WRITING A POLITICAL SCIENCE PAPER

A GUIDE FOR STUDENTS

 

Department of Political Science

William Paterson University

 

 

 

I.  WHAT NEEDS TO BE FOOTNOTED?

 

The term "footnote" technically refers to the method of documenting your writing in which the source appears at the bottom of each page. More generally, the term is used to mean any of the various methods of documenting your writing. The term will be used here in this more general sense; only in section III below will the narrower meaning be used.

 

Footnotes have two purposes. One, to credit someone for an idea or information that you used. And, two, to let the reader know where non-obvious information or opinions other than your own come from. Quotations are almost always footnoted (but not "Give me liberty or give me death!" or "I Have A Dream" -- these are well-known). But, material that is not in quotation marks often has to be footnoted as well.

 

The more controversial and non-obvious the statement you make, the more necessary it is to document where the statement comes from. The statement "George Washington was the first president of the United States" is well-known, the reader is not likely to say to herself "How does the writer know that?" or "I don't believe it!"  No footnote is necessary. On the other hand, "George Washington embezzled money from the Continental Army" is not at all well-known, and the reader might well want proof for the claim. A footnote or some other form of documentation allows the reader to judge the credibility of your source and, if the reader is so inclined, to check it further.

 

For more informal writing (for example, for a newspaper Op-Ed piece or a letter to the editor), you can document a controversial point as part of your text: "According to the memoirs of White House aide Theodore Sorensen, President John F. Kennedy said the CIA estimated that there was a one third to one half chance of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis."  The interested reader could find the proof, but it wouldn't be easy: the specific book by Sorensen would have to be identified and then the specific page would have to be found. So in more formal writing, including that which you do for a course, you want to include the title of the book and the page number. Since books are often published in different editions with different page numbering, you need to tell the reader the publisher and date as well. Place of publication is not essential, but it helps the reader who wants to try to obtain a book from an obscure publisher.

 

By looking at your footnote, the reader can often make a judgment as to how credible your argument or information is. If you write "Nixon didn’t give a damn about civilians killed by U.S. bombing in Vietnam," and give a footnote to a book by former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the reader will conclude that you didn't have very persuasive evidence for your claim. On the other hand, if you cite a newspaper report of newly released Nixon tapes, your case would be much more convincing. Publisher and date are also useful for allowing the reader to quickly determine the credibility of your argument without having to go to the trouble of tracking down your source. A book published by the Saddam Hussein Foundation, for example, will not be very compelling substantiation for the claim that Saddam Hussein is a kind man. And a 1972 book or article on anti-poverty programs in the United States will not do much to support an argument on the success or failure of anti-poverty programs today.

 

If a lot of general information in a number of consecutive paragraphs comes from the same source, it is permissible to have a footnote that reads: "All the basic demographic information on Serbia comes from ...."

 

If you know some non-obvious or controversial fact based on your personal experience, you can have a footnote reading: "The writer witnessed this incident while working at...."  If you can work this information into the text, no footnote is needed.

 

If someone else gave you a good idea that you want to use, credit them: "This explanation for Gov. Pataki's behavior was suggested to me by my roommate, Robin Williams."

 

 

II.  WHAT CONSTITUTES PLAGIARISM?

 

Plagiarism is a serious offense and a violation of the University's policy on academic integrity. University policy provides for severe sanctions for plagiarism. Basically, plagiarism means submitting the work or ideas of others as your own. It is also improper to resubmit your own work in more than one course without the explicit permission of the instructor. The following are some examples of plagiarism:

 

Having someone else write your paper for you, whether for pay or not.

 

Copying material from a source without crediting the source.

 

Copying material from a paper written by another student, for the same course or another course.

 

Buying a paper from a term paper company, retyping it with a few changes of your own.

 

Concocting footnotes (that is, claiming that a particular piece of information in your paper came from a particular place when in fact it came from somewhere else, such as your head).

Making up bibliography entries. If you didn't use a source, don't put it in your bibliography. And especially don't go to the card catalog (paper or electronic) and copy three dozen titles into your bibliography as a way to make it look like you did more work than you did.

