brings us back to the political philosopher’s fear that power might be regarded as legitimate because it is powerful. While this research paper has only briefly explored the concept of legitimacy, the tour has hopefully been sufficient to convince the reader that legitimacy is indeed a critical but vexing concept.

Bibliography:

• Barker R 1990 Political Legitimacy and the State. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK
• Beetham D 1991 The Legitimation of Power. Humanities Press International, Atlantic Highlands, NJ
• Beetham D 1993 In defence of legitimacy. Political Studies XLI: 488–91
• Berger P, Luckmann T 1967 The Social Construction of Reality. Anchor Books, Garden City, NY
• Lipset S M 1963 Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Anchor Books, Garden City, NY
• O’Kane R H T 1993 Against legitimacy. Political Studies XLI: 471–87
• Rogowski R 1974 Rational Legitimacy: A Theory of Political Support. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
• Schaar J H 1981 Legitimacy in the Modern State. Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ
• Simmons A J 1979 Moral Principles and Political Obligations. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
• Weber M 1946 Politics as a vocation. In: Gerth H H, Mills C W (eds.) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Oxford University Press, New York
• Weber M 1947 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Free Press, New York

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