Writing Assignments and Class Project

Writing Assignments and Class Project
POL 428
Fall 2006

The following are a variety of items that students should work on, in sequence, from the outset of the semester. Some of these will have due dates attached, such as the first one. To complete any of these assignments students will have to complete some extra, outside, reading and thinking about the task(s) required as well as some writing and rewriting of the necessary items. Please note the notes at the bottom of this document regarding due dates. The posted due dates in the far right column are due dates for final version of items, and the first or rough draft of these must be submitted earlier than that posted date. Note also that the submitted item in rough draft form will NOT be graded, while the final, revised version will be submitted, by the posted date and it will be graded. That means if a students wants a grade and credit for any of the items listed below (except for those noted otherwise) then must submit a rough draft version of the item at least five days in advance of the posted due date.

The core purpose of this set of assignments for the Research Project is to mark the progress systematically through the steps of a research project from start to finish. Many students have done these sorts of things in other courses. That is fine. It is even an advantage. However, it is quite possible for a neophyte to complete each of these steps carefully and quite successfully. Note that as due dates are posted, students should have this next phase of the project completed – in advance – so all they need to do is polish it off and submit it when it is due.

Step or Phase	Description and Purpose of the Phase	Items to be Submitted	Due Date*
I. Identify Regulatory Agency	Explore at least four federal regulatory agencies sufficiently so that you understand something about what each one does, and you can rank them in terms of preference. Each student will submit a rank ordered set of four preferences. The purpose of this is to select the regulatory agency that each student will work on this semester. This step will require outside, additional reading, and thus the start of the bibliography on three agencies. The selected agency will be forwarded to the student after the submissions and preferences of the class have been considered. Type your email address correctly on this written submission. The selected agency will be transmitted to the student on August 30 electronically.	Submit a list of four ordered preferences of federal agencies. (NOTE students on this written submission must include their email address so that the selected agency can be distributed back to students as soon as possible.)	29 August 2006
II. Identify the Selected Regulatory Agency's statutory authority	This phase of the Project will involve reading all the secondary literature on the selected agency that pertains to its regulatory tasks. Furthermore, the statutes under which the agency operates will need to be identified AND described.	Provide a descriptive statement of the agency's statutes and the agency's regulatory work. This should also include the correct statutory citation for the statutory authority. This submission must include the bibliography of secondary materials that students have consulted for this phase. The length of this written submission will depend on the breadth of agency authority. It will probably constitute two to five pages of typed text. It is to be submitted as a hardcopy.	5 September 2006
III. Outline Agency Rulemaking and Adjudicative Procedures	This set of tasks will provide a clear outline of the procedures the agency is authorized to use, by statute or court decisions, to develop and apply its policies. Note some agencies that operate under several different statutory authorizations, may have different rule making or adjudicative processes for different portions of their jurisdiction and authority.	This should be a description of agency procedures, including citations and verbatim quotations of statutory provisions as appropriate. It will range from three to five pages in length. It is to be submitted as a hardcopy.	12 September 2006
IV. Outline or identify the clientele groups and interests that are connected to the agency's regulatory tasks. In addition, outline the specific legislative (congressional) committees and actors that interact regularly and intimately with the agency	This should indicate the kinds of interests (economic, political, and social pressures) that the agency is presented with from the outside, as well as a treatment of those interests the agency selects to focus or or emphasize. This should be a listing of the political and regulatory interests that are most directly connected with the agency's work. First, those interests and actors the agency must deal with in order to perform its regulatory tasks should be outlined. That is the regulated industries. [Read G. Stigler, The Theory of Economic Regulation, 2 Bell J. Econ. 3-21 (1971).] Second, the specific legislative actors (House and Senate committees with authority over the agency and their chairs) and their interests that impinge on agency operation should be spelled out in detail.	This should be a three to five page analysis of the various individual actors and interested involved in the agency AND the kinds of interests that actors have in what the agency does.	19 September 2006
Va. Outline your expectations or your hypotheses about what kinds of policies the agency will develop given its authority, its procedures, and its clientele interests.	The analytic framework you developed for analyzing "your" agency's work in Phases II, III, and IV provide a set of rigorous and testable hypotheses regarding a policy and process that the agency has developed and applied in the past five years.	This should identify a policy and describe it. Then the rest of this submission should be a list of hypotheses that can be tested using this "case" (i.e., the agency) as a laboratory. This should be a five to seven page document.	29 September 2006
Vb. Identify HOW you will test your hypotheses.	This set of tasks requires the identification of empirical data – not the descriptive story – that can indicate whether the hypotheses are borne out by the case. In addition, the methods of analysis should be statistical in nature, not descriptive.	This will be about a five page document that focuses on the necessary identified items.	3 October 2006
Vc. Identify and collect the data that will form the basis for the analysis of the hypotheses specified in Phase Vb.	The data have to be focused. Each piece of data or variable must operationalize at least one feature of an hypothesis. Carefully consider what variables best measure the items that are being tested or that are expected to be related. Develop more than one indicator – variable – for each of the hypotheses that are being explored.	This submission requires a clear identification (a list) of the variables that will be used to test the hypothesis. Then an explanation of WHY the variable will be used. Then, each variable must be measure by one or more indicator, and the source of each indicator must be listed. This submission can be a chart or table with columns containing the list of variables, the list of explanations, and then the source of the variables	24 October 2006
VI. Conduct the analysis of your data (after its collection) to assess the validity of your hypothesis about agency policy making.	This phase involves the systematic and comprehensive analysis of the data each student has collected.	This should be an outline of the hypotheses, the analyses of them, the tabular or graphical presentation of those analyses, and the conclusions that can be drawn from the analysis.	14 November 2006
VII. Finalize the completed project by integrating all the revised portions or phases that have been completed prior to this point and writing a finalized version.	This final submission must integrate al the secondary and primary sources students have consulted. It should be organized into sections, with at least Roman numeral demarcations if not topical headings for each section. It should be well written and be a formal, rigorous statement.	The length of this paper should be in the 15 to 30 pages of text. It should also contain footnote references to the sources of statements and materials presented in the paper. It should also provide tables and graphs that illustrate the relationships that are uncovered in the course of the statistical analysis.**	NOON 8 December 2006