 

Downloading a paper from the web and submitting it as your own work.

 

The following do not constitute plagiarism:

 

Having a friend read a draft of your paper to improve the clarity, readability, or grammar. If the friend makes substantive suggestions, credit him or her.

 

Using ideas or information from others that you credit in a footnote. (Though if your whole paper is one long quote from one book, even with an appropriate footnote, you might still get an 'F' -- not for plagiarism, but for inadequate research, inadequate thought, etc.)

 

 

III. METHODS OF DOCUMENTING A PAPER

 

There are two main methods of documenting a paper, each with many variations. Some instructors require a specific format, others will accept any one of these styles and variations; ask your instructor if she or he has a specific preference. Some scholarly journals use one format, some the other, and some use both.

 

  A.  FOOTNOTE/ENDNOTE METHOD

 

1.     Basic approach: Consecutive numbers are placed in the text of your paper after each piece of information that you wish to document. The numbers can appear as superscripts or in parentheses. The same numbers appear either at the end of your paper (technically: endnotes) or at the bottom of each page (footnotes) along with the documentation. (Sometimes with notes at the bottom of the page, the numbering is restarted over again on each page.)

 

2.     The first time you cite a particular source you need to give full information (see section IIID below). If you have a bibliography at the end with all this information for each source, then it is permissible (though usually not preferred) to give only short citations in the notes.

 

3.     The second and subsequent times that you cite a source you should give a short citation. If the reader wants the full information, he or she can look above in the notes or turn to the bibliography. There are at least five different forms for the short citations:

 

a.  ibid. and op. cit.

Use ibid. (Latin for "in the same place") and the page number when you want to cite the source you just cited in the previous note. Use the author's last name, op. cit. (Latin for "work cited"), and the page number when you want to refer to a source you cited previously, but not in the immediately preceding note. (Some authorities insist that the words ibid. and op. cit. be underlined since they are foreign words.)  Sometimes there will be ambiguity: two authors with the same last name, or two books by the same author. You need to remove the ambiguity: either add the author's first initial or use one of the methods listed in (c), (d), or (e) below.

 

b.  author's last name

Give the author's last name and the page number. In cases of ambiguity, use first initial, or one of the methods in (c), (d), or (e).

 

c.   author's last name and short title

Give the author's last name and then make up a shortened title of the source. (Use this same shortened form throughout.)

 

d.   author's name and date

This may be ambiguous if the same author wrote 2 things in the same year, in which case you need to add a short title as in (c) or a note reference as in (e).

 

e.  author and a reference to the note number of the first citation.

For example: "Jones, as cited in note 13 above, p. 17."  Legal sources do this using the Latin words supra (above) and infra (below). For example: "Jones, note 21 supra, p. 17."

 

4.     Here are examples of each of the five short citation methods described above. In all these examples, assume your first 4 notes come from a book by Jones and an article by Wells; notes 1 and 4 are from Jones, 2 and 3 from Wells:

 

a.     1.  Thomas Jones, The Soviet State in the Twentieth Century, New York: Random House, 1991, p. 143.

2.  Sharon Wells, "The Khrushchev Ouster in Historical Perspective," Journal of Slavic Studies, vol. 3, no. 4, Summer 1987, p. 16.

3.  Ibid., p. 23.

4.  Jones, op. cit., p. 358.

 

b.     1.  Thomas Jones, The Soviet State in the Twentieth Century (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 143.

2.  Sharon Wells, "The Khrushchev Ouster in Historical Perspective," Journal of Slavic Studies, vol. 3, no. 4 (Summer 1987), p. 16.

3.  Wells, p. 23.

4.  Jones, p. 358.

 

c.      1.  Thomas Jones, The Soviet State in the Twentieth Century, New York: Random House, 1991, p. 143.

2.  Sharon Wells, "The Khrushchev Ouster in Historical Perspective," Journal of Slavic Studies, vol. 3, no. 4, Summer 1987, p. 16.

3.  Wells, "Khrushchev Ouster," p. 23.

4.  Jones, Soviet State, p. 358.

 

d.     1.  Thomas Jones, The Soviet State in the Twentieth Century, New York: Random House, 1991, p. 143.

