Why has electoral democracy failed to emerge in Syria, despite popular mobilization during the Arab Spring?

The paper should be around 10 – 12 pages long (12pt, 1.5 line spacing, top, bottom, left and right margins 1 – 1.5inches).

Guideline for the take home essay:

1. The paper should be based on at least 5 high-quality academic publications.
2. It should have a clear and focused research question.
3. Your paper must be a literature-assessing paper: Such a paper summarizes and evaluates existing theoretical or empirical literature on a precisely defined research question. Which means that all of the selected papers speak to the same question.
4. It asks whether existing explanations are valuable and identifies gaps in our knowledge. Note that a literature-assessing paper has a research question. It is not enough to summarize a few papers which talk about a common topic. Rather, the objective of a literature assessing paper is to see how different authors have tried to answer the same question. Where did they get their evidence? What methods were used? What are the findings? Where does the literature agree, and which are the big debates (i.e. where does it not agree)?
5. A paper requires a clearly defined research question. Finding and defining this research question is the most important part of your work! So ask yourself: What is the concrete problem at hand that I am going to attempt to solve? Thus, it is the central question of the paper and all elements of your paper are dedicated to the single purpose of answering this question.
6. Also ask yourself critically, whether it will be possible for you to find an answer to your question. In doing so you should consider whether the time and knowledge readily available to you is sufficient to complete this task and whether it can be accomplished within the parameters at hand (deadlines, pages limits etc.).
7. Above all: make sure your research question is concise and free from ambiguities (otherwise, you might decide to write about everything and you will get lost).
8. Make it focused, with one question, and “small”, not too broad. This is not a PhD – it’s a short paper.
9. A good paper has a clear and consistent theme. It makes an argument. It defines central analytical concepts. It provides appropriate evidence to support the argument. The paper is well-written, well-organized (subtitles help) and provides interesting insights. A poor paper shows shortcomings in terms of internal consistency, argumentation and composition, such as poor evidence to support statements made, a lack of logic, poor synthesis of the material, disorganization and poor writing. And most papers with a broad scope are also poor papers….. So again, pick a “small” question.