* N.B. Rewrites of each phase submission will be graded. (See ** below for an exception to this.) That means the due dates posted here are the due date for resubmissions or the REWRITES. Thus, the posted due date for all the phases (except Phase I which does not permit a rewrite since it is only a list of student preferences) is the item that will be graded. The first submission on any phase must be submitted at least three days in advance of the posted due date. The first submission will be submitted electronically. This as well as printed submissions should be submitted, double-spaced, using WORD, twelve point Times New Roman Font, and a 1 1/4 -inch minimum margins. Failure to meet one of these deadlines will be result in a failure for that phase of the project. Obviously, each phase of this project is critical as it appears on the sequence. It cannot be skipped or omitted without significant detriment. Students who are unable to work with this set of steps and meet these deadlines should seriously weigh whether they wish to be in this class.

** N.B.B. Because of the due date for this final phase (VII) of the Project, and because of all the earlier phases have been redrafted, there will NOT be an opportunity to revise this Final Phase of the project. When it is submitted electronically, it will be printed out by the professor and it will be graded as the "Final Draft" of your Project Paper.

N.B.B. The submission for each of these phases is to be electronic. Attach it as a WORD.doc document to an email from each student on or before the posted due dates. In the subject line of each email submission, the phase number (e.g., I or IV or Vb) should be clearly indicated. The document that is attached should be labeled with the phase number, e.g., "PhaseII.doc" These submissions will be returned electronically with specific and general comments attached to them.

N.B.B. Always save your work as you do it, repeatedly, and keep several electronic copies (and preferably a hard copy) of everything you submit to the instructor for this project. Losing the "only" copy of something is too bad, but it is NOT an acceptable explanation for a failure to submit one of these assignments.

N.B.B. This project is an individual project, NOT a GROUP Project. That means students may certainly discuss their projects and their agencies with each other and learn a good deal from those discussions, each student's submissions must be their own work.