2.  Sharon Wells, "The Khrushchev Ouster in Historical Perspective," Journal of Slavic Studies, vol. 3, no. 4, Summer 1987, p. 16.

3.  Wells, 1987, p. 23.

4.  Jones, 1991, p. 358.

 

e.     1.  Thomas Jones, The Soviet State in the Twentieth Century, New York: Random House, 1991, p. 143.

2.  Sharon Wells, "The Khrushchev Ouster in Historical Perspective," Journal of Slavic Studies, vol. 3, no. 4, Summer 1987, p. 16.

3.  Wells, as cited in note 2 above, p. 23.

4.  Jones, as cited in note 1 above, p. 358.

 

5.     Rules for writing footnotes. There are many variations here. Some put the publication information in parentheses, some just use commas. Some put the date of publication of a journal article in parentheses, some do not. Some use "p." and "pp." to indicate page numbers, some do not. There are various style manuals that recommend one particular style rather than another, but there is no uniform agreement. The American Political Science Association has published a Style Manual for Political Science (Washington, DC: APSA, 2002; for information, see http://www.apsanet.org/pubs/stylemanual.cfm); the newest APSA journal, however, Perspectives on Politics, asks those submitting articles to follow The Chicago Manual of Style. Other style manuals often used in political science are the American Psychological Association's (APA) Guide to Style and the Modern Language Association's MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The William Paterson library has handouts summarizing these latter two (available on-line at http://www.wpunj.edu/library/refpubs.htm). What is important is that whatever style you choose, stick with it throughout.

 

6.     Bibliography. At the end of the paper, you give a list of sources, with full information (see IIID below). The bibliography may be omitted if the full information for each source appears in the notes. You may include in your bibliography works that you consulted but which didn't get specifically footnoted, but make sure you really consulted them. (For example, if your paper argues that Jimmy Carter recklessly slashed defense spending and you list in your bibliography -- but don't otherwise refer to -- an article that says the defense budget went up during his term in office, something's fishy.)  Sometimes if consulted works are included, the bibliography is called "Works Consulted" instead of Bibliography. Bibliography entries should be alphabetized by the author's last name and appear last name first; usually periods replace the commas of a footnote entry. See IIID4 below for examples.

 

7.     Comments in notes. You can also use footnotes or endnotes for comments that you don't want to put in the text because they are a little off the topic or break the flow of the argument. These comments can be made part of a note that already gives a citation or they can appear in a separate note.

 

                For example, a footnote might read:

 

17. Kissinger, White House Years, p. 487. This is not the first time Kissinger’s account differs from reality. For further discussion, see Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, London: Verso, 2001.

 

   B.  CITATION-IN-TEXT METHOD

 

1.     Basic Approach: In the text, whenever you say something that needs documenting, you put the citation right there in parentheses.

 

2.     All parenthetic citations are in short form (so as not to disrupt the flow of the text more than necessary) and full citations are given at the end of your paper in a list of "Works Cited."

 

3.     There are 2 short forms for the parenthetical citations: author's last name and page, or author's last name, year, and page. (Often the page is indicated by the page number alone, with no "p." before it.)  If you have a lot of sources, and more than one from any author, use the year method. If more than one source by an author is published in the same year, refer to them as "Jones, 1991a" and "Jones, 1991b" both in the citations and in the "Works Cited" list. If the author's name is included in the sentence, it can be omitted from the parentheses; for example: "Hudson (1984, 134-35) has argued that toxic waste legislation is inadequate."

 

4.     The Works Cited list should be in alphabetical order by the author's last name. Sometimes the year of publication is given next, then the title, other publication data, and the rest of the date (if the date includes more than the year). For example:  "Roberts, Roberta (1991). 'Mud-Slinging In Political Campaigns.' American Political Science Review, vol. 3, no. 2, April."  Alternatively, the name is followed by the title, publication data, and date, as in: "Roberts, Roberta. 'Mud-Slinging In Political Campaigns.' American Political Science Review, vol. 3, no. 2, April 1991."

