Regionalism Research Paper

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We are exploring Europe’s role in the rise of regionalism as a new institutional form. You explore this theme in the context of a typical political science research paper. Specifically, you will provide an answer to the following question:

Why have some groups of countries (outside of Europe) pursued regionalism to a greater extent than others?

• First, provide a theoretical argument of why some factor (the independent variable) causes countries to pursue the institutional form of regionalism (the dependent variable).

• Next, test this argument by examining two groups of states (cases) with differing levels of regionalism. In this section you should compare the level of your independent variable in a group of states that exhibits a high amount of regionalism and a group that experiences a low amount of regionalism.

• You will interpret what this evidence means for your hypothesized relationship. Is there support for the theory? The paper should conform to previous standards and employ the following structure:

Framing of Paper:

• Introduction
  • Standard research paper introduction.

• Briefly describe what regionalism is?
  • What kinds of state behavior are included in this institutional form?
  • Why your reader should care about this phenomenon?

• Theory:
  • Present a cause and effect argument of what single factor (your independent variable) drives states to engage in regionalism.
  • While you may use Europe and the EU as a working example to explain the logic of your theory, you should not describe the cases from the next section.
    • This theoretical argument should stand by itself as an explanation of why states engage in regionalism generally, rather than historically in your specific cases.
• Focus on the logic of the argument in this section.
  • What is the story or mechanism behind your explanation causing regionalism in the world?
• Finally, you should explicitly state the main hypothesis of your paper.

• Empirical test:
  • This section presents evidence to evaluate your theory.
    • You should identify two groups of states as cases.
      • One group should demonstrate the presence or a high level of your independent variable, the other its absence (or a low level).
        • Does the postulated causal relationship hold?
        • You must present evidence on both your independent variable and dependent variable (regionalism).
        • This evidence may be quantitative (numerical measurement of some phenomenon) or qualitative (detailed description of that phenomenon from a credible source), and should allow your reader to assess whether or not your hypothesis from the previous section is supported.

• Conclusion:
  • Conforms to the standards of research papers.

• Works Cited