Current Affair Paper project
Paper Topic Choices
(choose one topic from these options)

1*Regimes: Stability or Change Processes >> ( Democratic Consolidation or Erosion in Pakistan)

2*Political Economy >>(Fighting Poverty in Brazil)

3*Elections and Institutions : ( Spain 2016)

Please choose one Topic to write the Essay and look for the requirement on the attached.

The core activity for this paper is to identify relevant articles from news sources, and write a brief report on a specific issue/conflict.
a) Essays must make use of (and refer to) at least five (5) news articles. These articles may be from newspapers, news magazines, or academic journals. These sources must be published: online webpages do not qualify. Class texts and articles (e.g. Drogus/Orvis) may be used as background sources, but do not qualify as one of the four cited sources and should not be used as a source for substantial sections of the paper.
b) Use concepts/processes from class to discuss the specific case selected. Students may refer to and draw from Drogus/Orvis text (although this will not be adequate as a source). Comparison of the country/case with other countries described in Drogus/Orvis is recommended.
c) Should point out why/how the issue has recent significant for the politics of the country being studied. Papers on broad historical topics or past events, on non-political issues will not qualify as having met core requirements for this project.
d) While the paper is about a current/contemporary political issue, general information from unofficial websites, ‘blogs’ or special interest groups will not be accepted as valid sources. ‘Google’ searches are strongly discouraged. Acceptable news sources include: newspapers, news wire services.

This project must be based on news articles that are available through one or more of the UM-Flint library’s database search engines.
 The UM Flint library website is at: http://www.umflint.edu/library/. Select “Databases: Indexes and Full Text Articles” from the main page.

 Select one of the available databases (Proquest or Lexis-Nexis are recommended)
 Searching the databases: Type in a few of the terms/descriptors for the topic. This will require trial and error as well as good judgment. Typing the words “India” and “Pakistan” for instance will generate a list of all the articles that include those terms in the title or text. This broad search will result in many (too many) citations: narrow the search by date, kind of source (only newspapers, for example), or by adding additional search terms.
 Select and read/scan the best (most useful) article for the paper. Give preference to content- rich articles (usually longer ones). Use these articles as the sources for the paper.