 

5.     For sources that don't have an author, use "Anonymous" as the author, or use the title, or the issuing agency.

 

6.     Non-standard sources can also be cited using this method. For example, a letter to you from former Gov. Jim Florio can be cited in the text "(Florio, 1992)" and in the "Works Cited" list as "Florio, Jim (1992). Letter to author. April 13."  A comment from a friend can be cited in the text as "(Reilly, 1992)" and in the "Works Cited" list as "Reilly, Susan (1992). Conversation with author. January 18."

 

7.     If you want to include some comments that you don't want to put in the text because they are a little off the topic or break the flow of the argument, you can put these in footnotes, even though you are using the citation-in-text method. Use a footnote number in the text (either a superscript or in parentheses) at the appropriate place or places and put the note(s) either at the bottom of the page or at the end of the article, before the Works Cited list.

 

8.     Example:

 

All together, 51.3% of registered voters cast ballots in 1988 (U.S. Senate, 1989, p. 23-24). Studies show that the more wealthy a person is, the more likely the person is to vote (Smith, 1991a, 143). Other studies have shown that the more education a person has, the more likely they are to vote (Besson, 1989, 27). But what about those who are rich but uneducated?  Smith (1991b, 117) has collected data demonstrating that their voting patterns are more like the rich and educated than like the poor and uneducated.

 

Works Cited

Besson, Samuel (1989). Voting Patterns of the American People. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Smith, Nancy M. (1991a). "Rich But Dumb: The Voting Behavior of Wealthy, Uneducated Americans," Journal of Politics, vol. 17, no. 2, Summer.

Smith, Nancy M. (1991b). Money and Voting. New York: Viking Press.

U.S. Senate (1989). Historical Data on U.S. Elections. Committee on Government Operations. Report. Washington, DC. June.

 

   C. THE SPECIAL PROBLEM OF USING SOURCES FROM THE WEB

 

The World Wide Web is a tremendous resource, putting a vast amount of information at your fingertips. However, the web also contains a lot of material that is worthless junk. Standard books, journals, and newspapers also may contain worthless junk, but because it is more costly to publish your own materials in these standard formats, there tend to be fewer wackos self-publishing on paper than on the web. Therefore, you need to be especially careful to evaluate the quality of the sources you cite from the web.

 

A claim by an unknown individual -- say, Joe Smith of Billings, Montana -- that Hillary Clinton kidnaps and tortures dogs from Republican families is not true merely because you found it on the web. You need to ask yourself: Does the information come from a reputable journal, individual, or institution?  Reputable journals and institutions tend to do more fact-checking and care about the damage to their reputations if the information they provide is false. Of course, even reputable organizations make self-serving claims, so you need to maintain a healthy skepticism.

 

Once you have convinced yourself that your source is reliable, you need to include enough information in your citation so that your reader can find the source and judge its reliability for him or herself. Therefore, at a minimum you need to give the web address (the URL) of where you found the information (so the reader can check it out if so desired) and a description of where it comes from. For example, if you found the text of an article from The National Review on the web, you should give both the URL and indicate the name of the author, the title of the article, the magazine or journal name, and the date. You will usually be unable to give the page number in the original source, since web pages rarely correspond to the printed pages. But you should give the page numbers of the entire article (if available); if no page numbers for the whole article are given, some suggest giving the number of paragraphs.  If the material came from a web service that collects huge amounts of documents, say Academic Search Premier (available from William Paterson computers) or Lexis/Nexis (ditto), it usually makes sense to just give the name of the service instead of the URL (since the long URL changes every time the document is accessed). Since web materials are frequently being updated and changed, most authorities state that your web citation should include the date when you found the information. Keeping a printed copy of the web page is also a good idea. The WPU library has a handout called "Guide for Citing Electronic Information," available on-line at http://www.wpunj.edu/library/citing.htm or in hard copy.

 

Here are some examples of web citations:

 

United States Government, Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 1996. "Dropout Rates in the United States, 1994," NCES No. 96-845. INTERNET: www.ed.gov/NCES/pubs/r94. Visited July 3, 1999.

