Research Question: How has the ongoing South China Sea territorial dispute affected the trade and economic relationship between the United States and China?
Paper Proposal:
A detailed proposal for your research paper. This must include an introduction, a literature review, a theory section, a research methods a conclusion, and a bibliography. This is a formal piece of writing, and it should not be taken lightly. It is a very specific and actionable plan about what you intend to do for each section of your final paper, so you need to think ahead.
Sources that are used in this research proposal need to be from databases, books, jounral articles, etc. And these should be incorporated in the literature review.
You need to use ONLY PRIMARY SOURCES
What should be included in the paper proposal, follow this order in the paper proposal:
- Introduction
- Should include:
- Brief history, a very brief context of the topic
- Motivation for Research
- Research question (1 sentence): The entire paper will revolve around this question
- The research question should be mentioned at least one in the introduction
- The answer to the research question (1 sentence)
- Research GAP
- Has this been done already?
- What have you identified?
- Ex: People have talked about the South China Sea, but missed this…
- Literature Review
- Should include:
- Sources that are in conversation with the paper
- Sources should be those that ask the same research question or related research questions
- Sources should those with authors examining a similar topic that is relevant for thinking about the answer to your question
- The central task for the literature review is to reveal the gap in existing research
- In the end of the literature review, readers should be able to answer the following questions:
- Has someone else already done what you are doing?
- What are the existing debates surrounding/related to your research question
- What is inadequate about these existing debates/studies?
- Theory
- Should include:
- Independent variable or dependent variable
- An explanation of the research gap (what is your position?)
- Given that gap how are you going to fill that gap
- Best argument in support of your issue
- Logic of the argument
- Why are you in this position?
- What is your argument?
- Research Design/Research Methods
- Should Include:
- How do you plan to show the reader you are right?
- How are you going to demonstrate the argument is right or wrong?
- Statistical Analysis (case study is the best thing, blue print of what the research is going to be)
- If you choose a case study, why did you choose a case study, why didn’t you choose a regression
- Why did you choose this specific method?
- Justify case selection (why is it right?)
- Few sentences on what are you exactly going to use to do the case study
- Are you going to look at books, Japanese news articles?
- What kind of sources are you going to use?
- Use the following case study:
- The South China Sea Arbitration Case (Philippines vs. China) in 2013
- Conclusion
- Should include:
- A summary of what you just did
- What did you exactly find in your research?
- What are the policy implications?
- Discuss the implications in this section
- Bibliography