 

Donald Tomaskovic‑Devey. "The gender and race composition of jobs and the male/female, white/black pay gaps." Social Forces, vol. 72, no. 1, Sept. 1993, pp. 45-76 (Academic Search Premier; Sept. 24, 1999).

 

The Sentencing Project, "U.S. Hits All‑time High Incarceration Rate; Russia & U.S. World Leaders," press release, 27 June 1997, available at their web site: http://www.sproject.com/ [15 Oct. 1998].

 

   D.  GENERAL RULES FOR CITING SOURCES

 

Whether you use the footnote/endnote method or the citations-in-text method, follow these rules when giving a full citation:

 

1.   Underline or italicize titles of books, journals, magazines, and newspapers. (You can use either underline or italics, but be consistent: use the same font format for all titles.)

 

2.   Put quotes around titles of articles from journals, magazines, newspapers, or from edited collections.

 

3.   Complete citations require the following information, in addition to any specific page numbers:

 

a.  For books: author, title, place of publication, publisher, date.

b.  For articles from journals: author, title of article, title of journal, volume, number, date.

c.  For articles from magazines: author, title of article, title of magazine, date.

d.  For articles from newspapers: author, title of article, name of newspaper, date.

e.  For articles from an edited collection: author, title of article, title of edited collection, editor, place of publication, publisher, date.

f.  For materials from the web, the above information as appropriate plus the web address (the URL) or the web service where you found the material. It is also advisable to give the date you visited the web site.

 

4.   Here are examples, first for footnotes, then for a bibliography, and then for a Works Cited list (but, again, note that there are many acceptable variations -- see the various style manuals cited in IIIA5 above -- and the key is to be consistent):

 

Footnotes

    book:            Ramón Javier, Plato and Justice, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 132-37.

    journal:         Maureen Wilde, "Women in Ohio Prisons," Journal of Criminal Justice, vol. 15, no. 3, May 1990, p. 351.

    magazine:      Charles Lane, "Bush In Trouble in Colorado," Newsweek, Oct. 23, 1992.

    newspaper:    Lance H. Kelb, "Bush Prepares Iraqi Attack," New York Times, April 3, 1992, p. A1.

    edited collection: William Jones, "The Labor Movement in Peru," in Latin American Labor, ed. Sarah Jones (New York: Pantheon, 1988), p. 16.

 

Bibliography

    book:            Javier, Ramón. Plato and Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

    journal:         Wilde, Maureen. "Women in Ohio Prisons." Journal of Criminal Justice. Vol. 15, no. 3, May 1990.

    magazine:      Lane, Charles. "Bush In Trouble in Colorado." Newsweek. Oct. 23, 1992.

    newspaper:    Kelb, Lance H. "Bush Prepares Iraqi Attack." New York Times. April 3, 1992.

    edited collection:  Jones, William. "The Labor Movement in Peru." In Latin America Labor. Ed. Sarah Jones. New York: Pantheon, 1988.

 

Works Cited list

    book:            Javier, Ramón (1992). Plato and Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.

    journal:         Wilde, Maureen (1990). "Women in Ohio Prisons." Journal of Criminal Justice. Vol. 15, no. 3, May.

    magazine:      Lane, Charles (1992). "Bush In Trouble in Colorado." Newsweek. Oct. 23.

    newspaper:    Kelb, Lance H. (1992). "Bush Prepares Iraqi Attack." New York Times. April 3.

    edited collection:  Jones, William (1988). "The Labor Movement in Peru." In Latin America Labor. Ed. Sarah Jones. New York: Pantheon.

 

   E.  ABSTRACTS

 

An abstract is a one-paragraph summary of what is in an article or research paper. Abstracts are helpful when you are looking for material in the library and trying to decide whether an article is worth reading. You may be asked to write an abstract for a paper that you write. You will be told how long the abstract may be: sometimes 100-150 words, sometimes up to 250. You write the abstract after the paper is completed. Abstracts should summarize the problem you are writing about, the methodology you used or the kinds of evidence you looked at, and your conclusions.

 

 

SRS 8/03